Today is the birthday of the British Music Hall star Stanley Holloway, who entered the world on October 1st, 1890, and proceeded to work through some amazing years of transition in the world of show business, performing on radio, stage, in TV and movies. Holloway’s greatest fame came as Alfred P. Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” both in the original Broadway production and in the 1964 film.
He strikes a familiar note for us with this old music hall favorite:
This is a classic example of humor made out of something that wouldn’t be funny at all if you actually witnessed it. Here’s another from Mr. Holloway:
Heads chopped off by selfish husbands, children eaten by lions. Har, har, har.
Don’t get the joke?
Guess you had to not be there.
When is it OK to laugh at the misfortune of others?
Trail Baboon 
Morning all!
Timely topic… for the first time in months/years, the teenager and I had “Funniest Home Videos” on last night while we put away clean laundry. This show gives me the creeps, because a good half of all the videos show some mishap that I’m sure was painful and I can’t keep from laughing. I say to myself “would you laugh if you were actually there in person” and I’m not sure I would. So would I have laughed when Albert got eaten. (Probably not until his da commented on his Sunday clothes anyway).
And small quibble with the fabulous “Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm”, which has always been a favorite of mine. On his deathbed, Henry wouldn’t wondered if the ghost was Jane Seymour as she didn’t lose her head… she died after complications from childbirth! (yes, yes, nerd alert!)
Have a great week everybody… for the next few days, I’ll be several hours behind you all, but I’ll try to check in!
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My favorite head tucked moment. When my son was in 6th grade we got to sing the chorus at the Tower of London. No, he was not a great student of history-he was raised on TLGMS.
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Good morning to all,
There are lots of times I might laugh at myself for doing something stupid and hope others would also laugh. My tendency to spill my wine at the table at family gatherings is a source of laughter in our family. It wasn’t too funny when some of the red wine I spilled landed on a light colored rug. There is a llttle laughter when I make a point of keeping my wine glass well away from me at family meals after having had several glasses go over on me at earlier gatherings.
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
MN Firefly’s comments yesterday, citing the Dalai Lama and his attitude of loving kindness towards those who harm us, seems to loosely and generally apply here. If we are to care for those who harm us, then I’m certain that laughing at harm to others also requires some form of loving kindness, as well.
However, this does not tell us how to react when someone’s misfortune is just FUNNY, not to mention well-deserved! After all, King Henry had lived a life of excess and malice towards others that an old bar song that survives 600 years still rings true. It is hard NOT to experience schadenfreude after such a hedonistic life.
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We’ll have to have a good discussion of Henry VIII one of these days. Not a hero, by any means, but much more maligned than he deserved. And don’t even get me started about “The Tudors” that was on this past summer!
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I shudder when I see that sentence construction. LOL
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I was on a roll…wasn’t I? Teenager was in the background nagging me about the speed (or lack thereof) of my packing. And finally a good use for this smart phone…checking the blog while killing time at the airport!!
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I may have missed this, where are you going, Sherrilee?
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I will now take advantage of my right to avoid self-incrimination (especially after all those years at Renaissance Festival where the misfortunes of my fellow cast members were often the source of a good bit…).
Off to Brainerd for the weekend – get to see favorite cousins who are too rarely together so we can celebrate their mom’s 70th birthday (happy birthday Aunt Mary! If I could request something on TLGMS for you, I would…).
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go ahead and we will put it on tb
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Thanks tim – I shall pass this along. 🙂
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Off to the airport… “talk” to you all later.
Oh, and thanks for a great write-up for book club. I don’t know how you remember all that!
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I think it is ok to laugh at such things when the unfortunate victim can laugh with you. My family is full of such stories and we all laugh at ourselves. We have some good fortune in our family with the great news that my daughter-in-law got hired yesterday at a marketing company after being unemployed for two months. Her job at a non-profit went away due to a lack of funding from the ND legislature. Whew! What a relief.
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Good for her!
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Of course, we were expected to laugh at the misfortunes of one person many of us know, Jim Ed Poole. Has anyone heard about how he is doing in retirement? If he could be talked into telling us about what he is doing these days, I think we might find out about some funny misfortunes that have been plaguing him as a retired person.
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When young scholars tip aftward in their chairs and bump their heads on t’ floor after bein’ repeatedly reminded t’ dangers o’ tippin’, I smile t’ meself.
Good Morning, Kids! It’s a lovely day here on the trail. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
(This message brought to you by me and God.)
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Okay, Donna. I will try to do as you say and wish the same for you and God.
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A lot of humor is a mystery to me.
Three of the big sources of humor are pain, embarrassment, and struggling to get something done and having everything go wrong, such as Laurel and Hardy with the piano up the flight of stairs and Lucy withe chocolates. I know this makes me at odds with the world. So I have no idea why anyone watches Lucy or the 3 Stooges. Some of L & H I “get.” it may be that I am a klutz and often do stupid things to hurt or embarrass myself. I believe firmly, as firmly as Steve and I trust our beliefs that is, that everyone else is normal and i am not.
A few great comedians, and most of them say that you simply cannot analyze humor, say the source of much comedy is that it is happening to them and not me.
Azimov had a short story about how nobody knows where all the jokes come from that circulate around. So one man is determined to find the source. He discovers they are planted by aliens who use humor to understand humans. The punchline of the story is that as soon as humans know the point of jokes, it ruins the aliens analysis, so they stop circulating the jokes.
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I think laughter might be a safety valve we’ve been given to cope with stressful times and situations – the flip side of crying, which may be why they are so close and one can turn into the other. I agree it is rather mysterious why some things make us laugh. Heck, maybe it is from the aliens, what do I know? Ummm, what was the question?
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Yes, I think humor is used to deal with stress. Also, it is used to get people into the right mood. Speakers at farm meetings and some other meetings often start off their talks with a joke. I was suprised that I was able come up with some jokes, when I spoke at some farmers meetings, which brought a laugh when I told them.
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I find it very satifsying to make others laugh – why is that?
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When we smile, the muscle action triggers something that shoots endorphins into our brains. Sometimes I assign 2 minutes of nonstop smiling to dysphoric clients to improve mood.
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heard of laugh yoga or laugh therapy. its wonderful try feeling crappy after the endorphins get synapsin
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Remember the “game” from the 70s where you lie down in a sort of zigzag layout with your head on your neighbor’s stomach? The first person says “Ha”: the second says “Ha ha”; the third “Ha ha ha” and so on. Soon everyone is laughing hysterically – it really worked.
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Fieldtrip? We ought to try this.
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“synapsin'” belongs in the dictionary.
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Duly noted.
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I have thought of looking up one of the laugh yoga groups in town. I think there is a Monday evening group at one of the churches nearby. Makes me think of the saying I may have picked up from one of you: you may as well laugh, crying only makes you wet.
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Can you achieve the synapsin’ endorphins by typing smiley faces? 🙂 🙂 🙂
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😦
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Well, is it or isn’t it working? :-), :-), :-)!
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The intent behind the laughter… that makes ALL the difference.
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Yes.
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“I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades. Especially if your teammates are bad guessers.”
how do you make a dead beay float?
i1 part dead baby one part ice cream one part ginger ale
what has two legs and bleeds?
half a dog
chevy chase again and again
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. ~e.e. cummings
Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others
i am a big sick humor fan not so much laughing at otehres misfortune. i have an issac asimov book that diasect jokes and what makes us laugh, i think laughing at another is a option vs crying as others noted today but making a joke out of it there is an art form. americas funniest videos not so much, who was the guy who just died after making the movies where he slams into trees on his bicycle and falls of roofs of houses and other really hilarious video clips. broken everything finally killed him . what a riot huh?
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WOT: Just tried the Eggplant Curry (I believe that was from PJ) and it is fabulous.
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Eggplant Curry–now that’s funny!
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We thought it was terrific, too.
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A humorous blending of high and low tech: I was typing away or trying to, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a little black icon running around in tight circles across the bottom of my screen. In panic I thought “Damn, I’ve got a virus. What kind of weird bug is this? I’m going to save right now before I lose what I am writing.”
So I closed the program quickly, but it was still there.
It remained there until I shooed the little black fly off my screen.
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Bugs!
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Morning–
We had supper with friends Friday night that involved much laughter. Some of it probably inappropriate but some of it also just from simple body language from our daughter. It was simply her reaction to something that caught us all off guard.
Kind of a fascinating topic why we laugh at the things we laugh at…
WOT-
I was in a cemetery yesterday looking up long lost relatives. One stone, white (sandstone?) and different from all the others simply said the person’s name, then “Minnesota, PVT. SATC Dunwoody Institute, 1927”
Does that mean he trained at Dunwoody? For the military? Or did he die there? Anyone know about such things?
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Ben, I think SATC stands for Students’ Army Training Corps, so it’s possible that he trained at Dunwoody Institute while enrolled in that program.
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you know why the bury polacks face down with the butts sticking out of the ground?
so their friends will have a place to park their bicycles.
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What did Ed Gein give his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day?
A box of farmer fannies.
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ooohhhh
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You started it.
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Snort!
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Oh ick – I just looked up Ed Gein – you mean Silence of the Lambs wasn’t just someone’s warped imagination?
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You mean you didn’t have Ed Gein jokes in Iowa?!!
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my first wife was from milwaukee and her father was fasinated by the ed gein story and went to the trial almost every day it was on.
ed had a wallet made of foreskin, rub it and it turned into an overnighter.
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The jokes were probably there somewhere, but they went right by me…
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Well, just to elevate the conversation somewhat, (after I have cleaned up my snorted coffee) today our Lutheran church cancelled services and the whole congregation is going out to do service projects. My husband and I will be washing windows and doing general maintenance and cleaning at an Alzheimer’s facility. I will be In Bismarck until Wednesday for some family therapy training and won’t have computer access, so have a good three days, baboons.
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When my son and I were in a rough non-communicative phase, he made the first move to rapprochement by sending me a dead baby joke. I obviously skipped some of the parenting lessons.
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Whatever works, you know? 🙂
Our son dropped a bomb on us last week. Said he’s thinking of joining the military at some point. (He just started college this fall). Having never said anything about this before it was rather a surprise. Not that there’s anything wrong with joining the military, I just didn’t expect it from him. And Mom is NOT happy about this! (Which ties it back into Beth-Ann’s comment.)
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Could he get in the bands etc. in the military?
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Did he say why he wants to join?
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BiR, we’re still discussing this with him but he hasn’t given us clear reasons yet. Mostly just a feeling of wanting to help people; which doesn’t surprise us, but in the military??
So Clyde, a military band is not what he’s interested in…
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Ben, is the Peace Corps an option?
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