Name Six: Times You Made Someone Laugh Intentionally.

From Rick to Seth:
Name Six times you intentionally made someone laugh, and how.


This is a trickier one, not because it is difficult to find examples, it is just tricky to find specific ones. Like most improvisers (and this includes Rick) I am always looking to entertain those around me in some way, and I tend to get bored easily. Combine those two things and you get a person who always has a comment or quip loaded and ready to fire. So, I will try and choose a few moments that A. I can remember clearly, and B. I'm some what proud of.

1. My Cousin Lance: My family is full of good laughers. Not just people with good senses of humor, but rich infectious laughs as well. Not more so then my cousin Lance. He has one of the best laughs I have ever met. It's layered and pitched and if you get him started, he keeps going for a while.  Needless to say, I try to make him laugh as much as possible. My two standing strategies are either quotes from Caddyshack ("This is an exclusive club Wang, so don't tell them you're Jewish. OK? Fine.") or non-sequitur jokes. My favorite of which is: Two birds are in a bird bath. The first bird turns to the second bird and says "Can you pass me the soap". The second bird says "What do I look like, a typewriter?"  Classics.

2. Messing with Sammy. My little sister Samara and I didn't always get along (see previous blog), and when we're younger, we got into a lot of arguments. Now, I learned early on that nothing upset Sam more then making her laugh when she was crying. It would make her voice warble in a way that I can't convey through writing, and would usually send her off to slam a door in the house somewhere. On one specific occasion that I can remember, she was unable to do that, because we we're traveling in the car with my parents. I think it was one of our long trips we took when we first got to Wyo.  It was late, and we we're all a little tired, so I told my father the non-sequitur joke about the birdbath. For what ever reason, my Mother and Father found it hilarious, but Sam didn't get it, which made her upset. So I told another one: You are paddling your canoe down the street and your canoe runs out of gas, how many bones are in a yogurt? None. Chickens don't have fur.  This joke made them laugh even harder, and Sam get even madder. By the third joke, my Father's eyes were watering and Sam was screaming: Is it further to Paris or by train? BATTING CAGE!  It was a perfect storm of comedy and cruelty.

3. Meeting Blake. I was out at a bar in a situation where I was meeting a few people for the first time. One of which was this highly entertaining guy named Blake. We were passing stories back and forth, as people do, when it came out that when Blake was younger he used to work at a Hot Topic in Arkansas. Without even thinking I said "What's the hot topic in Arkansas, electricity?"  Blake laughed for a solid minute and we've been friends ever since.

4. Other Bathroom. Back in high school, when we had just moved into the new house that my parents had built, I had a group of people over to check the place out. This one girl, Julie, went to use the small bathroom next to the kitchen. Just after she settled in to do her business, I knocked on the door and said "Oh no Julie, this one is just for show." She laughed after I told her I was kidding.

5.  Par's Wedding. I have spoken at a few weddings, and in each one I've tried to be a mix of funny and heartfelt. One of my favorite moments from any of them was at Parwaiz and Katie's wedding. The wedding took place in a suburb of Chicago where Katie's family is from. So, before I started the real meet of my speech, I went over to Katie's dad and quoted Luca Brasi from the Godfather. "Thank you for allowing me here on the day of your daughters wedding. My their first child be a masculine child." Half the room got what I was doing, and that's all I need to make me smile.   

6. Poker in Vegas. I was in Las Vegas playing Hold'em poker at a table in Bally's with my great buddy Parwaiz... and I was getting very drunk. And the more I drink, the looser my words become, and the more I try to be funny, which really got under the skin of half the guys at the table. The other half, including Par and the dealers, loved me. The comment that put me over the top was when the dealer told us that the monorail had been shut down because someone had been hit by it. I drunkenly cocked my head to the side and said "Hey, anybody that gets hit by a monorail....deserves it."  The dealer like that so much that he called the pit boss over to tell him.

Readers: Can you Name Six times you have intentionally made someone laugh? Then do it!