Huckster, I skimmed your reference. I will, of course, have to go back and read it more closely.
fresco, What does Freud know, right?
Letty,..."My cousin Vinnie" was one of the funniest movies ever made, period. To h*ll with what thw AFI thinks.
Hey, Boo. Never see your handle that I don't think of "To Kill a Mocking Bird"....
Goodnight all, from the Land of the buckin' ears.
It's been so long since I saw that movie, I miss the connection.....
BTW,......A toast, to your WORLD CHAMPION BUCKIN' EARS!
Boo, Boo Radley was the true "mocking bird" in the book and the movie. He had been a recluse so long because of misadventure and circumstance. He came out of hiding to save two young children who were attacked by a mindless nobody. That book; that movie; a must read.
I gotcha'' now. The Brock Peters character, if I'm not mistaken.
Hey, boo.
Boo Radley was played by Robert Duval. It was his first performance. You're thinking about the black guy maybe.
Hey, I just read that purring was a reproduced genetic trait in cats because it has beneficial health benefits. So, laughter may be our way of purring?
Hey, LittleK. That's an interesting footnote. If man is rat-like, then women can be cat-like
hey, who said man is rat-like? Anyway, men laugh too, no?
Just making an allusion to experimental psychology, LittleK. One critic observed that the only thing one may deduce from rat experiments, is how rat-like man is
and as BoGoWo has said, men don't laugh, they guffaw.
Letty - actually read a long exposition somewhere of the similarities between rats and humans: maturation and reproduction timetables, murder, genocide (one subspecies will wipe out another one), all sorts of lovely little things. Our buddies, rats are.
And a room full of laughing people has always reminded me somewhat of a group of shrieking chimps. (Not meant to put down laughter; I think chimps are great, especially when they ride around in cars and wear clothes. Now that's funny...)
IMHO, laughter is caused by ridiculous situations of any kind, by contradictions between the causes and results. And of course, sex, politics and bowel movement were the most popular funny items...
I watched "My Cousin Vinny" last night on TV! How's that for coincidence? Excellent, excellent, excellent.
I also remember laughing so hard I almost wet myself when I went to the movies recently. I'm not sure it was so much the movie itself as my girlfriend and I being in a silly mood. You know how you get started laughing at one thing and then suddenly everything is absolutely hilarious? People were displeased because I am sure they missed a couple of lines here and there with our snorting and hiccuping. Good job we didn't eat before the movie or I might have disemboweled myself!
There's a thing you can do with a group of people: everybody lays on the floor, in such a way that the back of everybody's head is resting on somebody else's stomach (or diaphragm, really). It doesn't take long before one person starts laughing, and for some reason this makes the person who's head is on their belly laugh, and so forth. Everybody ends up laughing, and I'm pretty sure it's more than just the incongruity of the situation. (Why is laughter ever contagious, for that matter?)
It's empathy. I think it may be part of human nature to emulate or 'take on' the emotions of those around us.
If, for example, you are at the funeral of a person who you do not know personally, you can empathise with the people who are grieving and your mood is one of sadness.
Just as laughing, when you don't fully understand why you are doing so, can occur with the onset of another chuckler in your midst.
We really are silly creatures.
Yeah, I can tell from your picture.
Okay I forgot to comb my hair this morning - Jeez!
