XL/TG

Random Thoughts The tidal forces around a black hole cause spaghettification of infalling matter. Or for child prodigy astrophysicists, “paskettification.” You can offer a black hole other foods but it’s just going to say “No!!! Spaghetti!!!” Something to add to the Paragon mythos. (Universal devourer Marvin Crackbaby is related to black holes.) I wanted to write a further black hole joke with the punchline “linguinification” but I Googled the word and a lot of people have done that already. Too bad. “Linguinification” is a hilarious word. Maybe I could say something about “lasagnification” instead. Make it a Garfield joke. “ Garfield Deforms Spacetime: His 36th Book .” When you think about it, the word “sweater” is kind of gross. As I continue to read Roger Ebert reviews, I notice that I’m gratified when he agrees with me [for example, that Dream a Little Dream (1989) is confusing] and irritated when he disagrees with me [for example, giving Looper (2012) three-...

  Comedy Theory: The Two Types of Audience Some comedies seem cruel instead of funny. Bad things happening to innocent people. Who thinks this is funny? My theory is that there are two types of audience. The first type suspends disbelief by default, and so they empathise with the characters, even in a story that is obviously absurd or impossible. The second type perceives the story only as abstract manipulation of ideas, and so they view it at arm’s length, without suspending disbelief. If you’re the first type (which I am), there’s a lot of comedy that’s clever, but just too depressing. Tom Goes to the Mayor (2004), for example. And if you’re the second type, the cleverness is enough to carry you through. In a broader sense, this also applies to how the audience approaches any art form. Some filmmakers are not trying to tell a story, or entertain the viewer, or make something beautiful. They’re only interested in manipulating information in smart new ways...

I’m going to try something. For the last decade or so my friend Michael Bertrand has been blogging 1000 words per day and has said that it’s made him a better writer. Also, one of my comedy teachers recently advised us to try stream-of-consciousness “automatic writing” for 15 minutes a day to unblock creativity for comedy writing (although he says it has to be longhand, not typed, so I’ll be doing that separately from this blog). They say the only way to get better at writing is to write, because “writers write.” They didn’t say it had to be good. I probably should have done this a long time ago, and today is an arbitrary starting point, which is against my nature, but never mind. What made it happen today was when another recent piece of advice from a comedy classmate got combined with something similar I’d been trying to do for a long time—and whatever mysterious change that needed to happen to allow me to actually do it, finally happened yesterday. The “...