In light of my hernia surgery on Tuesday, last week's blog entries revolved around all things medical and health-related (musicians just love a theme).
Well, I pretty much "milked that for all was was worth" so it is time to move on to bigger and better things .. perhaps just "move on" would be more accurate.
Since "laughter is a good medicine" (I read that somewhere .. Shakespeare, perhaps??) and the first week of August is National Clown Week (proclaimed by President Richard Nixon in 1971 .. insert your own joke here), the subject seemed like an appropriate "transition" in this little "symphony of silliness" known as RevKev's blog.
Our word for "clown" comes from an old Icelandic word, klunni, which meant a clumsy person. It is related to other archaic words for clod, or clump, or, in old Middle High German, klutz. We still use that word today to describe someone who always seems to be tripping over his two left feet.
Although no one really knows who the first clown was, that honor may go back to early drawings of a dancing man wearing a deer's head (office Christmas parties .. they've been around forever), discovered in a cave in the south of France in the early 1900s.
This mysterious figure, frequently called the magician or shaman, was believed to have the power to relieve illness.
The word shaman would eventually become show-man, one who can make you laugh your cares away.
Mel Brooks has a different take on who got the first laugh.
In his "History of the World Part One" the tribe/audience goes "wild" when a standup caveman comedian gets eaten by a dinosaur right in the middle of his monologue.
Take it from someone who has died a thousand times on stage...
There are worse ways to go.
" .. God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me." - Genesis 21:6b
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