Mister Rogers: Invisible, imperishable, good stuff.

A decent man in an indecent age. March 20, 1928 - February 27, 2003.

The words "invisible, imperishable, good stuff," in this blog's headline aren't mine. They were said by Fred Rogers, a trailblazer for public television, and a man who influenced millions of children, and their parents, in positive ways with his long-running show Mister Roger's Neighborhood. Many people remember him as as one of the major influences of their early childhoods. Read a few of his words here:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/32106.Fred_Rogers

Did you watch Mister Rogers as a child? I was unsure if my eldest daughter had, so I asked her in an email. I thought perhaps she'd watched Sesame Street and not Mister Rogers, but she replied "Of course! I watched both of them, but Mister Rogers taught me how to be a human being." Ditto, for millions of children in America, and the world. I did not pay much attention to Mister Rogers until my children began watching it. I was surprised with his gentle spirit and simple way of explaining complex things to children. Things like having feelings, and caring for people.

I didn't watch Mister Rogers as a child. I had never heard of Mister Rogers until I was fourteen years old. He seemed weird with his odd songs, his love of sweaters, and use of puppets. A little bit of Mister Rogers went a long ways. He was too nice and too different from the rest of what was airing on television. By the time Mister Rogers aired I had moved on to other things. I thought I was too old for him. Even Johnny Quest, Leave it to Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Dennis the Menace, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Candid Camera, had become boring. Sesame Street was just beginning. 

I grew up in what is called 'The Golden Age' of American sitcoms. We three youngest children watched Green Acres, Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, Star Trek, Gilligan's Island, Bonanza, Love Boat, Get Smart, and The Dating Game. The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone held my attention. My parents regularly watched Hee Haw, Hollywood Squares, and Jeopardy, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

As a child, given the options of cartoons on a Saturday morning or educational shows, we always chose the cartoons. The only exception to this was The Wonderful World of Disney, or Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, but these were shows that aired in the evenings. Cartoons were all that mattered on Saturday mornings. It was also the golden age of cartoons. Cartoons without violence were dull. Cartoon characters died in every imaginable way, but being cartoons they were immortal. I memorized Bug Bunny's comic lines, and other cartoon icons. My mind was silly putty.

Rogers said publicly that he didn't like cartoons because of the violence they taught children. It was an age where Vietnam was televised, and the news carried stories about racial riots. Death was the main topic of the news media. Shows about violence prevailed. If someone wasn't dying on Perry Mason, or one of the many cowboy western shows, something in TV-Land was amiss. 

Writing this blog I learned things I didn't know about Mister Rogers, such as the fact that he was a vegetarian. I knew he was an ordained minister, but I didn't know he took a swim in the nude very day. He was a bit quirky. I also didn't know his show began in Canada, or that he was born in Pennsylvania, not far from the city of Pittsburgh. He was married, he had children, and he was a great example of what it is to be a loving human being.

I don't always have confidence I did the best I could do with my children. Watching videos of Mr. Rogers today I got teary eyed. He cared about children, and I like what he had to say.

If Mister Rogers didn't get into Heaven, nobody is getting in. I tend to think that what we saw on TV was how he was in real life when he wasn't in front of the camera. In 1969 he testified before congress in order to get more funding for public television. http://video.pbs.org/video/1428499965/ As a result of his testimony, the budget of PBS increased from 9 Million to 22 Million dollars.

His show debuted in Canada in 1966, and lasted until 2001. That's a lot of years of caring for children, and I think he would say it was his Christian ministry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers

He died of stomach cancer on February 27, 2003, less than a month before he turned age 75 (birthday: March 20, 1928). But his legacy will endure for many years to come. I cannot wear a button up sweater without thinking of Mister Rogers, and his theme song still plays in my head.

Mr. Rogers’ song goes, "Won't you be, please won't you be, won't you be my neighbor?” We can still learn a lot from Mister Rogers, can’t we, neighbor?

My Life in the Theatre of the Absurd, or Comedy is the Best Medicine.

We can learn a lot from a show about nothing.

I've been thinking about comedy lately, prompted by Jerry Seinfeld's show Comedians in cars getting coffee. http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/

The premise of the show is simple. Seinfeld, at the wheel of collectible cars, picks up his comedian friends and they go for coffee. They talk. They knosh. They joke. They entertain. In Hollywood, and everywhere else, this is what people want: things that make them laugh. It is like a talk show on wheels. Guests have included Don Rickles, Chris Rock, David Letterman, Larry David, and Alec Baldwin.

Comedy is a science. Every comedian has a certain methodology for how they come up with jokes. It is like turning a sock inside out. They go into their childhoods, what they did on any given day, and the ordinary things become things we can relate to in our humdrum lives. Here is Seinfeld explaining how he works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCfW5s

I personally believe the world could benefit by electing comedians into public office. Imagine how much funnier Inauguration Day could be if a John Candy lookalike was being sworn in. Let's do a write in campaign to elect our favorite comedian. And what about a national holiday. Don't we need a Joke Day in America? On this day, everybody wears tee-shirts with one-liners. And clown shoes. Nobody is required to work. And if religion has to be involved, let's make a patron saint of the joke. Saint Tomfoolery, a martyr who died laughing.

This cerebral thinking has prompted me to ask: Are some people born with more humor than other people? Can humor be inherited in our DNA?  Truly naturally funny people are hard to find. Most of us have an uncle or aunt who cracks us up, but are they funny all of the time? No. If a person is always funny, we begin to wonder about their sanity and grip on reality. Why? Because reality can be grim and very unfunny. Death is all around us. What we need is a funny pill that elevates the humor potential of the human brain. Ready to kill your girlfriend or boyfriend? Had a parent that died? Take the pill and suddenly you're in happy-land. You and your significant other are laughing, reconciling, and flying to Reno to get hitched. 

When a human being is born funny from the womb, and gifted with comic qualities, their future employment may be in jeopardy.  Writing 'Jester’ as an employment objective on a resume is sure to raise the eyebrows of potential employers. Inevitably, often against their wills and better judgments, comics find themselves drawn to the entertainment world. Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park is an example of what happens when a person has had an epiphany that their true calling is to make people laugh. When suddenly they find themselves in costume shops ogling jester's costumes rather than a business wardrobe. 

Granted, some of the people I have seen at Speaker's Corner, and on sidewalks in cities I've visited, could have been escapees from mental institutions. Comedy often walks the line between sanity and insanity, as Mel Brooks reminded us in the films, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, Men in Tights, and  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O57mcVUd4Ygand The Producers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqpN6NXM3RA

But comedy is not all fun and games. It is serious business to become a comedian and make a living. To succeed takes quirkiness and luck. It takes good writing to be a good comedian. If a comedian can write funny material they stand a better chance of making it. Why? Because they only have to depend on themselves, not a team of writers who are not as funny. Think baseball players are superstitious? Comedians are the worst! How do they know so much about insecurity and phobias? They've got them! 

Why are there so many Jews in comedy? If your people were historically being forced to convert to Catholicism, gassed, and ousted from their land for thousands of years, humor is an alternative to despair. Similar reasons exist for why fat people, or people with odd voices, or hairdo's, are good comedians, and Black comedians seem to be in abundance. Stereotype and oppress a minority for long enough and you'll produce comedians. Half of England is made up of comedians who turned to animation as an outlet for happiness, owing to the Norman invasion centuries ago. Okay, maybe I've gone too far with that one.

A study by researchers at the University of Maryland found that laughing while watching a comedic film causes your blood vessels to dilate by 22 percent. That's because when you laugh, the tissues forming the lining of your blood vessels expand and make room for an increase in blood flow. Translation: When you laugh at the movies, you're actually lowering your blood pressure to the same extent that you'd lower it when you do physical exercise, said Dr. Michael Miller, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Preventive Cardiology.

Huge numbers of grownups in Japan read comic books. Comedy, and fantasy offer escapism from our lives. Why there aren't religious groups that have a divine comedian as their object of worship is beyond me. Oftentimes I laugh at myself. Imagine how much God laughs at us.

I did not plan to become a comic writer, though, like a Kentucky thoroughbred, I was raised in an environment where humor was king. Yes, a comedy farm where puns were abundant. My father was an amateur comedian, and my mother was his straight partner. This is important role in any comedy team. The audience needs this balance in order to gauge the quality of the humor. Comedians often hold down mundane day jobs to be funny in the comic profession. My father owned a body and fender shop. Dishwashers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, and the guy flipping the burgers are sort of undercover, collecting ideas for their comedy routines. Which touches on a sobering thought about comedians. Most comedians will never make it big. Everyone knows the ones that did make it big: Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis, the Smothers Brothers, The Marx Brothers. Here is a list of a few. http://listverse.com/2010/04/27/top-10-comedy-teams-of-all-time/

Comedy is not limited to comedians in films or on stage. Comedians often take up writing as a profession. Vonnegut, for example. Everyone loves a funny novel. Gene Shallot’s book Comedy Matters, sums up what the world needs perhaps more than love: funny stuff to get our minds off of the sadness and mundanity of living. This is called “comic relief.” Why do beautiful women marry odd-looking guys? The guys make them laugh. Laughter is the best medicine. In the midst of the worst situation, it is the comic who can prevail and live to tell about it. Take Woody Allen for example, who is even more neurotic than Mel Brooks. Here is a scrawny, myopic, balding Jew from New York. The epitome of stereotypes. His only saving grace, based undoubtedly on self-preservation, is to see the humor of everything. If you look hard enough, there are silver linings of absurdity present in every circumstance. http://splitsider.com/2013/07/our-favorite-woody-allen-movies/  Want to talk a bully into not beating you up? Make them laugh. Lonely and desperate for love and insecure about one’s sexual prowess? Joke about it, you’ll feel better. Woody once said, “I’m the best I ever had.” Allen addresses anyone who feels lonely and unloved at times, and that is everyone, which is why his movies are so popular.

It has been posited that a typical comedian has a thick layer of melancholia hidden beneath a veneer of humor. Kahlil Gibran said tears are laughter unmasked. The reason for this apparent contradiction is because comedians are deep thinkers. Aristotle was probably a comedian, and clearly so was Shakespeare. Superficiality is a smokescreen to the empathetic being behind the humor. The Seinfeld show was, as Jerry and George said in an episode where they had a sitcom idea, “A show about nothing.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQnaRtNMGMI Of course, it wasn’t a show about nothing. It was about everyone, and that was why everyone loved it.

Steve Harvey, while on a live BET (Black Entertainment Television) show, suggested that comedians are not like most people. He said comedians have a third eye that allows them to observe nuances others have missed. Comedians see a couple with wall-to-wall tattoos and think of comic conversations the couple could have. They ask the question: What do tattooed people talk about? Do they talk about the next tattoo they will get? Do they lament not having room left on their skin for another tattoo? Is it a club with special handshakes? Certainly they all have stories about their first tattoos. Why does a person let another person put ink under their skin? Do people with tattoos have phobias about going to art museums, and rather than go in the door of a museum they become their own museum? The potential for comic material is enormous.

Comedians think about the things everyone experiences in deeper ways. They posit questions some of us have thought about but never put into words. They strike a chord in us. They answer questions that have been on our minds for years. They can talk about the past and future, the latest gadgets, trends, and events. No subject is off-limits. Did we really go to the moon? If you shot a gun in space will the bullet travel forever? Do cell phones cook our brains? If you shoot a gun in space, what happens if the bullet travels forever until it is sucked into a planet’s orbit? What if the random space bullet kills a famous person on some planet? Does that explain the Kennedy assassination? Do Twinkies have a shelf life? Why do zebras have stripes? Why are some people gay and others aren't?

No subject is outside the realm of comedic discussion. Everything can be explained by a comic. This is why nobility often surrounded themselves with court jesters. Humor makes life bearable. Comedians are our only hope for the future. And, as the song goes, "Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!"