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rynlingI’ve been thinking about drawing quick and sketchy autobio comics, but
(a) My life as a writer who sits and writes is very boring, and
(b) There’s nothing funny to say about academia, and
(c) It’s still a pandemic and I don’t get out much.
I was thinking about writing about my husband, who is actually an interesting person, but a lot of our interactions require footnotes. Or maybe I’m just bad at writing jokes?
To give an example, earlier this morning I told my husband that I’m considering taking up smoking again. I think most Americans would be like, “No, you shouldn’t do that, I love you and smoking is bad for you.” Meanwhile, my husband was like, “Sounds legit, but we should go to New Jersey because cigarettes are cheaper there, there’s this gas station right over the bridge in Cherry Hill run by a Lebanese guy.”
The joke is that this is an oddly specific response, and that sometimes my husband says things that I don’t expect. Really, though, this is about cultural difference, and about how networks of immigrants share information that’s completely outside the realm of what most people would expect.
In the case of knowing where to get cheap cigarettes, this is something specific to a lot of communities of people from the Middle East, who make fun of American attitudes toward smoking. Like, you ordered drone strikes against my country, and now you tell me cigarettes are unhealthy, that sort of thing. (Also, Muslims who don’t drink always know where to get weed. I could write an entire graphic novel about this subculture, but I think stoner comedies went out of style maybe ten years ago.)
Anyway, I feel like people who get the joke will get the joke, but I’m not sure how relatable something like this is to the average person on Twitter. Idk, it might be easier to work with “pages” instead of trying to pare down stories to fit into a four-panel format, but first I have to get better at drawing. And like, the irony of this is not lost on me, but I think it would be easier to draw quick gag comics if someone else were writing the script.
(a) My life as a writer who sits and writes is very boring, and
(b) There’s nothing funny to say about academia, and
(c) It’s still a pandemic and I don’t get out much.
I was thinking about writing about my husband, who is actually an interesting person, but a lot of our interactions require footnotes. Or maybe I’m just bad at writing jokes?
To give an example, earlier this morning I told my husband that I’m considering taking up smoking again. I think most Americans would be like, “No, you shouldn’t do that, I love you and smoking is bad for you.” Meanwhile, my husband was like, “Sounds legit, but we should go to New Jersey because cigarettes are cheaper there, there’s this gas station right over the bridge in Cherry Hill run by a Lebanese guy.”
The joke is that this is an oddly specific response, and that sometimes my husband says things that I don’t expect. Really, though, this is about cultural difference, and about how networks of immigrants share information that’s completely outside the realm of what most people would expect.
In the case of knowing where to get cheap cigarettes, this is something specific to a lot of communities of people from the Middle East, who make fun of American attitudes toward smoking. Like, you ordered drone strikes against my country, and now you tell me cigarettes are unhealthy, that sort of thing. (Also, Muslims who don’t drink always know where to get weed. I could write an entire graphic novel about this subculture, but I think stoner comedies went out of style maybe ten years ago.)
Anyway, I feel like people who get the joke will get the joke, but I’m not sure how relatable something like this is to the average person on Twitter. Idk, it might be easier to work with “pages” instead of trying to pare down stories to fit into a four-panel format, but first I have to get better at drawing. And like, the irony of this is not lost on me, but I think it would be easier to draw quick gag comics if someone else were writing the script.
