Jack West
ASIN: B00NWULRVQ
Publisher: Amazon.com Services LLC
Pages: 103
“Dying is easy; comedy is hard.” – Edmund Kean, 1787-1833These last words, allegedly said by the Shakespearean stage actor Kean on his deathbed, tell a lot about our perception of the meaning of life and death, as well as how we normally deal with it. Many may contend that it is the other way around: that comedy is easy and dying is hard. However, in the circles of well-known comedians, this saying is accepted as a truism. The comedian is all too familiar with the humiliation of a stand-up comedy act gone wrong, where he has failed to elicit the expected laughter from his audience. It is an indignity that he fears, and fears justly.As with comedy, there is also much indignity in death. But there is also humor – albeit a dark one – in deaths that are bizarre and weird. They are ironically funny, as long as one doesn’t dwell too much on the macabre and gory aspect of the way certain ...