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Tea SongApril 26, 2006 After considering the tea possibilities this morning, I took one off the shelf, half singing to myself, "Pekoe, pekoe, pekoe, here comes orange pekoe . . ." Not for the first time either. I think it's pretty funny, but the riff will be totally lost on anyone who doesn't know Bernice Johnson Reagon's song "Biko," which begins "Biko! Biko! Biko! Here comes Stephen Biko, walking down the water." So I was going to keep it to myself until I remembered the sig often used by a science fiction guy I know online: "The more you know, the more jokes you get." This is true. It also increases the odds that you will keep your jokes to yourself, partly because any joke you have to explain is a joke that didn't work and partly because some people who get it right off aren't going to think it's funny to take liberties with a song about a black South African hero who was murdered by white South African authorities. That's OK. As far as I'm concerned, humor is about chortling to yourself at the songs and thoughts and unexpected juxtapositions that pop suddenly into your mind, and -- even better -- about bunches of people riffing off shared experiences and insights until they're all laughing so hard they can hardly breathe. It's not, or not primarily,* the product of stand-up comics and sitcoms. Humor, in other words, isn't a spectator sport. (Like music isn't a spectator sport -- if you're seeing a pattern here, you're seeing true: life isn't a spectator sport. Pass the word!) *That "not primarily" is for the likes of Tom Lehrer, Lily Tomlin, Kate Clinton, Jimmy Tingle, and Margaret Cho, without whom my dance through the world would be mostly flat-footed.
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