Two...Two...we got Two?!!

Russell Peters...you are a funny man and you have ruined my life! (but in a good way)

Comedy has always played a big part in my life. Growing up I think I was the only kid I knew who would prefer to listen to a stand up comedy tape (that's right...CASSETTE tape) rather than music. Thanks to my father and grandfather I was raised on the likes of Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Don Rickles, Mel Brooks and many more.

I was transfixed by Cosby the stand up (and then the TV Dad) "Noah, Right!" "Buck Buck" and anything having to do with Fat Albert were my favorites. The bit where he talked about how until the age of 9 he thought his name was dammit and his brother Russell's name was Jesus Christ always got me. 

Carlin's "Class Clown" was, and still is, one of my all time favorite comedy albums. Al Sleet "the Hippy Dippy Weatherman" and the "7 words you can never say on television" are classics not to be outdone. Carlin's humor grew as I did...I got the underlying jokes as I got older...not just the silly stuff. And there was also some profound observations to be had.

I can still remember when I talked a high school teacher into letting me play "bad words", off his Parental Warning album, in class as a part of a speech about context. The routine goes that there are no bad words..just words used in bad context. Carlin then proceeds to list off about 50 racial slurs only to pronounce that the words aren't "bad" but rather it's the context of how they were being used! To this day my favorite class presentation.

As I grew older I picked up other comedic tastes: Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Richard Jeni, Dennis Miller, Denis Leary, Lewis Black, and so forth. To my parents credit they never censored what I listened to...as long as I didn't repeat the curse words in public. Hell as a young white boy growing up in central Illinois my first two CD's I ever owned were Ice-T's "Home Invasion" (listen to the first track titled Warning if you dare) and Wu-Tang Clans "Enter the 36 Chambers".

It was my junior or senior year of high school though that a comedian came to my attention that changed the way I would look at things. That man was Eddie Izzard.

Eddie has a brand of humor that is part story telling part observation and part off the cuff train of thought. He's the only stand-up that I've seen live more than once and he opened my comedic mind to realm of international comics.

I had always been a fan of Monty Python (yeah...I was that kid) and the comedy shows of England. But, I had never really paid attention to stand up from other countries. Once I started to look at Eddie I found other talented comics such as: Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr, Omid Djalili and the aforementioned Russell Peters.

Basically I have a 24 hour comedy channel going on in my head at any given time! While this is entertaining it can cause problems. Laughing is fun...unless the situation calls for being serious. Then you drop into something that the BBC Comedy "coupling" described as the Giggle Loop

"You are surrounded by people for a moment of silence when the Giggle Loop begins... Suddenly out of nowhere this thought comes into your head: the worst thing I could possibly do during a minute's silence is laugh. And as soon as you think that you almost do laugh -- automatic reaction. But you don't, you control yourself, you're fine. Whew.

But then you think how terrible it would have been if you laughed out loud in the middle of a minutes silence. And so you nearly do again, only this time it's a bigger laugh. And then you think how awful this bigger laugh would have been. And so you nearly laugh again, only this time it's a very big laugh, it is an enormous laugh. Let this bastard out, and you get whiplash. And suddenly you are in the middle of this completely silent room and your shoulders are going like you are drilling the road. And what do you think of this situation? Oh dear Christ, you think it's funny!" Jeff -- Coupling - Series 1 - Episode 'Sex, Death & Nudity'

Wish I could say I have never been there...but that's not the case. While the giggle loop is reserved for somber situations there is the close relative that I like to call the "what the hell is that idiot laughing at" (granted it needs a new title). This is when a word or phrase that, out of context isn't funny, makes you laugh out loud like a bloody fool.

Take the word Speed (la Vitesse)...or the phrase we got two! The first is Eddie Izzard/s observation that the movie Speed in French isn't La Vitesse it's...Speed. and the second goes to Russell Peters who riffs on all things Indian and, well...I don't want to ruin that joke!

Basically what I'm saying is that I laugh for no reason and I blame my dad (who thought he was Cosby when I was growing up!)...and Cosby, Carlin, Brooks, Pryor, Leary, Izzard, Peters, Black, Carr and so many more that my brain hurts just now!

Also, a big shout out to Richard "Jeff" Coyle for playing one of the funniest characters ever to grace the small screen and bog up my mind with phrases like: Unflushable, The Zone, The Giggle Loop, Porn Buddies...etc.