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dizzydispatch · 6 months

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The Roof is on Fire: Part 3 (Too Soon?)

Content warning: discussion of 9/11, trauma and PTSD recovery, and a house fire, as well as a dead pet.

"…and then we were both howling. It's probably sheer luck that we didn't crash on the way home, because the rest of the drive was spent in hysterics, taking turns volleying fire-related jokes: "Did you hear about the fire in the shoe factory? Many soles were lost." "Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out flaming ducks!" "My grandfather always said, “Fight fire with fire.” He was a great man, but a terrible firefighter." …while the stereo played that old familiar song, and we laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. "The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire..." And that's when I knew I'd be okay." (Part 1: Backstory)

What I would've given to be there the night that Gilbert Gottfried gave what, to this day, remains one of the most iconic performances at a Hollywood Roast. It was the roast of Hugh Heffner, which means it was bound to be lascivious. Pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable is part of the tradition of the Hollywood Roast, and Gottfried himself has a long and rather sordid track record of doing just that.

“I have to catch a flight to California," Gottfried tells the audience. "But I can’t get a direct flight. They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

This is a joke that, today, might have seemed pretty tame compared to a lot of the 9/11 jokes that have been made in the past twenty-odd years. But it elicited groans of disgust and furtive boos from the audience. Gottfried-- already famous (infamous?) for a sense of humor that some might credit to his gumption, while others will call inappropriate and insensitive-- became one of the most, if not the single most controversial and iconic public displays of gallows humor ever uttered before a crowd.

The phrase, "Too soon!" could be heard among the boos of the audience that night. Two decades later, Vice released a documentary by that name, raising the question: at what point are we allowed to laugh after something terrible happens?

Apparently, two weeks was enough time: enough to laugh, if not to at the tragedy then at least in the midst of it. As the news continued to rehash the attacks over and over, the host of that year's already controversial Roast launched into another joke, and suddenly an auditorium full of people went absolutely hysterical with laughter.

"I'd lost an audience bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience," Gottfried explains later. "People were booing and hissing... oh my God. I was floating through outer space." So, he thought, "why not go to an even lower level of hell?"

"The Aristocrats" is one of the dirtiest jokes of all time. Gottfried himself didn't write it, and he certainly wasn't the first to tell some version of it. The routine has been around in comedy circles for years. Every comedian who uses it has a unique retelling, taking the same generally dirty premise and adding in whatever other repugnant details seem right in the moment. Gottfried's version was no exception, and it may have become the most famous, in part, for some of the repugnant details he includes.

You might think that an audience sensitive to the airplane-hijacking reference wouldn't have responded much better to this depraved ditty, but what happened next was a sensation in the world of comedy.

“The laugh was so deep and cathartic that people were coughing up pieces of lung,” recalls reporter Frank DiGiacomo. “It was amazing... he had united everybody in that one moment."

Gottfried himself was even a bit shocked at the overwhelming response. "The audience was going wild (with) the biggest laughs I ever heard."

What rang out from that auditorium was the sort of laughter that shook stadiums, changed lives, saved teetering comedy careers. World-renowned celebrities dressed to the nines in elegance and class were falling out of their seats, crumpling designer suits as they clutched their sides. Faces well-known to glamour magazines turned red under layers of concealer and cream, contorting as the uncontrollable need to laugh overtook them all. Tears stained glittering gowns as the unthinkable happened, as the people in that room were released, for that one shining moment, from the weight of tragedy, the shackles of couth, the hollowness left by weeks of endless mourning.

It was the sort of laughter that healed.

"I’ve always said tragedy and comedy are roommates," Gottfried explains. "Wherever tragedy’s around, comedy’s a few feet behind... sticking his tongue out and making obscene gestures. When you go to a funeral, the guy at the podium will say embarrassing stories about the guy in the box, and people will laugh... (and) hold their hands over their face like, Oh, I shouldn’t be laughing at this."

But why shouldn't they be?

I think it's a shame that funerals are considered universally inappropriate places for laughter. That isn't to say that churches full of grieving families dressed in black ought to be treated as basement improv clubs or the cemetery as a stand-up audition. No doubt many of those burying their loved ones just won't be in the mood for glib.

But when I think of my own funeral, of the time when it will be my loved ones gathering because I'm the guy in the box, I like to imagine a room filled with laughter. I want to know that they're remembering me as I am now, laughing and playing and pretending death isn't just one missed turn signal or grim-faced doctor's proclamation away from us all.

The trauma of losing my house in a fire pales considerably next to stories of rescue workers and those trapped within the rubble on September 11th, 2001. Which is why I do not intend to compare the two, or hold others to my own timeline of recovery. My intention is never to criticize those who prefer to mourn in more traditional ways, but rather to pose the question: Is there such thing as a universal standard of "too soon"?

When I told a firefighter from one of my towns that I had lost my cat in a fire, he was sympathetic.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," he told me. "I'm sorry you had to lose a family member in such a horrible way."

I shrugged. "Sure, I guess I did lose a family member, and that's pretty sad." Then my grin turned sideways. "But I got a pretty cool frisbee out of it."

In between approving guffaws, he slapped my shoulder amiably and said, "Oh, you're going to fit in just fine here."

By "here," I know he didn't mean that town's fire department. What he had meant to express was his I'd adjust nicely into the public safety field, because I had demonstrated competence with the national language of first responders: gallows humor.

Discretion is key when utilizing humor as a coping mechanism. Part of discretion is knowing how long to wait before laughing at something. Two weeks after 9/11, there were still funerals going on. Firefighters and officers who had braved the rubble of the city's once proud monument to commerce were still reeling from the catastrophic events that threatened the American way of life. Family members were still inconsolable, and many of the children of the fallen had not yet fully realized that Mom or Dad really wouldn't be coming home this time. So that, perhaps, was too soon.

But twenty years later, jokes about 9/11 can be funny, as Jimmy Carr proved in 2022 with this absolute knock-out. Legend has it Carr tested the joke on Davidson himself, and Pete gave his go-ahead before it was told in front of the Hollywood Roast crowd. In this way, he proved that a joke, far darker than Gottfried but told twenty years later, can be laughed at without guilt.

It's as they say: tragedy + time = comedy. The twin masks of the theater represent the relationship between the two. Along with comedians, first responders are among those who have cracked the formula for dealing with hard shit. We cope with the difficult things we have to witness every day by deciding, at some point, that it has to be funny. It has to be funny, or else the trauma wins. Tears of sorrow will eventually become tears of laughter, as soon as you're ready to allow them to.

Knowing the rules is important. You can't laugh at someone else's trauma until they laugh at it first, and even then it's often wise to leave the joke-making to them. You also can't be insensitive to the fact that not everybody is comfortable with gallows humor. Knowing your audience, respecting the healing timeline, engaging in a way that will draw people together rather than drive them apart-- these are the skills comedians both professional and amateur must develop before attempting to get the tears flowing.

Though risky, dark humor can be incredibly healing. Cliché as it sounds, shared laughter brings people together. Memes about unpleasant mundane experiences go viral because we see ourselves as well as each other in them. The fact that our experiences are universal means that we're all in this together, and that means that no matter what happens, none of us are ever alone.

Pain is the most reliable constant in all of human history, a "common thread" tying together the entire human race. We all suffer, so why shouldn't our suffering at least mean something? At least when we also choose to share in the struggles of life, we can end the day by laughing together, too.

#The Roof is on Fire #dizzydispatch #911 dispatcher #9/11 #dizzydispatch911 #tw 9 #tw 9/11 #dark humor #trauma #ptsd #humor is healing #coping #first responders

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ispenttoolongthinkingofanewname · 1 year

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#fresh prince gif #carlton #delaware #the roof is on fire

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emkini · 1 year

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Guileless son, I'll shape your belief And you'll always know that your father's a thief And you won't understand the cause of your grief But you'll always follow the voices beneath

#atla #avatar the last airbender #zuko and azula #zuko #azula #fire siblings #atla fanart #illustration #chinese dragon #-slaps roof of Them- these babies can fit so much toxicity inside #if anyone tags this as a ship I will start committing crimes by the way don't be weird on my post #lyrics from mordred's lullaby #em draws

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ezlsnap · 1 year

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#the roof #the roof is on fire #bathroom #shower #doorknob #im dying squirtle #snapchat #ezl+

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omgchristinaredford-blog · 2 years

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The Roof, the roof -> the Roof is on Fire

youtube

burn mother fucker : BURN

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 》》》 ->

The roof is on fire. Uhm ; excuse me - your roof is on fire. you're just letting it burn ; like,... put it out or something man. you're Going Down : brain up or something - you're on fire man!!! Do something !!! I think someone did it to you!!! Look around ; heads up -> he's like, Probably THERE SOMEWHERE!!! hey genius, HEADS UP

lol : burn motherfucker BURN

I ❤ the 90's ; never forget -> it was Special

#you're on fire #get the water #the roof is on fire #love the 90's #Youtube

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cowboy-caboodles · 3 months

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Off-Screen Apologies

Because i saw someone’s reblog saying we missed the opportunity to have a javey apology scene, because Davey deserved to be angry at Jack, and we deserved to see that happen between them, and also because i am possibly working on a little fic about the off-screen interaction.

(I drew just the end snippet of what would be an entire apology with much more lecturing from Davey, just as an excuse to draw boys smooching)

#character art #newsies #livesies #davey jacobs #jack kelly #javey newsies #on the roof #i just imagine it happens like at midnight #and jack finds davey’s apartment and climbs up the fire escape #i just really believe he got off without apologizing to like any of the newsies #i want to see the hard scary conversations where jack learns it’s ok to lean on his friends #grrrrr #bark bark #i’m so normal

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biggest-gaudiest-patronuses · 1 year

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"witches are EVIL they steal men's SEMEN" nadja you eat people

#wwdits #what we do in the shadows #nadja babe you're my favorite protagonist but your hypocrisy is breaking through the roof/glass ceiling/stratosphere #...which may well be why you're my favorite protagonist #in conclusion #GIRLBOSS (murder your (undead wraith) employees at the first sign of unionizing)#GATEKEEP (make your familiars serve for decades knowing they will die from hazardous working conditions #WAY before u actually have to follow through on the whole promise of eternal life thing)#GASLIGHT (you're a vampire who is presumably vulnerable to fire and yet u still somehow light your dwelling with gas lamps?#not to mention the MANY AND MULTIPLE exposed candles flames nadja what the f

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fortunaestalta · 2 months

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#artists on tumblr #ai artwork #alternative #playing with fire #snow on the roof

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compacflt · 7 months

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in regard to the icemav convo about american made cars: I think it would be funny if after mav gets his regular license, ice buys him a truck that they can use for transporting stuff to the hangar and when he gifts it to mav all the man can do is laugh bc stamped across the ass is MAVERICK. It’s a 2023 ford maverick (in area 51 bc I’m partial to that color)

and mav likes it, but he doesn’t love driving it bc it’s so big (and he just likes being a passenger princess too much), so ice drives it mostly which inspires a whole lot of jokes about ice liking having maverick’s name stamped on his ass. bradley gags from the other room every time.

if it matters to u, i agree with this hc 150% on rhetoric grounds. thank god for your mind.

however i would like to raise the issue that recent american pickup trucks have become non-useful, overexpensive, and suburban-coded in a way i think ice and mav would reject. the ford maverick was built with the intention of dropping kindergarteners off at school, not of actually doing hard labor. see below infographic for what I mean.

It’s a fucking travesty. Trucks are so ugly and useless now. the maverick is not immune to this. (maverick below)

what good is having a fucking truck if it can’t even hold two REGULAR ASS BIKES in the bed. & when the bed is empty the chassis is unbalanced in a way that leads to more accidents etc. (tbf that was true in the 70s/80s too but im feeling more hateful towards modern trucks rn). In short—the modern American pickup truck is no longer useful, it’s a way to virtue signal to other Americans that you *think * you know what hard labor is, even when you’re driving around in a glorified odyssey with a teeny tiny bed that can barely hold a couple bags of mulch for the back garden

ice & mav don’t even have any little kids anymore, i think they’d consider a backseat useless & a waste of space

SO i would like to offer you a Compromise, which is that ice & mav buy either (or both) a 1974 ford maverick AND/OR a 1990 ford maverick

for the Funny Name & coolness factor (& the “making Bradley vom cause of how cute his parents are” factor), and then soup up, like, a 1984 Chevy C10 for actual towing/hauling purposes.

#*slaps roof of 2022 ford maverick* you could hit so many grade schoolers with this bad boy #the 1974 ford maverick is. admittedly extremely sexy and i am only kind of a ford guy #god the 1990 maverick too. just kind of beast mode. i can see that.#love the ask though. i hope you don’t mind my tweaks. we’re on the same wavelength #my vitriol for the modern american truck stems from my hatred of my grandfather’s 2020 f250 #which he has never used to tow anything once and constantly complains about how hard it is to find parking in suburban california 😀#yeah brother no shit!#the one cool thing about new trucks is you can use them as a generator for a few days though #we lose power for days on end where i live during fire season and that truck has been really helpful #but it’s ass ugly and not otherwise useful.#pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #icemav #bradley rooster bradshaw #asks #mav being a passenger princess has to be canon #a man physiologically built to sit shotgun ❤️#if u get a truck with an actual bed u can drive ur war hero husband out into the desert #& lay out a blanket in the back & make out with him under the stars #can’t do that in a 2023 maverick

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dizzydispatch · 7 months

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The Roof is on Fire: Part 1 (Backstory)

Content warning: dead pet, house fire

"The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire."

These were the lyrics from the song he showed me upon dubbing me "Fire King." A crudely-photoshopped image of my face superimposed onto the profile of Fire Lord Ozai became my contact photo in his phone. The nickname came after my best friend Andy and I spent a weekend up in a rural woodland cabin. After assuring me he'd be able to start the woodstove fire-- after all, hadn't our families first bonded over a shared Boy Scouts troop?-- it started to seem as though we were fated to spend the weekend shivering. "Let me try," I said.

Begrudgingly, he offered me the lighter and wad of newspaper kindling, scooting aside to give me access to the stove. It took me a while, and for a few minutes there, his smug look told me that he'd doubted my ability to do what he couldn't from the beginning. But then, I figured it out. The trick was to keep at it, starting small with sticks and brush, before easing the heavier logs into the flame and allowing them to take gradually to the flame. "Hail, the Fire King!" Andy cried, feigning a royal bow.

The fire seemed to catch so slowly, I couldn't imagine how things like house fires got to be so out of control. After all, if I couldn't WILL the logs to catch, what did a modern house made to resist conflagration have to worry about?

I wouldn't find out for another few months.

It was a Thursday in early May. I had been hired at the Deaf school two weeks ago, and I was just starting to settle into the job. It wasn't what I wanted to be doing, but it was a job, and since I was living rent-free with my parents, I could put all of my money towards those pesky student loans. One of the perks of living at home was my dad's willingness to occasionally trade cars with me, bringing mine to the mechanic for me so I didn't get ripped off.

That's why I didn't answer the first time my little brother called me. Or the second. I figured, he's mad because I have Dad's car. I knew he wanted to buy it off of our father, and he probably had scheduled some preemptive appointment to tint the windows or have some other modification done. But by the fifth or sixth consecutive call, I figured I'd have to address him eventually. When my coworker came back into the room, I asked if she could handle the class for a minute.

"My brother is spam calling," I told her. In sign language, this looked like "MY BROTHER / CALL / CALL / CALL / (eyeroll)". As I slipped out I told her: "I've just gotta make sure it's not an emergency."

In the nearly deserted hallway, I didn't worry too much about letting some irritation creep into my tone when I answered. "This better be goddamn important," I told him. "I'm at work."

"It is," he responded, just as rudely. "The house is on fire, and your cat is probably dead."

My first impulse was to laugh. "Very funny," I told him. "What's really going on?"

I felt the buzz of my phone and saw that he was trying to FaceTime me. That's when it hit me that he wasn't kidding. With trembling fingers, I accepted the request, and the first thing I saw was the blurry feed of our house, and a big red firetruck in front.

Dazed, I sank to the ground in the middle of the school hallway. I opened my mouth but nothing came out at first, so I tried again. This time, my scratchy, dry voice made out, "Is... is everyone out?"

"The family is safe," he assured me. "Mom was at work, Dad's here with me." (And of course, the other brother was out of state for college.) "It's only Tilly they can't find."

Tilly.

I took a shaky breath and cleared my face. It was imperative that my students never see me as anything but happy or neutral.

"Everything okay?" my coworker asked as I reentered the classroom, face a blank slate.

I shook my head imperceptivity.

She gave me an inquisitive look. I glanced at the students, none of whom were looking my direction. Still, I shielded my hand with the other as I signed two words: HOUSE, and FIRE. Her eyes widened, and she shooed me away, silently telling me to take care of myself and leave the classroom to her.

I nodded once and left the room. I was going to cry; that much I could feel in my gut. I sought out the office once dubbed our team's "designated cry room." But when I slipped around the corner, I was brought up short by the sight of a closed door. This meant Jen was either interviewing a new applicant, or meeting with a prospective family. Next door to her, however, the program director for the hearing program also housed at the school seemed to have an empty office.

“Hi,” I said, poking my head through the open door. “Are you busy?”

She looked up, surprised. “Not really,” she admitted, her brows furrowing.

“No meetings scheduled--” I checked my watch, "--in the last two hours or so of the school day?”

“No…” I could tell she was wondering why someone from the other program was looking to speak to her, but before she had the chance to ask, I closed the door behind me.

“Great,” I said, collapsing into her chair. “I need a place to cry.”

Out from under the prying eyes of students and curious TAs, I could’ve let the floodgates open, but some latent instinct allowed me to first dial the first emergency contact on my phone.

Andy picked up before the first ring ended. “I heard,” he said.

A silent gratitude welled up inside of me, in spite of everything. I melted like hot wax, and the tears came silently as I curled up on this strange woman’s office chair.

“Tilly,” I whimpered.

“I know,” he said. “We’re going to find her. Do you need me to come get you?”

I shook my head, which of course he couldn’t hear. The voice I was able to manage was hardly more than a croak. “No.”

Not-Jen looked at me, bewildered. She asked me the question, what is going on? without words. Her eyes searched my face, and I imagined she was wondering if either program had ever had to section a new hire so quickly. Mental breakdowns were common enough in a place like this, but only a few ended in institutionalization. I pictured, hysterically, this woman slowly reaching under her desk for a secret button, like a bank teller in a robbery, alerting squads of uniformed people armed not with police-issue .45s but straightjackets and tranq darts. The idea was so comically ridiculous that I found myself laughing through the tears, surely only reinforcing her notions regarding my sanity.

I told her simply, “My house is on fire.”

This broke her frozen expression, and her face melted into one of sympathy and concern. “Is everyone okay?”

Lifting the phone again, I said to both her and Andy, “My family is all accounted for. The only one missing is my cat, Tilly.”

She made a sound like a squeaky toy being stepped on, and stepped around her desk to sit in the chair beside mine. Her hand was steady on my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

The sob was loud and choked, and I stifled the next one, concerned the occupants of the adjacent office might overhear. Not-Jen introduced herself as Cheryl, and I let her put her skinny arms around my shoulders as I continued to weep. Andy spoke soothingly from somewhere far away, giving me updates as he got them through the steady, reliable grapevine that interlaced our families. My family was in the care of the Red Cross. The fire department had gone to a second alarm.

Cheryl tried to console me, too, telling me, “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Cats are incredible hiders."

But they didn't find Tilly until the fire had been extinguished.Tilly, my cat, the first pet that was ever only mine.

It was my mom called me next. I was in my dad's car, sitting in the back parking lot, trying to decide where to go. Home? What would even be left of it? They wouldn't have put my parents up in a hotel yet. It was too soon. I was just settling on calling Andy when my phone rang.

"Mom?"

I could hear her tears when she spoke in a broken, tiny voice: "They found Tilly."

My heart sank into my stomach. "And-- I mean, is she--"

"I'm so sorry, honey."

I don't remember what I said. Maybe I didn't say anything, and just hung up. The next thing I remember is crying harder than I can remember crying in my adult life. The catharsis was immediate and relieving, and I knew as the weeping spell wound down that I would call Andy.

When I arrived at his place, Andy's mom greeted me with a hug that seemed to last eternity. Whitney is a short, plump woman from whom Andy had inherited his ocean-blue eyes, and in her arms I felt small in spite of the six inches of height I have on her. Like a little kid whose auntie took on the roll of secondary mother without needing to be asked. She didn't make me talk, and I found it comforting to remain in my silence, a state uncommon to one as loquacious as I am. I curled up in a ball on the corner of their brown leather couch, sinking endlessly into the deep cushions as though it could swallow me whole.

I stayed there, practically comatose, until Whitney insisted I let her buy me some essentials. She handed Andy her credit card and told him not to think twice about the expense, and soon enough we were on the way to Walmart.

I picked out a toothbrush, some travel hygiene essentials, some sweats to sleep in tonight and a set of fresh work-appropriate clothes for the next day. I didn't bother to style the outfit to match my usual pseudo-gothic preferences, but simply tossed some clothes that seemed close to my size into the cart. Andy added some snacks and a gluten-free frozen dinner for that night, and a bandana. Black, with red roses, matching my aesthetic perfectly. I hadn't even thought about my bandana collection, but Andy, my best friend since the first grade, knew me better than anyone. To this day I have that bandana, the first in my new collection.

On the way home, I fiddled with the music. Usually, Andy and I would bicker about what to play in the car, but I guess having your house burn down wins you some privileges because he let me have full control of the aux.

The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

"Wow," Andy remarked. "Your Spotify algorithm is really insensitive, huh?"

"No," I said. "I picked it. I made a playlist."

His brow furrowed, and he leaned over to look, but I smacked him away and snipped something about watching the road. "The last thing my family needs is for all of us to survive a housefire only to have one of us die in a car crash," I remarked.

His eyes bugged for a second, and then we were both laughing. At the next red light, I showed him the playlist, comprised solely of fire-related songs. "If you read the titles in order, they kind of tell a story," I said. "See? Lithium and Battery, because it was a lithium-ion battery that started it. Lady Gaga's 911, because the first thing you do is call 9-1-1, and Get Low because they tell you--"

"I get it," Andy said, chuckling darkly. "This is so morbid."

"I think it's funny."

He looked at me for a moment before informing me, "Your sense of humor is broken."

I thought about that for a long time, and then suddenly I was laughing. I couldn't stop laughing. I tried to answer his demanding gaze, but I got as far as "What do you call--" before I burst out again. Andy laughed with me, puzzled, but content that I didn't seem so miserable anymore. Finally, after several false starts that dissolved into hopeless giggles, I got the set up of the joke out.

"What do you call an elusive psychic who survives a house fire?"

Andy, already groaning, generously humored me. "What?"

"A rare medium well-done," I choked out, and then we were both howling. It's probably sheer luck that we didn't crash on the way home, because the rest of the drive was spent in hysterics, the two of us taking turns volleying all of the fire-related jokes...

"Did you hear about the fire in the shoe factory? Many soles were lost."

"My grandfather always said, “Fight fire with fire.” He was a great man, but a terrible firefighter."

"Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out flaming ducks!"

...while the stereo played that old familiar song, and we laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire...

And that's when I knew I'd be okay.

#The Roof is on Fire #dizzy #dizzydispatch #dizzydispatch911 #trauma #house fire #TW dead

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