I was in the Cub Scouts as a kid. We had this new guy, a kid called Wade, with us on a camping trip once. Wade told some of us around the campfire a joke. Wade called it the Pink Joke. He started telling a story. It began as any other joke--there are three guys in a situation. In this case each of them swerved off of the road to avoid an elk and hit a tree. We listened because we were excited to get to the punch-line, but Wade dragged the story out. At first, Wade's narration was captivating, too. Wade was quite the story teller. His descriptions of every detail kept our attention for some time. Each time someone crashed into the tree, though, the narrative became wordier and wordier. Wade went on about every little thing. Later, the guys wander through the woods and find a house. The house is pink. Wade told us everything on the house was pink. Then he told us what all those things were. Then the guys ask the woman there if they can use the phone to call someone to pick them up, but her phone, which is pink, is cut off till the morning. The woman gives each directions to a different bedroom in the house, and Wade told the directions to us, then said them again as each guy walked there. He told us everything that was pink inside the house, too. In the morning, the guys get breakfast--after walking from their rooms to the kitchen. After more unnecessary descriptions and asides, we find out that two out of three people prefer Corn Flakes to Rice Krispies.

The joke wasn't funny to us. It was very funny for Wade, as he had wasted an hour of our time. That's not the convention to which we were accustomed. We didn't like his joke.

Years later, I was at a Jimmy Buffett concert. My family and some of my neighbors were there, too. Mr. Poirier told a story about going to McDonald's. Mr. Poirier is a very funny guy, and so was his story. It ended with him stealing a paper bag from a homeless woman who had taken his food earlier. He said a clever line related to what she had said. It was a very funny situation. Then someone asked what was in the bag. Mr. Poirier told us it was full of shit, just like the rest of the story.

He had wasted our time. His was a funny story, though, and I've told it from time to time as my own. It makes for a good joke. The more I told it, the funnier that last bit got--but it wasn't funnier because I had wasted more people's times, it was just more what I expected from jokes.

After another couple of years, my brother and I watched Next, a film starring Nicholas Cage as a Vegas magician who can see into the future. The FBI wants to use his abilities to solve a bombing that hasn't even happened yet. Cage uses his power to evade them. Then he meets up with Jessica Biel. The two of them drive away and stay in a hotel room. Spoiler alert: they wake up, a bunch of action packed things happen, and Cage gets caught by the FBI. They use him to find the bomb, but Biel's character gets blown up anyway because the bomb they found was a fake or something. Anyways, it's very sad. Then she and Nick Cage wake up in the hotel room. Cage tells the FBI what will happen. Most of the movie never did happen. My brother was livid. I thought it was funny. I had been conditioned to that convention.

I think Beckett is funny, too. Freshman year, in one of my film classes, we read Waiting for Godot. It was my second experience with the play. I liked it the first time, but I certainly missed the humor. The professor told us that Lucky's "thinking" makes fun of Joyce's works. I've always seen it that way. There's even a fart joke. No matter how depressing and "Beckett-like" Beckett makes his characters, he always seems to weave humor in. I think we just don't tend to see it because it isn't what we expect humor to look like, but now I can appreciate the ending of Molloy.

Those were my thoughts. I was supposed to write about things that I found researching Beckett. Instead I did briefly mention that Beckett made fun of Joyce. I shall also point out that he worked for Joyce, but I think we all know that already. I saw part of An Act Without Words once. A bit later I saw the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. The second two movies introduced some Beckett-like qualities, I think. The scene with the crabs all the Captains Jack Sparrow working on the ship reminded me of An Act Without Words. The characters who become so decrepit that they become parts of shellfish and squids are very Beckett-like. One even gets his head (which is a snail) separated from his body. Instead being decapitated, though, his head goes on as if only his body was removed. Actually, that's kind of like those Endgame people in the trash cans.... The second Pirate movies also introduce a new character, whose name is Lord Beckett. Instead of looking up Samuel Beckett like I probably should, I've decided to research Lord Beckett from these films and list these lines he says that I think are relevant to the study of Samuel Beckett.

"Bloody hell, there's nothing left."

"The enemy has opted for oblivion!"(I picked this one because of Beckett's war hero times and because his writing is about oblivion)

"All that remains is where they make their final stand."

"The immaterial has become (pause) immaterial."

"A new deal. One that requires absolutely nothing of you..."

"Cut out the middle man, as it were."

I have one more thing I wanted to point out. I haven't seen if anyone else posted this, but Jon was talking about Beckett writing about "coming and going." He also said the book was about masturbation and defecation. I don't know if he meant this, but I am going to point it out. Masturbation is coming and defecation is going.