This is not so much a request for a description or a link or a retelling. It is a request for you to try to remember the very funniest thing you can, and to associate that funniest thing with the person you think was responsible for it.
It could have been a joke, a gag, a bit, some pratfall, one of those America’s Funniest Videos, something on YouTube, somthing in a cartoon. No limits.
Just when you see the words “funniest thing ever” what do you think of? And who made it funny?
In my case, I think I laughed hardest and longest at Lee Evans in Funny Bones (1995). If you’ve seen that movie and not found it outrageously funny, I’d like to know about why. And if you haven’t seen it, I can recommend it for Lee’s bits alone. Other parts are amusing to funny. Lee Evans is side-splittingly hilarious.
The act of the comedian John Byner where he is struggling with contact lenses, putting them in his eyes, rinsing them in his mouth, gargling with them … on and on until my sides hurt.
I’m not usually fond of slapstick, but I do recall that one years later.
I will pass over the occasional bouts of hilarity during my misspent salad days at the University of Maryland many, many moons ago.
Last summer, stone-cold sober and just checking out random clips on YouTube. I stumbled across a Charlie Brown Kwanzaa and laughed so hard I became worried because my chest began to hurt.
Not safe for work, not politically correct, not in good taste and I’m not posting the link.
Mine are all “you had to be there” moments with friends. Specificity is funnier to me than general humor, and the specifics you can exploit after 5+ years of friendship will always be hilarious to the friends, but completely baffling to outsiders.
Trust me, you have no idea why the idea of an action figure that flails its arms and legs while saying, “Next I’m going to learn 14th century Italian!” is so very, very funny. But it is. Funniest thing ever. Except for ringing a bell and yelling “Sex!” See? You had to be there, not just on those nights, but on all the nights leading up to them.
Agreed. There’s one moment from nearly seven years ago that still makes me giggle for no reason at all, and there’s only one other person in the world who finds it as funny as me. In fact, now that I think about it, the other people who were in the room when it happened found it distinctly unfunny. And whenever I’ve tried to describe it, no one else finds it funny.
But it’s like family sayings – we’re the only ones who laugh at the “put the food away first!” dance; “advance your load!”; K, O, cook, cook, ees; “who had the tick?” Outside the family, they’re not funny even when explained.
“I’m sorry, but you’d never catch me on a boat with Christopher Walken.”…former co-worker. You probably had to be there, but it was the funniest thing I ever heard.
I don’t remember, exactly, but I don’t think so. I think it was pretty random, and that’s why it was so hysterical. This guy was the king of obscure references (and I’m the queen, so I was always laughing at him).
Another time, he walked up to me, put his apron on his head and said, “Not without my daughter.”
Here’s one that happened to me:
When I was in High School, I had a friend who was sort of a tall goofy guy with red hair (think a young Jeffery Jones from Ferris Buhler). He had this fluorescent-red one-piece snowsuit that was completely ridiculous looking. We were playing in the snow, and I took a snowball and cocked my arm to throw it at him at close range. He put up his hand to stop me, and I noticed a little thread sticking out from his glove. Without thinking, I reached over with my other hand and pulled the thread, expecting it to snap. Instead it went ZZZZZzzzzz…ZZZZZZZzzzzz…ZZZZZZ… ZZZZZZZZzzz…ZZZZZZ…ZZZZZ… ZZZZZZZZZzzzzz…ZZZZzzzzz…ZZZZZZZzzzz up and down each finger, and the glove fell into two parts at the wrist. It was like something from a cartoon. He just stood there dumbfounded looking at the remains of his glove, and then we both started laughing so hard, I actually threw myself into the snow. The whole scene was just so perfect.
I’ve always had a soft spot for physical humor, and that was probably the funniest i’ve ever seen.
Beowullf, that made me LOL. You described it perfectly.
I would have to second that my funniest moments ever were with friends and you just hadda be there. I was once quietly studying in a dorm room with two of my best friends at the time, when one of them, well known for hilariously making no sense at all, suddenly looked up, pointed at me, and said thoughtfully, ‘‘You really have such undesirable qualities for a woman.’’
It sounds horrible, and I probably should have been offended, but I couldn’t stop laughing. It was just so completely out of nowhere, and his voice was so contemplative and pleasant, as if he were discussing the weather.
I still laugh out loud whenever I remember that moment.
Or the time my friend Brandon sent my friend Dennis out to get him some liquor, and he came back with a bottle of Canada Dry. And Brandon just looked at him and said, ‘‘You fucker.’’
Seriously, there is no way for me to give this question a single response. I used to live with five guys. There is nothing more hilarious than a group of bored college boys. My husband and I spent lots of time going, ‘‘Remember when so-and-so did… BWAHAHAHAH!’’
The night I graduated from college, my roommate and I went to a small, quiet party at the home of two very pretty, rather prudish sisters. Picture a half-dozen well-behaved college students, and the sisters and their parents, drinking pop and playing board games and such.
Around 10:30 the parents went to bed, leaving us kids standing around in the kitchen. Maybe 10 minutes later we began hearing, from the bedroom, a rhythmic SQUEAK-squeak, SQUEAK-squeak, SQUEAK-squeak – obviously the sound of bedsprings movin’ to the rhythm. And my roommate says, completely deadpan…
“Kinda late at night to be washing the windows, isn’t it?”
We laughed so hard we choked – except the sisters, who couldn’t figure out what we were laughing at – which made us laugh even harder. Eighteen years later I’m still laughing.
funniest passage in a book by Tom Sharpe (The Throwback) has an elderly gent trying to remove a condom filled with oven cleaner by using a cheese grater. Still has me in tears of laughter when I read it.
What makes people revive zombie threads? Obviously a search of some sort, but why post to it? Maybe a six month old thread is not a zombie. If so, I do apologize.
I can’t tell whether you’re joking or not. I guess I really don’t get that post at all.
Did you happen to see the six month gap between rucciface and beowulff’s posts? I’m really baffled by the intention of your post. It clearly wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a reply to the thread itself, I don’t think it was meant to make fun of me for pointing out that it was an old thread. Was it a feigned ignorance type thing? Maybe you are agreeing that it is an odd practice, and are also wondering why one would resurrect a zombie thread. I think I’m sticking with the last option.