No accounting for what folks find amusing
No accounting for what folks find amusing
By: Bill Mead
Topics:
Posted by editor Mon Nov 20, 2006 12:05:34 PST
Viewed 762 times
0 responses 0 comments I have no idea what cavemen laughed at but I'm pretty sure they had their chuckles.
Nature seems to have given humans a strong sense of humor that tends to surmount pain and terror. It's typical that in the midst of battle, warriors find it within themselves to crack jokes. I'm hardly a pillar of steel but when I was on the operating table waiting to have my coronary arteries yanked out and replaced, I looked up at the surgeon and asked the nurse who that masked man was. I was told later that my gallows humor was anything but original.
I have often pondered what tickles people's funnybones but I was stumped when I read a while back that a movie entitled “Jackass Number 2” was a box office smash, earning more than $20 million over one weekend. I haven't seen the movie but from what I have heard it follows in the hallowed tradition of Larry, Moe and Curly. You know, crude sight gags performed by idiots. I'm not being judgmental here. Guess who tunes in to Benny Hill when his wife leaves the room?
My favorite funny stuff, however, doesn't involve fingers poked in eyes or somebody being hit with a sack of garbage. I laugh the hardest at jokes based on what this old cornpicker thinks is clever dialog. Let me illustrate by repeating my all-time favorite joke:
A wife comes home from the doctor and tells her husband the doc said she was in fine shape.
“What did he say about your fat a**?” hubby retorted.
“He didn't mention you at all,” she replied sweetly.
A joke doesn't have to be new to get me slapping my thigh. Nobody ever accused Milton Berle of using the freshest material. In fact, his self-admitted stealing from other comedians became a central theme of his act. I've always felt ashamed of going into stitches whenever I think of some of Uncle Miltie's tiredest gags, like the one about him walking down the street and seeing a guy fall off a four-story building, hitting the sidewalk right in front of Berle.
“What happened?” Berle asked the battered victim.
“I don't know,” the guy replied. “I just got here myself.” I'm not sure the “Jackass” movie gets any worse than that.
So you'll know my taste in humor isn't completely Neanderthal, my second-favorite joke has to do with a ventriloquist who performed with a dummy he called Oscar. The schtick called for Oscar to make demeaning remarks about everybody in the room, with the ventriloquist begging him to stop. One night during a torrent of Oscar's dumb blonde jokes, a blonde woman jumped up and demanded an apology. The ventriloquist asked her to sit down, explaining it was all in fun.
“You stay out of this!” the angry blonde yelled. “I'm talkin' to that little jerk on your knee!”
Maybe the Three Stooges weren't so bad after all.
| Send to a Friend | Report a Violation |
