Writes Roz Chast in "Roz Chast on George Booth’s Cartoons/Every object is lovingly drawn, in a way that only Booth could draw them. Every detail enhances the scene" (The New Yorker).
That reminds me, I recently laughed hysterically — way way too much — at the tiniest little non-joke on the old TV show that Meade puts on sometimes, "Leave It to Beaver." Somehow, the father (Ward) saw fit to ask his wife (June), "What is it, mattress-turning day?" It is a non-brain response, like an orgasm....
Posts
33 comments:
In my experience, the best laughs, the ones where the stomach muscles will literally ache because of how long and hard a person laughs, are the ones shared spontaneously shared with a group of friends that occur unplanned and organically. I believe this despite also believing the best jokes are the ones that are artfully crafted, usually by professional comedians or writers, that I presume go through many revision and editing processes.
Roz knows funny.
I had that experience yesterday when I heard that television reporter say Elon Musk's new "X Formerly Twitter" handle out loud. (Probably because when I read the name, it didn't click. Had to hear it.)
I'm not a fan of a sudden sneeze or a belly laugh. I've given birth 4 times.
Absurdity, surrealism, long cons, all make me laugh the most. Also, sleep deprivation can trigger lotsa laughter at almost anything. Once in college I was going on 48 hours awake when a classmate took a long sip from a water fountain and said, "Cold water. It is as good as great sex. I wonder what they'd be like together." I fell to the floor laughing. True story.
Nobody drew a bull terrier better than Booth.
"What are we going to do Ward?" "What we always do--sit tight and wait for the explosion."
His interiors had his trademark bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The other day I was talking to someone about the democrat's obsession with allowing Men (pretending to be women) inside women's private spaces - like women's locker rooms.
He said to me something that made me laugh...
"leave your penis at the door... or IN the door."
Mime trapped in a women's restroom
Sometimes I make myself laugh. It's a filthy habit.
Bergan and water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZalpM9GNNk
That cartoon works.
A lot of brain work goes into orgasm. And negatively, you can think of baseball.
A "non-brain response"? So where does what claims to be Roz Chast's sense of humor reside, in her big toe? (the one on the left foot, naturally)
It's interesting that Althouse chose to illustrate her commentary on Roz Chast, a boomer, with a cartoon by Charles Booth, a WWII Marine Corps veteran, part of the Greatest Generation that spawned one of history's most regrettable age group cohorts. (Face it, we suck.)
Booth was an excellent cartoonist published by a magazine known for excellence, back when its owners paid smart people to create intellectually stimulating stuff. (Today, the Nooyawker pays nincompoops to create brain candy for other nincompoops that soothes their haunting cognizance of their imbecility.) (Don't you just love my parentheticals?)
Now, I'm not accusing Roz Chast of imbecility or even minor-league battiness, I'm just slightly disappointed in her work as a cartoonist. Instead, I think she's a a type of Erma Bombeck humorist who roughly illustrates her witty anecdotes and musings. I base that on the hand scrawled text with which usually she frames her drawings. The joke is in the text. The drawing is the straight man. By himself, Bud Abbott was only slightly drollish. (on a good day with a following wind) (I perceived it was time for some bracketed disparagement.) However, paired with Lou Costello, he was funny, or rather they were funny. (Separately, they were a bore and a buffoon, The same goes for Martin and Lewis, only Martin could manage pretty well alone, whereas Lewis only appealed to the French, the same people who actually enjoyed Eugène Ionesco and would pay him money.)
Cartooning has a long history. When it began, who knows? It was striding along confident in Roman antiquity. There's a crude but nonetheless pithy cartoon from the 2nd century AD that lampoons Christianity. It show a human-like being with a donkey's head crucified accompanied by another figure with its hand raise in a gesture of salute or acclimation with the Greek text ""Alexamenos worships [his] God". And there it is — a drawing pared to the essentials with the least explanatory text. As a vehicle for humor, cartooning has had its ups and down, like a sine wave. At its minimum value the typical cartoon has ooddles of noodle-like text everywhere, either issuing from the mouths of recognizable caricatures or stamped on things like labels, preferable on the thing's ass if it has one. Having a label on you butt is funny, see? At the maximum it's just a drawing. Charles Addams was a master of the pure cartoon. Booth was his salutatorian. We been on the cartooning downslope since Gary Larson retired. You'll know cartooning has reached it next nadir when the New Yorker contains a cartoon of Donald Trump with a swastika on his derriere.
Nothing is a greater indictment against the tenure of David Remnick as editor of the New Yorker than the serious decline in the quality of the cartoons. Most of them seem to aim for a forced, witless faux irony that produces groans rather than smiles or a sense of a penetrating social observation. For sharp, witty, smile-inducing cartooning, the British publication Private Eye has the field all to itself!
I love George Booth. First ran across him at my Grand Dad's, who had a hardcover collection of some of his cartoons. I've since picked up a couple of mine own. I love his dogs and his auto mechanics.
“ It's interesting that Althouse chose to illustrate her commentary on Roz Chast, a boomer, with a cartoon by Charles Booth…”
The linked article by Chast is about Booth, and she specifically talks about that particular cartoon, which I also think is good. That’s why I chose it. I don’t think that’s particularly remarkable
“ It's interesting that Althouse chose to illustrate her commentary on Roz Chast, a boomer, with a cartoon by Charles Booth…”
The linked article by Chast is about Booth, and she specifically talks about that particular cartoon, which I also think is good. That’s why I chose it. I don’t think that’s particularly remarkable
Somewhere there's a Thurber article (in the New Yorker) describing the operation of the New Yorker, in which every fact is wrong. They occupy the 11th floor of the Hotel New Yorker for example.
I laughed for days every time I thought about the AI generated image of from December of Chris Christie having bags of McDonalds delivered to his beach chair by those unidentified drones in New Jersey.
Jon's favorite George Booth cartoon
A laughing fit is without doubt not a non-brain response. This is well established by me in numerous double-blind tests using extremely priggish lab mice selectively bred for expression of the HOX wet blanket gene, using a control group of acutely giddy mice also selectively bred, but for for cheeriness. I confirmed the goody-two-shoes dominance of my test subjects with a questionnaire. All of them expressed positive opinions Kamala Harris with a mean rating of 87.327% approval.
I cannot be more specific due to contractual restraints imposed by Joke, the quarterly journal of the Iocusology Institute. However, I will give the non-subscribed reader this brief abstract: Laughing fits happen when we laugh at things we are told by our betters we should not, e.g. laughing at the Hal Roach Rascals when Stymie complains about watermelon seeds getting in his ears, or any situation involving Stymie or Buckwheat. In Freudian terms, a laughing fit is the Id having a good time. Henry Jeckyll greets every joke with stony-faced disapproval, whereas Edward Hyde laughs uncontrollably at nearly everything, particularly if it involves someone else stepping on a rake.
"Aren't you a string?"
"I'm a frayed not"
That's an old old joke.
Chast is funny and stays away from politics. She mixes familiar family themes with bizarre surreal touches, to give an indication of how close everyday life is to neurosis and maybe even psychosis. I'm still pondering her "Hollywood Squares" cover from last month.
There is a saying that "if you can make a girl laugh, you can kiss her."
I love Booth's work!
I once lost eye contact with the stage during a very silly play called "Triple Espresso". That has become my standard for a superior comedy (according to me).
I LOVE George Booth. I have a vintage collection of his cartoons, "Noises Off", and a sweatshirt with one of his cartoons on it. In the cartoon a middle-aged man is sitting in a chair, reading the newspaper. He's yelling, to no one in particular: "Can somebody please tell me what the hell is going on???"
By and large, I prefer an orgasm to a good laugh, but, as Booth would perhaps have observed, after a certain age a good laugh is easier to come by.
Talk about synchronicity. Today Jeopardy! had a New Yorker category that featured questions about Charles Addams and Updike presented by David Remnick.
Nobody knew what Updike looked like (except Ken Jennings, probably).
Speaking of popular art, I've become curious about the first unambiguous use of 'stink lines' to represent unpleasant odors. The interwebs offer examples, and there's a site or series called 'Stink Lines' but they aren't any help.
The consistently funniest - and most realistic - character on Leave It to Beaver was Larry Mondello, Beaver's dim-witted and lazy best friend.
Post a Comment
Comments older than 2 days are always moderated. Newer comments may be unmoderated, but are still subject to a spam filter and may take a few hours to get released. Thanks for your contributions and your patience.