Canadians: Better, Faster, FUNNIER?

One of my major goals this year is to meet La Weinman in real life. While we were both at Bouchercon in Toronto, we never crossed paths (synchronicity: we did independently draft our respective Anthony-banquet-table centerpieces for use as charmingly quasi-bacchanalian tiaras, though I wasn’t photographed in mine. Thank God, since it looked waaaaay better on her, plus my pants were broken at the time and who needs that kind of thing visually documented for posterity?)

I have my hopes set on an actual Bcon sighting in Chicago, come Labor Day Weekend, but as much as I dig Sarah on this blog and by email, the prospect of actually hanging out is frankly a little nervous-making for me. The woman is, after all, from Canada, and I have this history of becoming incredibly dull-witted whenever Canadians are present.

I can count on chalking up at least one bon mot to justify my existence at your average cocktail party, but throw in a single person who thinks bacon is round and I’m guaranteed to stultify. 

I’ve been wondering what the hell that’s about all weekend, here at the Chateau Ultra-Trashy. At first I figured it’s because they just possess greater native wit, resulting from their more extensive term of subjugation to the Brit Overlords, but slowly I came to realize there’s something far, far creepier at work. In fact, what’s really going on is a vast conspiracy to ensure all “American” humor is secretly engineered by Canadian sleeper agents, a truth so profoundly disturbing we are only able to comprehend it when they’re actually in the same room, humbling us with their rapier wits.

I mean, think about it… when does Saturday Night Live suck? In the seasons it’s not loaded with people from Up There. And don’t tell me Peter Jennings is proof Canadians are not universally funny, because hello, the guy’s totally part of the design–the curtain shielding all those other hockey-playing wizards of hilarity from view, as it were–planted to make sure we’re suitably faked out. And I bet you anything they had to send him to some hardcore federal anti-humor training program, so he could pass undetected.

No way, you protest. Cornelia, you argue, _they’re just, you know, harmless, with those quaint conceits like affordable prescription drugs and universal health care, and… um… calling their states “provinces” and having Margaret Trudeau instead of Betty Ford and stuff.

Harmless my ass, I retort. We are their JOKE-PUPPETS, people. We laugh only at their whim. Worse, they don’t actually WANT us to import their cattle, not merely because it means more meat for them, but because they’re nervous we might get hip to the fact that even their COWS have more innate comedic talent than we do.

Wanna know why? Because they’re up there in Canada reading their frozen toque-covered  heads off all the damn time. These people are absolute maniacs for books–stunningly, eerily, truly-madly-deeply literate–while we’re futzing around with Gameboys and iPods and reality TV shows.

It’s that simple: no reading = no funny.

If you don’t believe me about our “friends” to the north devouring literature like fiends, check out the proportion of GDP they slap down for books… not DVDs, not Grand Theft Auto XXVIII… BUT ACTUAL COLLECTIONS OF SERIAL PAGES WITH WORDS ON THEM THAT COME PACKAGED IN PROTECTIVE “COVERS.”

The Globe and Mail  reported Saturday that Canadians shelled out $1.13 billion for books in 2001 alone,  a figure up 23 percent from what they spent in 1997. Okay, so they cough up slightly more for newspapers ($1.22 billion) and movie tickets ($1.18 billion), but that’s still more than DOUBLE what they spend on live sporting events. I don’t care if those figures are rendered in so-called Canadian Dollars, we are still sucking huge wind by comparison.

My fellow Americans, it is therefore time we concede, humor-wise, that our collective national thumb is stuck firmly up our collective national butt. We can read more, or we can roll over and accept our fate as lameass dinner companions–the demi-continent of straight-men, for all eternity.

As it stands now, however, it’s no damn wonder that Sarah Weinman is queen of all she surveys. If I ever DO get to meet her in person, I will just be prepared to sound totally boring and not even make her laugh once the whole time, but it would still be really, really great if she could come take over Saturday Night Live, because I miss having it be funny.