Comedy Is Compression
A good joke is a proof.
It takes three lines to deliver a truth that a thousand-word essay cannot land.
That's not a bug of stand-up. That is what language does when it gets out of its
That's not a bug of stand-up.
That is what language does
when it gets out of its own way.
The heaviest things usually arrive laughing.
A grandmother complaining about airline food
is telling you something about power and indignity.
A comedian at a funeral
is telling you something about grief.
The person who roasts their own pain at the kitchen table
just performed
major surgery
at the pace of dinner.
Humor is not the sugar on the medicine. Humor is the medicine.
Laugh at the right thing
and you have understood it
in a way
that cannot be unwritten.