Editor’s Letter – Nov/Dec 2022

I feel like I have l dropped the ball a little in this issue. A missed comedic opportunity to add to my repertoire. Well, my collection of dad jokes in any case. Why do ducks have tail feathers? To hide their butt quacks. You know, that kind of thing. Sophisticated high-level humour, of course.

I interviewed two highly successful comedians and I forgot to talk about actual jokes. Instead, we talked about parallel universes of possibility, the philosophy of human ambition and the meaning of life. I’m not quite sure what happened there. Generally, I pride myself on a certain flippancy when it comes to the deepest questions of our existence – sometimes I think we can get so caught up in asking why we are here that we forget to enjoy the fact that we are here. I think jokes are a great representation of that appreciation. They can take the absurdity of life and package it in one of the things that is most beautiful about it: shared human laughter.

So I am not sure why I didn’t really go into jokes with either Jimmy Carr or Kumail Nanjiani, but they both had no problems talking about their journeys, the leap of faith moments or the mistakes that have shaped their careers with a sense of openness and humility that you don’t really expect from celebrities these days, so I’ll take that as a kind of win. Next time though, I promise I will get more jokes. Like this one for instance…

A string and his friends walk into a bar, and the string goes up to get a drink and the bartender says, “We don’t serve strings here”. So the string ties himself in a loop and goes up the top of his head and then goes up to the bar, and the bartender goes, “Uh . . . are you a string?” And the string goes, “No, I’m a frayed knot.” — stolen from Kumail Nanjaniani.