WHY ON EARTH NOT?

All those years, and you’ve not built up your comedy creds? What have you been doing with your time? Were you in solitary confinement or under a rock or something? How much tidy, buttoned-down sobriety can any senior take? Like the gym rats, you should have been pumping up your humor muscles every day. Pull off a few daily belly laughs, and presto, you’d have your six-pack “funniness abs” by now. Funniness? You’d be the George Atlas of comedy

Why on earth not?

At this stage, I’m running out of patriarchs and authority figures telling me what to do. The only one I have left is God, as played on film by George Burns. George was the hilarious stand-up comedian who preached to us all, “I’m going to do Vegas at 100”. Isn’t that what it’s all about: Regaling the world with laughter at 100? He damn near made it.  George Burns is the beautiful model, the Giselle Bundchen of senior hilarity.

We should dream so big: Can we say none among us could fulfill the “Vagas@100 Quest”?

Keep that dream alive!

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

To start, you need a good flow of belly laugh material. Seek out gags that are outside your comfort zone. What “yucks” are out there for you to work with? Check out YouTube comedy clips, grandkids’ antics, and SNL. That’s just to prime the pump to start up your humorous material flowing.

Professionals suggest that the fountain of funny rests in your attitude.  Everyone knows seniors are all complaining, cantankerous curmudgeons. That’s great! It means expectations of the elderly are already low. We can quickly contradict them. They expect us to see only half-empty glasses and view the world through dark black-colored spectacles.

How about a different set of eyewear that’s relentlessly humorous, leg-pulling, crazy hyperbolic, or just silly? For god’s sake, man, see the world as it really is: Hilarious, ironic, and so very hungry for laughter.

HUMOR IS EVERYWHERE

There is no single observation of your every day that we can not  see through “funny colored glasses.” Take any daily event or object: Visualize it as a picture painted on silly putty. Then stretch, pull and distort the image until it’s side-splitting silly. Add a touch of hyperbole, irony, and voila: You’re headed for Vegas.

Industrial strength giants of humor look inside their brains for two unrelated thoughts that are newsworthy, X-rated, or uncomfortable. Then relate them in an utterly bizarre manner and presto: Now you are George Burns.

 Keep the right side brain, the analytic part, out of this. We need left-brain stuff conducted with an irreverent, hilarious attitude.

For you incorrigibly right brain addicts, I agree that life is not all hilarious all the time. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve seen pain, heartbreak, and defeat. (All are feelings that are the sole of comedy.) Even a right-brain analysis will conclude you’ll be happier, healthier, and more fun to be with if you have an injection of humorous attitude. Even more critical, with a funny ‘tude, you’ll fulfill the primary quest of senior life: That is to be an upbeat example to those half your age. Give them a real life example you can live well right through to the end.

See you on the Vegas Strip.

(COMMENT PLEASE)