Comedy

The problem with comedy, my wife regularly reminds me, is that it's not funny.

This aphorism is oft repeated as we trudge home in the rain at the end of yet another desultory evening, through the ill-lit illicit back streets of one of the more affordable suburbs, having missed the last train home.


The evening always starts out promising. From the moment she steps through the door, bouncing from foot to foot I tell her about this guy, you know the one - he's amazing! Well he's in town for just one show tonight and...

"Comedy?"

Well, a mate had some tickets and...

"No!"

...and they were only twenty dollars...

"You bought them?"

... and they're good seats and the venue's just near that indian place you like and we can go there first my shout!

"How many times do I have to say it? Comedy's not funny."

At this point I try the tried and true method of petulant toddlers everywhere - sulking, whining, and if all else fails, soiling myself. Eventually, clearly outlining her objections, she gives in. I call a taxi. She grabs her coat and braces herself briefly on the threshold with the grim expression of an ANZAC about to leave his trench to meet certain death in no mans land.

"This" she says "will be truly awful."
___

Later that evening we walk back home through the rain.

"So, what was your favourite part of the evening?" she asks.

well, er...

"For me it was the bit where the MC began abusing the asian girl until she got up and left.

Yes, um, that was...

"Or perhaps it was the angry young guy actually crying on stage because not one of us appreciated the cleverness of his 18 minute monologue on the hilarious inconsistencies in a deconstructionist, anti-structuralist and post-structuralist analysis of Trotsky?"

His friends seemed to...

"No. Wait. That wasn't the best bit. My favourite part of the evening, the absolute highlight for me was the part where YOU HECKLED!"

Yes, well you see he said...

"Darling, if in some alternate dystopian future, in a universe where Satan holds court in an igloo...

...some people laughed when I...

"IF you have dragged me, god know's how, most likely in a rohypnol induced stupor, to a comedy show..."

...I think you might be...

"AND IF you decide to engage the comedian in a battle of - what for want of a better word we shall agree to call your 'wits'..."

...I thought he really...

"IF HE THEN asks you if I am your wife..."

...I know where this is...

"IF YOU PROCEED to answer in the affirmative; it will at that precise moment no longer technically, in any real or, barring the paperwork, legal sense - be true."

Ah.

"Look, there's a cab, you're paying, take me home."

I really did like the bit about the parrot though.