Funny Feelings (11)
“Okay, then.” she laughs. The auburn in her long hair brings out the similar color in her eyes. She’s changed and dried as well, now wearing a maroon sweater that clings to small curves.
Nope. Absolutely not, you lecher. You are here in a professional capacity, only.
She sprints over behind the bar and comes back with a bowl of cherries that she plops down in front of Hazel before flitting back to the stage.
When she approaches the mic, she greets it like a friend, an illuminated smile already in place…
“Good evening, friends. Happy to see you all…”
Her timing is natural. She lets everyone’s attention gravitate to her.
“Thanks for spending your Saturday night out here with me. Personally, I find myself trying to avoid going out on Saturdays lately, because I’ve recently started attending church on Sunday mornings.” she pauses, and I gather that there are a few returners, because they let out some laughs and a few “Yeah, right”s.
“No, really! Listen up. This is a hot tip that I’m sharing with you all…” she glances around, gathering some light tension.
“If you haven’t been, let me clue you in: Modern church is literally—and I mean every syllable of this—literally, like going to an Ed Sheeran concert, but for free, you guys. Listen to Castle on the Hill and tell me that’s not the same fucking song they play at any suburban middle-class church every Sunday!”
The laughs immediately start rumbling, whether knowing that this rings true from experience, or just finding her take funny— either way, it resonates.
“…and, exactly like an Ed Sheeran concert, at church, there’s also a bunch of white ladies with their hands in the air. White men with their hands in their pockets, shifting their weight from foot to foot…occasionally clapping along.” The room erupts at her spot-on impression. I look over and see Hazel, laughing brightly.
“The snacks and drinks are oddly small, but even those are free!”
She’s a natural.
The way Farley continuously moves her face and body without reservation commands my full attention, as punchlines are exclaimed with a perfectly timed hip pop, or a pose. She hops and hunches and is the closest thing I’ve witnessed to a human version of Kermit the Frog running around, completely untethered and shameless. The jokes all generally relate back to things that equal the simplest joys in life… Kids and their ability to cut you at the knees with the smallest, most brutally honest assessments. How, with every aging year, food becomes more and more of an all-consuming experience that borders sexual gratification.
The bit that is, without question, the least intellectual, and yet elicits the most tears of laughter and keening wails between bouts, is her impression of a god damn bumblebee.
She starts the bit talking about boredom being a necessary evil, and how it can make you turn your thoughts inside out. She tells everyone about losing her phone for an afternoon and everything she discovered about herself during that introspective time.
“…I realized that I always thought that the buzzing sound came from the bee’s mouth, not from its wings. Do you guys realize how stupid that is? That I thought that bees were just flying around, sputtering on, yelling ‘I’m a beeeeeeee!!!! Lookatme!!! I’m flyyyyyinnnnnggggggg!!!!’” She roars it so ferociously and animatedly, sprinting back and forth across the stage, that I have to swipe a palm over my face to stifle the stupid grin that wants to surface. When she stops, she polishes off the impression by doing a terrifying squat-and-thrust dance, the most possessed version of a twerk I’ve ever seen, like a bee pollinating.
Hazel hasn’t asked for my phone once, just continues to laugh and beam on.
For being raunchy at times, and flat-out silly in others, Farley’s set has the room grinning in…a strangely wholesome way? I gather that it’s because of how she manages to tie most of these things into a life philosophy or positive observation.
The transitions between jokes are clunky, and they jump around a bit abruptly, but it’s because she is attempting to be a freight train—charging on through the set and leaving it all out on the table for her allotted minutes.
The potential is a palpable thing, but I can’t help but think about how exhausting it must be to live in that brain.
Comedians tend to be some of life’s most ardent observers. Often, it’s born on a personal level. Find a way to laugh at your family’s (or your own) dysfunction, and you’ve somehow found a manageable way of enjoying it, instead of letting it drag you down.
Self-deprecation is also the best way to keep from feeling laughed at, after all. Intercept the joke and make it yours first, and it can’t hurt you, right? Learn to diminish the pain by reducing it to a laugh.
I admire that reducing, simplifying ability. I miss that ability. Though, I have to admit that I don’t know if I ever truly had it to begin with. I can write jokes from a more detached, abstract angle now. I can’t do it from my soul the way this woman so clearly does.
Constantly searching for that angle can eventually take you out of yourself, though. Out of actually experiencing your life, since you become too preoccupied with observing it and writing it down to make a bit from it.
She heads over to our table when she’s done, after raucous applause. The smile on her face broadcasts itself from across the room. I motion for Hazel to get ready to leave, as Farley waves her goodbyes and follows us out.