I get lost in my mind sometimes. I don’t mean I get confused. I mean, I get lost in it — as in, “She got lost in his eyes.” I have often said I can never get bored, because my own mind seems to be an endless source of amusement for me.
But, for some reason, I still like to go out and have lots and lots of adventures, as if to prove to my mind it’s not all that there is to the world! It’s like I’m going, “Hey, mind! Look! It’s Mulholland Drive. Huh? You didn’t just think up Mulholland Drive — we had to fly to LA, rent a car, and drive here.” And, then, I’m like, crap, I’m talking to myself again.
Here’s a random fact: I want to be funnier. My close friends and family will tell you — this is an obsession that started when I was young. My sister is naturally hilarious, and I was always envious of how she could make people smile and laugh.
My timing has never been great. Nor my delivery. My lines are loaded with an intonation of “I’m saying something seriously clever and funny right now, I hope you’re getting this.” And, the response, as one might expect, is usually, “Uh-huh. Yep, I get it.” But no laughs.
Sometimes I try to hang out with funny people to try to get their funny to rub off on me. Right now, I’m following a bunch of funny people on twitter like Dave Hill and Bridey Elliott. They’re freaking hilarious.
(In fact, if you want a good laugh, you should take a short break from reading my blog and buy Dave Hill’s book, Tasteful Nudes.)
But it’s always an uphill climb for me for to be funny. I think it’s because I’m so enamoured with my own mind! Inside my head, I think of something, and the next thought is that I pause and tell myself what a clever thought that was, and at this point, a funny person would have already caught somebody off guard by saying it out loud, but I’m too busy playing around in my head, going, “Uh-huh, yes. Oh, and in this context it could be taken like this! And, in another context, it would be really funny if…”
And, my jokes come out in a crazy burst like, “Hey, a really funny thing for if I ever got a goldfish would be if I named it Anne Boleyn because it’s IN the BOWL. Get it?”
And, my friend is like, “Why are you getting a goldfish?” No laughs. (Although my friend was a little bit amused because he knew I’d been watching a lot of the Tudors, and reading about Henry VIII. See what I mean? My jokes require too much context!)
So, yeah, I’m just having a hard time with this whole humor thing. And, it’s all my brain’s fault. I think to my brain, let’s see some sights in LA! Let’s go to the Griffith Park Observatory, and the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Let’s drink an $8 café au lait in Venice. I mean, quit thinking all the time, LIVE a little! And, so I do these things. But my brain doesn’t quit. My brain is always stopping me and saying, “Take a picture of that. Take a picture of that.”
Sigh. Alas, I am a photographer, and not a comedian. So I have to do what my mind tells me to do. I took a picture of that café au lait but couldn’t bring myself to post it here. Although maybe that would be funny?
