In the short time that has passed since my son Will began performing Stand-Up Comedy, I’ve seen more of it than I did in all the years prior. And my appreciation of what it takes to do it well has grown.

As is often the case in any field of endeavor, those who excel often create the impression that what they are doing comes easily and naturally—hence the assumption on the part of many people to think of it as “Talent”-- when in fact it’s the result of a great deal of practice, applied knowledge and experimentation. And of all the performing arts, Stand-Up Comedy may be the most demanding, daunting, challenging and frightening. It’s all on you, all the time. And if its not working, you know it right away—and there’s no one to bail you out, pick you up or share the burden. It’s not for the weak of heart or the thin skinned. Just getting up there and giving it a shot earns my respect.

And one thing that has occurred to me lately (having revisited the world of Pogo and Calvin and Hobbes) is that the best stand-up comics have a lot in common with the best cartoonists--minus the game changing fact that the cartoonist doesn’t have to witness (endure?) the reader’s response in person.

Both practice the arts of concision and compression—crafting and shaping ideas to fit a form with limited and precise specifications in space and time. Each works within structures that would seem to be too restrictive to allow for a richness of expression or thought. But the best transcend the limitations of the form and are able to create memorable and affecting work. They are story- tellers and truth tellers and keen observers of life and the world around us. And because they search and find what is comic in our lives, they provide a valuable service by reminding us that without a sense of humor, life makes no sense at all.





A while back I wrote about essayist Arthur Krystal and mentioned his essay on Aphorisms. You can find it in his book:
Except When I Write : Reflections of a Recovering Critic

http://www.amazon.com/Except-When-Write-Reflections-Recovering/dp/0199782407




That essay got me started collecting aphorisms and I think I posted something a while back with some of them…but today it’s proverbs and their derivations, which are distinguished from aphorisms by subtleties too debatable to discuss (maxim, proverb, gnome, aphorism, apothegm, sententia…all pretty much the same thing)

Suffice to say that the element of advice or instruction is in play in both…or at least a “rule of thumb” kind of thing is at work- which, if considered by enough people and generations practical and worthy, goes on to survive and become familiar and proverbial. Most of what follows is cut and paste of what I’ve found…

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

The February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine includes this:

"A Pembrokeshire proverb. Eat an apple on going to bed, And you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread."

A number of variants of the rhyme were in circulation around the turn of the 20th century.
In 1913, Elizabeth Wright recorded a Devonian dialect version and also first known record of the version we use now, in Rustic Speech and Folk-lore:

"Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An' you'll make the doctor beg his bread

Apples have a good claim to promote health. They contain Vitamin C, which aid the immune system and phenols, which reduce cholesterol. They also reduce tooth decay by cleaning one's teeth and killing off bacteria. And recent research shows that the quercetin found in apples protects brain cells against neuro-degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's Disease.

But it wasn't their precise medicinal properties that were being exalted when this phrase was coined. In Old English the word apple was used to describe any round fruit that grew on a tree.

Beauty is only skin deep

First found in a work by Sir Thomas Overbury's, 1613:

"All the carnall beauty of my wife, Is but skin deep."

Hmmm, wonder what she had to say when she heard that. There is a fanciful work attributed to Overbury called A true and historical relation of the poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1651. Perhaps she had him worried?

A stitch in time saves nine

Saves nine what? Turns out, the stitch in time is simply the sewing up of a small hole in a piece of material and so saving the need for more stitching at a later date, when the hole has become larger, so it’s referring to saving nine stitches.

The Anglo Saxon work ethic is being called on here. Many English proverbs encourage immediate effort as superior to putting things off until later; for example, 'one year's seeds, seven year's weeds', 'procrastination is the thief of time' and 'the early bird catches the worm.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Always thought it meant better to have one sure thing than two possibles –but this proverb refers back to mediaeval falconry where a bird in the hand (the falcon) was a valuable asset and certainly worth more than two in the bush (the prey). So it’s saying that even if you had those two in the bush, they wouldn’t exceed the value of the one in hand.

The Bird in Hand was adopted as a pub name in England in the Middle Ages and many of these still survive.







The term must have been known in the USA by 1734, as that is the date when a small town in Pennsylvania was founded with that name.




Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

From Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:27, 1850:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'
Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.


(don't) Upset the apple-cart

This allusory phrase is first recorded by Jeremy Belknap in The History of New Hampshire, 1788:

"Adams had almost overset the apple-cart by intruding an amendment of his own fabrication on the morning of the day of ratification" [of the Constitution].

Out of sight, out of mind

The use of 'in mind' for 'remembered' and 'out of mind' for 'forgotten' date back to the at least the 13th century.

The phrase is used as an example of the comic results that early computer translation and speech recognition programmes came up with. The phrase 'out of sight, out of mind' was supposed to have been translated by a computer as 'invisible idiot', 'blind and insane' etc.

This is on a par with 'computers can wreck a nice peach' (computers can recognise speech), which is also used as an example of how computers lack the general knowledge to compare with humans at speech recognition.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

The oldest proverb on record so I’ve discovered…though I imagine such a thing is not easy to confirm…It was recorded as early as 1175 in Old English Homilies:

Hwa is thet mei thet hors wettrien the him self nule drinken? 
[who can give water to the horse that will not drink of its own accord?]

There are other pretenders to the throne of the oldest English proverb; for example:

A friend in need is a friend indeed.
(mid 11th century in English; 5th century BC in Greek)

When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
(late 9th century in English; Bible, Luke Chapter 6)

The proverb 'lead a horse to water' has been in continuous use since the 12th century. John Heywood listed it in the influential glossary A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue:

"A man maie well bring a horse to the water, But he can not make him drinke without he will."

It wasn't until the 20th century that 'lead a horse to water...' got a substantial rewrite, when Dorothy Parker reworked it (and vastly improved it) from its proverbial form into the epigram 'you can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think'.

(Don’t) Throw out the baby with the bath water

My father used to say this…and I remember well thinking sometimes that he was the one who should have heeded it the most…but that’s a different story…It derives from a German proverb:

Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten


You can't teach an old dog new tricks

Another oldie… The earliest example of it in print is in John Fitzherbert's The boke of husbandry, 1534:

...and he [a shepherd] muste teche his dogge to barke whan he wolde haue hym, to ronne whan he wold haue hym, and to leue ronning whan he wolde haue hym; or els he is not a cunninge shepeherd. The dogge must lerne it, whan he is a whelpe, or els it will not be: for it is harde to make an olde dogge to stoupe.

By 'stoop', Fitzherbert meant 'put its nose to the ground to find a scent', as was the meaning of the verb in the 16th century.