A Planet Walks Into a Bar...

Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture by Ken Jennings (Scribner, 2018)

"Venus and Mars" may be "alright tonight,"* but Earth is downright funny, sometimes to its own detriment.  

Walking "bar bet" answer book and jokester  Ken Jennings has written an approachable, yet sometimes a bit academic look at the culture influence of comedy through the ages.  Jennings goes all the way back to early homosapiens and works his way up to the current political age.  He observes the evolution of what we value as a society and what we think is funny.  As a matter of fact, he takes an entire chapter - more like one long run-on sentence - to list the things he finds funny. (Some of his past tweets about people with handicaps, for example, have brought his sense of humor under scrutiny.  He has apologized for his "dumb jokes.")

When the book came out in paperback, the subheading was changed to How Comedy Ruined Everything. (Shades of Tru TV's Adam Ruins Everything.)  The new subhead sums up Jennings thesis that we've evolved as a society from one that valued physical strength (survival) to one that appreciated intellect (creative) to one that sees the ability to joke around as probably the most important attribute, as evidenced by practically everything and everyone having to be funny in some way to get our attention - so much so that we elected a reality buffoon as President.

*Thanks, Paul McCartney and Wings.