Happy Gouging Day!

And I do mean "Happy," because, for the first time in a long spell of years, The Lovely Missus and I will be receiving a decent-sized refund. Why didn't I file sooner? Because for years, my freelance income, minuscule though it may be, pushed me into the "Pay up, sucker!" zone. Nothing was deducted from most of that money, so I always ended up owing instead of being owed. (Yes, I know that a smart person would have withheld his own taxes, put them in the bank, etc. If I see a smart person around here, I'll tell him.)

Now, however, with my wonderful little tax deduction crawling around, and with the loss of revenue TLM's pregnancy and Jacob's birth caused last year, things are good around the Dunn household on an April 15th for a change. (Yes, I know that a smart person would have already filed...) Man, they tell you fatherhood is wonderful, but you really have to experience it for yourself to get the full impact.

But that's not why you called. You've all--I'm sure of this--been waiting with bated breath for my promised take on comedy from yesterday. Now that happy days are here again, tax-wise, I'll dispense it.

First, while I'm not a music snob, I am a proud comedy snob. Unabashedly so. Not that I only appreciate high-brow humor. Far from it. If the situation calls for it, I can be so lowbrow as to actually be countersunkbrow. Concavebrow. Subterranean brow. You get the picture. I'm not limited to New Yorker cartoons, is what I'm saying.

But while I can be as juvenile as the next guy, unless the next guy is Jim Carrey (in a nutshell: not a fan), I do have certain requirements in a comedian, and in a comedy. To wit, beginning with comedians.

1. Limit your use of the word "like." If I want to hear, "He was like" and "I was like" and "I'll be all like," I'll hang around with teenage girls. Every time I hear a comedian use "like," it's a sign that he or she is too lazy to craft a really funny line. It's not, "So when I saw the painter's bill, I was flabbergasted, because I had asked for oil-based paint, not gold-based paint. Was it personally brushed on by George Clooney, using only his left eyebrow?" (Which is not that funny, I know. Just take the gist, okay?)

Instead of those ostensibly funny lines, we get, "So he hands me the bill, and I'm like, 'Man, you're crazy.' And he's like, 'Yeah, but I'm rich.'" Har. Har.

2. Dispense with the contrived setups. Don't tell me about how you drove to the post office, and as you were getting out of your car, you saw a fat man climbing out of a small car, and he was mailing a package to his mother, blah blah blah. As comedian Daniel Tosh says, "No you weren't. Do your joke."

3. (Here's where I lose half my readership. Both of them, in other words.) Remember when Jerry Lewis said that he didn't like women comedians? I agreed with him. Still do. Let's stay frosty while I explain.

I didn't, and don't, agree with his view that women are baby-producing machines. And I don't, and never have, believed that women can't be funny. Every iota of humor I ever produced came to me through my mother, who at almost 78 can still kill me with how easily she brings the funny. I've seen her eviscerate people with an exquisitely timed remark, I've heard her tell jokes like a pro, and thanks to her, I see the necessity of laughing at life to keep from losing your sanity.

The Lovely Missus can slay me, too. Once, I was riding in the car with her and her mother. We came up on one of those portable radar units that shows your speed so that you'll slow down. TLM's mother said, "Is that one of those things that tells you how fast you're going?"

Without a nanosecond's hesitation, TLM stung. "No, Mother, that tells us how much we weigh. We weigh 43 pounds." That's killer stuff.

Some of the funniest commenters at Retrosnark are women. I've had to threaten some of them with banning, so badly have they embarrassed my attempts at humor.

To this day, the funniest line I've ever heard came from my cousin Ginger. It's a complete location joke, and y'all weren't there, but the punchline was, "And the Mazda goes 'MMMMMM.'" That was more than 30 years ago, and I still haven't heard a line that can top it.

And there are women comedians I love. Rita Rudner owned me, back when she was a regular guest on comedy shows like "Evening at the Improv." Maria Bamford is a scream. Laura Kightlinger had her moments. Margaret Cho used to crack me up, before she turned into a shrieking harpy with a thousand axes to grind. Janeane Garofalo was hilarious before she became so uber-political. Wendy Leibman's act was great until she ran the non-sequitur bit into the ground. Amy Sedaris is a comedic gem. I only wish she'd take over Dave Letterman's desk instead of being such a regular guest. (Speaking as someone who was a Letterman fan back when he was on DAYTIME television, the man has lost it. Jay Leno is funnier, Dave. Time to call in the dogs and pee on the fire.)

So I'm not anti-woman, and I'm not even anti-woman comedian. But for the most part, female comedians leave me laughless, and here's why. At its core, comedy is a humbling, a self-abasement. I don't care if you're pulling in Seinfeld money, you're still just a class clown done good, hoping people like you. And the male form, lacking as it is in refinement and beauty, just handles that abasement better than the sculptured beauty of the female form.

Look back at the women comedians I've listed, and for the most part, (at least when I thought they were funny) they all were funny without being vulgar or coarse. They weren't distaff versions of Sam Kinison. They were women, and while they weren't quite debutantes at a cotillion, they weren't longshoremen, either. Today, you have female comedians like Lisa Lampinelli, who I've laughed at quite a lot, mainly because I don't see her as a woman. She reminds me of the countless roughnecks I've worked with over the years, ripping off one dirty joke after another. As a female comedian, she's horrible. As Bubba the survey monkey, she's great.

I didn't intend for this to post to be a two-parter, but that's what it's become. Tune in tomorrow for the rest.