Words Worth

I try to squeeze in all of my leisure reading during the summer.
During the academic year I'm too busy with my required reading to take the time to read for pleasure.
So with my impending (temporary) unemployment and my sojourn from school, I plowed into my first book of the summer.


I was ecstatic when I found out that my main man, David Sedaris, had a new book out. To be perfectly honest, I finished this 2 days after I got it. So that was about 3 or 4 weeks ago.
And he did not disappoint me. I know that he has hit his mark when I have to put the book down and just laugh.

Last night, I got to thinking (for some strange reason) about writers. In particularly sitcom and movie writers, as well as, David Sedaris, Garrison Keillor, Mo Willems and our very own OTJ, and Kevin Charnas. As well as personal favorites Maigh and Flutter.

See they have something that I will never possess.
The ability to write, a wicked sense of humor and the ability to find great humor in the mundane.
Nothing slays me more than a person who can demonstrate wit, cheek, and humor with a single and oft time simply constructed sentence.
And when I use the word "simply" I mean it in the sense that they use ordinary words.
They don't have to flash a $10,000 vocabulary. They don't have to bedazzle you with verbosity.
They just say it and
it's damned funny and thought provoking. Sometimes even emotional.

When I think about characters in fiction or those on TV, I found that I have a recurring attraction to those that are precocious. Being a person who is not all that witty and only sporadically funny, I feel drawn to someone who oozes those attributes so freely. As though through this person I can relate to the sense of humor and the thoughts that get trapped somewhere between my brain and my mouth.

I fantasize about a smoke-filled, over-caffeinated writer's room.
And imagine myself swirling about with my arms stretched wide open, being completely in awe at the wicked smart one-liners that fly about.
Or the banter and mundane events that inspire one another to construct dialogue that will later amuse millions.

I wonder about the process. If a writer walks into the writer's room and innocently shares a story - something that could only happen to them and it becomes fodder.
I wonder about the lives and the real-life characters and happenings that later become my amusement.
A line from a movie such as: "I've always been considered an asshole for as long as I can remember. It's just my style." - Royal Tenenbaum, how does that take shape? What was the inspiration? How do you sit down and come up with something so simple and funny?

The point is: I adore it.
I wish I had it.
And I don't. But that's OK.
I'm just glad that there are people out there that do.