As a writer– and a Mick– I don’t think I’ve ever suffered from writer’s block. I’m filled with words to put on paper or shout or whisper to the wind. But I’m often at a loss as to what to write about.
I’m told I have a tendency to lecture. More truth than fiction. I’m sort of a half assed philosopher. Don’t get me started, we’ll be here ’til rapture. Speaking of which…
…Okay, I’ll steer clear of another religious harangue.Boy oh boy do I love to give the fundamentalists hell. A great guy said, “Fundamentalism is Christianity gone berserk,” and ain’t that the truth? I love to tweak its nose and pull its tail. I love to get ’em so hot under the collar it melts the baloney they spout, utter, and preach. I love to remind ‘them’ that to spend all eternity with them would be the hell they sell to the sinner they send there. Us guys got that place air-conditioned and spend all eternity playing strip poker with Marilyn Monroe and May West, if you’re a guy. With any good looking’ young hunk, if you’re a girl–which I will be again when I get there.
Anyhow, I got orders from my Editor, ‘Write something funny about yourself.’ That’s not hard to do. Essentially I’m a kind of funny character. Funny looking. Eccentric as all get out, always was and always will be. There’s something funny about eccentricity and eccentricity in public is a hoot and holler. To wear tennis shoes with a tux will earn you a giggle or two. Howard Hughes did it and got away with it. If you’re rich you can be as eccentric as the dickens and get away with it. But most of us aren’t Howard Hughes.
It used to be eccentrically outrageous to dye your hair green but that’s not so eccentric anymore. Few heads turn when you wear it to the mall, or charity ball, or down the red carpet, either. Red carpets? Hey, buddy, get a load of that. Funny is funny, and humor is humor, but that stuff’s just plain silly.
Okay, I’m a chicken– a scrawny old hen, if the truth were know–but I choose to be eccentric at home. Out in public I pretend I’m normal. Normal’s not funny. Fact is, normal is dull.
To be dull at eighty freakin’ five–which I am, in years–is a crime against posterity or prosperity or persnickety wicket.
As a writer, I love to make up words like brillig and the slithy toves. I jabberwacky. I’m jealous of Lewis Carrol.
I must admit my sense of humor has aged a bit, but I love to laugh. Make people laugh. I wanna die laughing with a glass of Charddonay in one hand, a magic wand in the other, wearing tennis shoes made in China dappled with red sequins. The Lion, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and my dumb Editor will escort me.
Now that’s funny.
bettejo 