Taking the time to polish a pun or fine-tune a practical joke is a way of saying, 'I'm thinking about you and I want to please you.'
I learned to think about religion, race and sex through the complex and often unattractive medium of jokes.
A good-humored wife who appreciates most, if not all, of my humor - her price is far above rubies, as the book of Proverbs doesn't quite say.
Of all the logical impasses, unknowings, paradoxes, and terrors that provoke laughter, death by its finality and unsolvable mystery is paramount.
My parents were mourning the death of my sister. She was killed in a car accident before I was born, and I didn't know she existed until I was 13 or 14 years old. I knew I was growing up in a house where people were angry and sad.