Comedy is King

This morning up at an ungodly hour: 4:00 a.m. The Who song, 'I'm a Boy,' playing in my head: 'I'm a boy, I'm a boy, but my mom won't admit it, I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm a boy.'

I went on a wild goose chase last night, looking for the Windy City Rollers -- I rented a car and wandered the south-side (Racine and 71st) looking for the roller rink, knowing that I shouldn't be in that neighborhood. It isn't racism, but intelligence, that tells you there are some places where you do not belong. I decided not to stop to ask for directions. It turns out that the Martin Luther King Roller Rink is on 76th, not 71st. So, I missed the event without shooting a frame of video. I went to sleep, in a very unsettled state.

I finished the Moliere biography. I guess I'm more intruiged by the man, than his plays. He was a satirist who had one great patron: the King of France. Moliere attacked the silliness and hypocrisy of aristocratic society. The King liked to laugh, so comedy was king. Moliere's targets included the Church and the medical profession. Both were riddled with superstition and stupidity. Moliere was a man ahead of his time, although, the King made him a man of his time too. Nearly every play Moliere wrote, created some kind of scandal.

At his deathbed, neither a priest nor a doctor could be found to attend to him. After his death, his wife pleaded with the Church to bury him in sacred ground. The Church refused, he was not only a thorn in their side, he was 'a comedian,' a profession populated by the lowest of the low. The King allowed Moliere to be buried in a Christian cemetary, but he was buried five feet deep, because, according to the church authorities, consecrated ground only went four feet down. 100 years later, the French Revolutionaries dug up Moliere's bones and put them a mausoleum.

The comedian had been resurrected.