As the Myth Salon wraps its first full calendar year, we have a very special treat to launch the holidays! On Monday, December 18, the Myth Salon will present David Misch, author of “A Beginner’s Guide to Corruption,” who will present “The History of Ha!”, a some-holds-barred survey of absolutely everything funny that’s ever happened. (FDA Advisory: Some funny things not included.) Ripped from the pages of his award-eligible “Funny: The Book / Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Comedy,” and beginning in pre-history with the mythological Trickster, David will look at how comedy went from Ancient Greece to “Modern Family”, from court jesters to Groucho Marx, from Plato & Aristotle to Abbott & Costello – with stops along the way for commedia dell’ arte, a French fartist, and how comedy killed Abraham Lincoln. He posits not only a corollary between religious ecstasy, laughter and orgasms (take a moment to contemplate that!) but the proposition that comedy is, ultimately, all about death. If there’s time – and there probably will be, David will also explore comedy’s relationship to the sacred, paying special attention to the novel “The Name of the Rose.”
Among David Misch’s TV and movie credits are the Emmy-nominated “Mork & Mindy”, the Emmy-losing “Duckman”, the Emmy-engorged “Saturday Night Live”, and the Emmy-ineligible “The Muppets Take Manhattan”. He’s the author of “Funny: The Book / Every-thing You Always Wanted To Know About Comedy” and is also a playwright, songwriter, blogger, teacher and recovered stand-up comic, and has lectured at Yale, Oxford Univer-sity, the Smithsonian, the University of Sydney (Australia), the VIEW Cinema Conference (Torino, Italy), Austin Film Festival, Burbank Comedy Festival, USC, UCLA, AFI, Lucas-film. Too much more at davidmisch.com, not to mention (yet here I am mentioning) fun-nythebook.com, funnythebook (Facebook) and @funnythebook (Twitter).
Please let me know if you’ll be able to attend the next Myth Salon – December 18, from 7-9pm. To everyone and all beings in the cosmos, may your time now and in the future overflow with love, meaning, and yes, a little laughter!