Before I was a man I was a boy, and when I was an immature boy I thought the three stooges were funny. Now when I think of them I remember that youthful amusement. I suspect if I were to actually bother to watch them, which I haven’t in decades, I’d probably change my mind.
I have a bonded pair of cats who came to us after being dumped in a feral colony. Probably abused before being dumped - for many months they flinched if one of us reached out suddenly. It took a long time for them to trust us. It was almost three years before one of them hopped up into my lap, curled up, and went to sleep. I might have cried a little when that happened.
The other one still has some trust issues. I'm only allowed to pet her when I am lying in bed. However, then she is quite insistent about being petted. At the crack of dawn.
As a little girl I loved watching old Laurel and Hardy movies, but never could bear to watch the Three Stooges. As an adult, I still think Laurel and Hardy were inspired, and still will not watch the Three Stooges.
I felt the same as a child. L&H and the Stooges were omnipresent on TV, but compared to the inspired, more innocent hilarity of the former, the Stooges just seemed crass and clownish.
How can you not laugh when Curly ( not Shemp!!) does a Curly Circle?? I think loving the Stooges has to start as a kid, when they get to behave in outrageous ways that you would get in trouble for. When you grow up, you love them out of nostalgia. And I’m a woman with women friends who also love the Stooges.
"I think loving the Stooges has to start as a kid" is exactly right and, at least, it's my excuse.
One of my earliest memories was a trip to Atlantic City. I must have been 4 or maybe 5. Besides being scared crapless by Mr. Peanut outside the Planters store on the Boardwalk, we went to the Steel Pier where one of the acts was The Three Stooges. There were no seats and I remember my Dad laughing. I must have said something about not being able to see so he picked me up and put me on his shoulders. I still have a flash memory, sort of like a couple of frames out of a movie, seeing them running around on stage.
Three Stooges--there's funny/mildly amusing, and funny/hilarious. The Stooges are one-note slapstick, but their timing is immaculate. They were also brave--You Natsy Spy was the first Hitler satire on film, predating Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Their occasional lapses into Yiddish are also pretty funny if you're in on it. Do they rise to the Marx Brothers. Laurel & Hardy or Chaplin (all very different forms of comedy)? Of course not, but hey, they're funnier than the Ritz Brothers. So a qualified yes, BUT. And that's a big but. (I like big buts and I cannot lie.)
I offer that Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin did many of the same setups as the Stooges. You know, just missing the big piece of glass being carried, the piano, the ladder swinging around, etc. EXCEPT it always missed. The Stooges showed it to it's more logical conclusion...a conk on the head, broken glass, which I think that if at the time you watched a lot of the Silent films, the Stooges would have been something completely different and really funny.
Not unlike The Boys versus any Marvel movies...what would REALLY happen if Superheroes were real.
And as for the Three Stooges, I'm with my brother on that one: Never saw the slightest sliver of anything remotely entertaining about anything they ever did.
The fighting in the stooges was always too cruel for me. I’m surprised men like it since it seems to violate all the rules of manly sportsmanship (hair-pulling, eye-poking, etc). Plus, fighting in 30s and 40s movies never comes across well. The movements are too heavy, almost in slow-motion, and the mics pick up all the shuffling sounds.
Regarding the poll question about the supernatural: I voted no, but it's a little more complicated than that.
As someone, I believe Arthur C. Clarke, has written, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I have my own version of that: "Any distantly undiscovered scientific truth will eventually prove to have inspired some religious thought or other."
I am confident that we have only just started to understand the world. People tend to feel, when some major scientific advance is made, that Aha: Now we know everything but the fine details. They thought that when atoms were discovered; they thought that when Einstein announced the General Theory of Relativity; when Quantum Mechanics was formalized. But I suspect we're not even close to "getting it." We're just closer and closer.
So, yeah, I suppose there may be SOME answers to the eternal human questions: "Why are we here? What is all this FOR? What's the damn POINT?" But I would bet a sizable chunk of my anatomy that IF there is some overarching explanation for why things are as they are, that it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with any religious dogma I have ever encounterd. And I am widely read.
Indeed. For example, we are far from knowing much at all relative to other areas of scientific endeavor about consciousness and how the brain processes information, generates thoughts, behaviors, and physiological responses. The fundamental laws of physics, including coming up with some kind of unified theory of everything (assuming one exists), is yet another area where, despite great advances, our knowledge is still limited.
Oh, sure. And a big one: Is there some way around the light speed barrier? On the answer to that question depends a lot: Will we be likely to encounter another intelligent species or not? Will we ever be able to explore the galaxy? To say nothing of other galaxies?
And the recent emergence of ai, for example, raises a whole lot of questions: At what point does consciousness and self-awareness emerge? At what point is an ai a mind? And once it is, what are its rights?
Expect to hear from the Haiku Society of America and the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. Having taken on South Asia with curry, you have now apparently moved on to East Asia with haiku.
It's been a really long time since I saw the Three Stooges. I put them down as funny and I am a man (although Gene has recently informed me that I am not).
When I was young, I thought the Stooges were funny because they were so insensitive to each other, so unaware of other people. That is something I struggle with, because I am perhaps excessively aware of where everyone is around me and what is going on with them in the moment. It can be very annoying to go shopping at the warehouse club when it is packed, because it feels like being surrounded by a building full of Stooges. People totally unaware of the way that they keep intruding on the personal space of others. So the thought of the Three Stooges, now, is the thought of being free to feel my smug superiority without having to feel guilty for thinking poorly of others.
Or maybe I just wouldn't find them funny anymore, after all. I suppose I should check on that.
Well over half my female sample thought the Stooges were funny at some point. The other two did not. While there is certainly a universality to physical comedy --- based on human vulnerability as it generally is --- because of its violent nature, and especially during the Stooges' heyday, it was probably considered a more socially acceptable form of male humor or even aggression catharsis, if you accept that possibility. Not that the "little ladies" didn't want to, or couldn't, kick ass, just something frowned upon in so-called polite society.
Before I was a man I was a boy, and when I was an immature boy I thought the three stooges were funny. Now when I think of them I remember that youthful amusement. I suspect if I were to actually bother to watch them, which I haven’t in decades, I’d probably change my mind.
I have a bonded pair of cats who came to us after being dumped in a feral colony. Probably abused before being dumped - for many months they flinched if one of us reached out suddenly. It took a long time for them to trust us. It was almost three years before one of them hopped up into my lap, curled up, and went to sleep. I might have cried a little when that happened.
The other one still has some trust issues. I'm only allowed to pet her when I am lying in bed. However, then she is quite insistent about being petted. At the crack of dawn.
As a little girl I loved watching old Laurel and Hardy movies, but never could bear to watch the Three Stooges. As an adult, I still think Laurel and Hardy were inspired, and still will not watch the Three Stooges.
I felt the same as a child. L&H and the Stooges were omnipresent on TV, but compared to the inspired, more innocent hilarity of the former, the Stooges just seemed crass and clownish.
How can you not laugh when Curly ( not Shemp!!) does a Curly Circle?? I think loving the Stooges has to start as a kid, when they get to behave in outrageous ways that you would get in trouble for. When you grow up, you love them out of nostalgia. And I’m a woman with women friends who also love the Stooges.
"I think loving the Stooges has to start as a kid" is exactly right and, at least, it's my excuse.
One of my earliest memories was a trip to Atlantic City. I must have been 4 or maybe 5. Besides being scared crapless by Mr. Peanut outside the Planters store on the Boardwalk, we went to the Steel Pier where one of the acts was The Three Stooges. There were no seats and I remember my Dad laughing. I must have said something about not being able to see so he picked me up and put me on his shoulders. I still have a flash memory, sort of like a couple of frames out of a movie, seeing them running around on stage.
Wow! I've never heard of anyone seeing them live! Was it Shemp or Curly?
Honestly I can't remember. And this would have been '59 or '60 so was likely Curly Joe.
This makes complete sense because I know Curly died young and that's when Shemp took over. Curly Joe was the final new Stooge.
Three Stooges--there's funny/mildly amusing, and funny/hilarious. The Stooges are one-note slapstick, but their timing is immaculate. They were also brave--You Natsy Spy was the first Hitler satire on film, predating Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Their occasional lapses into Yiddish are also pretty funny if you're in on it. Do they rise to the Marx Brothers. Laurel & Hardy or Chaplin (all very different forms of comedy)? Of course not, but hey, they're funnier than the Ritz Brothers. So a qualified yes, BUT. And that's a big but. (I like big buts and I cannot lie.)
I offer that Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin did many of the same setups as the Stooges. You know, just missing the big piece of glass being carried, the piano, the ladder swinging around, etc. EXCEPT it always missed. The Stooges showed it to it's more logical conclusion...a conk on the head, broken glass, which I think that if at the time you watched a lot of the Silent films, the Stooges would have been something completely different and really funny.
Not unlike The Boys versus any Marvel movies...what would REALLY happen if Superheroes were real.
And as for the Three Stooges, I'm with my brother on that one: Never saw the slightest sliver of anything remotely entertaining about anything they ever did.
The fighting in the stooges was always too cruel for me. I’m surprised men like it since it seems to violate all the rules of manly sportsmanship (hair-pulling, eye-poking, etc). Plus, fighting in 30s and 40s movies never comes across well. The movements are too heavy, almost in slow-motion, and the mics pick up all the shuffling sounds.
Regarding the poll question about the supernatural: I voted no, but it's a little more complicated than that.
As someone, I believe Arthur C. Clarke, has written, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I have my own version of that: "Any distantly undiscovered scientific truth will eventually prove to have inspired some religious thought or other."
I am confident that we have only just started to understand the world. People tend to feel, when some major scientific advance is made, that Aha: Now we know everything but the fine details. They thought that when atoms were discovered; they thought that when Einstein announced the General Theory of Relativity; when Quantum Mechanics was formalized. But I suspect we're not even close to "getting it." We're just closer and closer.
So, yeah, I suppose there may be SOME answers to the eternal human questions: "Why are we here? What is all this FOR? What's the damn POINT?" But I would bet a sizable chunk of my anatomy that IF there is some overarching explanation for why things are as they are, that it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with any religious dogma I have ever encounterd. And I am widely read.
Indeed. For example, we are far from knowing much at all relative to other areas of scientific endeavor about consciousness and how the brain processes information, generates thoughts, behaviors, and physiological responses. The fundamental laws of physics, including coming up with some kind of unified theory of everything (assuming one exists), is yet another area where, despite great advances, our knowledge is still limited.
Oh, sure. And a big one: Is there some way around the light speed barrier? On the answer to that question depends a lot: Will we be likely to encounter another intelligent species or not? Will we ever be able to explore the galaxy? To say nothing of other galaxies?
And the recent emergence of ai, for example, raises a whole lot of questions: At what point does consciousness and self-awareness emerge? At what point is an ai a mind? And once it is, what are its rights?
My poetry was lousy, you said
You have to live with that assessment, Jon, forever. Or until one of us dies.
My first Ink was a haiku; since then, bupkis
Haiku is not poetry. I realize mine is not a popular assessment!
Expect to hear from the Haiku Society of America and the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. Having taken on South Asia with curry, you have now apparently moved on to East Asia with haiku.
A mind stays closed tight,
No new lessons learned today,
Shadows fill the void.
Um...have it on questionable authority that in the Book of Losing, your entry carries the annotation: "No rhyme or reason."
A lot of the older entertainments were fresh at the time. The crafts evolved, became more complex and now the old ones are like drinking flat soda.
Well, I disagree. Charlie Chaplin is still very funny. As are Abbott and Costello, etc.
Agreed, along with still one of my favorites after decades of watching his shtick, Harold Lloyd.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"
--- Hamlet
It's been a really long time since I saw the Three Stooges. I put them down as funny and I am a man (although Gene has recently informed me that I am not).
When I was young, I thought the Stooges were funny because they were so insensitive to each other, so unaware of other people. That is something I struggle with, because I am perhaps excessively aware of where everyone is around me and what is going on with them in the moment. It can be very annoying to go shopping at the warehouse club when it is packed, because it feels like being surrounded by a building full of Stooges. People totally unaware of the way that they keep intruding on the personal space of others. So the thought of the Three Stooges, now, is the thought of being free to feel my smug superiority without having to feel guilty for thinking poorly of others.
Or maybe I just wouldn't find them funny anymore, after all. I suppose I should check on that.
Well over half my female sample thought the Stooges were funny at some point. The other two did not. While there is certainly a universality to physical comedy --- based on human vulnerability as it generally is --- because of its violent nature, and especially during the Stooges' heyday, it was probably considered a more socially acceptable form of male humor or even aggression catharsis, if you accept that possibility. Not that the "little ladies" didn't want to, or couldn't, kick ass, just something frowned upon in so-called polite society.