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Which Countries Have The BEST, WORST, STRANGEST Sense Of Humor?
Self
| December 24, 2002
| PJ-Comix
Posted on 12/24/2002 4:31:21 PM PST by PJ-Comix
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To: PJ-Comix
American humor has distinct subsets--each at its best outrageously funny--black, Jewish, deadpan white etc.
Compare that to the French who have--what--Jerry Lewis? Anything else? Certainly not mime. That ain't funny.
To: mlmr
PJ... YOU are running around with half dollars stuck in your eyes yelling BANSAI and you think THEY have as strange sense of humor...LOL. It was sort of an experiment to see just how far you can go with them. Actually you can do most anything slapstick in front of Japanese businessmen and they will laugh like hell at it. And the strange thing is they are incredibly formal (always wear business suits even when on vacation) and serious with each other.
Try cracking eggs on your forehead. I am sure this will make them go into convulsions.
22
posted on
12/24/2002 5:10:57 PM PST
by
PJ-Comix
To: RepoGirl
I dunno, I worked in Canada for six monthes and I'd put 'em a couple of pegs below the Germans. (I spent 16 month in Deutchland and spricht etwas Deutsch.) A blend of resentment and smoldering self-rigtheousness are not the right disposition for humor. It's hard for Canadians to brush their teeth without resenting Americans for selling them toothpaste.
To: Kevin Curry
PJ... YOU are running around with half dollars stuck in your eyes yelling BANSAI and you think THEY have as strange sense of humor...LOL. Marcel Marceau? Remember him? NOT FUNNY! He ended up so hated here that there have been a lot of movie scenes where bad things happen to annoying mimes. Oh, there was also once a French comedian named Fernandel but I don't know much about him.
24
posted on
12/24/2002 5:12:58 PM PST
by
PJ-Comix
To: PJ-Comix
An American comic (whose name escapes me) used to explain in his act why there are so few German comedians.
In an affected German accent, he would say:
"I shall now do for you comedy. You will listen; you will laugh. These are orders."
Joke number one:
Take my wife...
I command you!
To: PJ-Comix
Try cracking eggs on your forehead. I am sure this will make them go into convulsions
Perhaps the next time I run into a Japenese business man which here in little town, Maine is never very likely. Of course I could wear a LOBSTER HAT instead.
26
posted on
12/24/2002 5:16:32 PM PST
by
mlmr
To: mlmr
Muslim Arabs have practically no sense of humor. They laugh at ceremonial castrations, cross-amputations and female circumcisions, but little else. Certainly, a soldier trapped in a minefield is worth a few laughs. So too is a pre-pubescent dressed to kill. Oh yes, an occasional donkey whipping may raise a smile, and I remember that I once saw a magician (gully-gully man) raise a grunt in the audience.
The story is told in Benghazi of a Libyan who was new to the United States and was taken to a New York comedy club shortly after he arrived in America: The sound of boisterous laughter nearly gave him a heart attack. The sound was utterly foreign to him. I could go on....
27
posted on
12/24/2002 5:17:08 PM PST
by
gaspar
To: gaspar
What a sad thought that there could be a people without an ability to belly laugh...to truly enjoy. I think that is a gift of our Western culture...there were always jesters and clowns in our history.
28
posted on
12/24/2002 5:19:20 PM PST
by
mlmr
To: PJ-Comix
Hey, I like Jerry Lewis! Can't take too much at one sitting, though. About half of "The Errand Boy" or "Cinderfella" is all I can stand.......and just forget about the movies with Dean Martin.
For my taste, the brits are best. I love the BBC America cable channel. Monty Python, Charlie Chaplin, Keeping Up Appearances, Chef, McGyver......
Right, much British humour is understated, funny because of the situations and word play. On the other hand, there is Benny Hill, with the most broad and corny slapstick imaginable.
Coupling is a current BBC sitcom. It's about the perils of dating and becoming a couple. Six friends are in it (where did they get that idea?). They are all caricitures of single people, except for one couple, who are nearly normal.
An example of the caricituredom of the characters is one of the women, who is a beautician with her own shop. She is obsessed with how her skin is aging even as she speaks, how her "bottom" is her enemy, because it is always following her around and plotting against her to grow larger. She hates going to funerals because she has to see all of those old people, which is how she will look in another 30 years,
29
posted on
12/24/2002 5:19:45 PM PST
by
jimtorr
To: Lonesome in Massachussets
The funniest thing I ever heard a German say was by a FICTITIOUS German in
Stalag 17. It was Oberst Von Scherbach who said something like: "Curtains vould do vunders for dese barracks..... You vill NOT get them."
And in the same movie there was a reference to American vs German senses of humor:
Oberst Von Scherbach: How do you expect to win the war with an army of clowns?
J.J. Sefton: We sort of hope you'd laugh yourself to death.
30
posted on
12/24/2002 5:19:46 PM PST
by
PJ-Comix
To: PJ-Comix
The Brits have great senses of humor, and delight in "taking the mickey" out of just about anyone for anything. They are far, far less PC than Americans. They mercilessly skewer each other on account of ethnic differences in a way that would clog the courts with massive class actions and demands for reparations in the US.
To: PJ-Comix
Whaffo dokkie baks? What a riot! Thank you for that. When we were leaving Japan for China on a flight in 1980, our lovely tour guide wished us a "nice fright." We all burst out laughing...not at her, but it broke the tension of going to a mysterious country. At that time, we knew our trip was not going to be a vacation but a learning experience. Then there were none of the modern hotels in China one reads about these days. If I could do it again, I would go back to 1980. That was a great trip without the modern hotels.
To: PJ-Comix
He ended up so hated here that there have been a lot of movie scenes where bad things happen to annoying mimes . . .Yes! And those scenes ARE funny.
Hardly a titter from the frogs, however.
To: PJ-Comix
People who have had more than a couple of drinks will generally laugh at anything. I think this cuts across all kinds of cultural and nationality lines. Probably people of all nationalities can get drunk and stupid. I think you have to be careful about generalizing from what you observe in a barroom and applying it to an entire culture.
I think the funniest humor often comes from people who may not be at the top of the economic ladder but have plenty of native intelligence - enough to laugh at system that can seem at best arbitrary and at worst malicious. I think you can find people like this in almost any culture. It was certainly pretty common in people subjugated under communism in the USSR its satelites.
To: gaspar
Muslim Arabs have practically no sense of humor.
I don't know about Arabs but Iranians definitely have a sense of humor. I once knew an Iranian named Hassan and at first he didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. Anyway, I sometimes would leave long messages in an Iranian accent on his answering machine as if I were Ayatollah Khomeini speaking to him from the dead and giving him strict instructions on how to avoid the temptations of American culture. That really cracked him up. So much so that when I quit leaving those impressions on his answering machine, he begged me to do it again so he would have some laughs when he got home.
35
posted on
12/24/2002 5:26:29 PM PST
by
PJ-Comix
To: PJ-Comix
Bwhaaaaaa! Okay, thanks for giving me a great laugh. I meant no malice when I used the word dork, by the way. I think that the Japanese have a strange, but great sense of humor, by the way. In a silly sort of way. :)
Merry Christmas!
36
posted on
12/24/2002 5:28:56 PM PST
by
IamHD
To: Shermy
Not a nation, but New Yorkers are the funniest. Not so funny when you have to drive in traffic with them. BTW, I am now trying to get a Nooyorican chick to do comedy on stage. I have written some material for her but she is scared to go on the stage even though she is quite funny.
37
posted on
12/24/2002 5:34:27 PM PST
by
PJ-Comix
To: PJ-Comix
I don't know about Arabs but Iranians definitely have a sense of humor. I once knew an Iranian named Hassan . . .I once knew a Kuwaiti Air Force officer who was, without doubt, one of the funniest men I have ever met. He had an acute sense of humor and exquisite timing which he coupled with certain facial expressions that made him a tough man to get though a dinner with without passing a fair amount of the menu through your nose. What did he poke fun at? The Muslim culture (yet he was quite devout).
I remember him telling us in his broken English that, "In Kuwait, if you leave wallet in restroom, it will still be there one, two years! If you see wallet your think yours in restroom, you don't touch! If you wrong, they cut your hand off!" Then to demonstrate how one might safely go about checking an abandoned wallet he rocked way back on one foot, tongue hanging out of his mouth in painful utter concentration, eyeys blinking and wincing, and made like he was pushing an imaginary wallet at sink height. "You must tip . . . it . . . with . . . your . . . foot, and hope it fall open so you can see inside."
Well, you had to be there. But my sides ached.
To: struggle
The Japanese and puns.
MY GOD. You have no idea how bad they can get.
Well, you do, but the others may not.
To: 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
Which part of the USA has the best sense of humor? As far as WORST sense of humor, I'm guessing North Dakota. I worked in eastern Montana once and I noticed that folks in North Dakota weren't exactly a barrel of laughs.
40
posted on
12/24/2002 5:37:21 PM PST
by
PJ-Comix
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