I recently made a bold decision in my life that has made me a happier person. I decided to be completely honest with myself and others. I finally admitted that I don’t enjoy the music of Toto, Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, Hall & Oates, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald ironically. I just enjoy it. It is beautiful. It will set you free.

The only hint of irony that I will allow with regard to this glorious genre of soft seventies rock that’s oh so smooth is the remarkable comedy gem ‘Yacht Rock’. A fictionalised rockumentary series with incredibly realistic bad 80s production and film grade, it tells apocryphal tales of how this miraculous music came into being. I would call it a genesis document, but Genesis is not included as they came onto the scene a little later.

Before long you’ll have trouble separating the mild-mannered John Oates in your mind from the violently agressive John Oates of Yacht Rock who picks fights and holds an abusive control over Daryl Hall. And when I imagine Kenny Loggins, it’s definitely not the real one. It’s worth noting, though, that ‘Hollywood Steve’ is in fact a real person, and is playing himself.

It originally featured at Channel 101 a short film festival, but has reverberated throughout the Yacht Rock community. In an interview in 2008, Michael McDonald was asked the question ‘have you ever owned a yacht?’ His reply is one for the ages:

“No, but I thought Yacht Rock was hilarious. And uncannily, you know, those things always have a little bit of truth to them. It’s kind of like when you get a letter from a stalker who’s never met you. They somehow hit on something, and you have to admit they’re pretty intuitive.”

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Conventional wisdom would say that this sketch really shouldn’t work on TV for two diametrically opposed reasons.

Firstly, the idea is too ‘high-concept’. Targeting the inconsistencies between a society’s ultraconservative morals and human nature is all well and good in satire and happens all the time. But make that society Britain in the Nineteenth Century and make the two protagonists Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister, and all of a sudden this sketch is taking place in an atmosphere so rarefied that precisely zero people on the planet can actually relate to it. You know how sometimes when people hear a nice, relatable, observational gag, they’ll say through their laughter “it’s funny because it’s true!!”? That situation is impossible from the outset.

Secondly, it’s too vulgar. The word cum is said, at various volumes and with differing force no less than seven times in three minutes. That’s a ‘cum’ every 25 seconds. In some countries you’d be stoned to death before you finished the sketch, and on most television networks in the world an executive who has never successfully made anyone laugh in their life would have rejected the script on ‘tone’ grounds faster than you can organise a good stoning.

But when you ram those two things together, they completely cancel each other out. To the point where anyone can find this funny and you could just about watch this with your parents without feeling too awkward (although that really depends on who your parents are).

So it turns out that whether you’re accepting a gift from a dignitary, surviving Victorian society or writing sketch comedy, conventional wisdom ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. And yes, it’s funny because it’s true.

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Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper, possibly two of the whitest people in the world, missed this larger point. And Cam’ron missed the smaller – but no less crucial – point: there is an exception to every rule. Let’s call it the serial killer exception.

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During the show, a performer shot a metal-tipped dart out of her vagina from whence it flew over the audience before lodging itself in John’s arm. Bleeding slightly from the flesh-wound, John saw a local doctor who recommended an HIV test “as a precaution”. On their return, Jan told me that they had to wait until after the three month window period to know whether John was in the clear. I found myself anticipating John’s imminent death from AIDS, and how it would leave completely unanswered the fundamental question of whether the essence of life is comedy or tragedy.

Japanese prank videos have me wondering the same thing.

It is impossible to watch these pranks – and there are millions of them – without simultaneously feeling how awful and how hilarious they are. It is also impossible to watch them without wondering how litigation and public liability insurance work in Japan in a way that lets these pranksters get away with pulling this stuff on total strangers. Somewhere between slapstick and schadenfreude, the japrankster milieu is one of light and shadow. For better or worse, this is not a question of cultural relativism; despite extensive Japanese narration, no translation is needed to understand exactly what is going on and to find it hilarious. The traditional wisdom is that comedy is tragedy plus time. These videos simplify that equation, and our lofty perceptions of ourselves, by removing time.

But we can take comfort, maybe, in the fact that the Japanese prankster is an equal opportunity offender – young, old, weak, strong –the prank does not discriminate. Maybe this means that we are really just laughing at ourselves. Then again, nothing kills humor like analysis. Sometimes we just want to see a naked person clinging for dear life to a massage chair while barreling down a ski slope.

Epilogue: John did not have AIDS.

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We’re throwing in this pound/handshake fail for free. Keep watching for the softly sensual slow mo replay:

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