A history of your sense of humor, birth to present

the afhv-->garfield-->weird al-->monty python is a familiar track for me

im still trying to figure out when i started finding "total lack of humor" really funny

there was a point like 2 years ago when i started laughing a lot harder at shit that no one else laughed at, and the longer people weren't laughing the more i was

Liking Billy Madison is not a "soft spot" -- it is discerning viewership and plain good taste.

Also contains the line "It's poop again!"

jack nicholson now, or 74?

what is a horseshoe? what does a horseshoe do? are there any horse socks? is anyone listening to me?

chlorophyll?? more like BOROPHYLL

k maybe my sense of humor hasnt changed that much

t-t-t-today junior was the worst thing to happen to kids w/ actual lisps.

t-t-t-today junior vs. t-t-t-totally dude

"Miss Libby's car...is green. Billy likes to drink...orange juice."

At around 22 I stopped liking anything except weird-for-weird's sake (at least the Cartoon Network incarnation of it), and sitcoms.

OOOPS, that should be I stopped liking weird-for-weird's sake and sitcoms.

Right now I think angry people might be the funniest thing in the world. The angry and the gravely serious.

I follow the lead of the ancient Etruscans in this as in all things. They liked flange humor, but they called it by a different word, since lost. Tragic, really, when you think about it. All those lost Etruscans and their pets.

This reminds me of when i was talking to my friend yesterday, and mentioned how I, in my youth watched both Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore around 16 times each, and of course why I had (other that discerning viewership and good taste of course).

>They liked flange humor

Are all Etruscans Garu G?

my sense of humour has gone AWOL! disaster

That's true for me when it come to movies. Since I started editing a humor zine I almost NEVER want to watch comedies, and when I do I'm almost impossible to please. I'd rather watch the worst apocalyptic sci-fi blockbuster. The other night I watched Independence Day for about the sixth time, just because it happened to be on tv.

1970-2006 sophisticated wit
2007 OM NOM NOM NOM

Aged about 7:
Q: Want to hear a story about the girl who had three holes in teh ground?
A: Well, well, well
Q: Want to hear a story about the girl who had three jigsaw puzzles?
A: Jigsaw Puzzle, Jigsaw Puzzle, Jigsaw Puzzle.

Aged 7 and a bit:
Give up on humour entirely after realising I will never ever understand it.

me = alternately v laugh it up and v serious, love the absurd either way, can't recall laughing at bodily functions as much as other kids, except for farting, that was funny, esp as an assault on siblings.
loved garfield, went through knock-knock joke phase, books of corny jokes and puns phase (still love puns, it's true).

we had a subscription to reader's digest for years and years and years, and i read all their 'jokes' sections as kind of a 'will anything be funny this month?' challenge. sometimes things were funny. mostly not. read mad & cracked magazines but don't remember killing myself laughing over them or anything. do remember laughing v v hard at calvin and hobbes books. thought han solo was perfect man b/c he was good lookin, could fight and fly spaceships, and made me laugh. thought the same of cary grant (minus the spaceships). and obv indiana jones. also had huge crush on gene wilder though. haha. these ideals prob still hold. laughed a lot being goofy with friends & my brothers & parents.

never liked practical jokes, still don't, but do like physical humour, e.g., loved 'the jerk' at a young age, was really into laurel and hardy, abbott and costello - like, loved them. but not the three stooges, for some reason. liked tom & jerry, roadrunner, looney toons in general MUCH more than disney, though watched disney stuff, just did not align with its sense of humour nearly as much.

later on, watched monty python, faulty towers, old snl (repeats that were on earlier than midnight anyway), the princess bride, goonies, y'know

i remember laughing at books a lot but can't remember what all those books were... loved the alice in wonderland books, gordon korman books,
thought the real ghostbusters cartoon was hilarity and loved the movie, the muppet show!! totally. and even muppet babies! loved pee-wee's playhouse & the movie. at the same time watched a lot of action movies and grim dramas that i know were not meant for my age group. loved the 'mad max' movies for being grim + funny. love 'farscape' for being that too, though obv it's a bit less grim. the humour in certain eps of the x-files, twin peaks, also for example.

later in childhood and into teens: the simpsons, sctv and offshoots, esp john candy, bob & doug, snl and offshoots, kids in the hall (massive influence on teenage years), bob newhart cds, eddie murphy stand-up, richard pryor, bill & ted's excellent adventure, raising arizona (have seen so many times, always laugh), hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy books, roseanne, cosby show, cheers, murphy brown, golden girls!, family ties, red dwarf, black adder, thought jim carey was funny for a while there - oh yeah, so 'in living color'.

obv there's a difference btwn 'hehe' humour and 'hahahahahahaaa!!' humour, but will take both and most other kinds. def don't like that certain brand of mediocre middle-class sitcom (home improvement style), ugghh.

def less into anything that is more smug than fun. and not too stupid, but i mean damn, i laughed my head off at 'dumb and dumber' back then. and 'tommy boy' omg. hell, i've even laughed at more mainstream sitcoms though, like 'news radio', even sometimes 'friends', 'will & grace', and 'how i met your mother'. but yeah, now like things like the daily show, steven colbert, this hr has 22 minutes, arrested development, 30 rock, the office, flight of the conchords, harvey birdman, sealab, family guy (sometimes), chappelle's show (sometimes), some david cross stuff, mr show, mitch hedberg ('i am not familiar with the concept of hh - , things like '40-yr old virgin', 'shawn of the dead', 'borat' kind of killed me but required a couple of drinks for me to really get past the uncomfortable part, haha. slocki's movie co - automatic vaudville - consistently kills me too. but yeah, again, having friends/family who make me laugh / i can laugh with is prob the most important thing.

would like to read more funny books. hm. listen to more comedians. (have issues with comedy clubs/festivals, cannot deal.)
i do seem to laugh every day though, at something, which is good. today i laughed at a pack of tourist cyclists who were all wearing safety vests and wobbling along - wasn't laughing 'at' them really but just at the spectacle of the whole scene - not mean-spirited. circumstantial humour = good for daily laughs. i also laughed at some jokes i made to myself.

that was a long and interesting exercise whoa! humour is important! and, i think, much more complex a thing than it's generally given credit for. i mean, there are far fewer funny movies and shows that i like than there are dramas, but i like the few funny things with more intensity than i do all the dramatic things (unless they combine the two obv.)

OMNOMNOMNOM also funny
40% of time

25%

I made the mistake of telling my older sister that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian when I was a kid. She said, "Ok, make me laugh". After trying in vain to make her laugh using a combo of my 8-year-old wit and a few stuffed bears for about 20 minutes (think fart jokes, bears stepping on landmines and flying across the room, bears with sunglasses on, bears tripping and falling, and more fart jokes), I realized that my life was doomed to be a failure. Thanks a lot, sis.

I think ILX ate that last post.

One time, I was 17, my friend (one of the most perfectly droll people I know) said, "When I take off my hat, you guys are going to laugh for 20 minutes." He took off his green winter hat to reveal he'd dyed his hair green, the same shade as his hat. And we did. We laughed for 20 fucking minutes. Have any of you ever laughed that long? IT HURTS. You start to feel dizzy, you see flashing lights and spots in your vision, and your abdominal muscles cramp fiercely and yet cannot stop moving. It's exhausting!

This happened a lot when I was in elementary school...I'd start laughing and couldn't stop, so I'd get sent out into the hall when I was done. It got to the point where I just walked out when it was happening; the teacher didn't even have to say.

I laugh really loud and hard at almost anything I find funny...everyone in w/in 100 yards (or more, depending on the acoustics of the place) turn and stare. i can't help it. I laugh pretty easy.

And HAHAHA rrrobyn, that was all I did at my grandma's house, read through all the reader's digest "humor in uniform," "life in these united states," etc. Born Loser would steal those jokes like a month after the issue came out! I'm serious!

0-very old now: nonexistent

This thread reminded me of a time when I was maybe six years old, and I had this extremely blase teenage babysitter. We were sitting on the couch watching tv, and there was a Cap'n Crunch commercial that ended with the Cap'n jabbing a pirate with his sword and saying, "He got the point!" I didn't actually think this was very funny, but I forced a laugh and said "I get it, 'He got the point'" -- I think as a way of telling my bored-looking babysitter that "Hey there's intelligent life down here!" It didn't work.

1969-1970: Age 5-6, lived in MS, watched "Hee Haw" faithfully
1970-1975: Age 7-11, lived in CA, watched Three Stooges & Little Rascals two-reelers every weekday on Channel 52.
That's about it.

When I was 9-13, British comedies on PBS seemed like the best television in the world - Are You Being Served, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder. There was even a general feeling among people I knew that it was more sophisticated than American comedy.

Now I find it all unwatchable.

Watched the hell out of MASH reruns on UHF channels around the same age - seems like we always had two channels playing them at the same time, one the Henry years, one the Sherman T. Potter years. But that might just be a bad memory.

favorite show from 1990-~1993 (after which it sucked) was Northern Exposure

I saw Robert Webb on that Stephen Fry programme recently, and he talked about his teenage years listening to Saturday Night Fry and watching Fry and Laurie on telly. He said that where other people had the Smiths in their teen years, he had Stephen Fry.

I'm a bit like this as well. Comedy was what made me feel good through my teenage years, rather than music. I've seen so much of it now, though (especially standup), that it has to be really different for me to find it funny now.

early years - "Family Matters" & "Fresh Prince" = my shit
early adolescence - "Ni! Ni!" lolomgwtf
late adolescnce - "insufferable prick ironist" (mcsweeney's etc) = i'm better than you cause i smirk wryly but never laugh
today - FRESH OFF THE PLANE KONICHIWA BITCHES

maybe add "robot chicken" as "proto-today"

In short...

Childhood to teenage: sex and poop jokes are the best!
Late teenage to early twenties: I'm above such vulgarities, I want my humour to be dry and intelligent.
Now: sex and poop jokes are the best!

It is so, so true. Sex and poop jokes...poop jokes...poop jokes: You are the best!

whoa i can't believe i forgot to include MASH (how an 8-yr-old can love this show so much i do not know but i did) and Three's Company and Welcome Back Cotter and Mork & Mindy and Taxi! Formative!

Friends who laugh easily are to be treasured.

The fish slapping sketch on Monty Python - which I first saw at the age of 8 - pretty much sums up the history of my sense of humour up until the first time I saw Soap. After that I found pretty much everything funny.

re: AFHV

see i went from watching it every week (saget-era) to not caring/actively avoiding it (fuentes-era) back to...watching it every week (bergeron-era) (starting about, oh, earlier this year)

i like to think that no matter what my age/tastes/style is, old people falling into rivers and cats running head-on into walls will NEVER STOP BEING FUNNY

nevertheless i found benny hill really funny when i was 9, and today his stuff just looks awful (my dad loves him still)

while i went thru a number of the phases above i generally find friends to be the funniest to me lately. i'm not sure if this is good or not but i feel surrounded by wisenheimers.

very impressed by abbott and rrrobyn's breakdowns tho. i don't think i could put remotely the same breakdown to my sense of humor and i'm usually fairly self-analytical.

it's funny/it's not funny

while i went thru a number of the phases above i generally find friends to be the funniest to me lately. i'm not sure if this is good or not but i feel surrounded by wisenheimers.

this is a good thing for sure. its always best when all your friends are smarter and funnier than you.

I imitated everyone's sense of humor in middle school-early high school. I think slapstick or 'bad' humor was the most popular back then and I think it still is the most popular today.

old people falling into rivers and cats running head-on into walls will NEVER STOP BEING FUNNY

Also, bandaged men being hit and screaming in pain.

Somehow I've ended up at the point where stuff like this cracks me up:

And I feel really, really alone in that sense of humor.

I made the mistake of telling my older sister that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian when I was a kid. She said, "Ok, make me laugh". After trying in vain to make her laugh using a combo of my 8-year-old wit and a few stuffed bears for about 20 minutes (think fart jokes, bears stepping on landmines and flying across the room, bears with sunglasses on, bears tripping and falling, and more fart jokes), I realized that my life was doomed to be a failure. Thanks a lot, sis.

― Z S, Tuesday, September 11, 2007 7:32 PM

Now that I think about it, I guess my sense of humor has barely evolved at all, because I stall think bears wearing sunglasses and stepping on landmines and tripping and falling are funny.

That post made me lol pretty hard I must say. But it's always kind of funny when someone's under sudden performance pressure. That and putting sunglasses on a bear!

In sixth grade I wanted to be the youngest person making a syndicated comic strip. So the one I made was called "Quack Benny," which was of ducks biting jokes from Jack Benny. (Quack Benny was a greedy penny-pincher who was also a duck.) Didn't get anywhere with that one.

In Juno I got kind of pissed off when she drops some Soupy Sales ref. 'wtf she is like 16.' Then I remembered 'Quack Benny.'

"BULLSHIT!!!"
"Who cares, I'm gonna go piss on this game right now"

In Middle School, since I hadn't really hit puberty yet and there was no chance of getting anywhere with girls or with guys over 5 feet tall, I used to sneak around underneath the bleachers at basketball games and contort my face, do a lazy eye, and squeal "don't look at my face! It's horrible!"

haha

Oh shit I didn't even notice Mark Gormley Tribute Thread

OK, at least people are on board with that one. That makes me feel better.

Age 5: I checked some book out from the school library called Crabapple. It was 24 illustrated pages of a cartoon apple yelling the word "crab." Oh god that was the funniest book in the world. My mom refused to read it to me eventually.

this actually sounds kind of hilarious

Used to think I had a sense of humor, now not so sure anymore.

Same here, but replace "had a sense of humor" with "was funny."

age 2:
"knock knock"
"who's there?"
"green"
"green who?"
"green apple!"

this is pretty consistent with my sense of humor now

also I think when I shared this with my mom I did it in the most inefficient way possible, like "hey mom, say 'knock knock.' who's there? say 'green.'"

lol

i was watching madagascar 2 with my nephew and it has this one fairly grim joke, where the giraffe that's lived in captivity all its life (voiced by david schwimmer i think) says to a wild giraffe (i think possibly also voiced by david schwimmer) "well, what about VETS? what do you do when you get ILL?" and the answer is "you go and find a dying hole and you die" at which point there's a cut to a sick-looking giraffe with just it's head visible poking out of a hole in the ground and flies circling around it

my nephew said "why are you laughing, uncle tom" and i really did not know how to explain that one

"ive to sneak out the door for a smoke. its discrimination against smokers is wha. you'd catch your death out there"

he's in for terminal lung cancer.

his laugh,oh god his laugh

thought you were supposed to be getting out today

not likely now but they assure me tomorrow

when I was in for an appendectomy/recovery for a week in 2005 the eightysomething bloke in the next bed, possibly in his last days of life, assured me he was in for a sex change

throw-that-into-a-bucket list

age 4: I dunno what ever
age 14: red dwarf, hitchhikers guide, the fast show, life of brian, be avid and butthead
age 24: league of gentlemen, mighty boosh, the office
age 34: badkidsjokes.tumblr.com

*beavis