Movember -- Humour

Humour

With a 'u'.  Gives it an air of respectability.  Aire.

I started the day off in a foul mood (the way I ended the previous evening).  Driving to work, I heard a news report from NY about Santacon.  I was unfamiliar with this particular event, which I think made it even funnier.  Santacon is a take-off on ComiCon, that ridiculous convention of all things from the Comic Book world:  the magazines themselves; movies related to them; TV shows; science fiction; science fantasy; straight fantasy; Dungeons and Dragons; World of Warcraft; and pretty much anything else that occupies the minds of 13-year-old boys...



...as well as larger, unevolved versions of the same.



Santacon, however, started as some sort of charitable event, but morphed into an excuse to have a winter boozefest...a veritable mid-term St. Patrick's Day, if you will.

So the WNYC news announcer, in serious "spawn-of-Cronkite" tone, said "The NYPD has asked bar owners not to serve alcohol to patrons dressed as Santa Claus".

This was enough to nearly cause me to crash.  Mercifully, everyone on Route 10 West at that moment was listening to the same program, because we swerved in such synchronization that it caught the eye of the one NASCAR fan on the IOC.


This fixed my wagon, as my mother used to say.  You'd be surprised how often my wagon was broken, according to her.  Perhaps it was a metaphor...for my ass.  "That'll fix your ass" works, but I'm shuddering thinking about what a "broken ass" would mean, so we'll get back on track...in 5...4...3...2...

Humor is an important part of my life.  I guess most people would say this.  But I think about it. Obsessively. Like a guy who went to a convention focused only on comedy.  What would they call it, now that "ComicCon" is taken?

I analyze comedy.  Categorize jokes.  Rate all-time comics the way we used to compare baseball players from all eras.  When Donna and I were getting serious (date #3), I put her through a series of comedy tests:

• What did she think of I Love Lucy?
• Which episode is better: Kramer's Kandy Kitchen or Vitameatavegimin?
• Life of Brian is the best Python movie.  True or False?
• Compare and Contrast: Moms Mabley, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers
• The Simpsons.  {just saying the name must evoke a positive reaction}
• Howard Stern is a radio broadcast imitation of Lenny Bruce.  Discuss.

The litmus test prior to getting engaged was the movie Arthur.  We rented it and watched it in her apartment in Maryland (we had a distance relationship at the outset, which is why things went so well at the beginning!)  I sat to her left on the couch and leaned back to see if she was laughing without prodding from me on which parts were funny.  (If you've ever watched an episode of The Simpsons or Modern Family with me, you know that I howl like there's a prize for maxing out a dB meter).  The Arthur test was on...

• "Steal something casual..."
• "You must have hated this moose"
• "It's what I live for..."
• and the pièce de résistance:  "Is this a joke?  Are these Polish girls?"

You know the outcome, because we're happily married for almost 16 years.  Better evidence is that she quotes Arthur as a matter of routine (e.g., any non sequitur in our house is met with "I have a brother who moved to New Jersey"...love it when my disease catches...BTW, message me if you know who said that without looking it up.  I'll be impressed.)

So I thought about how restorative that little Santacon laughter was for me today.  Laughter is the best medicine came from somewhere (albeit not from Big Pharma).

Physical effects

There have been studies done to determine if there is a physical benefit from laughter.  There are no definitive results, but there are clear benefits in disrupting stress cycles (like the one I had this morning) and breaking a bought of depression.  Hey, these are serious studies (and not by the guys who studied if "Ovulatory cycles have an effect on the tips of lapdancers...")  Holy Jebus, guys...if you want to go to a strip club, just tell her:

• "Honey, I'm a faithful guy and I don't do this very often, but I think it would be worthwhile if the boys and I had a night out at Stinkfinger Willies"
• OR, if that doesn't fit your relationship, try "We're working late...the boss will probably want to take me out for a drink or two to thank me for that...I have NO idea where we're going or what time we'll be home...but, wherever it is, there'll be bad cell reception."

Two endocrine response systems are particularly susceptible to stress:  the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (HPA) and the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) system.  I'm not as lost here as you might think -- I buy only HPA-free plastic bottles now and nobody is more sympathetic to Sam I Am than I am (or was it pathetic?)  HPA and SAM hormones bind to and alter the effects of immunologically active cells.  This means your stress level can, in fact, hinder or progress disease!  (Oh, and there is that other stress-related health issue...that a lot of us, under chronic, crushing stress, tend to eat poorly, skip the gym, smoke, drink and take other pharmacological paths to deal with the pain.  JAMA mentioned that one, too.)

Psychological stress has also been shown to impair vagal tone.  I don't have the first clue what this means, but I am thankful Donna had good vagal tone when we were dating (hell, I wouldn't have married her if she didn't).



The good news is that this health improvement is easy:  allow yourself to laugh.  Find things to laugh at.  Then laugh.  Let's be clear: we all also say "I've got a great sense of humor".  No you don't.  You enjoy laughing.  So do I.  But a very small subset of the population is good at making us laugh (and those people are GODS).

But I will offer you this:  allow yourself to laugh out loud.  My children all grew up thinking the funniest thing in the world was dad's idiotic cackling on the couch when a funny TV show was on.  Now they're all Simpsons fans.  I Love Lucy, too.  I don't know what Puritan or Victorian impulse causes us to put three fingers over our closed mouths and chuckle like one of the Queen's consorts after she farts.  Open your mouth, push a lot of air out and laugh naturally.  It's the greatest sound in the world and the cheapest medicine with absolutely no side effects (except that your kids may go to school and ask their teachers if they "pop out at parties" and are "unpoopular").

BTW, today's little driving incident was not my first near-laughter-crash.  That happened in 1985 on South Broad Street in Hamilton, NJ (then called Trenton because Jack Rafferty had not completed his life-altering campaign with the USPS to give them a one-word name).  Jimmy Tohill, Scott Matheson and I had just seen Return of the Living Dead at the Eric theater next to the Independence Mall.  Driving away from the theater, we were doing what guys do...repeating every funny line in the movie like we wrote it.  "Send more paramedics" almost caused us to need some.  Irony in action.

Movember On!