Sit Down Comedy … August 14th, 2020

Jonathots Daily Blog

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First Comedians

If I’m able to yap in every language, or even sound like a televangelist, and I don’t have funny, I am a boring sermon or a bombastic speech.

If I can guess what’s going to happen next and explain how to solve the Rubik’s Cube, and I have mind control that can convince you that I’m miraculous, but I don’t have funny, I am a boob.

If I give all my pocket change to poor people or even donate my time to community service but I do not pursue funny, I am truly a snoozer.

Funny is impatient, but ultimately kind.

It does yearn for things—but it doesn’t cheat to get them.

And if it gets lucky, it’s grateful.

It doesn’t lie about folks but will poke fun at them. And because it pursues the laughable, it’s not so easy to get pissed off. (And if you have something funnier, you win.)

Funny doesn’t try to promote the dark side, but in its own way, is digging around for truth.

To put it this way, funny always protects the weak, trusts people to get the jokes, hopes the sponsor will rebook—and on a bad night, settles for a burger and fries.

But be sure of this:

Funny rarely fails.

Some people preach, but that will die out.

Other folks negotiate, but eventually the treaties fail.

And you can get enough education to make you a doctor of everything–except comedy.

Since we don’t know everything, we can laugh about most things and in laughing, sometimes we gain understanding.

When I was a little dude, I loved silly things.

Now that I’ve become a big boy, I speak silly things.

It doesn’t make me less mature—just more tolerable.

For it’s hard to understand what’s going on.

Maybe some day we will. Maybe not.

But our job is to promote good cheer—so we can survive.

Now, there are three things at work on Earth:

Facts

Faith

And funny

Hell … the greatest of these is funny.

We Are Not Malala… October 13, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Adequately enraged by the story of a fifteen-year-old Pakistani girl who is shot in the head by a religious zealot on a school bus just one year ago, the American public has, this week, welcomed the brave lass into our hearts while simultaneously expressing disdain and indignation for the treachery. People all over the globe have begun to respond, uttering the mantra, “I am Malala.”

It’s one of the things we do best in this country–put a spotlight on injustice.

Of course, unless it is our own.

Do I think it’s possible for a young girl in this country to be shot in the head by a fanatic simply because she’s pursuing education and trying to gain some footing in her generation? Probably not.

But we do fail to give equal pay to women for equal work. In so doing, we create a backlog of single mothers who struggle to maintain solvency with their children, who are often cruelly abandoned by the men who had the testosterone to father but no will to parent.

We also willingly foster and fund an ongoing gender bashing via our movies, television shows and comedians, who preach the implausibility for the male and female of our species to get along in any way, shape or form. May I ask who, generally speaking, receives the major amount of blame for this feud? Is it not the female?

Hundreds and thousands of churches in this country refuse to allow a woman to speak in the pulpit–to preach a sermon about the goodness and mercy of God, who by the way, is no respecter of persons.

We have taken the nastiness of pornography, which used to be relegated to small shops on the side of the road, only open for a counterculture which indulged in such activity, and now have turned it into art–acceptable behavior for everyone, even though it is used to abuse women and place them in a painful, subordinate position.

In the course of one week of prime time television, nearly a hundred women are beat, abused, raped, murdered and dismembered, as the plot for detective shows or any program that wants to sensationalize cruelty to the daughters of Eve.

Yet we will pause in the midst of this ongoing revenue of insanity to posture ourselves as a civilized culture that would never think of shooting a teenage girl in the head because she was on her way to school.

Again, perhaps not.

But there are many other ways to mutilate the spirit of a human being other than creasing the brain with a bullet.

The only way we can become Malala is if we “take the log out of our own eye” on this issue of gender equality, and set an example for the world of how human beings are meant to be treated, no matter what their sexuality.

For I do not know the difference between gunning down a young girl and raping her spirit by using rap music to call her a bitch, a whore and then turning around and refusing to allow her the chance to stand toe-to-toe with her brothers.

No one is perfect on this issue. Each one of us has grown up with bias and prejudice, but because I love my country, I would ask for us to do less chest-thumping of superiority, and more gazing into the mirror, to find our soul on an issue that plagues the world.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event

Which came first–the joke or the laugh? … September 14, 2012

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I need a God who laughs.

I’m afraid it’s kind of a deal breaker. If somebody came back from the dead, it’s probably the first thing I would ask. “Did you find the Almighty to be festive?”

I don’t know what I would do if He was serious. For truthfully, prayer makes me sleepy, singing hymns makes me hoarse, and fasting? Well, it makes me hungry. I certainly hope that’s not the best He has to offer.

I think there is good evidence for the contention that God is a rejoicer. Whether it’s a He or a She, you can certainly tell by many of the processes taken by the Heavenly Being–there is a giggle in there somewhere.

That is why I think that the laugh came before the joke.

I think God was laughing when He came up with the joke of humanity. I think it tickled His fancy to create a creature who was endowed with such tremendous potential and spirituality, but also flawed with a predilection towards mediocrity and infested with foibles.

You might ask where I get the idea that God came into this thing laughing. Let me start by asking you, “What was the purpose for creating the heavens and the earth?”  You might make the case that He was bored, but boredom is so boring. I think He was playful. I think He wanted to expand His own horizons by opening the door to new possibilities. I also feel He had a youthful spirit, because after creating the heavens and the earth, He got distracted and didn’t come back again for quite some time.

When He did make His way back to the earth, He found it pretty dormant–and pretty ugly. So He started to work, and after a full season of pouring His energy into the project, He closed out the endeavor with, “It is good.”

Honestly, can you say it is good with a frown on your face? Can you proclaim it is good with a nod and a yawn? How pleased He must have been the first time He saw mitosis, and one cell divided into two. It would make me laugh–watching that little blob of nothing wiggle and squirm until the one became twain. Great fun.

There are so many strange things He made that you have to believe there was an element of tongue-in-cheek involved in the decision. Please, someone explain a platypus to me. And how much knee slapping did He do over including a pouch on the kangaroo?

Yes, I believe laughter came before the joke–and candidly, I am much more comfortable with the notion that God finds us funny than I am with thinking that He is some sort of schoolmaster, looking for opportunities to flunk us out. For I have no problem with the Book of Proverbs citing that God laughs at our calamities. I would be frightened to death if every time we did something stupid God rolled His eyes or marked something down on a chart, or removed some of the furniture from my heavenly mansion. He can feel free to laugh at what I do–and hopefully, by and large, I can follow His example and laugh at myself.

I think we live in a generation when we want people to tell jokes because we know we need to laugh, but because we have forgotten how to laugh at ourselves, we need professionals to bring us comedy, relieving our tension through the experience. I like jokes, but I have much more fun laughing at life.

There’s so much that makes me laugh:

• Politicians arguing with each other? I’m sorry, it sends me into a giggle fest.
• Watching religious people do very religious things, hoping to achieve an immense religious result will just take me to a world of hilarity.
• And how the arts and entertainment community insists on finding the most obtuse story lines and pushing them to the forefront as examples of normal life is enough to make me fall off my chair in uncontrollable good cheer.

I need to know that God laughs. I certainly see plenty of proof that He has manufactured many practical jokes. Take romance, for instance. Was this ever supposed to actually have a flow, or even a rhyme and reason? The humor of our body parts, our interactions, our attempts to be sexy and just the general forced warfare between the sexes–it’s enough to make me (and I think maybe even God) sit back and smile away.

Which came first, the joke or the laugh?

I like to believe that the first time God said, “Let there be … ” it was preceded by a bit of a chortle. After all, if He wasn’t thrilled about what He made, how can he expect me to appreciate it? Yes, I believe the laugh came first, and then God, on the sixth day, created the joke.

And ever since, we human beings have gladly been providing the punch line.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity