John Seroff

January 1, 1997

you know what, i’d hate to be some sort of pinkwater-flooder (although what better place to start a storm of well-deserved praise), but what the hey, I felt the need to drop off a second-in-as-many-days line. sue me. i’m enthusiastic. anyway, here’s what i wanted to say: I do occasional work as an actor for children’s theatre and have discovered the progression of the appreciation of humour in the child, i.e. those things which can always illicit a cheap laugh from kids. As any teacher can tell you, there’s nothing more intrinsically funny than a fart joke. Preschoolers dig ’em. They’re forever good for a fast snort, no pun intended. Next, around six or eight, every kid is going to laugh when you say “underwear”, “naked”, or “Lake Titticaca” in casual conversation (My father had a strange habit of periodically screaming “underwear” at the dinner table just to put us kids on the floor, hysterically gagging on our mashed potatoes and spouting milk gravy out of our noses, much to the chagrin of my mother. He also liked to scream mean spirited obscenities about Mr. T out our kitchen window during supper. This was in the eighties, you understand. I digress.) Having grown older and wiser, we reach the critical “barnyard” state at which point anything involving cows or (wait for it) CHICKENS becomes hysterical. Thanks to many a great pinkwater chicken joke, i have never escaped the barnyard state. Nothing (and i’ve discussed this with many a friend and relative; they back me on this one) is funnier than a chicken (excluding mr. pinkwater… maybe lenny bruce… others? no… sorry…NOTHING IS FUNNIER THAN A CHICKEN) Thanks for the lesson. I’m in the midst of lizard music and it’s like meeting the old friend that would eat jello/ milk/ creamed corn casserole just to gross out the lunch monitor and finding out that he still eats that stuff for kicks. whatever happened to him anyway?

“what, all my pretty chickens and their dam,

At one fell swoop?”
-the funniest line in macbeth

(playing the role of macduff’s child, I WAS THE PRETTY CHICKEN.

i’ve never been prouder.)

Right nothing is funnier than a chicken. Unless it's....a ....pickle!