Welcome to this week's Gulf Watchers Block Party, dedicated to the geniuses who make us chuckle, or guffaw, or catch a fit of the giggles, or laugh so hard we are reduced to weepy crooning and then go into silent laugh mode and come dangerously close to wetting ourselves and falling out of our chairs. Here are a few of my favorites.
Please share yours, but out of consideration for those on low bandwidth, use links only, no images or embeds.
Some of the "classic" stars of comedy: Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Carol Burnett, Charlie Chaplin, etc. Watching them, I feel as though I’m peering into a by-gone age. Nevertheless, we still have a lot of folks gracing us with their comedic gifts.
Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the telephone company's switchboard operator. "We are not subject to city, state or federal regulations. We are omnipotent. That's 'potent' with an 'omni' in front of it." Little did you know, Lily.
In the innocent boyish or girlish charm category...
Bill Cosby on dentists
Craig Ferguson. This clip includes Dr. Who and the zany hand puppets.
Dawn French as Geraldine, the Vicar of Dibley. At the end of each segment, she tells her housekeeper Alice a joke, and Alice’s failure to get it is funnier than joke itself.
ALL of Monty Python. Here’s the scene in Life of Brian where Pilate’s guards are overcome by fits of giggles over Bigus Dickus.
Helpless giggling is most excellent. In this clip from real life, Switzerland's finance minister loses it in parliament while trying to read the unintelligible bureaucratic language in his report on imports of cured meats. And his colleagues applaud!
Biting political satirists include Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, and Whoopi Goldberg, bless them one and all in this, our time of dire need. Also the comedians who use their ethnicity to call out bigotry, among them George Lopez and Russell Peters.
My favorite commercials are the ones hilarious enough to go viral on YouTube, like this one.
And then there is wordless visual humor. I got this from another Kos poster and use it to ground myself when the pie fights break out.
What tickles your funny bone? Bring on your clowns!