WHAT IS FUNNY?

Humor is very hard to write. It’s easier to write about bad stuff happening. Newspapers are full of crime, tragedy, bad economic news, and politics. Rarely do you find humor unless it’s in the op-ed pages where it is more likely to be sarcasm cloaked as humor. Maureen Dowd for example. But I do get a belly laugh as she takes the politicos to task. Hold their feet to the fire, Maureen. Art Buchwald was a humorist. I miss him. P.G. Wodehouse and his Jeeves was a past master at humor and the human—ever-so-human- condition. He had a rough go being interned by the Nazis during the Second World War. Not much humor there.

 Austin Powers. Now there was humor. I still laugh at Mike Meyers and his cast of characters.  

Fawlty
Towers
is another one of my favorites.

 Kids get humor, real humor. They can make fun of themselves and laugh, make fun of what adults see as important when it’s only pomposity dressed for dinner. Too often adults see humor as enjoying the defeats and stupid acts of others. Perhaps that type of humor is schadenfreude.

 What is funny to you? I would love to see your list of books, movies, plays (all of Noel Coward, Shakespeare etc.)

 Where am I going with this entry today? I guess I want to laugh, deep, rocking laughter not at someone else’s expense but at the joy of being alive and taking in oxygen. 

 Several summers ago I was standing on a bluff looking down at a long dock stretching out into the lake. It was a great summer’s day. An eight year old boy had been fussing with a boat tied up at the dock. Kids love boats ( I do too). He finished with his boat fussing or investigation and started down the dock to the land. I watched; he walked slowly, without undue haste or seeming purpose. Suddenly he spun up into the air, twirled around, arms flapping like a giant bird, landed and kept on walking without missing a beat. He didn’t know I was observing but as in the Heisneberg principle where the observer is ultimately part of the action, I exploded in silent laughter. His actions, his being, had touched my soul; I responded to his spontaneous joy of and for life with similar joy.

 It’s snowing and raining. I need to laugh.