Welcome to Sunday Morning Hot Tea where I write about a little something up top then usually answer a legal question for you down below. This week, learning what makes someone laugh, and that’s it.
In this edition:
Topic of the Week - Incensed in the Fruits and Vegetables
Legal Question – Taking the week off!
Don’t Look
Early one morning the week before Christmas I was scrolling through Twitter while drinking coffee. A woman tweeted that she tried showing a clip from the BBC game show Taskmaster to her family while visiting for the holidays. The tweeter's parents watched in silence through all the parts she thought would make them laugh. Her sister pity-scoffed then left the room.
I had never heard of this show, mostly because I only ever watch old sitcom reruns. I clicked play, and for a solid twelve minutes, I was both riveted and terribly amused at five grown adults struggling with a potato. I laughed so loud at several points that Paris could hear me clear on the other side of the house.
That night, I cued up the clip and showed him. Once he began to laugh, I could exhale. I trust Paris. I mean, I better. We’re getting married soon. But even with our deep level of intimacy, it was still scary to show him something that I thought was so funny for fear that he may not enjoy it.
Later that week during our family's Christmas Eve festivities, my cousin, Ami, was sharing a story about a patient of hers. She's a nurse in the post-surgical department at a local hospital. Her patient had been putting his clothes back on after a procedure when he shouted to his wife, "Don't look, Ethel!"
When the man said this, Ami laughed. She described how she and the patient shared a moment of recognition over this reference. When Ami repeated the phrase for us at Christmas, it elicited chuckles from my mom, aunts, and uncles. Ami noticed the confused look on my face.
"From the Ray Stevens song? You know Ray Stevens, don’t you?”
I knew of Ray Stevens. My former coworker had shown some of his music videos to me while we fettered away work time on YouTube. But I had no idea what song Ami was talking about.
“‘The Streak’?” Ami asked. “Mam-maw used to play that record all the time."
My coworker had wisely not shown me any videos about streaking on the company computer. I pulled out my phone and began to play "The Streak." It begins at a supermarket with Ray Stevens interviewing himself, playing the part of both an "action news reporter" and a witness to some streaking.
"Mam-maw knew every word to this song. All the spoken parts. Everything," Ami said over the music.
I have tons of memories of our grandmother. I was born in 1986, the year of her 70th birthday. We spent plenty of time together, with sleep overs and shopping trips and sitting beside one another at family holidays. Once I could drive, I would make random visits to her house up until she passed away in 2004.
For so many of those years we spent together, I was a kid. Although we shared a lot, you can only share so much with a kid. We watched TV together and laughed at Johnny Carson’s jokes, but “The Streak” must have fallen out of favor all those years after its release, so she never played it for me. Also it's a song about committing a crime, so probably not appropriate for a kid anyway.
Listening now, it's no surprise to me that she loved this song. Mam-maw was naturally funny. When she told a story, she held an audience. She would lower her voice at certain points in a story and relate an aside to you that made you feel like it was a story she was telling only to you. She’d get tickled at herself, too, and start laughing along with whoever was listening.
I remember asking her about what she was like when she was younger. She told me about a time when she and her friends were none too pleased with a fellow girl in their group. Mam-maw and her friends took turns pissing into a bowl full of punch that they then set out and let her drink from at a dance.
“Did she drink it?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” she said. Then she added, “But not much.”
I also got to live some funny Mam-maw stories as they were unfolding. Once I was tasked with escorting her from our car up to the event space at the top of the luxury Stoneleigh Hotel for a cousin’s wedding. I was around twelve at the time and was happy to walk with Mam-maw, her arm linked in mine. We stepped onto the elevator, and a couple of strangers joined us. At the time, I thought they were weird. As an adult, I now know they were drunk.
“Are you going to the reception, too?” she asked.
They shook their heads.
“You should join us. I'm sure it'll be fine. There’s a full bar. Unlimited wine," she said, giving the wedding crashers both motive and permission to do their crashing.
They looked at one another then to me. I had nothing.
“If anybody says anything, just tell them you’re with Mam-maw,” she said.
The strangers disembarked the elevator into the reception and made a beeline to the bar. A glass or two deep in wine, they were escorted out by hotel security.
In the days since Christmas, I have listened to "The Streak" no less than fifty times. It's grown on me more each time. If you're not familiar, the song follows a streaker running nude around a town. The same male witness is interviewed by the reporter during every verse. The witness is accompanied by a woman named Ethel, who the witness admonishes not to look at the streaker's exposed bits. These warnings don't work, and in the end, Ethel strips down and joins the fun.
Though it is categorized as a "country/novelty" song, it hit the Billboard Top 100 chart in 1974. It spent some time at number one and finished the year at number eight, just above "Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John, "Jungle Boogie" by Kool & the Gang, "Sunshine On My Shoulders" by John Denver, and "Hooked on a Feeling" by Blue Swede.
"You know he wrote that song in the 70s when everybody was streaking all the time," my mom told me.
When everybody was streaking all the time?
Turns out, the mid-1970s were prime streaking time across the U.S. and the globe. It was such a prevalent occurrence that Ray Stevens had to RUSH his song to air for fear that others may try to capitalize on the trend. They did. According to an interview with him in a book on Billboard hit songs, there ended up being THIRTY TO FORTY more songs about streaking.
None were as successful as his.
How could they have hoped to be as beloved as "The Streak"? It is a catchy tune with a quotable refrain - "Don't look, Ethel!" Its popularity, particularly in the 1970s, is not surprising. There was no accompanying music video at its initial release. Therefore, the audience was left only to imagine the “fastest thing on two feet” who was “wearin’ just his tennis shoes” in their minds’ eyes.
There’s power in the theater of the mind, and Ray Stevens nailed it. The song’s structure also follows what they teach you in comedy classes. It has three beats with a clear game set out in the first "scene." It heightens the game with every beat and “shows” the characters in different settings. We’re taught “if this, then what?” If someone is behaving this way in one setting, what are they like in another? And if this reality is true, then what even more extreme fact may be true in another setting?
In this song, Ethel is first incensed in the fruits and vegetables aisle at the grocery store, then “flashed in front of the shock absorbers” at the filling station. She finally gets a free shot of the streaker “dribblin’ right down the middle of the court” in the gym at the basketball playoff.
Not every Ray Stevens song is as classic as this one. Some have not aged well at all (and weren't funny when they came out, either). But I don’t find myself with a sudden affection for those songs -- or even Stevens himself -- like I do with “The Streak.” While I have so many memories of her, listening to the song and imagining my Mam-maw listening so often that she knew all the words makes me feel closer to her.
Sharing something that you thought was funny feels like a risky move. No matter if it's a video of people struggling with a potato or a song about jogging balls-out through a community. We fear judgment. The pity scoff. The other person leaving the room. The unanswered meme in the group chat.
Showing our soft little underbellies of what we find funny fosters intimacy in the most terrifying way. We are offering a glimpse into our inner selves to a person who we hope will know us better. Humor is born from surprise, and learning what tickles someone else can be just as funny as the thing that makes them laugh.
Though I felt close to her the whole time our lives lined up, hearing that she loved that comedy song about "running through the pole beans...nekkid as a jaybird" was like a warm hug from my Mam-maw. The comedy we enjoy when no one is around is a window into a very intimate part of ourselves. It helped fill in the blanks of the picture I have of her in my mind. It's a picture that remains necessarily incomplete since I only knew her in the context of kid and grandma.
The best thing I got for Christmas this year was the little movie in my mind of my Mam-maw in her housecoat, washing dishes or playing cards or making dinner with that record player going, singing along and hollering out, “Don’t look, Ethel!”
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Here is the link to the Taskmaster bit that cracked me up. And here is the link to “The Streak” - the original version.
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QUESTIONS FROM YOU
Normally this is where I answer a legal pop culture question from you. In the spirit of “don’t do anything between Christmas and New Year” I did not do one this week. See y’all next week!
Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.
Until next week, that’s the tea, and Happy New Year from me!
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