Marty on Humor

I like humor. Why, you might even say that I enjoy jocularity. But what's the best type humor?

No red blooded American male will ever say that he doesn't like the slapstick of the Three Stooges. Not. One. But the slapstick towards the end of Home Alone (the first one) is about the most inspired I've ever seen.

I like farce, and both overstated and understated jokes. One of my favorite lines is still, "Wait a minute, Doc. You're telling me you made a time machine...out of a DeLorean?" from Back to the Future. Silly humor can be fun if well done and without self-conscience. I think of the Canadians Wayne and Shuster in that sense. Loved their shtick. Did you know that they were Ed Sullivan's guests more often than any other performers? It's true.

Bob Newhart gets my vote for great understated humor. His stuttering and stammering are priceless. For farcical, outlandish humor it's either Monty Python's Flying Circus or the Marx Brothers. I give Python points for the often inspired cleverness of their insanity (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!), but the Marx Brothers get the nod on comic timing. Even though it's been done a million, jillion times, you have to see Harpo and Groucho doing the mirror gag in Duck Soup. I still laugh out loud at it. Hell, I'm laughing out loud thinking about it.

Then there's unintended humor. Look up The Room or At Long Last Love for a taste of that. Sometimes people are so serious that it becomes funny. As the then movie critic Michael Medved said, "You haven't lived until you've seen the powder room scene in At Long Last Love." He's right. It's the pinnacle of unintended humor.

Yes, I enjoy jocularity. How about you?

Can I Trust Groucho?

I received an email from, I am not making this up up, the law firm of Wagstaff and Cartmell. It deals with the possibility that William Cosgriff Sales may be entitled to around $275, and perhaps a thousand dollars or more, as part of a class action suit settlement against a company which processes credit and debit cards. I don't know what to think.

In the first place, we haven't used the company since 2013 when Dad passed away and I dissolved his sales business and formed mine. So William Cosgriff Sales hasn't existed since December 31, 2013. Do you think I can I get that money? It's no windfall, and I would give it to me Mom of course since anything from that era, being Dad's entitlement, would now be hers. She would be tickled just to get it, even if she didn't really understand where it came from.

But more than that. Can I trust a law firm named after one of Groucho Marx' most famous characters, Quincy Adams Wagstaff? He was a college professor in the Marx Brothers college romp Horse Feathers. Here's a clip of his famous little ditty: 

Professor Wagstaff Song

What do you think? Should I go for it?

A variation on an old Marx Brothers routine

I wasn't really sure what to title this post. Free Ice? didn't seem right. The thousand percent profit margin is a bit wordy. What I chose is a bit too cryptic. Oh well.

The things you see on the road. A party store I drove past in a small town the other day had a sign out front advertising its current sales. That's common enough. Some of the prices in fact looked pretty good. But perhaps the best sale on display was: 0 lb. ice for $1. For a buck you could get no ice.

Yes, I know that's not what it meant. I'm sure that the number 1 which was surely in front of the 0 had fallen off. But that's simply not funny, is it? And obvious, rational explanations make Jack a dull boy. Further, they avoid the next natural question.

Could you afford to actually get ice?

Worth the read

Awhile back I stumbled upon the type of thing one often stumbles upon on the Internet: a list (this one by Esquire magazine) of 80 books in no particular order which Esquire insists everyone ought to read. To my delight (I can be delighted rather easily it seems) I found several books on the list which I actually have read: The Things They Carried by one Tim O'Brien, a rather grotesque Vietnam War tale which I thought far too full of itself; Jack London's The Call of The Wild, which I remember little of except that they made us read it in Grade 7; The Killer Angels, a simply marvelous historical fiction from Michael Shaara wrapped around the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War (I gained a great respect and admiration for the Confederate General Longstreet after reading it); and Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff about the Mercury astronauts, where I similarly learned to like Deke Slayton. On the list too though I have not read it was David McCullough's The Great Bridge, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. As he did such fine jobs with biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman I find myself interested in how he might make bridge construction an exciting read

But what most delighted me to find on list was, of all things, a little comedy which I first read after my wife, who had had it assigned to her in an English course at the University of Detroit, complained to me that neither she nor the rest of the class understood. So I borrowed it immediately. Five pages in I was laughing so hard I was, as the cliche insists, crying. Or hurting, as both adjectives are suggested by like cliches. The book, which by one of those strange intersections of time and circumstance I just happen to be rereading just now, is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

It really is very funny in its very English way. There are passages which until yet I laugh at for so long and so hard that I have to stop reading for minutes at a time. Then I have trouble getting back to the text because the funniest moments just keep coming back to me. Yes, it is that good. That is, if you like dry, droll, yet still somehow over the top English humor.

And you should, you know. The English have a delightful way of melding sublime understatement, surreal juxtaposition, and outlandish slapstick in hilariously satisfying ways. A wonderful example from Lucky Jim is a passage where an absent minded driver comes near to a head on collision with a bus. His passenger, the actual lucky Jim, describes the incident in harrowing comedic detail, finishing with a description of the obviously excited and screeching bus driver, "...his mouth opening and shutting vigorously.' I'm chuckling at it still.

The closest American approximations are the Marx Brothers and, believe it or not, Bob Newhart. The English, they know humor. Americans should get to know English humor better too.

And I'm not talking Benny Hill either, you walking primates out there.

Lucky Jim? Lucky Marty

Awhile back I stumbled upon the type of thing one often stumbles upon on the Internet: a list (this one by Esquire magazine) of 80 books in no particular order which Esquire insists everyone ought to read. To my delight (I can be delighted rather easily it seems) I found several books on the list which I actually have read: The Things They Carried by one Tim O'Brien, a rather grotesque Vietnam War tale which I thought far too full of itself; Jack London's The Call of The Wild, which I remember little of except that they made us read it in Grade 7; The Killer Angels, a simply marvelous historical fiction from Michael Shaara wrapped around the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War (I gained a great respect and admiration for the Confederate General Longstreet after reading it); and Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff about the Mercury astronauts, where I similarly learned to like Deke Slayton. On the list too though I have not read it was David McCullough's The Great Bridge, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. As he did such fine jobs with biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman I find myself interested in how he might make bridge construction an exciting read. But what most delighted me to find on list was, of all things, a little comedy which I first read after my wife, who had had it assigned to her in an English course at the University of Detroit, complained to me that neither she nor the rest of the class understood. So I borrowed it immediately. Five pages in I was laughing so hard I was, as the cliche insists, crying. Or hurting, as both adjectives are suggested by like cliches. The book, which by one of those strange intersections of time and circumstance I just happen to be rereading just now, is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

It really is very funny in its very English way. There are passages which until yet I laugh so long and hard at that I have to stop reading for minutes at a time. Then I have trouble getting back to the text because the funniest moments just keep coming back to me. Yes, it is that good. If you like dry, droll, yet still somehow over the top English humor.

And you should, you know. The English have a delightful way of melding sublime understatement, surreal juxtaposition, and outlandish slapstick in hilariously satisfying ways. A wonderful example from Lucky Jim is a passage where an absent minded driver comes near to a head on collision with a bus. His passenger, the actual lucky Jim, describes the incident in harrowing comedic detail, finishing with a description of the obviously excited and screeching bus driver, "...his mouth opening and shutting vigorously.' I'm chuckling at it still.

The closest American approximations are the Marx Brothers and, believe it or not, Bob Newhart. The English, they know humor. Americans should get to know English humor better too.

And I'm not talking Benny Hill either, you walking primates out there.

Lucky Jim and English Humour

I see that I haven't posted a blog since the Twenty-Third of August, so I decided that I had better get back to it. A thousand inquiring readers want to hear what Marty has to say, he says knowingly (foolishly) to himself. And not out loud he hopes, even though he is alone, for that would still somehow be embarrassing.

I stumbled this morning upon the type of thing one often stumbles upon on the Internet, a list (this one by Esquire magazine) of 80 books in no particular order which Esquire insists everyone ought to read. To my delight (I can be delighted rather easily it seems) I found several books on the list which I actually have read: The Things They Carried by one Tim O'Brien, a rather grotesque Vietnam War tale which I thought far too full of itself; Jack London's The Call of The Wild, which I remember little of except that they made us read it in Grade 7; The Killer Angels, a simply marvelous historical fiction from Michael Shaara wrapped around the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War (I gained a great respect and admiration for the Confederate General Longstreet after reading it); and Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff about the Mercury astronauts, where I similarly learned to like Deke Slayton. On the list too though I have not read it was David McCullough's The Great Bridge, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. As he did such fine jobs with biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman I find myself interested in how he might make bridge construction an exciting read. But what most delighted me to find on list was of all things a little comedy which I first read after my wife, who had had it assigned to her in an English course at the University of Detroit, complained to me that neither she nor the rest of the class understood. So I borrowed it immediately. Five pages in I was laughing so hard I was, as the cliche insists, crying. Or hurting, as both adjectives are suggested by like cliches. The book, which by one of those strange intersections of time and circumstance I just happen to be rereading just now, is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

It really is very funny in its very English way. There are passages which until yet I laugh so long and hard at that I have to stop reading for minutes at a time. Then I have trouble getting back to the text because the funniest moments just keep coming back to me. Yes, it is that good. If you like dry, droll, over the top English humor.

And you should, you know. The English have a delightful way of melding sublime understatement, surreal juxtaposition, and outlandish slapstick in hilariously satisfying ways. A wonderful example from Lucky Jim is a passage where an absent minded driver comes near to a head on collision with a bus. His passenger, the actual lucky Jim, describes the incident in harrowing comedic detail, finishing with a description of the obviously excited and screeching bus driver, "...his mouth opening and shutting vigorously.' I'm chuckling at it still.

The closest American approximations are the Marx Brothers and, believe it or not, Bob Newhart. The English, they know humor. Americans should get to know English humor better too.

And I'm not talking Benny Hill either, you walking primates out there.