Comedy 101 with Dan Greaney
Emmy-winning writer of The Simpsons weighs in on "Live Laugh Lube"
“Why comedians?” Dan Greaney asks me over the phone. His voice is gentle, inquisitive.
I’m sitting in my garage, which triples as my office, art studio, and laundry room—having just outlined my new collaborative art project “Live Laugh Lube” (see last week’s post for details). Dan, I assume, is sitting in his living room near his Emmys and small Alma Allan sculptures. It strikes me, as I search for an answer, that my social media coach and UA sponsor being comedians is not a good enough reason, in and of itself, to mount an ambitious art project with comedians.
“Well,” I say, thinking swiftly, “my experience with social media has been pretty negative. You know, social media affects dopamine production and causes all kinds of anxiety and depression. And I guess I’m trying to have a different experience by involving the healing power of comedy.”
“There’s all sorts of comedy,” Dan says kindly. (Dan is always kind). “There’s mockery, satire, …” He lists a few other forms of potentially mean-spirited comedy.
“Right,” I say, slumping into my IKEA office chair. “I understand. Comedy is not inherently healing.”
“Maybe you could ask the comedians to recommend other comedians that made them feel good?”
“Yes! That’s a great idea,” I say, sitting back up. After all, that is why I asked my coach Melinda, my sponsor, and now Dan to be my first collaborators. Not because they are professional funny people, but because they are professional funny people who make me feel good—who’ve spiritually enhanced my life.
“And maybe each comedian could add a little something to the rules,” adds Dan.
“Errr…” I shake my head. I imagine my neat framework ballooning into a dissertation of asinine rules like ‘the comedian must always wear blue’ or ‘all words must start with “q.”’
Dan launches into a brief history of comedy—something about musical theater and people retelling the same joke until they realized they had to evolve the joke over time for it to retain its humor. I get out a pen and write keep evolving the joke in my black, leather-bound ‘Mieke’s Spiritual Social Media Journal’ as Dan talks about Sideshow Bob and rakes. The ultimate counter example (a joke with no evolution), cites Dan. I haven’t watched The Simpsons in 20 years, but I recall the frizzy auburn hair, the posh English accent, the rake from out-of-nowhere whapping a man in the face, as if I were recalling childhood itself.
“Anyway, by having each comedian add a rule you’d be mimicking the form of comedy, you’d be socializing the algorithm,” adds Dan.
“Yes!” I exclaim, a wild grin on my face. “That’s exactly how I view this project, as a kind of algorithm. An algorithm, after all, is just a set of instructions. This project is my algorithm to combat Instagram’s algorithm, except it doesn’t use code. It uses comedy and paint and people.”
Dan and I talk about a few other things before wrapping up our call. He says he’s happy to introduce me to Conan O’Brien (an old friend he’s fallen out of touch with as he’s become famous) if he can figure out how. I am wide-eyed with optimism and flattered by Dan’s belief in this project, though I try not to get my hopes up. Dan, by the way, has—as of 9/23—563 Instagram followers. So perhaps the more interesting question is not will Conan O’Brien participate in this obscure social media art experiment, but what “less” visible person will Dan recommend? Or, more existentially, what does visibility mean?
Next week: What my agent thinks of my pitch for a book about trying to have a spiritual experience with social media.
Below is Dan’s and my collaborative video. If you enjoy it, please give it a like, comment, or share with a friend.
It will work out, it is a grand idea.
So fun!