Things that amaze me most... Part IV

OK, I'm cheating. It's been too long since I put out a new post but I thought you deserved better. So here's a favorite of mine from 2010... still true, still vital to a better life. Enjoy this now, I have a doozie coming up in the next few days.

From November, 2010
As I told you before, there are a number of things/events/emotions that absolutely blow-my-mind because they are so introspectively amazing and give me a deeper sense of awe. So I made a list of the things that amaze me most... some big, some small, some acts, some things... but all, in my mind, amazing.  So far:

Part I:    THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Part II:   BIG NUMBERS
Part III: THE YOUNG: Babies, toddlers and teens

Part IV:  LAUGHTER: A peek into the soul

I'm a sucker for this one. It's not only laughter, which offers a peek into an individual's soul.... it's the power of a smile, the lighter heart, the joy of living. The world is a serious place... no one gets out alive. But to live on a globe half-empty makes time spent a tough slog when compared to the joy to be had on a globe half-full. Laughter is just one very public indication of a person trying to keep in balance with life's ups and downs.

Ever walk down the street with a smile and nod to the strangers walking toward you? Most smile back... not counting the few who think you are an idiot. However, this is absolutely guaranteed to give at least one person--you--a lighter step. And you can be sure it affects a few more than that.

For something to be funny, it only has to amuse one person... you. Anything after that is a bonus. Example: Comedian Emo Phillips said, "I used to think that the human brain was the most fascinating part of the body. But then I realized, Well... look what's telling me that!" See how happy that made me?

Do you know a person can actually die of a broken heart? (Check out the Mayo Clinic's take on broken-heart syndrome.) There is unhappiness in life and we have to deal with it best we can. Then, there are other times... lots more of them... that better defines us.

A lighter heart is a free, not-toxic, over-the-counter drug that is good for almost anything that may ail you. The welcome side-effect is that it is infectious.

Robin Williams tells this story: Bono was performing a benefit in Scotland before a crowded house. He started slowly clapping his hands and told his audience, "Every time I clap my hands, an elephant dies in Africa!" A man in the back row stood up and hollered, "THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN, STOP CLAPPING YOUR HANDS!"  See?

A sense of humor represents more 'life in balance' than almost anything else because it comes from the reflection of the world as seen through your eyes. Carry a grudge... seek revenge... harbor hate... see seven shades of gray... fail to appreciate life's delights? Then my friend, I'm sad for you because you only have one crack at it.

Live life to your principles... WITH GUSTO!  What that does for the soul... that is something that amazes me most.  

Elsie had it right: (with thanks to Fred Ebb and John Kander who created the song and Lisa Minelli who made it come alive in Cabaret.)

What good is  sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the kniting,

The book and the broom.

Time for a holiday.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Come taste the wine,

Come hear the band.

Come blow a horn,

Start celebrating;

Right this way,

Your table's waiting.

No use permitting

Some prophet of doom

To wipe every smile away.

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend

Known as Elsie,

With whom I shared

Four sorid rooms in Chelsea.

She wasn't what you'd call

A blushing flower...

As a matter of fact

She rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors

Came to snicker:

Well that's what comes

From too much pills and liquor.

But when I saw her laid out

Like a Queen,

She was the happiest corpse

I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day,

I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

What good is sitting alone

In your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,

The book and the broom.

Time for a holiday.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

As for me,

I made my mind up back in  Chelsea,

When I go, I'm going like Elsie.

Start by admitting,

From cradle to tomb

Isn't that long a stay.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Only a Cabaret, old chum,

And I love a Cabaret.

Life's funny that way...

Pay Attention. Your personal humor IQ test follows.

In his scholarly book (yes, scholarly, thus by definition, unfunny) Sex, Aggression and Humour: Responses to Unicycling, Sam Shuster tries to dissect what makes us laugh by age and gender. So take your average unicyclist and look at all the ways this is seen... with no mention of a pie in the face at any time. For example:

A father to son about 3 years old. "Look, he's only got one wheels... wonder what happened to the other wheel.
Inquisitive 5 to 12 year old: "Why do you use only one wheel?"
 
Aggressive boys: "You're gonna to fall off... you're gonna fall off."
 
Women: "Wonderful... I'm impressed."
 Men: "Lost your wheel?"
etc., etc.

Shuster did identify something... that defining humour (as he spells it) and what may make us laugh is a varied and complex thing.

Plato, Aristotle and Descartes also had very unfunny takes on it and Freud felt forbidden things are hilarious because humor is a pressure release for psychic energy.

But in the end, what is funny to one very likely is not funny to most... one size does not fit all.

Incongruity seems to be a more-common-to-all humor thing and incongruity itself adds another variable to the mix... unless it is followed on social media by lol, then it is funny... or we just didn't get it.

HUMOR IQ TEST

Read these short paragraphs from an actual newspaper contest where entrants, age 4 to 15,  were asked to imitate "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey, a former Saturday Night Live writer of years back and tell me you didn't laugh or smile more than once.

I gaze at the brilliant full moon. The same one, I think to myself, at which Socrates, Aristotle and Plato gazed. Suddenly, I imagine they appear beside me. I tell Socrates about the national debate over one's right to die and wonder at the constancy of the human condition. I tell Plato that I live in the country that has come the closest to Utopia and I show him a copy of the Constitution. I tell Aristotle that we have found many more than the four  basic elements and I show him a periodic table. I get a box of kitchen matches and strike one. They gasp with wonder. We spend the rest of the night lighting farts. (Age 15)

Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money. (Age 13)

I bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween. (Age 13)

For centuries, people thought the moon was made of green cheese. Then the astronauts found that the moon is really a big hard rock. That's what happens to cheese when you leave it out. (Age 6)

I once heard the voice of God. He said "Vroommm." Unless it was just a lawn mower. (Age l1)

If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started. (Age 15)

It sure would be nice if we got a day off for the presidents' birthdays, like they do for the queen's. Of course, then we would have a lot of people voting for a candidate born on July 3rd or December 26th, just for the long weekends. (Age 8)

Answer key: If you laughed or smiled at some of these, you probably passed and are "life-ready." If you didn't, then be an actuary. (Oops, sorry all my actuary friends, I meant be an accountant.)


You know, I want these kids in my world because if you can't see humor, it's a tougher life for you and those you touch.

As the real Jack Haney explains, "Maybe to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: 'Mankind.' Basically, it's made up of two separate words, mank and ind. What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind."

Five senses does not a nickel make. If you haven't got a sense of humor, nothing tastes, smells, sounds, feels or looks as good... and neither do you.

Most of us are blessed with the ability to see, smell, hear, taste and touch. That's good but definitely not enough. If you are born without a sense of humor, you are handicapped. Really handicapped. It's a tough world out there and to go it without a smile waiting to escape, you are one doomed Scrooge.

We've all known people who have little time or desire to laugh, tell a joke, enjoy a good 'slip on the banana peel' or ever be light-hearted. It's a tough world for a somber person. Have you seen the video Barack Obama just put on line? It's here... and it is absolutely non political, I promise. He makes fun of no one but himself and worth every second, even if you voted for Trump... or especially if you voted for Trump.

Person A

Person B

A test to see if you have a sense of humor is easy. Tell me which is more likely to have a sense of humor, Person A or Person B?

If you chose Person B, you lose on a technicality. That is Shakespeare's fictional character, Falstaff, painted by Eduard Von Grutzner. Person A is Bob Hope on a bad day.

So, where has all the humor gone? When we lost Robin Williams, we lost perhaps the richest example of what a sense of humor can do for all who have a chance to observe and laugh. His death had me searching for the funny side of life... the place where Williams most liked to live. If you click on the link, it will take you to my 2015 post of what funny can look like. Here's a tease:

Robin Williams tells this story: Bono was performing a benefit in Scotland before a crowded house. He started slowly clapping his hands and told his audience, "Every time I clap my hands, an elephant dies in Africa!" A man in the back row stood up and hollered, "THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN, STOP CLAPPING YOUR HANDS!"

In my publishing life, I worked with many very rich and focused people. (Note: I was not one of them.) Some were a pleasure to be with, some though were real pains in the collective ass. Those were the most obvious humorless examples as a group that I can think of. They were the ones who took making more money so seriously that they forgot (or never learned) how to do anything else, let alone find time to laugh. Being humorless though, is far from exclusive to the wealthy, though they are the ones who can try to buy happiness. (Secret tip: it doesn't work.)

A sense of humor is not manifested in a joke. It is a way of looking at the world with a richer eye for human nature's joys and foibles. Sadly though, some just don't seem to have time.

Flashback: Obama to his audience at a press corp roast, "My mother was born in Kansas, my father was born in Kenya, and I was born, of course, in Hawaii," he said — with a wink.

Live life to your principles... WITH GUSTO!  What that does for the soul... that is something that amazes me most.  

Elsie had it right: (with thanks to Fred Ebb and John Kander who created the song and Lisa Minelli who made it come alive in Cabaret.)

What good is  sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,

The book and the broom.

Time for a holiday.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Come taste the wine,

Come hear the band.

Come blow a horn,

Start celebrating;

Right this way,

Your table's waiting.

No use permitting

Some prophet of doom

To wipe every smile away.

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend

Known as Elsie,

With whom I shared

Four sorid rooms in Chelsea.

She wasn't what you'd call

A blushing flower...

As a matter of fact

She rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors

Came to snicker:

Well that's what comes

From too much pills and liquor.

But when I saw her laid out

Like a Queen,

She was the happiest corpse

I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day,

I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

What good is sitting alone

In your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,

The book and the broom.

Time for a holiday.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Come to the Cabaret.

As for me,

I made my mind up back in  Chelsea,

When I go, I'm going like Elsie.

Start by admitting,

From cradle to tomb

Isn't that long a stay.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

Only a Cabaret, old chum,

And I love a Cabaret.

 

: - )

Where has all the humor gone?

Robin Williams... the best!

Where has all the humor gone? Are we so busy worrying that we don't have time to laugh anymore or even think funny thoughts?

Chuckles the Clown of the old Mary Tyler Moore was eulogized as Mary remembered by his favorite line: "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in your pants." Funny or not? I dare you to decide here.

Biggest problem is, to think funny you can't be mad or angry all the time... like most of us seem to be.

The earth is warming, death and killings seem to call for more guns just in case we have to shoot or kill someone ourselves, the stock market controls too many lives, bad guys have all the power of today's killer technology and a mere handful can do more damage than the atomic bomb, omnipresent politics are more divisive than ever, wars never end, refugees flood the earth, the rich get richer, the poor struggle every day, the Congress we elected is one of our least trusted bodies with a primary goal to get reelected... and after all that, we die.

Is that all there is?

Where is the balance? Have we tuned out human nature? We the people... are human... and funny. Sometimes funny ha ha, some times funny stupid. Sometimes they laugh at us, sometimes we laugh at ourselves. I think we have become somberly focused on every negative aspect--real or imagined--that permeates our minds.

In my former life as a magazine publisher, I wrote a column called For Your Information that began in 1962 and continued monthly through 1996. It was a lighthearted attempt to lift spirits and laugh at ourselves. What could be richer than that. I had a section in every column called "Dumb Crooks" and later added "... and Stupid Sounding Lawsuits." It was the best read feature in the magazine and generated the greatest reader response. People love to laugh... they just sometimes forget.

Way before anyone else, I started a trend that resulted in books, stories and television specials of the stupid things we do. Today, Chuck Shepherd has picked up the theme in his News of the Weird that regularly appears in a delightful 24-page monthly newspaper, Funny Times. If you think you might actually enjoy funny news and cartoons (both political and human nature-filled), do yourself a favor and check it out.

Here are a few examples of how funny (and/or stupid and/or ironic or just plain ridiculous) we can be in real life:

• A Nebraska man is in prison for shooting his girlfriend with a pistol. The 22 caliber bullet cut right through her tattoo that read, "Happiness Is A Warm Gun."
• Car-jacking isn't as easy as it seems. When the thief ripped-off the ar of a handicapped driver, he didn't know how to use the hand controls. So he got out of the car and handed the wheel-chair bound victim the keys, then stripped off his ski mask and said, "Just kidding." 
• A woman from Arkansas is suing her college for a classroom exercise of 'musical chairs' that went wrong. She claims in her suit that the game was played wrong because the instructor had asked her and two other students to play with only one chair. The resulting game scramble that ensued, she claimed, cost her two broken fingers and forced her into "years" of surgery and physical therapy. She asserted that "everyone knows Musical Chairs should be two chairs for three people." She asks for $75,000.
• In Australia, a man about to board a 14 hour flight to Vienna was stopped by authorities who discovered he had 35 geckos under his clothes, all taped to his skin. Sounds like the kind of guy I get stuck next to on a plane.
• A recent demonstration of 100 people outside Britain's Parliament to protest legislation to curb psychoactive drugs, passed out gas-filled balloons containing nitrous oxide--laughing gas. The demonstration turned funny as the group took hits from their balloons and "erupted in fits of laughter."
• From the 'New Product' department: A Yom Kipur workaround for "fasting" coffee addicts: caffeine suppositories.
• Extensive research by Animal Behaviour Science magazine cautions pet owners that they may be petting their cats all wrong! Felines seem to prefer face-caressing, especially between the eyes and ears, and are negatively aroused by tail-petting, especially at the base.
• The Welsh language is such a severe mutation of the original English spoken in the Middle Ages that it is barely distinguishable from Klingon. In fact, the Welsh government, responding to queries about a possible UFO sighting near Cardiff airport, playfully issued its galaxy-friendly response in Klingon: "jang dvlDa je due luq." And if you wish to say "I cannot understand in Welsh," simply respond "nad oes modd i ddeall Cymraeg."
• In Arkansas, a man representing himself on a disorderly conduct charge was found guilty. So he took down his pants and mooned the judge. Not one to take a joke, the judge added 5 months for each cheek.

So seriously, laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone, or worse yet, go to jail for 10 months. Sure cure for the frown, the always funny, never blue Funny Times web page

Try not to take yourself so seriously. There's always someone worse off than you.