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Comedy: August 09, 2006 Issue [#1179]

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Comedy


 This week:
  Edited by: Holly Jahangiri Author IconMail Icon
                             More Newsletters By This Editor  Open in new Window.

Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter

“Sex education may be a good idea in the schools, but I don't believe the kids should be given homework.”

--Bill Cosby

“God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.”

--Garrison Keillor

“The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.”

--Moliere




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Letter from the editor

Don’t Have to be Brain-Damaged to Prefer Slapstick
But It Helps...

Which is funnier: A long joke that builds to an involved play on words, or someone stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the nose by the handle? Do you prefer a sly double-entendre, or a cream pie smooshed in someone’s face and sloughed off with a squirt of seltzer water? A number of studies since 1999 have shown that the ability to recognize and appreciate a subtle punch line requires complex, higher brain functions such as abstract reasoning, mental agility, and functional memory that are associated with a healthy frontal lobe. These studies also show that, as we age, we lose some of that frontal lobe functionality. We can still appreciate a good joke as we grow older - so long as we can understand it.

“People With Brain Injury To Frontal Lobe Don't Get Punch Lines -- Prefer Slapstick Humor!” University of Toronto. ScienceDaily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/03/990325105542.htm; last accessed July 29, 2006).

“Better laughing through chemistry,” Liz Langley. Orlando Weekly (http://www.orlandoweekly.com/columns/story.asp?id=1422; last accessed July 29, 2006).

I used to think slapstick was a “guy thing.” Hmmmm…now that I think about it, that makes sense. No - not because men are all brain-damaged by nature, but because their brains do function differently from women’s.

Many studies have shown that men tend to be better at mathematics and spatial reasoning while women outdo men in verbal and language skills. … But women outperformed men in a test of verbal fluency conducted by Wei-li Chang and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md.

“Monkeys show gender differences in toy preferences like humans, research finds,” Robert S. Boyd. Knight Ridder Tribune (December 12, 2005; from Arbiter Online, http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/12/12/439d0e637b566; last accessed July 29, 2006).

But back to comedy (the article does state that men and women achieve similar IQ scores and abilities using different areas of the brain - there’s no appreciable gender difference in intelligence, just in the way we process information).

Brain images showed that the language center on the left side of the brain lit up more in women than in men. This may explain why men appreciate one-liners and slapstick, while women tend to enjoy more complicated stories and funny situations, Reiss said.

Ibid.

Okay, guys - before you complain that we women laugh at you too much, consider this research out of London, that proposes laughter as a facet of “social dominance”:

When the laughter researcher Robert Provine, the professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, eavesdropped in clubs and bars to find exactly what happens when people laugh, he discovered that it is something women do in response to men. When talking to men, women will laugh 127 per cent more than their male audience, while men talking to a female audience will laugh 7 per cent less than their audience.

“Laughter, like many other social activities, is bound up with status and male display,” Provine says. “Top people don’t laugh; you laugh at what they say.”

“We’re Funny in the Brain,” Jerome Burne. Health, TimesOnline (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1334195,00.html; last accessed July 29, 2006).




Editor's Picks

 Convention 2006-Writers Gone Wild Open in new Window. (18+)
Just a recap of Convention 2006, from one of the quiet people's POV.
#1136349 by Midnight Dawn Author IconMail Icon

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This item number is not valid.
#1136323 by Not Available.

We all have deadline pressure. Some of it’s realistic, some…not so much. How would you deal with it?

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1126272 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1119006 by Not Available.

This one makes me really glad of the differences between men and women, and grateful to those who accept them without too much question:

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
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#1103028 by Not Available.

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
This item number is not valid.
#1109326 by Not Available.

 The Tool Collector Open in new Window. (ASR)
Every man has a story like this... some of us are still writing them!
#1111340 by Brokensong Author IconMail Icon

Having once worked in the airline industry and having flown waaaaay too many times during the month of July, I couldn’t get through this next piece without laughing so hard I had to stop reading. I’ll let you decide if I’m just burnt out on air travel and slightly hysterical, or if it really is “laugh out loud funny.”

 Invalid Item Open in new Window.
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#1137766 by Not Available.



 
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Ask & Answer

Wren Author IconMail Icon writes:

I considered sneaking out in the night and adding some graffiti to two signs I passed on the way to the grocery today. One is in front of some chemical tanks and says, "Tanks" "Tanks" "Tanks." I want to go paint, "You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome."

Too tempting, isn't it? *Laugh* Your second one is likely to get us both in trouble, but I thought it was funny… -- Jessiebelle


Marguerite Author IconMail Icon writes:

"Chocolate soup" sounds better than "burnt, can't-get-it-off-the-pan" chocolate! One of my best friends and I tried to make fudge for Christmas presents one year when we were roommates in college. We did it on a day when we also made five different batches of cookies, and by the time we got to the fudge, we were dead tired. We followed the recipie exactly...but when we poured it in the pan, it wouldn't set and tasted weird, like burnt chocolate toast. We did finally give some of it away, but my boyfriend ate most of it!

Some of us just aren’t that picky about our chocolate. *Laugh* -- Jessiebelle



What a delightful chicken soup/chocolate soup newsletter! I am a lousy cook, but I was inspired by the humor and simplicity of the whole-chicken soup recipe, and, frankly, the only way I can cook is to sing, so possibly I could do this. I even have a can of College Inn chicken broth in my cupboard. All I lack is the noodles and the whole chicken. And, surely, if I would ever attempt fudge, I would get soup! Thanks for the fun!

So, have you tried it yet? -- Jessiebelle


Alimohkon Author IconMail Icon writes:

I got your chicken soup, but I just wonder why you had to discard the "inedibles" in the chicken. Here in the Philippines, we eat everything in the chicken. (Of course, not the feathers.)

“…not the feathers”? Hah… I know better. I read "Invalid EntryOpen in new Window.! -- Jessiebelle


Kenzie Author IconMail Icon writes:

Another funny one, Jessiebelle™. Food and recipes can be quite comical. I do think sometimes our older relatives enjoy leaving out important things when they pass on recipes.

Sad to think that’s one of the few entertainments left to the elderly, some days, isn’t it? My grandmother also delighted in calling squirrels chipmunks, just because it irritated my aunt and made her think her mother was senile (well before she truly was). -- Jessiebelle



Jessie,
Thank you for a great newsletter. You brought back memories of the Nancy Drew Cookbook my grandmother gave me and the intriguing results of a recipe for Peanut Butter Soup. Needless to say my mother was kind enough not to force me to finish my lunch that day. :)
Nighala

I used to have a Winnie the Pooh cookbook. I tried to write my own version, using nothing but tomatoes and honey in the recipes… -- Jessiebelle



I have tons of wayward cooking stories from my own lifetime. Thanks for sharing your mother's blunders with Writing.Com, Holly.

Maybe we should collaborate on a book! *Wink* -- Jessiebelle


Vivian Author IconMail Icon writes:

Jessie, I have a recipe for microwave fudge that is sooooo easy, and it tastes like the old fashioned kind. Ummm ummm good. Want me to pass it on to you?

Oh, yum… I think I may actually be able to pull that off - thanks, Viv! That looks wonderful! -- Jessiebelle

By the way, catwoman Author IconMail Icon’s fudge really is worth the 70 dollars a baggie elizm446 paid for it at the Convention. *Laugh*


dogfreek21 writes:

I have the perfect recipe for fudge! It never fails.

Ingredients

1 car
some money
1 driver

Directions

Drive to Walmart.
Buy some fudge.
Come home.

Eat it. (sometimes 'come home' and 'eat it' change positions in the directions)

Oh, dear. You and I think too much alike. That doesn’t bode well for you, Dog Freek. -- Jessiebelle


Ms Kimmie Author IconMail Icon writes:

Jessiebelle™

I can only imagine how your mother and my sister could butcher a dinner party if given the chance. My sister tries hard, but she is the worst cook I've ever met. You know it's dinner at her house because the dinner bell summons us all to help clear the smoke from the room and get the bell to shut off. Either that or someone manages to get the battery out so we can eat her burnt offerings in peace - before they get stone cold.

Kimmer, when my husband and I were dating, I lived in a tiny apartment - 400 sq. feet - and I knew his steak was done to his liking after the third time the smoke alarm went off. I’m sure the neighbors wished I dated a vegetarian. --Jessiebelle


Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon writes:

Please God! The opening story isn't comedy! It's a slightly sentimental, vaguely amusing tale about someone reminiscing about his mother! This is comedy if you're senile, and a good laugh might possibly give you a heart-attack! Tell me where the comedy is there, please?! The fact that this sentimental drivel is obviously imoportant to someone (the writer and the demented) is not enough to warrant this verbal diarroeha appearing here!

Not everyone can be a fan. But it’s not nice to fling the **** AT the fans, just to watch it hit. --Jessiebelle


Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon writes:

If this should appear anywhere, it should be in a letter from a grandmother to a caring and slightly put upon daughter who puts up with this nonsense becuase of a familial obligation. All well and good in the right circumstances, but so far removed from comedy as to be comparable to an amoeba and an accountant. Where did you get this pestilencial wordplay from? An old people's home? But this in a family newsletter! Not comedy!

It’s “pestilential.” And damn, I really thought I could get by with recycling this for my community service newsletter for the old folks’ home and no one would notice. (I only have 300 hours to go. Don’t ask.) Did you hear the one about the amoeba who walked into the accountant’s office…? (Anyone want to attempt to finish that one?) --Jessiebelle


Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon writes:

I therefore suggest a challenge to the comedy editor's - find something genuinely funny - maybe five pieces of work and e-mail them to as many people on this sight (whether they request them or not - deletion is only a key) as possible, and ask them if any of them are genuinely funny (not chucklingly funny becuase 'granny did that once back in the old days' lets tell the children and bore them bloody senseless - I mean actual laughter funny)!!!

If it comes back and it's granny humour, I shall admit my fault and not darken this letter with my writing again!

Otherwise don't burden us all with this misnamed dirge that is the antithesis of humour.

Sincerely,
Johnny66

I’m not going to start spamming members for your amusement, Johnny, but I will take you up on your challenge. Dear Readers, submitted for your opinion (are these “actual laughter funny”?)

 How The West Was Found And Found Open in new Window. (13+)
Captain Idaho was terrible fighter in the Wild West...
#1112631 by Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon

 Short Stories Open in new Window. (13+)
Lots of short stories (v.short) with nonsense plots (if they have one)
#1102264 by Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon

 A Day In The Office Open in new Window. (E)
This is the first chapter of madness in many
#1101547 by Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon

 The Industrial Revolution Open in new Window. (E)
This is an absurdist piece designed to entertain for a minute.
#1101499 by Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon

I didn’t bust a gut, Johnny, but then I barely cracked a smile at “The Bald Soprano,” either - and you, sir, are no Eugene Ionesco. --Jessiebelle


Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon writes:

And graffiti as an art form?! Has the Louvre been eradicated by a misplaced missile so that we're scrabbling around for crap (literally) from toilets to fill the vacuum left by the distruction of real art? Are you, indeed, mental? I don't think I've found any comedy in these comedy newsletters, this makes them more depressing than a day at Disneyland. With added Mickey Mouse.

You’re just angry, still, over the fact that Duchamp's Fountain beat out works by Picasso and Matisse to be named the most influential work of modern art. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4059997.stm) Sadly, I have to agree with you, if that’s the case… --Jessiebelle


Johnny66 Author IconMail Icon writes:

Oh, by the *** **** way, a funny piece of intellectual graffiti is the classic,

God is dead
Nietzsche

and underneath was written:

Nietzsche is dead,
God.

Now that is funny and intellectual - But it isn't nothing!!!!!!!!!

Again,
Johnny66

Ahh, so even you are not immune. Gets pretty boring staring at the undecorated wall in front of the urinal (art) doesn’t it, Johnny? --Jessiebelle


karabu gets the last laugh:

*Laugh* *Laugh*



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