Comedy upon comedy upon comedy makes for sad sad sad

Profjokes. Thats what his email short name was. Its a small world, comedy, so there's an iddy biddy chance someone who reads this will know him.

He "taught" me "comedy writing" at NYU. He came to class on the first day and told us we had to look at the world through "comedy colored" glasses. I suddenly knew what he meant. Because comedy is not a color and everybody knows that.

Then he announced that he would be missing the next class because he was going in for surgery. What kind of surgery? Chin tuck and nose job, thats all.

When he came back from surgery, it happened to be on the very day that a photographer from the Daily News was coming to take a picture of him for an article they were writing on "Comedy after 9/11." (By the way, Comedy after 9/11 soon became everybody's favorite topic in New York, and guess what? It is the least funny topic of conversation EVAR.)

So since he knew he was going to be photographed he covered his surgery bruises in ORANGE make-up. He came up to me before class and, since our "assignment" had been to "look for" comedy (where oh WHERE would I find it?), he asked me, "So...did you see anything funny recently?"

I paused because, try as I might, not a single funny thing was happening to me. Not a thing. Certainly not the unblended orange face with purple undertones in front of me, asking me for funny things. I just stared at him and said "no."

This class soon became the most depressing class I ever took. More depressing than Criminology or The Search for Peace in the Nuclear Age or even Radical Street Performance. Because this class was supposed to be fun and funny and everybody in it, including the teacher, was supposed to be funny and interesting and creative, and just HILARIOUS. But they weren't. They were all just trying to crack these jokes. And trying to convince the teacher they were the funniest. And some of them had gotten special permission to take the class for over 3 semesters. The same exact class.

I would trudge through the snow to my "comedy class" in the most depressed mood. One time one of our classmates did stand-up at a club and the whole class went to watch. The funniest thing about it was the way he was dressed. I will let your imagination run wild.

For my "final project" which I got an "A" on (please don't ask why because I really don't know), I wrote ONE POEM, a limerick really, loosely following the "Night Before Christmas" poem, about a drunk person who thinks they are seeing Santa Claus' rosie cheeks and nose, but it is revealed that it is a hallucination of "Kurt Cobain's ghostly ass." So I really progressed as a writer there.

P.S. You know those days where no matter what you do, the air smells like bile? What IS that SMELL?