Humour-writing instruction -- part one

The second-most-popular question I get asked is: “When you sit down to write, are you consciously trying to be funny?”

(The most popular is: “Why do you keep embarrassing yourself writing rubbish on a platform such as Thought Leader when you could be using it to write something meaningful that adds something to public debate? How are posts about your tennis games taking the national democratic revolution forward?”)

The second question I will have to tackle some other time. The answer to the first question is that I try very hard not to sit down specifically to write something funny. I didn’t even realise that the stuff I wrote was funny until people pointed it out to me. The first recorded case of accidental humour writing? I recently realised that people find it funny when someone thinks out loud. It’s a case of, “Hey, I’ve thought about that!”

I have taken the liberty of doing a cut-and-paste job on a piece I posted on my other blog on Amagama on May 6 this year. When I sat down to write that, I honestly intended to write about the efficacy of sportsmen staying away from their spouses ahead of major competitions to improve performance. Kind of like what I imagine is happening at the Rugby World Cup now. I’ve seen a dangerous glint in some of the players’ eyes.

And then I took a wrong turn somewhere and started “thinking out loud” on the keyboard. When I say “took a wrong turn”, I actually mean that I allowed myself to get side-tracked by peripheral thoughts. This is called “lateral thinking” by people who want to justify their hallucinations.

This was the result:

Sex in sport — missed opportunity

Not unlike most South African men, I’m somewhat of a sports fan. OK — let me stop lying. I’m a downright fanatical idiot when it comes to my sport.

At 4am this morning, I got up to watch perhaps the most lucrative non-heavyweight fight in the history of boxing. I’m a fanatical follower of the pugilistic science. Sue me.

The principals were one Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, otherwise known as The Golden Boy and The Pretty Boy respectively (This is a reference to their looks. Let’s ignore the obvious question: Whatever happened to boxers with nicknames such as The Hitman or The Beast?)

What interested me about this particular fight is a bit of trivia of which most of the millions across the globe watching were not aware. Apparently De la Hoya had been using an interesting method to keep his aggression levels up ahead of the bout.

He took his beautiful, voluptuous and sexy Latino wife Millie Corretjer with him to his eight-week training camp. Ahead of sparring sessions he would engage in penetrative but non-ejaculatory sex with her and then rush off to the gym. Apparently this was to build up sexual energy that he would presumably turn into physical aggression in the ring. I’m not making any of this up: http://www.blacksportsonline.com/zjmayoscar.html.

I can see how that could work. When my wife’s away for more than a few days I get the urge, more than I ordinarily do, to slit the throat of the arrogant midget from number 25 and stuff his body in the boot of my car.

So I had a special interest in this morning’s fight. I was expecting something unusual to happen. I could see how all that pent-up energy could have led to De la Hoya ripping out Mayweather’s spleen and swallowing it during the fight. But just as easily, I could see how he could pin him to a corner, rip off his boxing trunks and start mounting him live on HBO.

Of all the millions watching, I think I was the only one who noticed the fact that De la Hoya had no interest in fighting in the middle of the ring. He charged Mayweather and pushed him towards the corner at every opportunity. I was on the edge of my seat by the third round in anticipation of the potential drama waiting to unfold had he had managed to pin him to a corner. But Mayweather, the party pooper, was just too slippery.

I kept on wondering what the referee, Kenny Bayless, would have done had De la Horny managed to pin Mayweather down and started shagging him. I doubt that there’s any boxing law that explicitly prohibits shagging an opponent in the ring. If he’d tried to stop him, I think De la Hoya would have been well within his rights to turn around and say: “Show me the rule that says I can’t hump this bitch.” The other option is that Bayless might have been tempted to make it a threesome. Mayweather is a handsome man, you know — they don’t call him Pretty Boy for nothing.

Be that as it may, I think De la Hoya missed an opportunity at immortality this morning. He eventually lost the fight. As things stand now, he’s just a loser with a boner. You know that if Don King, he of the electric shock hair, had been the promoter in this fight he would have tried to get the guys to make history: “OK Floyd, repeat after me. In the fifth round, my ass belongs to Oscar.”

It would have been spectacular.

So I saved the piece, added “missed opportunity” to the title and posted it. The first lesson here is: allow those peripheral thoughts to make their way to the paper. You can always delete them afterwards.

Fine print:

Take writing advice from a first-time author whose book has only sold 37 copies at your own risk.

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