As always, in no particular order. May we all be so lucky as to laugh another moment away.
Picture this with me right. Iād say close your eyes but you need to read this in order to picture the writing, so I suppose close your peripherals to focus? Youāre at a moderately empty bar. Maybe there are fifteen-to-twenty people there. Itās a large space with room for probably a hundred-fifty. Thereās a wide-open floor for standing or dancing. Thereās been live-music going for three hours. Your friend gets up to play a headliner set. Itās an intimate crowd and he starts with a bit of chattering, some back-and-forth, some throat-clearing, some intimacy-setting. He plays his first song. Thereās a group of two men, conspicuously drunk, in the booth tucked closest to the stage. They slur some assumed heckling. But then you listen a little closer and the heckling entails various phrases like man you have a damn good voice and shit you could sing like that? thatās incredible man. The pair heckle supportively after almost every song in the near-hour-long set. It seems to ease the comfort of the singer, and he receives a heckled request for an encore with the previous singer, as well, where they go up on stage and play a non-practiced rendition of Cowboy Take Me Away by The Chicks. The set finishes. You get up to get your friend some water, or a whiskey, or some congratulations, and finally peer around to see the two affectionate hecklers. Some dozen or so empty tallboy PBRs in front of them, both looking like Seattle tech guys: unkempt brown hair, patagonia-adjacent chic, moderate beards, fairly lean. Except for the one who was most vocal throughout the sets, who had begun the supportive heckling, was just covered in blood. He looked like heād gotten knocked in the face and lost a tooth. Blood all over his mouth and lips and nose, drips all down his shirt and pants. You and your friendās girlfriend talk to the two hecklers and thank them for being so supportive. They ask what the next place to go is. Itās close to one in the morning at this point, a weeknight, thereās no real intention of spending more time with them. You settle tabs, help clean up the stage and pick up equipment. The two follow along and the bloody man tries one last time: he lives right around the corner and he could set up a projector, you all could watch a movie or something with some lawn chairs and have a few drinks that way. Itās pouring outside. Kindly rejected, the bloody man takes the news with disappointment and grace. He hands your singer friend some fifty or sixty dollars for the performance. You walk out and listen to the Tarzan soundtrack for the fifteen- or twenty-minute drive home. O, bloody man at bar. Itās an incredulous laugh, but nevertheless, he was so human that he had to be believable.
Did you know that some blood moons look more pink than red? Thereās something so marvelously gay about a pink moon that I canāt help but grin and laugh.
In the toy aisle of one of the most compact TJ Maxxās Iāve had the pleasure of walking into, there rests a sprawlingly displayed large box for an RC U.S. Army Jeep. Thereās a teasing offer to two non-U.S. citizens if this was a must-have for them. Thereās the hesitant laugh of, āUh, no, we donāt really feel the desire to care about let alone support the U.S. military.ā Itās a laugh of, well, I mean, we all live in this festering mess of a world. Itās a laugh of god, imagine if we spent some of the military budget on education. Itās a laugh of god, can we stop providing bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb to various defense contractors and countries?
As wedding preparations get more intense, thereās a laugh of the oncomingness of it all. The considerations and the desires. The locations and the people. And the love, foremost. I found myself telling some kind, early-60s man who lives in such a far destination next to a beautiful hamlet of the sound that, sometimes, when you step somewhere, you can tell the emotions thatāve been shared on the ground, and that the ground we were on was overwhelmingly full with joy. I held her hands on a deck over the water and said I do and knew it didnāt count, yet, but sometimes there is no virtue to patience. Giddy laughter, like a flock of gulls in your throat excited over a spilled bag of chips.
The fumbling humility of offering a couple free donuts and a coffee, and within minutes running into several people who wanted it at once. I didnāt really want to make anyone work for it, so I gave it to the first to claim the prize. Should I have made them all rock-paper-scissors tournament for it all? Dance for the treat! Dance for me! A laughter of simple pleasures. Of the opportunity to give simple pleasures.
There really isnāt much depth to this one: I wore an outfit consisting of matching frog-print socks and a frog-print cardigan. And whenever I saw them together, I giggled a little at the ridiculousness of walking around double-ribbited-up on a Friday.
Itās a great day to be a red dragon! Itās a great day to be a red dragon! Itās a great day to be a red dragon! Itās a great day to be a red dragon! Itās a great day to be a red dragon! Itās a great day to be a red dragon! Itās a great day to be a red dragon! My alma materās catchphrase. They use it in every email. You see it enough times and you think, you know, what if it really was a great day to be a red dragon? Do I sprout wings now, in my relinquishing? Do I gain some crown of horns, some scaley hide? Itās a great day to be a red dragon! What does a dragonās laugh sound like? On the smaller scales, do lizards laugh?
Did you know there was a phenomenon of some combination of wind-pressure, currents, and cloud-structures that resulted in the particular view of a spiral-cylinder-column of rainbow? I mean, surely, thatās enough to give you some type of laugh at the miraculousness that continues to find novel moments in this world.
Sometimes, I like to listen to the same song over-and-over-and-over-and-over. The last two I remember doing this to were both Carly Rae Jepsen songs: The Knocks ft. Carly Rae Jepsen - Love Me Like That, and Carly Rae Jepsen's Beach House. This day in particular, I had queued up an instance of Chappell Roanās My Kink is Karma. If there ever was a song that really gave the energy of my spite it would be this:
But it's hot when you have a meltdown
In the front of your house and you're getting kicked out
It's hot when you're drinking downtown
And you're getting called out 'cause you're running your mouth
My time of listening ended before my queue got to this song, though, and I found myself in my next instance immediately greeted with the lyrics. Of course I listened, regardless of circumstance and mood. Then the song played again. Then again. After the third I skipped forward, thinking, surely this song canāt be on an endless loop. I checked my settings. I skipped again. I clicked the loop buttons. I skipped again. I checked the queue. Somewhere in the beautifully inept machinery of digital applications, My Kink is Karma had been queued up some forty times. Oh, it's hot when you're going through hell alright. Iām not sure what karmic forces were at play here, or who my music needed to convince me was deservedly suffering, but I got the point. Someone, somewhere, who had done wrong, was getting their comeuppance. What better to inspire a deep, breathy laugh?
Thank you for reading, as always, loves. And let me know if you have any notable laughs in recent memory!