HOW HARRY CHAPIN RUINED MY MARRIAGE
And other subject lines I’m using to get your attention this week.
Let’s talk about “DARK HUMOR”
I have some clients who talk about dark topics, but that doesn’t mean humor doesn’t have its place in their presentations.
Frank King, the record holder for the number of TedX appearances speaks to his specialty, suicide prevention. And he does it with humor. (TBC, Frank’s not a client but a friend.)
Dark humor involves taking serious topics and finding the absurdity or irony within them. It allows people to confront uncomfortable truths in a way that feels safe, often by defusing tension with laughter. It can be a powerful tool for coping with life’s harsh realities.
Like roast comedy, dark humor is dark magic…
… and it needs to be handled carefully. This is some Voldemort, s**t, people. So, if you are courageous enough to tackle it, here are some suggestions:
Read the Room: This kind of humor probably works better in close-knit groups than in a more formal setting. (i.e. Bill’s retirement celebration.)
Keep it Personal: Dark humor works best when it comes from a real place. It can be extremely effective when it comes across as authentic, and less so when it’s for shock value.
Tap Into Universal Themes: Sadly…death, failure and existential dread are universal themes. (They’re usually 1,2 and 3 on my to-do list on Mondays.) Lean into topics that your audience is connected to.
End Lighter: Leave the room inspired, not bummed out. Seriously.
All that said, Dark Humor also works very well when you are reacting to something that’s intrinsically, earnestly, dark. Sometimes something is so dark that it’s absurd. Which is why this week, I’m going to post an older piece of mine about singer-songwriter Harry Chapin. This is going to get dark, people. So, if you’re not in the mood, check out one of my lighter posts like how to write your social media bio.
HARRY CHAPIN
You can tell a lot about your mental state by the music you stream when you’re drinking.
Recently, after too many glasses of wine, I found myself bingeing “The Best of Harry Chapin.” More like “Best I shouldn’t have done it.” It put me in a very dark place. When my wife found me staring into space while “Cats in the Cradle” was blaring, she immediately shut down my computer. Thanks, babe.
Everybody knows that “Cats in the Cradle” is the #1 anthem for horrible father-son relationships. (Which is why they play it in nursing homes and in prison waiting rooms.) “Cats in the Cradle” is the most compelling commentary on bad parenting since Darth Vader said “Luke, I am your father.”
If you’re unfamiliar with Harry Chapin, all you need to know is this:
Any of his songs of is more depressing than anything “The Cure” ever wrote. Harry’s music is filled with so much angst, when Morrissey listens to it, he thinks “I am a f***king fraud. Gotta step up my game.”
It’s the stuff the writers of The Walking Dead listen to when they’re breaking story.
If Harry Chapin had ever met Bobby McFerrin, it would have been like matter and anti-matter colliding. I think it was Stephen Hawking who theorized that if you play “Don’t Worry Be Happy” at the same time as “Cats in the Cradle,” a black hole will form, creating a gravity field from which happiness cannot escape.
Harry Chapin music is not party music, it’s Donner Party music. (Look it up people.)
These are all reasons why it was the perfect music for me in my emotional funk. Recently, I had begun to ask the big questions, like “What’s the point?” and “Can I achieve my dreams?” and “What the hell is Pinterest for?” But somehow, I decided that to work through my existential crisis, I needed to confront real sadness. I would jump into the abyss of Chapin’s oevre, and see if I could come out the other side.
I started with “Taxi,”
… which is about a cab driver who picks up a fare… the first woman he had ever had sex with. When they were kids, she wanted to be an actress and he wanted to be a pilot. Years later, she’s married to a guy she doesn’t love and he’s driving a cab getting stoned all day.
It’s pretty hard to find anything consoling about this song, especially since he works for a company that doesn’t drug test their drivers.
Hard to get behind a guy’s dream of being a pilot when he’s shuttling people around from place to place getting baked as a fart. After downing a glass of scotch while listening to Taxi on a loop, I came to the conclusion that neither the cabbie nor his ex-girlfriend tried to get what they wanted out of life and just settled. There is no uplifting message for me here.
Next, I moved on to a real toe-tag tapper, called…
The Shortest Story
a song about a dying child. If you’ve never heard it, imagine someone took dead baby jokes and set them to an acoustic guitar. This can only be the result of a bet Harry made with James Taylor over who could bum out an audience faster. JT came up with “Fire and Rain,” but Harry won because the dead baby song only lasts two and a half minutes.
Next up on my playlist of doom, it’s…
Mr. Tanner
In it, Harry tells us the uplifting story of a dry cleaner from Dayton who loved to sing at work. Everyone told Mr. Tanner he should try to make it as a professional singer. So, he took his life savings, flew to New York, sang in a concert, and I got panned by the critics in the audience. He came home to Dayton and no one ever heard him sing again.
“Mr. Tanner” is on Harry’s album “Greatest Stories Live.” If this is one of his “greatest” stories, I don’t want to know what songs didn’t make the cut.
I can imagine Harry was in the studio thinking: “Hmm... I got room for one more track on my LP -- part of me wants the song about a guy who gets his foot caught in a combine and has to have it amputated, but I think what would really destroy my fans emotionally, would be my ditty about a Dry Cleaner who gets his dreams dashed from Dayton, Ohio.”
How are you supposed to feel after hearing this song? “Yeah! F you for having a dream, Mr. Tanner! How dare you dream your life should mean more than getting a red wine stain out of a white cashmere sweater! That thing that made you happy? Singing? Well guess what, you suck at it!”
If Harry wrote that song today, it would involve Mr. Tanner going on “The Voice” and none of the coaches turn their chair around. And then it would end with Carson Daly saying “Thanks for wasting our time, dickhead, enjoy your Amtrak ride back to Shit City, Ohio.”
Now that song hit really close to home for me, because it’s about someone who tried to do what he loved and failed. It taps into all our greatest fears. If you’re struggling to be creative, no matter who you are, when you listen to “Mr. Tanner,” you can hear your mother’s voice singing in the background track.
I was starting to think listening to Harry Chapin wasn’t the best idea for someone in a sadness spiral. It was time to take a deep breath, step away for a moment, and learn a little about Harry Chapin, the man.
Harry Chapin, the man..
The late Harry Chapin was a conundrum. He was a philanthropist. He donated a third of all the money he made from his live performances to charity. His work combatting world hunger earned him a Congressional Gold Medal. When he died, he was supporting seventeen relatives and eighty-two charitable organizations. He was quoted as saying “Money is for people.” So, he gave it away.
These are not the actions of a depressed man.
I came to the conclusion that God cannot exist unless somewhere deep within Harry’s music library is a message of hope and optimism.
My renewed search led me to
30,000 pounds of Bananas
I remember hearing it as a kid. It’s a catchy tune and it has a silly title. It’s about a banana truck driver -- what could go wrong here? Does he get to his destination late and now the bananas are brown? Does he slip on a peel, land on his ass, and bystanders laugh at him?
Wrong again, jackass!
This isn’t America’s Funniest Home Videos, it’s a Harry Chapin song! The banana truck driver loses control of his rig while on a steep grade, crashes, and gets decapitated. Which is what I started to wish would happen to me.
Eventually, I found my salvation in a song Harry named…
A Better Place to Be
It opens with this...
“It was an early morning bar room and the place just opened up. And a little man came in so fast and started on his cups.”
Here we have your classic depressed Harry Chapin protagonist. If you see a guy sprinting into a watering hole at 9am, chances are, he’s not there to meet Taylor Swift and trade stories about how great their lives are going. Here’s the next lyric :
“And the broad who served the whiskey was a big old friendly girl, and she tried to fight her empty nights by smiling at the world.”
Ok, depressed guy, meet overweight waitress. Sounds like an ad for e-Tragedy.
The song continues. The waitress asks him what’s wrong and he tells her his horrible story.
“I am the midnight watchman, down at Miller’s Tool and Die. I watch the metal rusting. I watch the time go by.”
Now the first time I heard this song, I started to think, “Hey, maybe I misjudged this guy. If the most exciting part of my job was staring at a lathe, I’d be a morning drinker too.”
The song goes on and we find out that after work a week earlier, this guy goes to a diner, meets a lonely, beautiful woman, brings her back to his boarding house and ends up sleeping with her.
But things take a turn for the worse -- in the next verse we find out that in the morning, the night watchman goes out to bring back some breakfast, and when he gets home – SHE’S GONE!! And he’ll never see her again.
So now we’re back in the bar room and the overweight waitress is so moved by the night watchman’s story, she starts to cry and says...
"I wish that I was beautiful, or that you were halfway blind. And I wish I weren't so doggone fat, I wish that you were mine.”
And with that, light broke through the darkness and Harry delivered me his message of hope. If a third shift night watchman with no social skills can find two women IN ONE WEEK with such low self-esteem, they’re willing to sleep with him in his 20 dollar a week room, my dreams can come true, too. And so can yours!
I work with people across the comedy spectrum. I’ve coached some of the edgiest comics in the country… all the way to business transformation experts and awesome funny Grandmas who had something they wanted to say.
Upcoming Workshops
If you’re interested in the essentials of humor or storytelling, I’ll be running the following workshops this fall! Or hit me up for 1:1 coaching at www.humordetector.com
The Essentials of Humor, Quick!
Humor Boot Camp 2 Day Virtual workshop (8/22-23 2024) — Info here.
Humor Boot Camp 2 Day Live workshop (10/11-12 2024) — Info here.
Humor and Storytelling Deep Dive!
Finding The Funny: Creating Stories That Stick Virtual Workshop (11/7-9 2024) — Info here.
Make Your Event Feel Even More Special
Customize Your Keynote Virtual Workshop (11/22-23 2024) Email Me For Details
Use Early Signup Promo Code: CHRIS25 to get 25% off
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The only workshops designed for presenters and co-presented by a World Champion Speaker (Darren Lacroix) and a Television Showrunner, Writer & Producer. (Me)
Any questions? Click the button or email me at chrismcguire@humordectector.com
Such great info. And the run on Morrisey & cure, waking dead & black holes - hilarious! 🤣
I think the best song ever composed is Sniper. Harry Chapin is my favorite musician and songwriter of all time.