Why is this expression funny?

How to be Funny

"But how can I be funny, too?" This is the question I'm often asked when I encourage people to cheer up friends or lonely people they know. Some people think that being funny is a gift. Well, in part, I guess it is. But being funny?-like playing the cello or finger painting portraits of famous people can be learned. You just have to know the rules of comedy. Certain things make something funny. Learn these rules, practice them, adapt them to your own style and you'll get lots of laughs (True, it is easier to pay people to laugh when you say something funny.) Anyway, here are the rules.

1. Don't limit comedy to jokes. Jokes are great, but there is more to humor than jokes. Often, the funniest things are remarks made in a conversation or during a certain situation. Once when I was a kid we were packing the car for a trip. My brother and brother-in-law were in the back yard playing catch. (Yeah, I know, why weren't they helping to pack, but never mind that.) As I walked by with several shoe boxes, heading toward the car, my brother-in-law looked at me. Right away I said?-"I don't know why Dad doesn't use a wallet." It got a big laugh.

2. Exaggeration is very important in humor. But it must be the exaggeration or the stretching of the truth?-that is the teaching of the great Phyllis Diller. You can stretch the truth, but if you say something so impossible or unreal it won't be funny. If I say, "I'm on a diet so I only had three pieces of pie," I'll probably get a chuckle. If I said I had eighty-four pieces of pie, that wouldn't be funny for it's too unreal.

3. Surprise is important to humor. Even though when we are listening to a stand-up comic and we know he or she is about to say something funny, we laugh because we are surprised at the specific funny thing that the comic said. Even when we are funny in a conversation much of the laughter we receive is from the surprise element in what we have said.

4. Don't limit humor to words. Unfortunately now-a-days that's what the situation comedies do. (I don't find them funny!) But being funny also involves doing funny or silly things. Lucille Ball was a master at this. Remember all the funny things she used to do on her "I Love Lucy" show like when eating long spaghetti she cut it with a scissors?

5. Timing is very important in humor. There has to be a pause before the funny part, before the punch line. In my talks on benefits of humor I try to say two or three serious or sensible lines then pause?-then hit them with the punch line.

6. Remember that humor need not always be laugh-on-the-floor funny. We should value things that get just a chuckle or even a smile. Betty White said about my "Humor Helps!" book?-"I got some good laughs and many, many smiles." Remember, with humor smiles are important, too.

I think sozobe has inspired me, though not so much.

I am afraid the writer was not qualified enough to teach others with lecture like "How to Be Funny". Because even McTag could not get his humor.