I have this friend. We've been friends for years. He's hung out with me, and had my dog and a couple of our mutual friends climb onto him (not into his lap-- just up his legs onto his chest, then onto his shoulders, and then off onto the other side of the couch). For years, his battle cry, and my battle cry on his behalf, was "I am not an amusement park!".

The joke worked. Everybody laughed, everybody took the hint. Anyway, several years after this, he and I moved in together; just right-time, right-place, both-need-a-roommate kind of things. I had furniture, kitchenware, and other good domestic stuff. He had some kick-ass electronics gear and a pretty large collection of DVDs. Just one of those roommate synergy type of things--our living space combined was more than the sum of its parts.

Before we moved in together, he and I attended a number of different social gatherings together. This continued after the move-in. One of these gatherings took place at a friend's house, which happened to be filled with pets and rug rats. My friend's battle cry, "I am not an amusement park", issued forth on several occasions. This joke is now several years old, and not the novelty it used to be. I decided to spice it up a little.

"Yes you are, you're Six Flags Over Beldin's Couch!"

Personally, I think that was funny, and that it was playing along with his initial joke, not turning it against him. He says that I have made a joke at his expense, and that I am against him.

Some people just can't take a joke. Either that, or I'm some jerk who doesn't know how to put himself in others' shoes. The 'either that' is what makes it so hard to say "fuck him if he can't take a joke".

This was part of a line in a scene cut from the Kevin Smith movie Chasing Amy. It was intended to be the opening scene, but was cut because it was too similar to the first scene at the comicbook convention. In the cut scene, Jason Lee's character (Banky Edwards) Throws a garbage can through the window of a comic shop the owners of which had been insulting the quality of his work. Attached to the garbage can is a cheque (for, apparently, three times what the window it broke was worth), and a note... the note read as follows.



Dear Critics:

Thanks for the insight, but as my grandmother always said: "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. And break their window."



Kiss it,

Banky "The Hack"



P.S. I'm rich.
Y'know, if you log in, you can write something here, or contact authors directly on the site. Create a New User if you don't already have an account.