July 24: I laughed, I cried, I laughed until I cried

 Here then is the funniest scene in the history of the cinema:

I was sixteen years old when I saw that movie, UHF, in the summer of 1989. Some friends and I went to see it at the now defunct Southland Cinema that used to be at the corner of Southland and MacLeod Trail in Calgary. I didn't just laugh, I howled. I laughed so hard that my sides hurt and tears came out of my eyes. I laughed so hard that some of my fellow moviegoers shushed me. 

What made that scene even funnier was the sure knowledge that not everyone found it as funny as I did. A girl named Keri, who was the girlfriend of my friend, Jay, looked at me like I was crazy. She didn't find anything funny about that scene - thought it cruel, in fact - and this just made me laugh harder.

My dad tells a similar story of walking into a movie house circa 1976 and watching a movie called Murder By Death. The film is a sendup of all those turn of the century murder mysteries and my dad thought it was so funny that he screamed about as loud as I did. Adding to the mirth was that he was alone in that theatre with a bunch of little old ladies, none of whom found Murder By Death to be at all funny and who didn't approve of to such garrulous public displays of laughter, thank you very much.

Two other movies made me laugh almost as hard as UHF did. Mel Brooks' History of the World (Spanish Inquisition sequence) and the John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd outing, Neighbors.

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I have laughed as hard at some stand-up comedy routines (John Pinette) and some Peanuts comic strips. I also laughed so hard while biking home from junior high school one day and my best friend, Ozi, told me that a mutual friend of ours was no longer allowed in his house. The reason: the mutual friend, wanting to play a practical joke, excused himself to Ozi's bathroom and proceeded to urinate in one of the shampoo bottles. When Ozi told me that story, his tone was one of righteous anger. He didn't see anything funny about taking a shower and accidentally lathering someone else's old pee in his hair. But I found it so screamingly funny that I fell off my bike and rolled around on the ground there for a good hour, unable to get myself under control.

Ozi used to get me to laugh that hard too. When we were even younger, we came up with the idea of making a radio talk show that was hosted by our French teacher. Ozi decided that the French teacher should be prone to farting. In every episode, the French teacher would interview a local hockey player who always wore X-ray glasses while playing hockey so he could check out foxy looking chicks in the stands. And there were cameo appearances by our classmates, whom we would imitate poorly. It wasn't funny at all - nothing in those tapes would have made it to Kids in the Hall - but I found one of those tapes about 20 years ago and Ozi and I went for a drive and listened to it and we wound up at Heritage Park, eating takeout from McDonalds and laughing our fool heads off.

Other things that made me laugh so hard that I cried:

- The Ronald McDonald magic show

- When Char yawned really big

- When Kathy went to the doctor

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I end this report by shining the spotlight on a success of my own. Apparently, my Mr. Dog magic routine is so funny that it gave one guy a nosebleed and another lady pee her pants. So hooray for me.