There’s a skit a comedian does involving life. His take on it is ,wouldn’t life be more interesting if you started out really old, and progressed from that point, back to birth…actually he went back to the orgasm…funny stuff.
Anyone know who the comedian is, and ,if it’s on line somewhere?
Hmm. I’ve heard that idea several times, from several people. There’s the episode “Backwards” from Red Dwarf, for instance, which includes a conversation about how Lister wasn’t looking forward to being a sperm swimming around in someone’s testicles in twenty-something years.
I don’t know that particular one, but I saw a guy do something similar (in pantomime) on Whose Line is it Anyway?. It was the skit where a few actors are having a party and each one has some bizarre distinction he has to act out, and the other actors have to guess what they are. His was that he was getting younger and younger… at the end, he was making swimming motions.
I’ve heard something similar, only the punchline was something like, “and you end up as a gleam in somebody’s eye.” Can’t recall who it was, though. Sorry.
I believe this is in George Carlin’s book Brain Droppings, but I don’t know if he’s the originator.
I’m pretty sure it was Rio by Duran Du*<Oof! Ow! Ouch! Stop it, please, no kicking!!>*
I think Jonathon Winters used this idea (and later based his Mork & Mindy character on it).
And Hal, that joke was funny just once.
In 1960. For 20 minutes.
Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello) on Saturday Night Live once said something like this. I don’t know if he proposed that some people started out young and grew old, while other started out old and grew young, or if one reached a certain age and then started backwards at that point. His point was that eventually, you had to “go back in.” He mentioned that some young lovers could get into real trouble if they started out around the same age but one was progressing older while the other was getting younger. I don’t recall the orgasmic climax (heh!) though.
That was the plot of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s early short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but it was creepy, not funny.
Hell, my friend’s LJ userinfo has the following:
There was also a great sf story called “The Man Who Never Grew Young”. I think it was by Fritz Leiber.