Audience, Richard Dworsky, Garrison Keillor.
Battle Hymn of the Republic ( Garrison Keillor , Audience ) Abide with me ( Garrison Keillor , Audience ) Honky Tonk Woman ( Garrison Keillor , Audience ) I've been working on the Railroad ( Garrison Keillor , Audience )
[undocumented]
My new career as a stand-up is more fun than the old one in broadcasting for the simple reason that the audience is right there in front of me and it’s very clear when I connect and when I don’t. Comedy is intimate. You poke them right, they laugh, it isn’t a conceptual problem. AI can create what sounds like jokes but they’re not funny. AI is going to take over banking and politics long before it takes over comedy. I had three great nights in Northern California and Nevada and Tucson, some landslides of laughter, and then bombed in Scottsdale. It happened when I said, “These are crazy times we’re living in” and the crowd went dead. Scottsdale is a red city, I found out. They thought I was going to rip into DJT for posting online a Christlike image of himself healing the sick. So they folded their arms and frowned and I stood on stage and took my punishment. The tour took me to the Granite State of New Hampshire where the state motto is “Live Free or Die,” which strikes me as harsh. There are more than those two options — living free and dying — and anyway dying isn’t an option, it’s an obligation. I lived more freely fifty years ago when I smoked three packs a day and indulged a fondness for whiskey and took the stairs two at a time, and was in love with two women at the same time. Since then I’ve deleted those things in the interest of being happier in the time I have left. I’m from Minnesota where the motto is Peius esse potest et probabiliter mox erit. (It could be worse and soon will be.) My people were worriers, not warriors. I am 83 and “living free” is a concept I don’t take seriously. Back in January, I got up in the night and suddenly became a physics experiment and I’m still recovering. If I’m to suffer serious injury, I want it to be while defending a child against a vicious beast, not by tripping on a rug. Which, of course, is not for me to choose. In Portsmouth I heard from some Trumper friends who said, “You need to deal with your Derangement Syndrome. We are going through some bad polling now and $5 gas and jittery stock market, but we are here to stay and you need to make your peace and accept that this is the wave of the future. The Bible says that we should be Christlike and that’s what the president was doing in that post. Get over it. Don’t be such a scumbag weirdo leftist creep. What will persuade you to support him and help make America great?” I’ll tell you. If the man would use Universal Fight Club cage matches as a way of settling international differences, I would buy the red ballcap and the autographed Bible and stand up to my sleazy radical lefty friends. Let Don Trump and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf get in the ring and take care of things man to man, no holds barred, kicking and punching and kneeing in the groin, neck-wrenching, along with the spitting, snot-blowing, poop-smearing, and verbal abuse, maybe some eye-gouging and biting, and see who says “Uncle.” Name-calling — any three-year-old can do that. Let’s see what our leaders can do grappling while smeared with all sorts of bodily fluids. War is terribly expensive. Three hundred billion dollars and more under the bridge and the man has threatened to DESTROY AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION so they will be LIVING IN HELL and nobody seems quite certain that the Commander is in full command of himself, and his midnight threats have our allies on edge, whereas a simple cage match encounter would resolve things quickly and painlessly. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? I connected with the Portsmouth crowd. I sang and told stories and tossed out some poems and expressed my love of the English language and 600 people went home happy. It was the only time in their life when they sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Abide with Me, Honky-Tonk Women, and I’ve Been Working on the Railroad in one evening. When you’re 83, you have nothing to prove, you’re free to do what you love. Portsmouth is a beautiful town and your life is not complete until you’ve been there and walked around.