Can We Be Funny?

After September 11th, Lorne Michaels asked the Mayor of NYC at the time, Rudolph Giuliani, “Can we be funny?” during the first live broadcast since the Towers fell. In true New Yorker fashion, Giuliani replied, “Why start now?”  And similar to the relief you felt when your parents changed their minds and said you could, in fact, go to prom with the boy/girl you really liked, we breathed, we cried, and then we let ourselves be something other than sad.

During major events, it’s interesting how we react based upon the source of the issue.  Meaning, since the World Trade Center (along with other parts of the US) was destroyed by what we were told were Terrorists, us Americans felt like we got to have an extra hug from the rest of the world or an extra reason to be pissed off at SOMEONE.  Hell, it even gave us a face to target the impending war. But, who do you yell at when nature takes over, destroys countless properties, and takes multiple lives?  Where can you put your anger, sadness, confusion, etc. when there isn’t a person behind it all, but rather an impenetrable force over which you have no control?

Attaching anger to people when stuff goes “wrong” is common, if not advisable, in the world we live in today.  My gut reaction when shit happens to me is, “Who caused this?  Who’s going on my list of assholes?”  Mother Nature, for lack of a better term, is fully in charge of this life game – straight up.  We can’t stop the rain.  We can’t stop the sunshine.  And, we most certainly cannot stop the force of tectonic plates shifting.

Photosource: auctionvideo.com

I live in Southern California so, naturally, after the horror facing Japan, I’m obsessing over what will happen if/when a big earthquake hits us here (don’t get me wrong, I’m horribly sad for the people over there, but you get what I mean).  Earthquakes, for the record, kind of blow ass.  The experience of them is oddly exciting at the time, and then immediately after, you spend the next 847 minutes of your life convincing yourself that it wasn’t actually THAT bad and that you will be fine.  Hell, I was at a theatre show in Hollywood when one went off and the actors paused for the mandatory second, and then continued on as the lights were swinging back and forth.  Needless to say, you get used to them after awhile.

But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, gets used to anything over a 5.9.

When looking at the lives taken/changed during this disaster of proportions I have never seen in my lifetime, I am humbled.  I don’t have cable, so I obsess over internet clips of stories of survival, loved ones being reunited and a damn video of a dog that refuses to leave his other dog buddy as he is dying.  Weeping underestimates the level of crying that video made me do (find that one here). Some of the videos just show the tsunami slowly taking over the streets, to the point that a certain reporter had to keep climbing higher and higher to avoid getting swept away as he shot (the hardest part is the sound of the siren, followed by the sound of rushing water. You can see that here.) This devastation was completely and totally out of the hands of the Japanese people.

I wrestled with talking about Japan, but I felt like I had so much to say. A self indulgent tool, this blog oftentimes makes me want to tell myself to shut up. Then, I thought about Lorne Michaels in a poignant (albeit, staged) moment on television and it begged the question – can we be funny? As entertainers, don’t we have a job, if not an obligation, to attempt to distract (even for a moment) from the pain that must be ravaging the hearts and minds of the people effected by all of this?  I still can’t confidently answer that. I will say that while walking on stage on Friday night I felt guilty…until I heard laughter. Once that happened, I remembered why we’re all here and it felt good, if not necessary, to refuel my heart and believe that it will, in fact, get better.

You can help it immediately get better by clicking here or by choosing “Japan” on this page.

Moral of the story: Don’t be a dick – donate.