Unsung comedic heroes.

As I mentioned in a very early (and special) episode of Rising Like A Trout, my dream job would be to create funny (read: stupid) t-shirt designs all the live-long day. This is my latest:


If you are from the Bay Area, then I apologize for the milk currently spewing forth from your nostrils. I know, I���m a genius and you must have this shirt like, now. If you are not from the Bay Area, or you haven���t heard of Alice Waters, or you simply don���t find this funny (more likely the case), then click on the link that occurred earlier in this sentence, or here, for you lazybones.

I should say that Che would no doubt approve of this appropriation of his visage in the name of comedy. Few people know this, but if the whole revolutionary thing hadn���t worked out for him, he had a fall-back career as a gag writer for the likes of Ernie Kovacs and Phil Silvers. Of course, the gags were all in Spanish, a language which neither Kovacs nor Silvers spoke even a word of, but the sheer force of Che���s personality won over the two legendary comedians, not to mention the enormous pistols he carried at all times.

Che mainly worked in the topical vein, mining 50���s pop culture and skewering such icons as Eisenhower, Marilyn Monroe, and even his more conventional contemporaries like Milton Berle. This made him few friends in show business, but things like popularity mattered little to Che. Artistic integrity and the art of the joke were paramount, and Che worked diligently in between political rallies to amass a huge backlog of material. There is rumored to be a secret vault somewhere in Havana containing thousands of unused jokes. In fact, Bob Hope reportedly searched for this comedic goldmine for decades, spending millions of his fortune on the endeavor. Sadly, ���ol ski-nose died without ever having found it.

After leaving Cuba in 1965, Che settled in Bolivia. Here, he ran into trouble with the local government and became a fugitive. One would think this would have caused Che���s art to suffer. To the contrary, the turbulent times only fueled his comedic output, so that some of his finest work, later called ���The Bolivian Material,��� came from this time period. While hiding out in a straw hut in the middle of the Bolivian jungle, Che honed his craft, abandoning broad political farce in favor of subtle, biting satire. His bit on the Bay of Pigs, written during this era, is still considered to be the definitive comedic statement on that event.

He was captured and shot by the Bolivian government in 1967. Funny to the end, his last words were reportedly, ���Is this thing on?��� At the time, the meaning of this statement was unclear, but recent discoveries have revealed his secret desire to take his material to the stage as a stand-up comedian. The world will never know to what heights Che would have taken this art form.

Just thought you might want to know.