The Ides of March, Bad Drawings, and Why I Write

“All right, why did the soothsayer tell Caesar to beware the Ides of March?  Who wants to take a stab?” – Daria

Now this is a tough day at the office.

The Ides of March is today (if you’re reading in real-time) – and it’s been showing up a lot this year in coincidences – even a warning in a comment on this blog! – so I thought I’d write about the historical implications of the Ides of March on the career of the most beloved humor writer in American history.

Me.  Hopefully nobody brings up that Mark Twain poseur again.

Historically, the Ides of March was a Roman time for settling debts, and boy did the Roman Senate settle one in 44 B.C., which was the subject of my first long-form humor attempt.  In seventh grade, my history teacher showed us films.  As an adult, I’m thinking that history teachers show films due to hangovers (it’s dark, quiet, and they don’t have to lecture or even be awake as they sleep the scotch off in second period), but my utterly innocent seventh grade self didn’t make that connection.  And make no mistake – this was in the era before video tapes had taken over, so when we watched a film, it was a real reel, sprocket, and stuttering film noise affair projected onto a portable screen smaller than the average computer monitor at the DMV.

This device was wonderful – regardless of the subject, you could coast that day in school.

The film in question was about Julius Caesar, and I do think we watched it around the actual Ides of March.  I don’t recall a lot about the film, but I do recall this – Caesar was assassinated.  And not assassinated in any sort of short, quick, reasonable way.  No.  Caesar was stabbed in full cinematic glory dozens and dozens and dozens of times.  But it wasn’t graphic – it was G-rated.  Consequently the assassination was, in my estimation, was pretty close to the scene with the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail©.  Man, could Caesar take punishment – no wonder he was in charge!  And it went on, and on, and on, and on.

This is the second best fight scene in movie history, without question.  It was also available on PBS® when I was growing up, and proved the old adage:  PBS© – good only for Monty Python™ and Doctor Who©.

So I wrote about Caesar’s assassination.  I created the one and only issue of The Roman Times.  The lead story of The Roman Times was about Julius Caesar.  I think I could nearly do the artwork and story from The Roman Times verbatim.  Let me give it a try:

Today’s news from Rome:  Caesar stabbed, shot, poked, prodded, speared, impaled, jabbed, skewered, perforated, and bayoneted MMLXVI times.  Doctors say he would have survived, however he did also have quite a nasty infected splinter and wasn’t wearing clean underwear, much to his mother’s disappointment.

Okay, I was kinda shocked when I found out that the Romans had bikinis.  Not only did they have bikinis, they had a swimsuit mosaic edition of Gladiators Illustrated®.

It’s more of a thesaurus approach at humor than my current subtle use of bikini jokes.  But I feel confident that if Julius Caesar would have known that a seventh grader would be laughing about his assassination 2000 years later, well, he could have died happy rather than screaming and bleeding because of the 23 stab wounds.  Yup.  We know it was 23 stab wounds because Caesar also had the first documented autopsy that we know of.  To make it all official, the Roman Senate held hearings and after reviewing all of the evidence discovered that Julius Caesar’s assassination was all the work of a single assassin, Longinus Harvey Oswald, who stabbed twice from the sixth floor of the Roman School Scroll Depositorium.

Artist’s conception, as nearly as I can recall my seventh grade drawing – that thing behind him is supposed to be a bear trap.  Apologies to real artists like Steve (LINK).

The end result of all of this Ides of March musing is that I’ve been writing funny things for most of my life.  And this is Friday, and Friday means a health post.  So what does a dead Julius Caesar and schoolboy drivel have to do with health?

I write because it makes me happy.  I think I’ve mentioned before – when I’ve written a good post, one I like, I am happy.  It’s hard to sleep.  I know that sounds silly, especially since, if I finish the post early I’ll have four or five hours of sleep, and if I get distracted and research ancient Roman bikinis and then somehow end up researching the history of the 1^st Marine Expeditionary Force the post runs late I might only have two or three hours of sleep that night.

But it still excites me to do good work.  And I recall that I was giddy when I was in seventh grade, putting together The Roman Times.  I enjoyed it so much I put together a sequel:  The Medieval Times, although I’m quite sure that I spelled Medieval wrong and I think the lead story was about some knight getting stabbed, poked, speared . . . et cetera.  Why does writing humor give me a sense of fulfillment?  I think for several reasons – I get a chance to learn and research new things, often with a purpose.  I love new ideas, new thoughts, and probably the best thing is when you laugh out loud.

No, not a generalized you.  You, dear reader.  I write this for me, but also for you, because I know that someplace out there this post made someone’s day better.

But not Caesar.  His Ides of March was pretty rough.  But at least his fame will live on through my glorious art, because otherwise people might forget all about him.