Q: Who is Boston's most famous stand-up comedy hobbit?
A: Bill Burr Baggins

"Gandalf was a great man! A great man! Dude is a forgetful wizard with a pipe weed addiction. Solving problems in Valinor should have been the height of his career. But because he's a great man, he had the balls to move to Middle Earth and became famous..."

Once again targeting my comedy to the smallest possible Venn diagram overlap (Bill Burr fans who are also LotR fans), but niche comedy is how I'm celebrating the fact that the past week has brought a little more comedy back for me, a pleasant accompaniment to the thrice-delayed warm weather which has finally arrived. A long awaited thaw (I thought thaw good weather!) and maybe next week I'll even take the flannel sheets off my bed. (Under Berkshires law, either your shirt or sheets have to be flannel in cold weather, that's just a rule)(It's actually the First Law About Dressing, which is why if you break the rule, you are tried before a FLAD Panel for plaid flannel)(That was a long way to go for a bad spoonerism)(but you should see the lengths people will go through for a bad fork)(never trust anyone complaining that knife guys finish last)

PUTTING THE HUMOR BACK IN HUMOR COLUMNS

Against all odds, my humor column this week is actually just pure funny and not about the world at all! Weirdly even though this is more fun for me and inevitably more fun for my readership (which is, y'know, what people generally want from a humor column), there's still a part of me that would feel guilty going on for months on end without commenting on the world. But tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight!

• Livin' on the Hedge

I coveted my neighbor's hedge. This possibly offended God, who is not a fan of hedges to begin with, judging from the whole burning bush thing.

...

One of my other neighbors has a nice arboreal wall which didn't take nearly so long to go up. Admittedly, that's because it's a picket fence. I had that option, but I'd prefer a hedge because it's more likely to attract birds. I love watching the birds, although I am NOT a bird-watcher. I'm a bird-looker.

The difference is that the cardinal rule for bird-watchers is that you have to know what birds you're watching, so you can impress everyone else with your ornithological acumen when you say, "Ah yes, a beautiful red-elbowed spaghetti thrush, very rare to see on a Thursday."

Whereas I go, "Look, a bird!"

You may wonder if that is always my level of scientific accuracy, and no it is not. Last week I was dining on the patio with my partner and we were appreciating the birds as I saw a cardinal. We heard a bird call which she identified as belonging to some fancy bird I have already forgotten the name of. I heard a different bird and said, "Do you think that's a cardinal?" She said, "No, that's a squirrel."

And yes, I am actually trying to grow a hedge (as the non-excerpted parts of the column explain). I'm not entirely convinced it will work, but I guess I'll let you know in five years.

Last week's Banner column:
Live, Laugh, Bears

COMEDIANS ON KEYBOARDS GETTING COUGHY

Okay, so Seinfeld I am not, and neither is my friend Mark, although he is someone I used to do a lot of stand-up comedy with. But he has a podcast called "Why Are We Still Doing This?" and this week he had me on to talk about all things comedy, ranging from our own experiences bombing to our favorite comedians. You can ostensibly listen wherever you get your podcasts, but since I don't know where that is I'll share this youtube link just in case.

Also, I'm naming my friend Mark (and marking my friend's name!)(I mean, his parents named him Mark) because I realize I've defaulted to my usual anonymity mode perhaps unwisely. I never want anyone to be unhappily singled out in my newsletter by me accidentally referring to a conversation or interaction that a friend might have presumed was private and so I tend to err on the side of referring to any friend I mention as "a friend" rather than using names.

But I'm realizing that when people have things they want to promote anyway, using names is probably not bad, and might be actively good, and possibly for the past couple years when I've said "Hey, a friend made cool stuff", I should have actually said, "Hey, Gianna has this cool album and Thor has this cool painting and Lex has this cool podcast etc." (I'm sure I'll remember this for two weeks before I go back to my old habits of making everyone anonymous except for Debbie, which is basically how I've done things since the days of the Moldy Mansion a quarter century ago, when I made everyone in my blog anonymous except for Tom Stackpole, my favorite write-in candidate for every election.)

Okay, any more omphaloskepsis and I'll have to open a navel academy.

DO NOT ASK FOR ZOOM THE BELL TOLLS

And finally, because comedy always comes in threes, next month I'll finally be performing comedy on a Zoom show again. I'm looking forward to it, since I haven't actually performed stand-up in a couple years now and was just reminiscing with a friend today about the highs of performance. I realize people's interest in Zoom comedy largely dissipated around the time everyone agreed to pretend the pandemic was over, but nonetheless the plan is for me to perform on the evening of Friday June 5th and next issue I'll have a link for you and ideally even have finished putting together my set.

FOUR FOUR FOUR FOUR

Just seen that time hour read Four four-four, then made this part head four four, then took that idea into play GAME with four. Does make this news mail last part less easy. Like each time, Seth will have been glad that your eyes read this news mail, will come back once dual week have gone past with next haha post that Seth writ into that news site with bird name, plus.... less word with four next time.

Stay cool, good folk!

With love plus dumb joke,
Seth