Comedy: My other passion

Long before I had aspirations of being a reporter, I was interested in a career in comedy. It all started in fifth grade when our teacher told us to perform skits that had something to do with the short story we were reading that week. I was a big fan of David Letterman so I encouraged those in my group to do a skit in which I was the host of a late night talk show and that they, playing the role of the characters in our short story, were my guests. The rest of the class thought it was a hoot and from then on my classmates looked to me for laughs.

In junior high and high school I was active in a youth group that held a fundraising supper every February. In addition to serving our guests a plate of spaghetti, we put on a variety show of sketches and musical numbers. Usually we relied on scripts that others had written but occasionally we wrote our own material. When I was in high school, I helped write a sketch that took place on the set of ?Who Wants to be a Millionaire?? ? a popular show at the time.

The gist of the skit was that contestants would come on the show, be stumped by an easy question and then have to ?phone a friend.? I played the part of the friend. I sat in a booth backstage and spoke into a microphone so the audience could hear me. I remember that one of the friends I imitated was George H.W. Bush. I had a lot of practice imitating him because I had seen Dana Carvey of Saturday Night Live do it so many times. In fact, my impression was probably closer to Carvey?s impression of Bush than of Bush himself.

Another ?friend? I portrayed that night was Al Gore. It was a character I was accustomed to playing. In my freshman health class, my friends and I wrote a sketch in which Gore, who had just lost the election to George W. Bush in real life, thinks he can continue in his role as vice president if he gets rid of Dick Cheney, which he plans to do by feeding him foods high in cholesterol. Cheney ultimately discovers what Gore is trying to do but Gore gets away because Cheney is not fit enough to chase him down the hallway into science class.

When I was a junior, my youth group worked really hard on the skits so we could have them memorized by the time of the show. My friend Chris and I found a couple of Monty Python skits to perform at the Spaghetti Supper. One was about an ?argument clinic? in which a customer of this clinic pays to have a five-minute argument with a professional arguer. First the professional refuses to argue after only about a minute, claiming the customer?s time is up. The customer pays for another five minutes. The professional takes the money, only to later argue that the customer hadn?t really paid.

?If you're arguing, I must have paid,? says the customer.

?Not necessarily,? says the professional. ?I could be arguing in my spare time.?

We also performed a skit about a job interview, in which a man thinks he?s being interviewed for a job. The employer says ?good morning? to the interviewee, to which the interviewee responds with ?good morning.? The employer then asks the interviewee why he said ?good morning? when he knows perfectly well that it?s afternoon.

?Because you said ?good morning,?? says the interviewee.

?Oh dear,? says the employer, who fervently begins taking notes about the interviewee.

The employer acts increasingly outlandish and even gets the interviewee to act silly as well. A team of judges is brought in and holds up number cards after seeing the interviewee?s antics. The employer tells him he received very good marks. The interviewee asks if he got the job. Sadly, the employer informs him, all the vacancies were filled weeks ago.

My friends and I performed the job interview sketch at our high school swing show later that year. I didn?t plan to do any comedy at our senior year swing show, but as luck would have it I was given the opportunity at the last minute. Our band director needed to fill time in between sets, so she asked me if I would read jokes. One of the jokes she handed me was something like ?Why couldn?t the young pirate go to the movie? Because it was rated Ahrrrr.? I felt it was beneath me to read such jokes, so I wracked my brain for polished material.

Unfortunately, I didn?t have any other jokes with me, but I had just seen on television a funny stand-up comedian named Brian Regan. In fact, I had seen his act a few times, and remembered one of the bits well enough that I felt comfortable reciting it on stage, which I did. Regan talks about the anxiety attack he gets whenever he goes to the optometrist because of the ?A-B test.?

?Tell me the exact moment point A is above point B,? his eye doctor instructs him.

?Uh, uh, uh, now! No?now! Then!? says Regan.

My friends and I have made a few home movies since our high school graduation. My favorite movie was one where we used stuffed animals to act out Arnold Schwarzenegger?s tenure as the governor of California. In our movie, Schwarzenegger forces the state?s inhabitants to follow an intense body-building routine, and punishes them harshly if they don?t pass muster.