In preparation for an interview with Dustin Hoffman that never happened, I went to see Kung Fu Panda 3. This is something I would not have done unless I was preparing to interview the great American actor.
When I entered the screening room, it was completely empty. I took a seat halfway back. I did this because it was a sweet little animated film with nothing scary in it. If it had been a scary film, like The Last Witch Hunter or Paranormal Activity XXXVIII or Grandma and I found myself in a deserted room, I would have gone to the very last row and sat with my back to the wall so no one could sneak up from behind and garrote me the way a murderer did to a Supreme Court justice in The Pelican Brief, a film that permanently altered my moviegoing habits.
But then I thought: Wait a minute, this is crazy. If a murderer was on the loose somewhere in the multiplex, he wouldn’t necessarily be looking for victims at scary movies just because he himself was scary. He’d be much more likely to seek his prey at a screening of an upbeat, life-affirming film like Kung Fu Panda 3 precisely because a solitary viewer, feeling that he was in a safe environment, would not be sitting with his back to the wall. He would have taken a seat in the center of the room, where he could easily be attacked from the rear and strangled.
I almost never make the mistake of telling people what I’m working on because they always say that it’s not funny, or it’s already been done, or it’s stupid. But this time, I did happen to mention the story I was working on. And the person I told this to immediately said: “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, being the callous, insensitive person that you are, but there have been a number of tragic incidents at movie houses in recent years. And not just in Aurora. There was also that incident in Florida where the guy told the other guy to shut off his cell phone and he didn’t so the first guy went and shot him. So I don’t think writing about getting murdered at a movie theater is very funny.”
“But does that mean I can’t write a funny article about sharks just because people get attacked by them?” I fired back. “I mean, Matt Lauer and Kelly Ripa were in Sharknado 2, and nobody complained about that. And if I can’t write a mildly amusing story about someone sneaking up on me at Kung Fu Panda 3, does that mean I can’t write a funny article about the zany things grizzly bears get up to just because of what happened to Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant?”
“That’s exactly what it means,” she said. “Anytime something really bad just happened, you should avoid writing about the subject. An article about getting strangled at a screening of Kung Fu Panda 3 because you were lulled into a false sense of security is not going to strike anybody as funny. Even an idiot like you should realize that.”
Taking this sage advice to heart, I ditched the article about the steps one should take to avoid getting strangled at the movie house. Instead, I moved on to an article triggered by something my son said. “Oh, the lost art of balancing a plate of cookies on one’s teacup,” he joked one evening as I was doing just that. This got us to talking about how old-timers down through the ages must have constantly referred to “the lost art” of this or that—valuable, once-ubiquitous skills that were no longer in common use.
“Oh, the lost art of writing cuneiform,” an old man might wistfully sigh toward the end of the ancient Sumerians’ great reign as a world power. “Why, back when Enmebaragesi of Kish was running things, scribes could churn out 50 cuneiform tablets before breakfast. You look at the kids today trying to do that? Forget it. Those clowns have trouble writing hieroglyphics.”
My son and I thought of many other situations in which the words “Oh, the lost art of this or that” might be heard. Oh, the lost art of cutting purses. Oh, the lost art of derring-do. Oh, the lost art of getting hoist on one’s own petard. Eventually, we got around to talking about the French Revolution: “Oh, the lost art of tumbrel-driving,” an ancient Frenchman might moan, a half-century after the French Revolution had run its course. “Why, when I was a boy, you couldn’t get a job in Paris unless you knew how to load blood-sucking aristocrats onto a tumbrel and deposit them in front of the guillotine. Today, you couldn’t find anyone under the age of 50 who’d know the front end of a tumbrel from the rear.”
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
A couple of days later I mentioned to a friend that I was working on a story about the lost art of tumbrel-driving, and she said: “Tumbrels were used to convey rapacious aristocrats to the Place de la Concorde, where they got their heads chopped off. Well, I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but people are getting their heads chopped off every day by ISIS in Syria and Iraq and Libya. So I don’t think people are going to be very amused by your stupid, mean-spirited story.”
“But does that mean I can’t write a funny story about old people just because old people are dying every day?” I asked. “Does that mean I can’t write a funny story about long, flowing scarves just because Isadora Duncan got strangled by a scarf that got caught in the wheels of a car? Does that mean I can’t write a funny story about pretentious dorks who store their cigars in personal humidors and who spend hours and hours bending your ear about the impossibly subtle differences between Cuban and Dominican wrappers just because smoking causes cancer?”
“That’s exactly what it means,” my friend said. “You need to find something to write about that no one could possibly take offense at. Low-fat yogurt. The Easter Bunny. The ukulele revival. The little kittens that have lost their mittens.”
Okay, okay—so I moved onto a story about Google Chrome sending me a message announcing that it would no longer support my operating system because it was out of date. I imagined what it would be like if other companies did the same thing: Levi’s would stop supporting 501 jeans; ice cream makers would stop providing technical support for Rocky Road. The warnings would read like this:
My sage, beloved friend said that I should ditch that joke because people actually had died recently as a result of defective pacemakers. So it wasn’t funny.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that my friends are absolutely right about all this. Jokes about killers sneaking up on you in movie houses are not funny. Jokes about guillotines are not funny. Jokes about defective pacemakers are not funny. From now on, I’m going to write about something that everyone thinks is funny and no one could possibly take offense at.
I’m going to write about President-elect Trump.
Joe Queenan is the author, most recently, of One for the Books.
