“A lot of them were quite depressing and didn't have a sense of humor. And, none of them told the story of our family. I knew we had a really positive feeling about Jon and his affect on our lives.”

Looking back, retrospectively on the events of that evening, I can see the irony — the shrink whose cat ate his own tail. At the time of the incident, however, humor was not in my emotional repertoire; it was the furthest thing from my mind.

“I pray that as America reflects on the passing of my dad, they will remember a man of integrity, conviction and good humor that changed America and the world for the better. He would modestly say the credit goes to others, but I believe the credit is his.”

His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.

You always were a strange child, Alexander," he said, "but vampires? I can't believe it."I shrugged."Well, now you know where I get my biting sense of humor," I said weakly.

I naively believe that self-love is 80 percent of the solution, that it helps beyond words to take yourself through the day as you would with your most beloved mental-patient relative, with great humor and lots of small treats.

Every black film feels like it's Tyler Perry, and that just needs to stop. But people seem to slowly be looking for what else is out there - 'Is there something else besides this type of humor?' 'I'm tired of seeing men in dresses.'

I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but... I have a reputation of - people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.

In the household in which I was raised, the themes were pretty simple. 'Work hard. Don't quit. Be appreciative, be thankful, be grateful, be respectful. Also, never whine, never complain. And always, for crying out loud, keep a sense of humor.'

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.