Great American Success Story

Monday, January 15, 2018

Overcoming fear when it goes from reasonable to irrational

The Gator Whisperer

I once went hiking up a mountain with some friends. As we went higher the trail got thinner. In some places we were one small slip from plunging to the depths of Hell. Then there was a spot where the trail had been washed out. A jump of about three feet was required to go forward.

I was at the front of the group but I was so scared of missing the little jump that I stepped aside and let the others go first. I was in good shape and there was no reason to think I would have any trouble with the jump. However, the more I looked, the more I envisioned myself sliding down the mountain to my demise.

Seeing my friends make the jump should have helped. Instead, I was focused on the horrible consequences if I missed. Soon I was the only person who hadn’t made the jump. I was nearly paralyzed with fear and I seriously considered staying behind. My friends told me there was nothing to it. Finally, I took a deep breath and made the jump. It was no big deal.

When you spend too much time looking at a problem, it can seem bigger and more difficult than it actually is. Being careful is good, but overdoing it can keep us from moving forward.

Do fears sometimes hold you back? How can you recognize when sensible fear crosses the line to being irrational?

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Monday, January 1, 2018

Fat Free Jokes

The punchline is the funny part of the joke. First you have the setup, then comes the punchline. It’s the destination. The setup normally exists for one reason - to lead the way to the punchline. (There are talented people who get laughs out of their setups, but that’s fairly unusual.)

Most people have probably heard someone tell a joke and include all sorts of details in the setup that really weren’t necessary. There’ve been many times when I‘ve heard someone setting up a joke and I’ve muttered inwardly, “Would you please get to the punchline?”

Something happens to an audience when there’s a long setup for a joke. The longer the setup is, the more people anticipate the punchline. In my opinion, the punchline should be a surprise, something people don’t see coming. Also, as a rule of thumb, the longer the setup is, the stronger the punchline should be.

Many of my setups were questions that were a little off the wall to get people scratching their heads a bit. For example, Have you noticed that whenever a whale lands on the beach, people assume it got there by mistake? Or, Have you ever wondered why people ignore the limits at the express checkout counter?

When I wrote those bits, which were two of my better ones, the setups were different from what I just wrote. I started out with more and then cut the setups down to exactly what was needed to get to the punchline. No more, no less. Nobody needed to know what species of whale I was talking about. Nobody needed to know which chain of grocery stores I was talking about. Those details could only have slowed down the joke.

If a detail doesn’t contribute to the effectiveness of the joke, it simply has to go – no ifs, ands, or buttocks. You must be mindful of the fact that people have short attention spans. You don’t want members of the audience to be wishing they had a remote so they could hit the fast forward.

For more tips like this, check out Humor101: How to Tell Jokes for Power, Prestige, Profit, and Personal Fulfillment atAmazon.

Further Reading

Laughter is the best therapy

Practice telling your jokes

How to use sight gags

Related articles

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Blue Angles, Jacksonville Beach, 2007

I've seen the Blue Angels dozens of times, but this was the the best performance I've ever seen. The sky was perfect, the light was perfect, and I had a good camera and a nice spot to shoot from. Unforgettable!

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Humor for the Totality, The Mother of All Traffic Jams, 2017 Eclipse Predictions

Box-headed people in 1963!

The bad news is that there is a nationwide shortage of glasses to view the eclipse. The good news is that suitable viewing boxes can be made out of the millions of Amazon boxes that have been piling up in Americans’ garages. Now, nobody has to miss out.

Pundits predict that traffic to and from the Path of Totality of the eclipse will produce the worst traffic jam in the history of humankind. To listen to the media, the traffic promises to be even more apocalyptic than the apocalypse! It will be the Mother of All Traffic Jams. There will be shortages of food, fuel, water, Grey Poupon mustard, and escargot. The traffic is going to be so bad that most Americans will not be able to get out of their own driveways for days, possibly weeks.

According to experts in the media, this event will be like Y2K, the Mayan Calendar, and the 2016 election rolled into one. Who can bear the thought of living through any of those events again? Take a look out your front door. Traffic is probably piling up right now! Fill your gas tanks and get some water, while you still can.

I have a contrasting opinion about this event because I've observed various media using the power of exaggeration for decades, actually centuries, come to think of it. I, on the other hand, am predicting another massive miss for the media. There will likely be heavy traffic here and there, but nothing beyond an annoying inconvenience for most people. You heard it here folks.

My next post may be from the Totality!