Swing-and-a-miss! (or reasons why I am not a superstar comedian)

Yesterday, one of the members of “Jihad the Musical” came into the office of the venue where I was in the corner, squirreled away, gorging myself on their open-access Wi-Fi.

Someone asked why the show had been cancelled earlier that evening, and the man replied that two of the cast had been an unfortunate car accident and were now recovering in the hospital. He assured the worried faces that the actors were fine and the performance would be as-scheduled tomorrow night.


Previously unnoticed, I of course felt compelled to pipe up with,

“Will it be staged here or at the hospital?”

“Excuse me?”

I awkwardly repeated my question to blank faces.

There was another long pause.

Everyone looked around confused….It seemed that my “humor” was too obscure to even be thought insensitive.

“Right, thanks.” The man smiled genially, nodded to the rest of the room sympathetically and left.

Everyone looked mildly uncomfortable as they eased back into their work.

I mumbled some excuse about no longer being able to receive the connection and made my humble exit trying my best not to genuflect apologetically.

I do not think it is a coincidence that both kowtowing and bowing (a root of the Middle English word “bowen” suspiciously resembling “bovine”) all relate to the glum, uninteresting and hardly hilarious cow. The Chinese Calendar was wrong, I am not a tiger.