Funny pages

While we were gone to New Orleans, the newspaper delivery person -- someone I actually know from high school, which is cool -- slipped us a free copy of the News and Observer Sunday paper. Which included funny pages, which I haven't seen for a long time.

I took the time to read through them, and was mildly amused. There were no moments of convulsive guffawing, just some low-volume chuckles and slight curling of the mouth. But, as someone who makes and has made an effort to produce a volume of hopefully readable and worthwhile text over a long period of time, I have all the respect in the world for the people who draw and write the comic strips. It ain't easy to just keep producing, day in day out, or week in week out, year after year.

Perhaps more importantly, it's very helpful for me to adjust my expectations of what constitutes good humor. What's wrong with dredging a slight moment of sympathetic recognition or a remembrance of childhood from the funny pages, as opposed to the full body laughs that came from the best of Dave Chappelle's first season? You can't have genius all the time, and if you are demanding it of the universe constantly, you're setting yourself up for unhappiness. Much better to accept what's on offer and roll forward.