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The Use and Abuse of Humor
I don’t tend to get excited about Hollywood folklore. But there’s one particular story I really love because it contains an unexpected pearl of wisdom, wrapped in a paradoxical sentence. It sounds contradictory, and like it can’t possibly be true. And yet it reveals something about human nature that’s worth thinking about.
An LSD Trip into Wisdom
The story in question comes by way of the 1960s/70s countercultural madman Paul Krassner, part of which appeared in an article he wrote for High Times magazine called “My Acid Trip With Groucho”. The tale he tells (which you can read in full here) is every bit as crazy as the title sounds.
It was 1967, and Krassner is friends with a producer making a comedy movie called “Skidoo”. It features an aging Groucho Marx as a crime boss named God. The movie (which is very 1960s) does a lot to basically…advocate LSD use. Groucho was concerned about being part of the film having never done the drug. So he asks Krassner to be his sitter on his inaugural LSD trip.
Krassner documents a great collection of pull quotes from Groucho during his trip. At one point he’s talking about how he’s going to approach playing a character named God who’s also a criminal overlord. This prompts him to think out loud:
