Who Asked Me?

“It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun anymore” – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Neil

Could there be a greater tragedy? When Dylan Thomas suggested raging against the dying light, I think what he was really getting at was raging against being no fun anymore. Who really has a problem with the unfun dying? We may make like we do for the sake of grieving widows but underneath most of us are handling it fine. Fun, in all forms, can take on widely different dimensions. There are those who are big fun by virtue of being insufferable pains in the ass. Some of these people are entirely aware of how much fun they are and others are not. I appreciate this form of covert, subversive fun. It differs from the Robin Williams overt brand where one is always openly in need of response. The covert and miserably fun often seem content to toil in obscurity. They ask little in return for being miserably fun and are often content to go it alone. For this I applaud them.

Even more rare and perhaps most coveted are the unintentionally covert fun. So uncommon is this quality that I tend to think it might only exist in the minds of those deciding who these people are. I put Giants baseball announcer Duane Kuiper in this category. Kuiper is a lot of fun because underneath his play-by-play calling there seems to be an unspoken level of adequately-controlled depression. He jokes about the one major league home run he hit because he can. How many of us even get to the major leagues? His tone and demeanor make these self-deprecating barbs more poignant and suggest genuine darkness and despair. The beauty of this is that I’ve no doubt made it up in my own head and nobody else (including Kuiper) is giving it any thought.

Everybody funny .. now you funny, too.

Semi non sequiturs notwithstanding, George Thorogood is my kind of rock star. He’s got that Delaware blues thing down well and opened for the Stones in ’81. Still, he placed more importance on playing semi-pro baseball and often put his promising musical career on hold to do so. How much more delusional could a grown man get? He was lucky enough to sell albums with titles like “Get a Haircut” and write songs with lyrics like “I really, really, really, really, really, really like girls,” yet cocky enough to pursue the one-in-a-million dream of being a pro ballplayer. Now there’s some fun.