A good-humored wife who appreciates most, if not all, of my humor - her price is far above rubies, as the book of Proverbs doesn't quite say.
My parents were mourning the death of my sister. She was killed in a car accident before I was born, and I didn't know she existed until I was 13 or 14 years old. I knew I was growing up in a house where people were angry and sad.
I learned to think about religion, race and sex through the complex and often unattractive medium of jokes.
Taking the time to polish a pun or fine-tune a practical joke is a way of saying, 'I'm thinking about you and I want to please you.'
Of all the logical impasses, unknowings, paradoxes, and terrors that provoke laughter, death by its finality and unsolvable mystery is paramount.
