We learn that Napoleon was funny, quick-witted and, one presumes, deadpan.   A biographer of his recounts Napoleon’s drollness when a maniac ran up to Napoleon and Josephine outside the opera and declared to Napoleon that he was in love with Josephine.  “Odd choice of a confidant, sir,” Napoleon said to the maniac. 

“There are over FIFTY Napoleonic jokes recounted in my book,” said the biographer indignantly to the man he was debating, a man who held that Napoleon was a humorless, tyrannical, bungling, petty dickhead who, given the chance to truly spread the values of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, made things much darker rather than lighter, particularly to the humorless, autocratic, militaristic east.

“Over 50 jokes scattered over the 900 pages of your book,” shot back the man who would stop at nothing to debunk the notion that Napoleon was a cool guy, a great man, and funny.  “Pretty slow going, eh?”  Turns out he’s got a Napoleon biography in the works too, was flogging it a bit by the end of the debate– hinting coyly, in hopes of boosting sales, that he actually thought Napoleon was a cool guy and, possibly, even droll.

I have no idea if he was a cool guy, or droll, or if one should expect more jokes in a 900 page biography of a famous conqueror and ruler.  It’s not like it’s the biography of Jerry Seinfeld, after all.  Still, it got me thinking cheerlessly about humor, about the mysterious force that makes people say and do things that make people laugh.

If you ask me, or even if you don’t, I will admit to being a bit mystified that I am not more depressed at the moment.  If we get on to the subject, and I don’t dodge it for once but describe plainly the present circumstances I find myself in, you will find yourself flinching.  I’ve seen people literally start biting themselves in the back, like dogs attacking fleas, when I am done recounting the probably impossible challenges I’m up against at the moment.   People begin clutching at the most ridiculous ideas to try to help me.  Perhaps I could do the animation workshop with severely retarded adults who are also blind and deaf?  There’d probably be a grant for that somewhere, no?

“Hmmm,” I’ll say, pretending to consider the merits of the idea, “You know, I never thought of that.   Of course, they’d have a bit of trouble making a soundtrack, wouldn’t they, if they’re deaf?   And I suppose they’d need some help with the visual part, being blind.  But I’ll have to mull it over.  Thanks!”  And my thank you will ring a bit emptily in the uncomfortable silence before we can shift the conversation to more pleasant topics.

Still, before taking my leave of these friends, at more of a loss than I am to understand why I am not yet totally paralyzed by depression, I will usually have remarked, riffed, opined, and/or dead-panned in some semi-humorous way.  People need to laugh and the dark humor of dark humorists will suffice in a pinch, especially in a pinch.  

An old friend, literally almost 98 years old, passed away recently.  Sekhnet cried and I patted her then said “but let’s be honest about it, she’s a fucking quitter.  She said she was going for 100, but she just didn’t have the guts.”  Tears still falling she laughed, the sick twist, because there’s nothing like a little laugh to ease pain.

There are over FORTY other, equally hilarious, jokes in the 3,000 page memoir I am working on now.  You’ll want to be alert for them when you read the book.  Of course, bear in mind they don’t come across as well in print as they do when deadpanned spontaneously in the circumstances that spawned them.

“You should do stand-up!” a friend declares, wiping his eyes after my farcical account of my long and terminal unemployment, my foolish ideals and abject lack of practicality.  A good idea, stand-up, perhaps, if I’d started 40 years ago, had an incredibly thick hide and was as determined pursuing it as I am now, intermittently, pursuing this other long shot.  I could also have been a hell of a professor of something, if I’d started a few decades back.  Coulda, woulda, shoulda, you know the drill.

On the other hand, I know a self-made millionaire, one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met, who lives in a mansion of one hundred rooms, a beautiful place he had built for himself and the wife who savagely attacks him daily. And, like in the old Yiddish curse, the devil chases him from room to room. Helps me keep things in perspective, thank my luck that I live alone in only three cluttered rooms where the devil has a much less fun course to chase me through and often tires of the tedious game.

LOL!