Journal #9 Mark Twain: My Favorite Humor!

QUOTE:

“Why, it made no difference to him - he’d bet on any thing – the dangdest feller” (Twain 105).


SUMMARY:

Smiley is just a lucky guy, so he finds the strangest bets to try his chances on. He even goes as far as betting whether Parson Walker’s wife will die or not.


RESPONSE:

This is a nice light-hearted story about a gambling man and a frog, and it also happens to be frustratingly funny without the obvious punch line. The humor comes from the ridiculous situations, which seem especially silly when told in the correct accent of the dialect, and other little details in how the simple story is told. For example, I wonder how different this story would have come across if it were told from a third person perspective instead of a first person perspective.

The main reason I love this story, however, is because it reminds me of my all-time favorite show in the whole world on television: The Simpsons. Reading this story made me think of an episode with Krusty The Clown making ridiculous bets, similarly to Jim Smiley’s ridiculous bets. Krusty starts getting into gambling debt, so to fix this problem he makes any other bet he can make. He asks his bookie, “What do ya got on the Opera tonight?” And the bookie actually asks, “Who do ya like?” Krusty then says, “The Tenor!!” That’s the joke without a punch line.

It seems so much wittier to me than anything; book, movie, or television show, that uses “bathroom” or crude humor. Maybe that’s why I also have always loved Groucho Marx. He is probably my favorite comedian, and he always said that a real comedian would never have to be censored; a real comedian can suggest something that is only an allusion to something shocking, so anyone will still find it funny.