Confucius Didn't Say That: Funny Edition

There's a common trope in Western culture about "the sad clown".  Of course like many cliches, there's some truth behind it. Who can forget the tragedy of the suicide of Robin Williams?

Well, I might have just brought you down, but good news, my fair reader, it's time to bring you back up with another exciting blog post about another FAKE CONFUCIUS QUOTE. This one comes courtesy of a website called "Goalcast" and it's on their "23 Confucius Quotes to Convert Your Knowledge Into Wisdom" page. 


 "The funniest people are the saddest ones" - Confucius


It's pretty easy to dismiss that Confucius didn't say this as Confucius wasn't the Seinfeld of ancient China. 
  

Hey, Confucian scholar, you probably noticed this is based on 7:37 in the Analects.

This surprisingly strikes at the core of the whole project, as Confucius didn't come up cliched aphorisms, but taught people how to live. In other words, the goal wasn't to describe truth but to live it. Confucius was a teacher first, so when Confucius does describe something, it serves a purpose of making a larger point about our ethics or character.

For example, this is from 8:11:

"The Master said: “Perhaps you could be as handsome and as talented as the Duke of Zhou. But if you are arrogant or stingy, those good qualities will not be noticed.”

You can imagine Confucius breaking into a conversation his students were having about the Duke of Zhou with this ditty. This is classic Confucius, its might sting a little if you were rebuked but his logic and reasoning is spot-on. 

I could not find any instance of Confucius speaking about funny or humorous people. There's no mention of the term "funny" in the Analects, The Great Learning or The Doctrine of the the Mean. There's a few references to Confucius laughing but there are definitely not any sections on laughter, humor or funny people in general. 


I also couldn't find any example of Confucius speaking about sad people either.  There is no mention of the term "sad" or "sadness" and little about crying. There are a few mentions of "mourning" but they relate to how best to mourn or how best we should treat those in mourning like in 7:9: 

"If the Master sat beside a person in mourning, he would not eat to the full. If he had wept on a certain day, he would not sing."


At this point, I can't find the original person who said this quote. I got nothing for ya on this. Most attribute this quote to Confucius or it is left anonymous. 

As for judging if this is a good quote, I am not personally particularly fond of it. Although it can be true in the generic sense, it's too broad and general for my taste. While it's true that many funny people are sad we should also recognize there are lots of other people who aren't funny that are also sad.

I suppose my next question is did someone who was unfunny come up with this quote to feel better about not being funny? Like, "Hey you may be funny, but you're secretly sad and depressed on the inside, so you try to act funny on the outside in hopes of feeling better!"

Disney Queries

Just got Ducktales Vol. 2 DVD for the kids because C has been loving the old Carl Barks Comics and sue me, I want my kids to like everything I do!!! So, here are my thoughts and queries about this strange, strange world.

Have you ever noticed that in old-school Disney comics, Donald Duck never wore pants and Mickey Mouse never wore a shirt?

That's inversion PERVERSION (but clever, Walt, very, very clever)

To top it off, Goofy was always FULLY CLOTHED.

What's odd about the whole Disney Cartoon Universe is that's it's mainly populated by dog-like people and ducks. We're watching DuckTales and there is the occasional pig in the background, or weasels (of course, they're bad guys) or different birds (like Gyro and Launchpad)  but it's mainly dog people and ducks. The dog people are kinda more like humans and less like dogs (their skin looks human). But the ducks are pretty duck-like. Where are the cats, sheep, goats and cows? Why limit yourself to dog people? 


Is this like an alternate earth where animals evolved and lost their animal aspects such as flight for the ducks and great hearing for the dogs? Wouldn't it be cool if it was a like a Planet of the Apes thing going on and they could retcon the whole universe to show the over-throw of man? (Hint: No).

Also what is very strange is that  the whole universe is segregated. You never see a mixed couple in the Disney animal world. RACISTS.

What's up with Donald's voice? It was a mistake made 70 years ago, just correct it already. People will moan about it but that's because most people are stupid. The voice is  horrible and hard to understand. It doesn't make any sense either, all the other ducks talk normal, so why doesn't he?
In the pilot of Ducktales, Launchpad asks, "why does he talk so weird?" which actually made me laugh.

Donald's like George Costanza of Seasons 7-9 of Seinfeld (when he become a caricature of the character --  in fact the whole show started to go downhill). He's a one-note character that is predictable and boring.WAIT A SECOND --

Mickey = Jerry = Every Man 
Goofy = Kramer  = Stupid Man (and both tall)
Donald = George = Angry Man 

HOLY POOP - Seinfeld is based off of Micky, Donald and Goofy.

 My mind is officially blown.

They actually work okay as a trio but the characterization in the comics by Gottfredson and Barks are so much more subtle and fun than we have ever seen in the cartoons. 

My daughter E asked if Mickey and Minnie were getting married. I told her they had been dating for 60 years so it was doubtful. I mean you know they're DOING IT, right? They can't hold out this long....

One last thing that bothers me is Huey, Dewey and Louie are STILL UNDEVELOPED characters after 60 or 70 years. Even the great Duck Man himself, Carl Barks was too lazy to try. They are just clones of each other that happen to finish each other's sentences. Can anyone address this? Wouldn't it be worthwhile?

Paba Free Fragments

So one of my best friends and I had a falling out several years ago. It is sad, but it is what it is. When we were in college we applied for a 2-hour  radio show on our college radio station and created The Paba Free Show. It was fun. Here are the fragments:


It took us a long time to think of a name for our show. Nothing seemed to come naturally to us or maybe we were trying to hard to be clever. I came up with the name based off a comment from George on Seinfeld who was looking for a "Paba Free" suntan lotion. I was a massive Seinfeld show fan, so it felt right. Here is the whole exchange and inspiration for the name.

Jerry: Are these seats unbelievable or what?
George: Where’s the sunblock?
Jerry: Here.
George: 25? You don’t have anything higher?
Jerry: What, are you on Mercury?
George: I need higher. This has paba in it, I need paba-free.
Jerry: You got a problem with paba?
George: Yes, I have a problem with paba.
Jerry: You don’t even know what paba is.
George: I know enough to stay away from it.

Our college radio station's range was tiny. When I mean tiny, I mean if you were on the far side of campus, you couldn't pick up the AM frequency. We also had "FM-Cable" but you would have to plug in a cable, for the television into the back of your stereo, to hear it, if your stereo even had this slot, which was unlikely. No one could ever figure out if that was working or not because no body had this slot on the back of their stereo.

I found this googling the old station. This was never a door I used, it seems the station has moved once (or has been renovated) and maybe even twice. We had it old school with turntables, old school mics, and tons of old LP's. All of this was cramped in a tiny little space, in the back of a building where no one could find you if they tried. All the photos made me sad we never took a picture and sad because it means I am getting OLD.

Our first shows were awful as we learned the ropes of the technology. Eventually, I think we had some nice DJ moments, but the tapes of the early shows were pretty embarrassing.

It was such a cool thing to tell people at parties or where-ever, "yeah, we have a radio show on Fridays". You felt like such a bad-ass just saying it.  Honestly, I haven't had too many humble brags this good in my life. I still get reactions from people when I tell them I had a radio show in college, and they say something like, "That's awesome!"...and I'm like....(sounding like I don't think so)..."yeah.....I guess".

My friend and I were  power-pop fiends. Bands in our common rotation: Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, Spoon, Sloan, Superdrag, The Apples in Stereo, Nirvana, Sixteen Deluxe, Beck, Crumb, Frank Black and Tripping Daisy (yes, I am aware some of those artists are not "Power Pop"). I always told my friend to never play the singles from "big bands" like Nirvana or Weezer and to NEVER play R.E.M. but he would sneak them in when I went to the bathroom. Bastard.

 

Cool Power Pop image. I mean, this is cool right? Or maybe not. 

Our first semester we had the show on Saturday mornings (that was my friend's stupid idea) from 10:00-12:00, then we went to Sunday afternoon from 2:00-4:00 and finally found a good place on Friday afternoon's from 4:00-6:00. That was my favorite time slot. We would do our show, grab a bite to eat on Northgate (where all the best bars in College Station were), go home and hang out, get ready and go out for the night later. It was a nice routine that I always looked forward to. One week my friend was feeling frisky and decided to have a few beers during our show (obviously, a big school "no-no").  I was freaking out the whole time and generally was a big douche about it.

Our audience was miniscule. The few listeners we had, were, of course, our friends. Frankly, they only listened once we were in the Friday time slot anyway. Two of our friends could miraculously  tune into the station and we would often have them call-in for over-the-air conversations. This made it feel like an actual show.  Another friend would listen as he drove a school bus on campus and he would tune in as he shuttled students around. Once he drove on the other side of campus, he couldn't pick it up. I'm sure the bus-riding students were confused as to what they had the radio tuned to.  I think one of the other DJ's said they tuned in once and it so happened she was a girl and kinda cute so this made us doubly excited.

We would beg people to call in with requests. The truth was sad....but outside a few friends, NO ONE was listening. Then one day-- it happened. An actual request. From someone we didn't know!  He requested Echo and the Bunnymen (who I had only heard of)...we were nervous that we didn't have an album to play...but we eventually found an old LP. You know this is a big deal because I remember what the guy requested to this day.  We were so proud. One time we had a "stand off" with our non-existent listeners, telling them we wouldn't play music until someone called in. They never called and we chatted for the last hour of the show. We were a little "in on the joke"...but we both would have been thrilled to have actual, occasional listeners.


The great thing about having no listeners was that we could pretty much do what we wanted. We ended up rapping one day over a music-only track of "All About the Benjamins"  (of course I made up most of my rap).  I also sang over a non-vocal track from a indie band, about Huevos Rancheros a few times. Both of these experiments were pretty terrible, but darkly funny in an awkward-white guy kinda way.

I made a pathetic little website for the show (I mean it was 1998-1999 so most websites were pathetic to begin with). We never got any email requests and I was sad about that.  When I look back on it, it's kinda cute that I was trying to be cutting-edge.

We taped most of our shows but I would tape over them all the time with new shows.  We stopped doing the show after two years, for whatever reason we felt like we would be "too busy" but I always regret not giving it a final semester.  I had only taped about 3.5 shows even though I am certain I lost a tape along the way in a move or lost underneath my car seat.   About 10 years ago,  I transferred much of our banter (editing out boring stuff) into single MP3 digital copies. I collected many of the songs we played on the show and and mailed them to my friend on a CD before our falling out.  I love having these in my MP3 collection as they are a part of my personal history that is recorded. Sure, it doesn't mean a lot to anyone else....but it does to me (ya know, like this blog).

Recently, I created two huge MP3 files (mimicking an audio tape), I wanted to create the feeling of it not being easy to "skip" tracks. You would have to "fast-forward" if you didn't like the song. I edited our banter to ensure the bands we said were "coming up next" really were coming up next and created a "new" show out of old stuff.  I found old tid-bits of dialogue that I hadn't recorded years ago. It took a lot of time but at the same time it was a lot of fun too. I sent it to my friend as a peace offering about a week ago.....we'll see what happens.

Since my friend has kinda ignored me the last few years it makes memories of the show a little bitter sweet. He was a like a brother to me, we fought about life, politics, religion, you name it. But we had a shared past, loved the same type of music, loved going to concerts, hanging out, being stupid and having fun.  Maybe we debated a lot, but we also liked pushing each other's buttons...it was part of what made us friends. We could disagree but still hang out. Maybe we grew up and maybe we're too different now....time changes things. I don't know. I don't expect our friendship to be the same, but it would be nice to be facebook friends. I miss my friend but at least I'll always have the Paba Free Show.

Update 1/31/13:  I sent the package, he never responded. Oh well.