The funniest man in Nepal
For some reason, Jerry Lewis is still the funniest man in France. All these years later and the comedian now associated with Labor Day telethons is still packing out movies houses in Lyon. It doesn’t make sense, but humor rarely makes sense. It either works for some unfathomable reason, or it doesn’t. I got my beautiful wife to marry me mostly because I can make her laugh. It doesn’t make sense, but I went with it because, well, a beautiful woman was available and eager to laugh. Eleven years later she is still laughing, and I hope I’m as funny to her at 85 as I was at 25.
Likewise, Celine Dion is not selling as many records as she once did (the movie Titanic came out 15 years ago, can you believe it?), but she is still selling out a daily show in Las Vegas and shattering wine glasses with those crazy high notes. She may not appeal to suburban New Jersey housewives as she once did, but she really scratches the itch of Japanese tourists in town to play the slot machines.
Who can say why different cultures find different artists appealing while similar artists can’t sell a single ticket in the same country? There is a Boston area band that released two albums here in the states a few years ago, had a video on MTV, and now tours exclusively in Malaysia. They shut down malls over there. They were mobbed at the airport, but here in the states they were dropped by their record label because they didn’t sell many records.
One of my roommates in college, a Jewish kid named Dan, is perhaps the funniest person I personally know. He was a Woody Allen disciple and always had me in stitches. Once we were free climbing a rock face and he was going on about something (not even trying to be funny) and I almost dropped off the face of the mountain because I was laughing so hard. Never have I been so close to death for such a wonderful reason.
But the thing is, in Dan’s area of New Jersey, he was not considered very funny. But after college he moved to Minnesota (a lovely lady was responsible for this, I’m told) and had people rolling in the aisles. He vowed never to leave the state.
My wonderful church (Oasis Christian Church in Concord — stop in some Sunday to see how strange and wonderful a Sunday morning can be) holds a church body made up of folks from Nepal, and for some reason I slay comically with this group.
Now, I consider myself a pretty funny guy, especially in the southern parts of our country (I should move down there if I were serious about being a standup comedian), but I have never been as instantly funny as I am with my new Nepali friends. Within a few moments of talking with a couple of them before their Sunday afternoon service, I had a crowd around me as I explained how to play the bongos. I’m not sure what I said or did, but to have an instant audience like that in the palm of my hand is a pretty heady experience. I even got a smile and a small laugh out of the stern Nepali grandmothers in the room.
Then, the next week, it happened again, and this time I felt the pressure. It’s one thing to be funny spontaneously, but when it’s expected, it’s a little more difficult. But I came through and had the crowd roaring (in their polite, Nepali style of laughing). One of them sought out my wife (Special Sauce Caldwell) and said, “Your husband is a very, very funny man.”
All of this makes me think that I should start a standup comedy tour of Nepal soon. For the price of a plane ticket, I could soon be packing out theatres in Kathmandu (possibly the greatest capital name of all time) and maybe even give a command performance in the royal palace. I think all I have to do is work on my funny faces, play the bongos, and riff on folks from India and Pakistan. (Have you heard the one about the Pakistani man and the block of ice?)
So look for my dispatches from Nepal any day now. I just need to take a crash course in the Nepali language (also called “Nepali” — thank you, Wikipedia), figure out how to fill out my State Department visa forms, and, of course, find my way across the Hindu Kush mountain range.
Hindu Kush … Kush … I think I could really do something funny with that word.