Humor Monday: Not Cool

On bitter cold days like we have had this last week, the world locks up and shuts down.  Nothing moves that does not have to move and what does move, complains about it.  Even the mercury at the bottom of the thermometer curls into a little ball and hibernates. 

For my wife and I, it's just too cold to get out and socialize so we cocoon in the living room and battle for the remote.

We share many tastes, but few in television.  Her first choice is the Home Network, mine the History Channel and her loathing for endless WWII documentaries is surpassed only by my disdain for foo-foo decorating ideas.  It makes it hard to compromise.

So what do we do?  We surf the channels, taking pot-shots at each others choices.

"Seen it" - click

"No way" - click

"Bang, bang, all fall down" - click

"Chick flick" - click, click

"Felons in squeaky sneakers" - click

"Is a felon in the kitchen any better?" - click

"Millionaire thugs on ice" - click

"Smarmy is not funny" - click

"Boring" - click

"Lizard mating rituals?" - click

"Teen mating rituals?" - click

"Shocker, the singing cowboy has messed up his life" - click

"Shocker, yet another celebrity gets out of jail, rehab and/or a relationship" - click

"Boring" - click

"Seen it" - click

The exercise ends inevitably with one of us sulking away to watch television in the bedroom while the other holds aloft the remote in triumph.

But every once in a while, we come across something very special.

Last night we snuggled up to watch a classic.  The Turner Network was airing the Frank Carpa movie "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

The script is full of gags, pithy dialog and snappy comebacks but there was something else, something critics of Frank Capra's films coined "Capra Corn".

"It Happened" is a road-trip, much of it on a bus.  The odd thing is - people on the bus talk to each other.

No, they don't just talk - they sing. 

That's right, all the passengers come together in song.  In one scene they take turns standing in the aisle to sing lines from "The Man On The Flying Trapeze".  For the chorus, everyone joins in, even the bus driver, singing:

Oh, he floats through the air
with the greatest of ease,
This daring young man on the flying trapeze;
His actions are graceful,
all girls he does please,
My love he has taken away.

Is that corny or what?

Maybe, but I've been on dusty, jostling, nerve wracking bus rides in places like Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Ireland where poor people, living hard lives, do pass the time singing together.

In our modern world people do not sing on buses.  Here music is something you strap on to drown out the few brave souls who actually try to talk to each other.

In our affluent society, instead of spending time or talking together, we sulk at opposite ends of the hall, clicking through endless re-runs of the same-old, same-old.

I am not sure how we got to this point but I feel it has a great deal to do with television, a media that exhorted us all to be so hip and so cool - that we have lost human warmth.

© Greg Schiller, 2008
Author: Greg Schiller