Most of us thinking and listening people have at this point heard the described-as-awful, Trump rally joke that Puerto Rico is “a floating sea of garbage.”
A gag worth of political discourse, or even comedy?
I guess it depends who is listening. Or how it is told?
What if this attempt at humor came without the expense of, and sparing, a double-edge? So instead, double your funky fun. What if say, there was given the addition of a slight-of-hand, if there existed a Puerto Rican semi-slang term for stuff drifting up unto shore. Incorporate it and thus double the now non-gaff.
As mom said, twice, while watching TV with me, its all in the presentation.
— With that I present a take on early Hallows Eve. Sports bar hosts had on the same bad costumes, with the best a take on Beetlejuice, though badly misspelled. Serving was a deer huntress, not hunter, to those sitting next to a skull that was jet black, in a new look.
The weather was wet and a bit snowy, but nothing like 35 years ago when I first came to Hudson and Halloween spirits were greeted with a mean-spirited two feet of snow. Still, this spurred a thought that these days, various city officials and such could look at the weather charts to see if it was safe outside, for both the predictions for All Hallows Eve itself and the Sunday before, then make a decision on when to allow trick or treating. Or maybe hold a November referendum on that choice between the two days, for the next October 31, with no write-ins allowed.
Up the road at the Third Street Historical District, annually the biggest and best place for trick or treating, at 7:25 p.m. there was no one to be seen at its entry with Vine Street, maybe because that was a corner with a church, the conservative kind.
Back to the bar scene, that night. I told the three behind the long rail at Hudson Tap, that with their ears they collectively looked like Bad Bunny. I was corrected, Care Bears. One T-shirt said the stoner type, another huggy bear … OK, I’m kidding. Aaron Rodgers starred on Thursday Night Football, emerging from the darkness of this night. And on the way back home, I was flanked by no one in costume but one in a halter top despite the cold, walking all the way across town.
Over at Collective Soul, actually rather the Awakened Soul, they were having funky metaphysical stuff going on during many a Thursday in October, so Halloween was timed just right. —
To this joke, back to the bad political one, I make a comparison that might be made via music. What if the joke were told in the contest of, say, lyrics about the environment by the old metal band Flotsam and Jetsom, which for the unannounced has only at its start the description of a certain specific type of junk floating in the sea, as in from old shipwrecks. And that’s only quantifying the first word of the phrase. (Jetsom takes to the air?) Wikipedia has, at least or now, a more complete description of the meaning of the term that goes on for pages. Rise up the intellectual level?
Would that make the joke a quip, and even a bit more tasteful to the palette?
I will now make a comparison to something I actually wrote a few months ago, for a twist. After all, we as content creators must take responsibility for what we put out there. And in some forms of the internet, you can go back in, return to the remarks, and edit and re-edit, as I did in this case. Again, this tried to make the gag two-fold, not a one-trick pony, and even if by example, turn it into a bass ackwards “this is not the way to do it” about racial relations.
The following twist of (bad) language, while slurring, I must note not just a quip but part of an about 1,000 word joke — and hopefully that many points of light — and was a commentary about VP Vance and his rant against current VP Kamala Harris being a cat-lady. And Black. At a convention of journalists, of all the ill-astute places.
“Wait, isn’t having a whole bunch of children, if a “Welfare Queen,” what the Republicans used to be all about rallying against. Which is it? And now on stage with a bunch of convention reporters, so more mics on, for the likes of …
“Ya’ll best know what that thar community you be, in the ‘hood.” OK and yes, I seriously doubt that most Black people, or even rednecks, really talk like that. But we’re right now in Archie Bunker Land Speak and see my end to this post, as its setting cities are much similar to the above. After all, this post is about massively over-generalizing.”
What ya’ll think? But to what I think. The Republicans did politics as usual (non-Walz I might add, as he is more likely to own up to his mistakes) and then said didn’t vett the comedian they asked on board, hadn’t heard it and won’t comment on the slur, but then did comment, saying we should not have such a thin skin these days. I’ll agree with him on that much, and on our culture of entitlement. But tell that to hundreds of thousands of voters in Pennsylvania. Bottom line: If the joke requires little forethought or intellect, then its too easy and just not funny. But in no case can such a gag be justified in the mind of a good friend, who has little tolerance for any kind of bad language or humor. She pointed out something I had not known, which she is good at: This was the 85th anniversary, to the day, of that infamous Nazi rally in the same place, Madison Square Garden. In the heart of Blue country.