Jobs, Graduate School...Too Many Choices

Life is chaotic right now. Coronavirus is shutting everything down. With everything that’s going on, I’m finding it hard to decide what to do with my life. Last semester, one of my honors professors told me that I should go to graduate school. I thought, “Me? Graduate school? Absolutely not!” However, with everything going on right now, I’m finding myself thinking about it more and more. The more I reflect, the more I keep thinking that this is what I’m supposed to do. I keep thinking about the “everything happens for a reason” mindset, and I can’t help but think that it applies here. If this pandemic never happened, I don't think I'd be having this conversation with myself. Learning is something that I think I’ve taken for granted every now and then. I don’t want to let this opportunity pass me by. It’s safe to say that the job market isn’t exactly at its best at the moment, and who knows when things will start to get back to normal.

To be quite honest, I’ve never really considered going to graduate school—when people would bring it up to me, I never actually gave it a thought. It’s not that it was never an option for me, I guess I just thought that I didn’t need to go because it wasn’t essential for what I want to do as a career. However, I’m realizing that I can’t just skip out on something because it’s not required for my career. I need to go with my gut feeling and do what’s right for me. I’ve always been a people pleaser, and it’s been this way since elementary school. I remember one teacher telling my mom that my twin brother was a prodigy and was the most gifted student she’d ever seen. However, she also told my mom that I was dumb and never going anywhere in life. That stuck with me. Since then, I’ve felt this need to prove myself and be the best. I think that’s why I’ve always wanted to dive into the job market right after college. Learning is something so near to my heart, something that I think I’ve always been drawn to. It makes sense for me to continue on in my education so that I can be best prepared in the long run for my career. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are going to be times when we think we’re on the right road, but it takes a big obstacle to make us realize that we’re not.

Uncontrollable Laughter – Nutmeg’s Shenanigans

If anyone else has a cat, then they know that cats LOVE to get into boxes, vases, baskets, really anything they think they can fit themselves into. My cat, Nutmeg, is no different. She’s constantly getting into trouble and finding things she can get into. It’s quite amusing. Downstairs in our living room, we have a fruit bowl that, surprisingly, doesn’t have any fruit it in. Weird. Anyways, yesterday, while my mom and I were walking around the house watering the plants, we came across Nutmeg literally squished on top of the clearly smaller than her body fruit bowl. We both immediately busted out laughing. Here was this cat trying to fit her body somewhere that clearly wasn’t meant for her! I don’t know if anyone in this class has seen the film, The Secret Life of Pets. But, the main cat character in the film, Chloe, accurately depicts the common cat. If you haven’t seen the film, I highly recommend you give it a view—it’s so great and so funny! Anyway, Nutmeg always finds herself getting into trouble, and when we stumbled upon her yesterday, we couldn’t help but laugh at what she was doing. I think the reason why it’s so funny is because it’s something unexpected that goes beyond the ordinary. During these times of uncertainty, we have to find the humor in the little things. Nutmeg has been that source for me. She always keeps me on my toes, and I love her for that! I had to take a photo of it, so if anyone’s interested, here it is!

5 Tips on How to be Funny

Anyone can be funny! Sometimes, it’s just about following steps to try and improve your humor. Here are five tips on how to be funny and improve your humor:

1.         Give the opposite answer to yes/no questions: I read that one of the easiest ways to be funny, even if you’re not, is to give the opposite answer to yes/no questions. If people are expecting you to say yes, you say no; if people are expecting you to say no, you say yes. This is Jennifer Lawrence’s go-to strategy for her own humor. The magic here is that the moment you give the opposite answer, you have surprised the audience, so they naturally laugh in response—after this, you can move on to the real story.

2.         Play with numbers: One way to be surprising is to play with numbers. Why? Because numbers are specific. When something is small, numbers tell. The same can be said when something is big. To be surprising, all you have to do is build up people’s expectation to be the opposite of what the number suggests. For example, when you’re about to say a very big number, add “only” before it; when you’re about to say a very small number, say something along the lines of “it’s a huge amount” beforehand.

3.         Use the Rule of 3: The Rule of 3 establishes a pattern, then ends with something unexpected. For example, “red, white, and barf” is something unexpected as a spin-off of “red, white, and blue.” This breakaway from the pattern created by the first two items builds tension and creates surprise, usually resulting in laughter. This example is also quite effective: “I love hot dogs, hamburgers, and handsome men.”

4.         Use real-life stories, not jokes: The beauty of using personal experiences as fodder for humor is that your life experience is unique, and, therefore, stories based on it are guaranteed to be original. The easiest way to be funny is highlighting actual funny things that happen in your everyday life. Jokes are harder to tell in real life than stories. Rather than tell jokes, exceptionally funny people tell relevant stories that have humorous elements. If people don’t find a story funny, no big deal, because the story has a point beyond just being funny—if people laugh, then all the better in the end!

5.         Delay the funny: The best-placed pun is actually at the end. Put the funny part at the end of the sentence. For example, if the fact it’s a cat is the surprise or twist, say, “In that box was a cat” instead of “there was a cat in the box.” An easy way to delay and replay the funny is to use callbacks. Callbacks bring together everything in the end—this is where you go back and reference items that just got a laugh or create something from items mentioned earlier in the conversation.

Reactions to Arbuckle, Lloyd, Chaplin, and Keaton Silent Comedy Compilations

I think it’s so fascinating that people can create comedy without having to say anything—when I think about the word “comedy,” I always imagine people getting in front of an audience and doing stand-up. That’s why these four videos struck me so much: being funny or providing some sort of comedic relief doesn’t merely have to be with words, it can be through stunts and silence.

One of Arbuckle’s stunts in particular ties back to what we’ve learned in class. He gets hit by a large gavel and falls down, and others around him (including himself) start to laugh. This links back to the superiority theory, which basically says that we laugh in situations where we feel ‘higher’ than others, especially during moments when the object of the laughter is caught in a misfortune. Arbuckle experienced an embarrassing moment, thereby exemplifying the Superiority theory. A lot of what Arbuckle was doing in the video was sort of emasculating in a way, especially when he was shown wearing a wig and a dress and dancing with girls or running away from another man, or even when he’s shown with two pots over his chest area. With that being said, I wasn’t blown away by these scenes and didn’t find any of them to be particularly funny. He didn’t depict himself in a strong way, but rather in an inferior way (from what I saw). His stunts weren’t physical or eye-catching as the other videos/characters.

I was pleasantly surprised by Harold Lloyd’s compilation of stunts. I enjoyed how he portrayed himself in these videos. In one scene, he quickly runs through what seems like a Ferris wheel seat right before people who were chasing him get trapped—genius! I thought the scene where him and another man hang themselves on a wall by the tops of their jackets was so ingenuous and something that I’ve never seen before, something that truly made me laugh. I was drawn to his more dangerous stunts, like scaling a building, hanging from a building (while a bucket falls on his head), or dangling from a clock over a street. I think these scenes get the attention of an audience more than what Arbuckle was doing in his scenes. From what I gathered through the videos, he created a screen character as much like the average man as possible: no outsize costume or face makeup—just a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and the occasional straw hat. His comedy came from taking this man who might pass us on the street and walking him one plausible step at a time into a world of outrageous misfortune.

Out of the four comedians, I recognized Chaplin’s name the most because he’s referenced a lot in popular culture. Just from what I watched, I can tell that he represented the destitute everyman. He turned laziness and the feeling of being unwanted into comedy. I was drawn into everything he did, and I couldn’t deny the way he could indirectly interact with the camera and audience. I really enjoyed the scene from The Gold Rush where he made wooden “feet” dance—I thought its humor was subtle but very effective. I think his characterization and the way he’s portrayed is quite memorable. The physical attributes of the "Tramp" include a pair of baggy pants, a tight coat, a small bowler hat, a large pair of shoes, a springy and flexible cane and a mustache. I think I connected with this character because of how seemingly well-meaning he is. Unlike the daredevil that’s associated with Lloyd, I see more subtleties with Chaplin—I think that’s what makes him so great.

The thing I noticed with Keaton is that he seemed to maneuver through surreal and complex situations. I liked how there was one scene that showed him getting into a car tire connected to the back of the car, but the car drives away without the tire…and without Keaton. There are a lot of stunts where Keaton falls down a lot, which I think shows his style of comedy. I also noticed his facial expressions—he can be seen with a constant deadpan facial expression. His style was quite similar to Lloyd’s, as both showed a lot of dangerous stunts and emphasized the act of danger. A lot of comedy today focuses on crude humor, and I think there’s a lost art in the silent comedy film. It adds a visual style and an element that just can’t be found in today’s comedy.

Greatest Comedy Films List

Here's my list for my top five greatest comedy films of all time! *in no particular order*

1. Bridesmaids

2. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

3. Step Brothers

4. Superbad

5. National Lampoon's Animal House

There’s Nothing I Can Do…And I Feel Helpless: COVID-19 Strikes Again

This sucks. My senior year is basically over. And it’s all thanks to COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus. I never imagined that it would end this way. However, in spite of all of this, I feel as though I’m blessed. I was on a cruise a week ago, and the government could have decided to quarantine all of us to our staterooms for who knows how long. I am safe and healthy. That’s all that should matter. But, I can’t help but think about all of the goodbyes and celebrations that have been taken from me because of this. It’s completely and utterly devastating. I’ve always been an optimist, looking and thinking on the bright side of things no matter the situation. I’m not going to pretend that this doesn’t suck. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. All of the friendships that were made during these past four years will continue to blossom and don’t end here. These people aren’t going anywhere. I need to keep reminding myself that TCU doesn’t end when our time here does. Even though we’re not physically on campus, we still have each other, and we’re still connected to one another. As a graduating senior, it’s hard to cope with the fact that my last two months on campus have been cut short. It’s not what any of us wanted. But, I’m still holding out some hope for a postponed graduation, for the hope that the class of 2020 can be together one last time to celebrate all of our accomplishments over the last four years. After receiving the email this morning that online classes have been extended for the rest of the semester, all of the pent up frustrations and sadness came out all at once—I sobbed for fifteen minutes straight while my mom cried with me and held me in her arms. I know that things will get better and that things have a way of working themselves out, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. My family is safe and healthy and that’s all that matters. We just have to take things one step at a time…day by day. It’s probably not going to get better in a month, but we just have to remain patient and keep praying for the world. It will get better. Things will change. It just takes time. I wish more than anything that we could go back because we never got to say our proper goodbyes. But, maybe we don’t have to. We will always have this amazing place, and we will always have each other. We don’t have to let go, at least not yet.

Pictured below is me with my sweet kitty, Nutmeg. I got her my freshman year of high school, and she’s been my sidekick for the past 8ish years. Since being back home, she hasn’t left my side. It’s things like this that I can’t take for granted. Coronavirus may have screwed everything up, but we still have our families. We still have our friends. We still have our sidekicks.

Mosh Pit Fail Videos Triggers Continuous Laughter

Last Wednesday during class, we watched some mosh pit fail videos as well as some other random funny/fail videos. There was one video especially that seemed to make the class just bust out in long fits of laughter. In the video, a girl was seen dancing with her group of friends at a seemingly techno/hard rock concert in an open space—all of a sudden, she disappears as she gets run over by “the wall of death,” which is a term used to describe a form of moshing which sees participants split into two halves before slamming the two sides into one another. I just remember the entire class busting out into laugher, myself included. I couldn’t stop laughing for what seemed like minutes. I have a high-pitched, cackle type laugh, so I knew that this video really had to get to me in order for my witch cackle to come out. We had to watch the video again because we just couldn’t believe that that had happened. Now you see her, now you don’t. I think I kept laughing because my classmates were laughing along with me. Earlier on in the semester, we talked about how laughter is contagious—it can be so either in a destructive way or a positive way. Yes, I was laughing at the fact that the girl in the video was physically taken down by two groups of people running toward each other, but it wasn’t in a malicious way or with ill intent. What I mean is that maybe it’s not particularly appropriate to laugh after that moment, but in a way, I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it was just the way she disappeared into the abyss of people, or how she seemingly just slipped away, but it triggered the response of laughter. In terms of how this event relates to materials discussed and learned in class, I relate it to what Comic Relief mentioned in that laughter causes us to lose control sometimes, especially by joking. I also see connections to the Superiority theory as well, which basically says that we laugh in situations where we feel ‘higher’ than others, especially during moments when the object of the laughter is caught in a misfortunate situation. I’m not saying that myself or the class looked down on the girl in her misfortune, but I’m merely saying that I can see a link between this event and that concept merely because of the way it happened. The girl experienced an embarrassing and absolutely disastrous moment that was shared for the whole world to see, thereby exemplifying the Superiority theory. There’s this element where I knew I shouldn’t be laughing because it was an unfortunate incident due to the fact that it was completely unintentional and out of the blue, but there’s always been this response to laugh when others hurt and/or embarrass themselves. I see this through the other various fail videos we watched during this class session, including the one where two friends were playing the game rock, paper, scissors and if one of them won, then the other could bonk the one who lost on the head with a large, empty water jug. I hope the girl wasn’t hurt and can laugh at this in the future. It’s little moments like these that bring light to the course topics and adds an element of relaxation and fun to the course as a whole.