Heal with Laughter: Go Bananas!

Heal With Laughter:Go Bananas!
By John-Robert Coleman, MPA

Lately I admit I have been taking life rather seriously until I was confronted with a timely challenge-- I am to make people laugh? “Yeah Right,as I said to self, are you kidding me?” I am supposed to dig up some personal experiences from my past to make people go funny?” Yes, I dreaded this assignment for what I thought was out of my character or rather it was that fear monger that reared its ugly head. It did seem as if the Toastmaster’s Entertaining Speaker Manual did insistently voice its charge, “Hey, lighte
UP! Just do it… Take it one line at a time and make them laugh anyway”

My only home memories that got close to comedic relief in my early youth were of TV variety like the late night Johnny Carson, Red Skelton, Robin Williams, Roger Dangerfield and the original SNL shows. In particular I was fascinated with stand up comics who had that ballsy talent and timing to perform One Line Jokes. To me the more these comics loomed as borderline simpletons with their corny one-liners, the more I’d laugh. To speak to a cliché, they were into monkey business and they knew how to let it fly or ‘just go bananas’! I then decided, Why not, I’ll give it a shot with some co-opted One-Liners.

Someone asked me the other day why I loved bananas so much, and I replied, “Because they have appeal!” Also I discovered that local economist and business community here in Honolulu, Hawaii are very worried, in fact very nervous over the decline in our tourism rate until they discovered that tourists are much like bananas; they do come in bunches! Now if you are an ocean lover, one might say, they come in waves. Now these are typical examples of the one-liners that do appeal to my kind of humor.

My objective here with you is to audition, try out a monolog of one-liners just for the sake of stirring up some nonsense, some foolishness, or if you will- I challenged myself to simply “go bananas” on your behalf which brings me to utter a list of borrowed and twisted one-liners:

1) Sarah Palin, the X governor of the Alaskan islands saw an eye doctor
and it turned out she was diagnosed as seeing “Optical Aleutians…” .
2) In the back woods of Tennessee a lady was known to be a fine whiskey maker
and her husband stayed to love her Still….oh how touching …

3) A rubber band pistol was confiscated from an algebra class one day
because the Principal saw this object as a weapon of “Math Disruption!”

4) Two silk worms had a race-- They both ended up in a tie.

5) Some holes, pukas have been found on the local seaside
Hawaii ‘Five O’ Nudist Camp Walls--The police are now “Looking Into It.”

6) Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway.
One hat said to the other,” You stay here; I'll go ON A-Head.

7) Here’s one for all those who are Blonde and a baseball fanatic ---
I wondered why this baseball kept getting bigger, and bigger and Bigger-- then it Hit me!

8) A sign on a lawn at a drug Re-Hab Center that read: “Keep Off the Grass.”

9) A fortune-teller/physic of a very dwarfed stature escaped from prison and
the police dept dispatcher put out an APB for her capture and it sounded like this: “Be on the lookout; be on the look out for a “small, medium at Large.”

10 And speaking of an individual at Large, there is a member in our Tastmasters Speech Club who actually has survived 36 years of mustard gas and Verbal pepper spray and is now said to be our “Seasoned Oral Specialist.”

11) And in the Australian News, did you hear about those cannibals who ate a missionary? oh how gross, not a nice thought is it?), but the Upside of this story is-they got a “taste of religion.”

12) How many here has or have had a dog their life?
Now I am not talking about your x boyfriend or x girlfriends or spouses!
Well my dog recently gave birth to a slew of puppies along side a Highway,
And can you believe this?-she was cited for littering!

13) Anyway, no matter how much I push this Envelope by telling corny one-liners,
Have you noticed yourself?—You still remain on this cyber-Stationery! .
14) And finally, I sat up all night writing and wondering and wondering about our Sun, that ball of sunshine in the sky, on where did it really go?--then it finally DAWNED on me….

Perhaps by now it may have dawned on you- t’s Ok,it’s healthy to risk
foolishness because I did get some laughs. That made me happy
and I encourage you to Go Bananas!