Dear Diary: Mon sendable, mon frère
This will be brief, partly because I’m in the mood for a holiday, and partly because I found out this morning that the furniture shuffle is going to take place on Tuesday. I’m very tempted to announce, tomorrow, that the Daily Office will be suspended next week. If I don’t take the week off, it’ll be because I’m afraid of never going back to work.
The other “partly” is the fun I’ve been having at JibJab, creating “sendables.” I hadn’t given JibJab much thought since the 2004 election, but as anybody who subscribes to birthday notifcations knows, you can customize birthday and other greetings at the site. Last night, having drunk far too much tea in the earlier part of the evening and not feeling remotely sleepy, I capitulated to the request to send my latest birthday friend — Joe Jervis, of Joe.My.God — a JibJab offering. Loaded with caffeine, I found the patience to go through the sign-up procedure, and was I happy to pay the ten dollar annual subscription fee. Having chosen a cheesy card for Joe, and sent it, I went back to explore the scene of the crime, and in no time at all I discovered “sendables,” some of which can be “personalized.”
Once again, Facebook friends will be familiar with the results. I probably ought to have gone with the “Soul Train: Get Down!” solo, or, even funnier (with my head, that is), the “You Still Got It” card. But I fell for a drag act, “Chiquita.” I’m not sorry that I did, because when Kathleen got round to seeing it, she exploded —  just like Mr Too-Much-Magnesium: Crack! There is nothing finer in life than the big bang of Kathleen’s bursting out laughing.
This evening, I continued my laboratory experiments, and did a very fetching “Mexican Hat Dance” with Edith Wharton, who turned out to be a fine disco partner as well. Just a few minutes ago, the evening culminated (by fiat) with an “Irish Step” number featuring me (of course) assisted by Mrs Wharton, Queen Victoria, the Empress Ci Xi, and George Eliot. (I’d have asked Virginia Woolf to stand up, but her pictures all seemed to be in profile.) I might as well confess that the only other male head that I have invited into my workshop is that of Louis XV. I look better than he does in every JibJab scenario.
Sadly, I put so much effort into these ephemeral entertainments that I have no brainpower left for trying to explain the deeply delicious silliness of superimposing a staid head on a jitterbug body. It must have something to do with simple defacement — L.H.O.O.Q. and that sort of thing. And what about those perforated flats that allowed anybody, by putting his or her head in a hole, to become Napoleon or Abe Lincoln? Did those things have a name? There is certainly a cognitive dissonance thing going when Edith Wharton and I are throwing ourselves into disco extremities while keeping the straightest of faces. It is the humor of the incongruous — my favorite form of non-verbal humor.
A favorite moment: On Candid Camera, Alan Funt slaps a “Rest Room” sign on the door to a broom closet in a Broadway theatre lobby. There are buckets inside, but no… fixtures. The look on those faces, when they come back outside.
But that’s mean. There’s nothing mean about JibJab — except appropriating the faces of your friends. I counsel the greatest caution in that regard. It is almost certain that your friends will not find your dissonance as cognitive as you do, if you know what I mean. Stick to dead empresses. And have a great time laughing at the inner ridiculousness of you.