What makes someone laugh tells a great deal about a person. At least that’s what some people say.
But I’m not so sure. When it comes to my taste in comedy, I’m not easily pigeonholed because I find so many things amuse me.
I get a kick out of slapstick, but I also enjoy dry humor from comedians like Bob Newhart or Steven Wright. I find some of James Thurber’s short stories to be hysterical, but I also can get chuckles from a variety of comic strips.
I can be entertained by a sitcom like “Gilligan’s Island,” which was pretty lowbrow, but I also like spending time with something more subtle, such as “A Man on the Inside,” a current streaming series starring Ted Danson.
My list of best TV sitcoms includes “Green Acres,” “Taxi” and “Seinfeld.” The first few seasons of “MASH” are some of the best television episodes of all time, and I continued to watch it for the rest of its long run, but it was never the same after Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson left.
My family’s one can’t-miss sitcom currently airing is “Abbott Elementary.”
I have roared at British sitcoms such as “The IT Crowd.” There are episodes of this show that I would rank as some of the top television entertainment I have ever seen. Other sitcoms from Great Britain I’ve loved include “Fawlty Towers,” “The Young Ones” and “The Vicar of Dibley.”
I realize that just bringing up a few examples of what I find funny makes me a target.
I remember catching a rerun of “F Troop,” the '60s sitcom set in the Old West, and my mother pausing briefly to watch a scene and then tell me something like, “I can’t believe you’re laughing at something this stupid.”
Everybody’s a critic.
To that end, I recall getting involved in a group argument during one of my Coast Guard Reserve weekends in the 1980s. During a break, several of us younger Coasties were talking about how much we liked Richard Pryor. At some point, another guy, possibly the youngest of the bunch, piped in saying he thought Pryor was vulgar and he hated him.
This was not a popular view among the majority of the 20-somethings participating in the discussion. To this day, Pryor is my favorite stand-up comedian.
Almost as good as Pryor, to me, was George Carlin. Carlin’s “Jammin’ in New York” may be my top comedy album, if I were to rank them.
I have been a fan of Steve Martin since the 1970s. I was among about 20,000 people who saw him perform stand-up Nov. 19, 1978, at what was then called the Checkerdome. I remember having a great time. He’s been great in the TV show “Only Murders in the Building,” still in its first run.
Bill Hicks was a terrific stand-up who died too young. Rodney Dangerfield often had me in stitches. In recent years, I’ve learned how good comics like Ali Wong and Leeanne Morgan are through YouTube. Dave Chappelle is a blast, and I loved his show on Comedy Central that aired about 20 years ago.
I often talk about my No. 1 film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” The satire on the King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable hardly requires an advanced degree to understand. Yet, one time while having a get-together to watch the flick, I remember one guest saying the humor must be over that person’s head.
Are you kidding me? In the film, they do things like tying coconuts to sparrows and catapulting farm animals out of a castle. Do you really need that explained to you?
Peter Sellers made some fall-down funny movies as Inspector Clouseau, with my favorite the second in the series, “A Shot in the Dark.” He also did “The Party” as an Indian actor who screws up an expensive scene, then gets invited to a big-time Hollywood party by mistake.
I must include “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” a classic comedy from 1963 with a cast of virtually every comedic actor and actress around at the time. It is a scream.
Now, I do not laugh at everything.
In fact, there are plenty of comedians that make me cringe. Kathy Griffin and Pauly Shore come to mind immediately. I also never understood the popularity of Dane Cook.
And yet, the alleged comic I least want to see or hear would be Red Buttons. Not familiar with him? Well, he was an old-time comedian who would pop up on talk shows. He’d do a stand-up bit, come chat with the host, then hang around to chime in while the other guests tried to talk to the host. He was like nails on a chalkboard to me.
That said, I enjoy many of the comedians of times past. I would laugh at George Burns on talk shows. Don Rickles could just take over a room.
Jack Benny’s radio show was incredible. I learned of it by hearing clips of it on the old “Saturday Morning Comedy Show” hosted by Jack Carney on KMOX radio.
All of this leads me to what I believe is the great divider in tastes in humor… The Three Stooges.
If I pass by a TV showing a short by the great comedy troupe, I must stop what I’m doing to catch a few minutes of it. I may have seen “Three Little Beers,” a short in which the Stooges destroy a golf course, dozens of times, but I still laugh at it whenever I’m exposed to even a few moments of it.
I’m generalizing here, but I find that many more men than women appreciate the talents of the Stooges.
Oh, you’ll find a rare female who will look forward to seeing the Stooges. However, in my experience you are much more likely to encounter a guy than a gal anxious to sit through three hours of viewing the antics of the Stooges.
Not all Stooges are created equal. For many of us, the combination of Moe, Larry and Curly is the best. The shorts with Shemp are not bad. The later offerings with Joe Besser and Curly Joe DeRita pale in comparison to the earlier versions.
So, there you are. I’m sure I’ve left out a number of humorous things that I’ll regret later, but this covers a pretty wide scope of where I get my laughs.