Like Minds

There's an old saying we've probably all heard that claims, "Laughter is the best medicine." While I can't vouch for its medicinal purposes, I can say that it at times can be a tremendous workout, and working out regularly can keep illness at bay. Of course, it has to be real, sustained laughter, not the "therapeutic" kind you force in search of some sense of well-being.

The crux — or crutch, if you will — of most of my humor is the double-entendre. Whether I'm in conversation or just witness to it, my brain is always tuned to the other meanings of words or their sound-alikes and, when the situation is informal and amenable enough to it, I'll make comments to those other meanings. That's making a double-entendre out of innocent or unfortunate phrasing, and I go for the laugh. Unfortunately, since so much of it is of the moment, I rarely remember the things I come up with, and some of them are, to my mind, real gems.

I recently got a laughter workout on a shoot gig. I usually do when I work for this particular producer. His name is Andy, and his employer is a long-time client of my former employer, who booked me a while ago for last week's shoot.

Andy and I worked together for the first time probably back in 2002, and it was way back then that we realized we had synchronous — if not identical — senses of humor. We both fully grasp the concept of the double-entendre and its comic potential, and we bounce our fleeting thoughts off of each other for maximum entertainment value.

A few years ago Andy and I worked together on a shoot in southern California and, on the last day, as we were running late to the airport (I missed my scheduled flight), we passed a restaurant called The Buggy Whip. We both seized on that and turned it into a restaurant with a BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism) theme, positing a dominatrix-cum-hostess (perhaps an unfortunate syntax there!!) who seats you when and where she wants to while shaping your behavior with the threat and/or use of a whip, and wait staff who make you beg before you can request — rather than order — your food. We laughed well, but briefly, over that one, and I retained very few of the ideas we broached in the car.

This most recent shoot with Andy was once again in southern California, which makes me think the place imparts to us some kind of cosmic synergy. Monday evening, after being treated to dinner and drinks by the subject of our shoot, Andy and I were driving back to our hotel when, just to keep silence from invading our ride, I did what I often find myself doing and blurted out the name of the cross street at which we paused for a red light.

"Orangewood," I blurted.

Andy looked down at his lap. "No, mine's usually sort of pink." Typical guy humor, I know.

Feigning mild disgust, I said, "Dude. You just described part of your anatomy to me." And then my own odd phrasing and pronunciation occurred to me, and I repeated, "Anatomy to me."

Displaying perfect timing, Andy sang, "Doot-doooo-dee-doo-doot!" from the Manah Manah song. It took me a second to catch it, but when I did, HOLY CRAP! I hadn't laughed like that in years, and suddenly I was seized in hysteric convulsions. Mind you, I was driving; I can only imagine the look on the police officer's face if we had been pulled over at that moment. He would have had probable cause to search the vehicle for drugs! We laughed for another ten minutes, all the way to the hotel!

Maybe you get it. Maybe you had to be there.

Tuesday was a regular day. We shot several interviews, I shot a half-ton of b-roll. We finished around 5:00, and I debated whether to see my uncle who — so it turns out — lives only a few miles from where we were working, or to hang with Andy for the evening. The next day looked to be fairly light, with a late evening flight home, so I opted to visit Uncle Guido on my way out of town on Wednesday, and to hang with Andy Tuesday night.

We made plans to go see the film The Hangover at a shopping mall theater complex a few miles away, and thought we would take our chances at finding somewhere to eat close to it.

On our way there we saw a sign on a building, obviously a pet- or pet supply store. However, our minds took Pet City the other way, and it became a place where you go to be fondled. We didn't just state our interpretations, we created scenarios in the air, with a man going in to look for some stuff for his dog, but he walks in and is groped by an attractive female employee. He expresses his shock and confusion, and the woman explains what the place is, and then reveals to him a line of men waiting their turn.

We got some good laughs from "Pet City," but further along down the road we drove past a restaurant of the name, "Wok Experience." Nothing came to either of us as far as double entendre is concerned, but I blurted out the image of an unwitting customer entering the place, and a small Asian man running up and clocking the guy with a wok! I spoke as the attackee: "Why did you hit me with a pan?"

Andy countered in a stereotypical Asian accent, "Better than chopstick in eye!"

And we were rolling. Without going into all the details, we created a whole scene that involved more woks to the head (as the standard greeting upon arrival), to hands shoved into hot oil, to warnings about the Asian man's brother's place, "Chopstick Experience," where you get "chopstick in eye," and the Asian's admonition, "You no wanna go there!" We also included free foot binding as Tuesday's special; and Wednesday's special, the hibachi experience. Hmmm. It seems we get a lot of mileage out of the S&M theme....

We didn't have time to eat dinner and catch The Hangover, so we decided to just eat, and then we would catch the late showing of Angels and Demons at a different theater.

We sat at an Italian restaurant, where I actually wrote down some of the ideas spilling out of our heads, and we riffed for two hours on "Wok Experience," certainly convincing our waitress that we were high or certifiably loony. Neither Andy nor I could stop laughing, nor did the ideas and dialogue stop coming to us, which certainly didn't help to stop the laughter. Andy coughed briefly, then lamented, "Aw, now I'm gonna start coughing up crap."

Well, guess what that started?

On our way to the theater we passed some sort of oil-change/auto service place that had a huge neon sign glowing in the night: "Pit Service." I raised my arm and looked at my pit and said, "Can you tell me how long this is going to take? I have to be to work in an hour..."

Andy was gone. I was losing it...and, yes, driving again.

We managed to keep quiet during the film, but were rolling again — mostly with a revisit to "Wok Experience" — on the way back to the hotel.

The next morning I felt hung-over, only without the headache and nausea. I was achy from laughter, the muscles for which had not been engaged so much in years. My sinuses were clogged. I felt exhausted, yet exhilarated. And inspired. I told Andy I wanted to write "Wok Experience" as a scene, a short screenplay. He agreed that I should. After the day's shoots, a few more giddy laughs at lunch, and a visit to my uncle and aunt, I sat at the airport and tapped out a script on my laptop. As with anything I write, I'm not too crazy about how it turned out, but I sent it to Andy, and he thought it hilarious.

I hope someday to make it, or see it made into a film.

Hope with me, won't you?



°

Laugh 'Til Liquid Leaks From You

The following is in response to the instructions by JillJillBoBill to recall and share an occurrence in my life that incited uncontrollable laughter to the point of tears and/or peeing the pants:

It was May of 2004. I was on the job, shooting a highlights video for one of our clients whose annual sales meeting that particular year happened to take place on a HollandAmerica cruise ship in the Caribbean. A chartered cruise ship, no less! The only people on the ship were HollandAmerica crew, the client's people (about 600), and the four of us on the video crew.

Despite the low number of people on the ship – the passenger count was half the ship's capacity – we still had designated dinner seatings, and the crew person who organizes such things seemed to think that, after working together all day, the guys making the video would want to spend even more time together by sitting together for dinner.

So there we were, the four of us: Mr. Graceful, our boss; Stud-boy, our editor; The King of Comedy, our producer; and I. We had finished dinner and were waiting for dessert and the floor-show, which we were told was not to be missed. A waiter brought a small plate with four small cookies on it.

The King of Comedy – if you can't tell by my nickname for him – is an attention whore who thinks every word he utters is pure Comedy Gold. Don't get the wrong idea…he can be clever, he is often pretty funny, but rarely is he original, and turn it off once in a while! And though he has good common sense, has great organizational skills and seems savvy about politics and dealing with people, he's a geographical moron who is prone to utter malapropisms due to his shallow vocabulary, and so often comes across as kind of dumb. Anyway, the King of Comedy looks down at the small plate of cookies and he says, "Oh! It's…" He points at the cookies and then looks at us. "They're…" He's stuck for a word. He gestures with one hand in an effort to encourage one of us to read his mind.

"Cookies?" I say.

"No!" he says, still gesturing.

"Dessert," says Mr. Graceful.

King of Comedy closes his eyes and shakes his head in frustration. "You know. They're… they're…" More gesturing follows.

"What?" says one of us in mild exasperation. This has already gone on too long. I'm anticipating another wisecrack, but his own dysfunctional vocabulary is delaying his punchline.

"You know!" He starts pointing violently at the cookies.

"No, we don't!" I yell back.

Finally King of Comedy gives up, slaps the table and, in frustration, asks, "What's in a meringue pie?"

In unplanned unison, Mr. Graceful, Stud-boy and I, each of us thinking we're being funny, say, "Meringue?"

Suddenly a stunned, sheepish look comes across King of Comedy's face, along with a quickly spreading pink tint. Just as suddenly, I realize that he was not trying to make a joke, and that "meringue" was indeed the word he was trying to come up with.

In the same instant I realized it, Mr. Graceful and Stud-boy figure it out, too, and we start laughing hysterically. A few moments later, King of Comedy is also laughing, and none of us can stop. We can't even pause long enough to tell the waiter we want coffee.

We must have laughed non-stop for a full half-hour. The next day Stud-boy placed a videotape adhesive label above the screen of his video monitor and wrote on it, "What's in a meringue pie?" When the rest of us saw it, we were laughing yet again, for almost as long. It became the catch phrase for the rest of the trip, and King of Comedy has not been able – or allowed – to live it down.

Oh, and the floor-show? It was worth missing.