In an earlier post I talked about how Warren Zevon used simple words to move readers. Zevon also excelled in humor – he may have been the wittiest lyricist in all of rock. Let’s look at a few examples and see if we can learn anything that applies to business writing.
He’s the hairy handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim
I’d like to meet his tailor.
(Werewolves of London, by LeRoy Marinell, Waddy Wachtel, and Warren Zevon)
Juxtaposition of incongruous elements — funny. That’s why a gecko selling supplementary insurance tickles our ribs. But the GEICO idea, while humorous, relies on an inherently silly element, a talking lizard. Zevon’s joke is even more skillful, in that neither werewolves nor tailors are inherently funny.
Image via Wikipedia
From a shotgun shack singing Pentecostal hymns
Through the wrought iron gates to the TV room
He had a little world, it was smaller than your hand
It’s a rockabilly ride from the glitter to the gloomLeft behind by the latest trends
Eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends
That’s how the story ends
With a porcelain monkey
(Porcelain Monkey, by Warren Zevon and Jorge Calderon)
__________
Daddy’s doing Sister Sally
Grandma’s dying of cancer now
The cattle all have brucellosis
We’ll get through somehow
(Play It All Night Long, by Warren Zevon)
Perfectly chosen, perfectly placed weird words — funny. In these two excerpts, I’d like to draw attention to how one single word turns ordinary into funny. In the first song, about Elvis Presley, “Eating fried chicken with his friends” would give us a taste of the situation, but “Eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends” says a mouthful. A less carefully chosen phrase, such as “homicidal friends” would have rendered the phrase merely disgusting. But “regicidal” add just enough quirky lightheartedness to make the concept palatable. Zevon used adjectives sparingly, but when he did, the adjective was, like the part in the werewolf’s hair, perfect.
David Letterman famously observed that Warren Zevon was the only songwriter in history to use the word “brucellosis” in a composition. I’m not going to argue. What’s really amusing here is this. You don’t even have to know what “brucellosis” means to know that if your cattle have it, you’ve got a very messed up situation on your hands.
The key to this technique is to use it sparingly. Packing light business copy with oddball words and phrases quickly passes from entertaining to annoying.
Questions
What kinds of advertising/taglines/business copy tickle your funny bone? Does humor help connect you to a company or product, or put you off?
I think the greatest challenge to using humor is something you’ve already mentioned about using cartoons. It’s that humor is probably the most universally undefinable thing there is!
EVERYBODY has a different view of what’s funny. Plus, in this worldwide fishbowl we live in, different cultures see things totally different. Then there’s the subtle stuff you’re talking about here. Just a little: funny. Too much: not funny. But where’s the line? Not so easy to formulate, is it?
Man, what a challenge! It’s amazing to me that we can still all laugh together about anything! Yet — we do. Amazing!
Bob, so true. That’s why you almost never see a comedy film that gains a mass audience. One possible common denominator of humor is surprise — the unexpected twist, the new wrinkle. But then not everything unexpected is funny, or meant to be. Too deep for me, but defining “funny” has always been a fascinating topic for me, and for you too I suspect!
I guess that’s one thing I’m always surprised at – how many folks think my particular brand of humor is indeed humorous. Should I be worried?
Not always on target, though. Sometimes, I see things in a humorous light – but it turns out not to be funny at all, nor meant to be! Oops – open foot, insert mouth.
But hey, it’s what keeps me going. I’ve always believed, along with Reader’s Digest, that laughter is indeed the best medicine.