engrouched

Mark Evanier, whom I read, has so often praised Frank Ferrante's one-man "An Evening with Groucho" show that when it came to town I decided to go see it, even though I'm not a big Marx Brothers fan. The small theater downtown was not entirely full, and I got the impression that his complaints that the audience was not very responsive were not entirely part of the act. The fact is that stage performers of the vaudeville era, where Groucho originated, were very "hot" and fast in their presentations. Compared to today's slower, cooler stand-up comedians, they require a lot of concentration by the audience to follow and appreciate. I was kind of tired out and it was hard to summon up the energy and intense application needed. Some of the puns were new to me, but the jokes were mostly old ones. Good ones, and well delivered, but not subject to bursts of surprised laughter. I felt dampened, and a little embarrassed for the performer, because the level of impersonation he displayed was very high.

The bigger problem is that, while I never disliked the Marx Brothers as I did the Three Stooges, I was never a big fan of theirs, either. (Nor were my parents, who were more of their time. My mother's favorite comedian was Jack Benny.) I learned the Marxes mostly by osmosis, as they were revered by my generation of college students as great comedians of an earlier age, much as (I take it) Monty Python is by many young people today. (And the major Marx Brothers movies were no older then than the heyday of Python is today, and doesn't that seem weird.) I've seen most of the movies, but usually only once each, long ago. In fact, my favorite Groucho incarnation is his avatar as the wily ruler of a late-medieval city-state in Dave Sim's barbarian-hero-parody comic book Cerebus.

I'm reminded, indirectly, of the many people reprocessing their often intense personal feelings about Michael Jackson in the wake of the disturbing claims publicized by the recent documentary. What causes the reminder is that here I feel even more separated than I do in a roomful of Marx Brothers fans. I'm not reprocessing my personal feelings about Michael Jackson because I have no personal feelings about Michael Jackson, and never have. He's never meant anything to me, and thus ranks in my mind with all the molesters I'd never previously heard of at all. The only song by Michael Jackson I know is "Eat It" by Weird Al. As with Sim's Lord Julius, that's kind of a separate thing.