Any event, story, joke, etc. What was the funniest, as measured by the amount of laughter.
In my case (and this is not going to sound that funny to you), it was when a pizza menu had abbreviated “salami” with “salam.”.
About a year ago I had a laughing fit that ended up lasting about an hour. I can’t recall what started it off, and really I think it was more an issue that I needed to laugh than that anything was all that funny.
I think it was some years ago when I watched the movie Brain Donors , with some friends, you know how being in good company can accentuate such things. We were almost rolling on the floor, I felt like I was about to pass out for lack of oxygen, and that lasted throughout the movie.
No drugs involved…
I haven´t seen the movie since then, I don´t know if I´ll find it so funny now, I guess it was just the environment and the jokes we made watching it.
Unrestrained laughter: It was a party, and not a milk-and-cookies party, IYKWIM, so the circumstances had a lot to do with it. But at any rate, we were in a suite with its own bathroom, and at some point during the evening, everyone started avoiding it, leaving the room if they really had to go, because the door was closed and everyone assumed someone was in there. Finally, after about an hour, one guy started to open the door and was told, “Someone’s in there.”
He flung open the door and said, with heavy sarcasm, “Oh look at the person run!” And of course, no one was in there. For days afterwards, I couldn’t think of it without laughing. I’m laughing now, incidentally.
Restrained laughter: When I was a senior in high school, I was a member of Academic Challenge, or whatever the Quiz Bowl-type thing was called. One day, during a match, the coach made me sit out the second half so someone from the B team could get in. All the chairs in the classroom were occupied by spectators, so I took an extra chair near the teacher’s desk (but not the actual teacher’s chair). After a few minutes, I noticed a photo on the desk. A newspaper or magazine photo, depicting a morbidly obese bedbound person, with the handwritten notation, “BROWNIES AND CHOCOLATES DID THIS!!!”
I spent the rest of the match with arms folded, shaking with silent laughter. Luckily, I wasn’t in the eyeline of my teammates, or I might have distracted them.
The gentleman I love. He may not look it, but I swear he channels Tim Conway! The stories he tells are too long and elaborate to post here, not to mention too private, but let’s just say sometimes I feel like Carol Burnett at the beginning of The Elephant Sketch.
CJ
During a performance of Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show Search for Signs of Intelligence Life in the Universe, I laughed so hard I actually had to hold on to the seat in front of me to avoid falling down.
And it’s hard to explain why what I was laughing at was so funny. It’s a sketch about a woman who finds a beautifully-written suicide note on the street, with no context, no hint as to who it belongs to. She can’t bring herself to throw it away; it is so eloquent and meaningful. So she keeps it with her…until she realizes that if some accident were to befall her, they would find the note and think it was hers; that she deliberately killed herself. So she takes it home and puts it with her important papers… until she realizes that if something were to happen to her, her family would go through her important papers, find the note, and (by virtue of it being with her important papers, assume it was similarly important). So she can’t keep it there. At the end of the skit she’s frantically moving this note from place to place. Absolutely hilarious.
My roommate and I used to hate this locally produced Saturday morning TV show that came on after PeeWee’s Playhouse, but we’d watch it to enjoy hating it.
It was a teen-issues show, with this cast called the “In Our Lives Players” acting out vignettes that demonstrated these stupid issues.
One day I got a call from my roommate at work (he was a bank officer). His bank was making a documentary on good banking, at his branch. One of the “In Our Lives Players” was in the cast of this documentary. Further, he was playing my roommate, sitting at his desk, using his name. Further, he was the ‘evil banker’ - the Goofus of the Goofus/Gallant structure this documentary employed.
I laughed for perhaps twenty minutes before I could calm down. A few months later I saw the documentary and laughed that hard again.
In college, my concert band had a performance at a local high school. My flute-playing friend had her flute-rag (to wipe down the outside/swab the inside of the flute) on her lap during the concert. I’m pretty sure her rag was made from an old white T-Shirt, and looked terribly grungy.
Well, she had this beautiful solo, must have been at least 32 measures long, at a very slow tempo. Well, she picked up her flute oh-so-elegantly, and her rag was stuck right to the end of the flute. She had no idea, but was swaying and emoting, the rag swinging lovingly in the movement.
My stand partner and I noticed and spent the rest of that piece snickering behing our music stand. Finally, when the concert ended, I started laughing every time I pictured her and could not stop, even to tell her what had been going on. She thought it was funny, but apparently not nearly as much as I.
I think it was one of those things where the tension was held so long, I had to make up for it when it was all over.
In high school, when the principal referred to himself as “a big athletic supporter” during a meeting with the web team. I had to bite my hand to avoid laughing.
More recently, I was returning from a day trip to NYC with some friends, and were, ah, “discussing” the implications of Metuchen, NJ and macaque monkeys.
Some one else posted this a while ago…so brilliantly written, I had to take several breaks while reading though it so as to get my breath back and my heart rate down…can’t recall ever laughing that hard in my life…
Holy crap, that’s some good funny. I only read the Beggin’ Strips one ('cause my dog, Billy the Stupid Stinky Ugly Puppy That Nobody Loves) can’t get enough of 'em. Duely bookmarked.
For me, the best recent laugh came from The Order Of The Stick (very, very D&D-related humor – not suitable for all readers).
Totally with you on this one. Although I think mine is more Harvey Korman. 
But you know those instances where you simply physically CANNOT laugh hard enough? I had one the other day, and I’m still giggling just thinking about it, although I doubt it’ll be that funny to anybody but me.
One of the only co-workers I actually like, who is nearer my age than anyone else, and who, up until recently pretty much embodied the spectre of uptight accountant, was joking with me about wanting to strangle some people here right after he quit chewing.
We have recently repainted the walls in the office here a bright white, and have had the floors redone with that laminate wood flooring stuff.
As he was about to walk down the hallway back toward his office, his parting shot in the joke came as he threw down his pen in mock frustration and anger. The pen exploded so hard that it covered the walls on either side of him, all the way up to the doorjamb height of about 8’ in black ink. Didn’t spare him or the floor, either. (Who knew a regular mild mannered ink pen had so much ink in it, or came standard loaded with explosives?)
He FROZE. Just stopped moving and talking, and his expression was not unlike this: :eek:
My response to that? Well, I kind of froze up, too, but more like what happens when a baby falls down…there’s that good 15 seconds or so where they cannot suck in air before the screaming starts and they turn all red? That’s me, only with the bouncing and shaking that accompany laughter too hard for sound.
Wow. STILL f’n funny.
" … freshly-douched pork chop …" I’m freakin’ DYING here!
In high school, out for a burger with my friend, Tom. We’re kidding with the waitress, and she and Tom start trading increasingly more bizarre pet names. Snuggle-pookie. Widdle Wuvvey. Huggy-buns. He adds, “Banana-nose,” which was so off the scale, I burst out laughing – and a HUGE chunk of hamburger flew out of my nose. Well, that was it for me. My nose hurt like hell, but my chest was hurting worse by the time I was done hyperventilating. Good times.
This probably won’t be funny to anyone but me, but…
A few years ago my girlfriend wrote a book. It was the result of years of research and writing and editing. A lot of blood went into that.
So we went on vacation. Our first night there, we went into a bookstore to see if it was there. It wasn’t. We did, however, find a book that purported to ask the most important questions of our time. Earth-shattering questions. Deep, probing questions. Questions that will reorganize the concept of your self.
I decided to open the book and find out what one of these questions was. “Would you rather have seventeen testicles, or one testicle the size of a coconut?”
Most important questions of our time, Gracie? We were pretty pissed that my GF’s book, well done as it was, wasn’t even on shelves, but this crap was probably selling like hotcakes. Stupid literate public.
Later that night, we were riffing on that for about an hour. “Honey, what would you like for breakfast? A coconut, or a testicle the size of a coconut?” “Let’s go to that store tomorrow. I need to pick up 15 more testicles.” Stuff like that.
I guess you had to be there.
Let’s go back to middle school . . .
I had a seventh grade science teacher who was the most buttoned-down guy I’ve ever known. Anyway, one day we had a guest speaker come and demonstrate electrical devices from the nineteenth century that were thought to be able to zap diseases out of people. (If it hurts, it must be good for you.)
At one point, my arch-nemesis DJ was the guinea pig. He was holding onto two iron arms with current running through his body. At this point, my teacher got a mischevious look on his face, snuck up behind DJ, and touched his (DJ’s) ear. I could hear the sound of the current going through DJ’s ear . From the scream, I imagine that it hurt pretty badly. I think I laughed for a solid five minutes.
I think it was Amazon Floozy Goddess who posted this link, to a fashion-critic of third-rate superheroes’ costumes.. For me, it was the best laugh of 2005.
“Despite the fact that I am a grown man with children, I’m off to go eat dog food.” Just beautiful. I almost hurt myself laughing.
My funny moment happened a few weeks ago. My employer decided to combine the annual company address/progress report with the annual worker appreciation luncheon. Both are mindnumbingly dull, but at least we get food at the luncheon.
Most years we play the “Stupid Question Game” at the company address: whoever can ask the vice president the most inane or embarrassing question without getting fired wins. During lunch I suggested that we have a drinking game this year instead. I meant it as a joke, but my coworkers jumped at the idea. We decided on the rules (take a sip every time the VP said “editorial” or “year”), refilled our drinks and waited for the show to start.
Unfortunately I’d forgotten to take two factors into account: 1) my seat gave me a good view of all my coworkers; and 2) I was sitting right in line with the managers’ table.
So the VP got up to start the speech. “I’d like to talk about our editorial department.”
My coworkers (whom I’ll call Bill and Nina) and I all lifted our cups in perfect unison and sipped our drinks.
“As you know, 2005 was an exciting year for the editorial department.”
(sip sip)
“And as we start off this new year, we’re looking to make editorial even better.”
Bill made a big show of taking two sips of his iced tea. Nina and I put our cups down and try to stop ourselves from giggling. Also to keep us from looking too much like synchronized swimmers. The managers were eyeing us, but couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. Meanwhile, “Gary,” the coworker who’d made up the rules but was too chicken to play, was red-faced and shaking with laughter. The longer the game went on, the harder it got.
After awhile we learned to stagger our sipping so it wasn’t quite so obvious, but it was hilarious! We’re already planning next year’s game (assuming, of course, that we’re all still employed). 
About 25 years ago I was office manager at an ad agency and had to comple a list of utility company our client works with. Endless, dull, list compiling.
Till I got to the Southwest and encountered El Paso Gas.
I was curled up in a tiny ball under my desk for 20 minutes, laughing so hard I couldn’t inhale. All I could do was point helplessly at the offending piece of paper while I made horrific little snorty and glurky noises of distress.
That was very funny. So is Super Dickery.com.
This is a tough question, and I hope it’s okay if I cheat and tell a few stories.
Short answer first: the first time I saw Steve Martin perform his, er, version of “Mack the Knife” in his Steve Martin Live video. He sings “Oh the shark bites/with his teeth dear/and he keeps them/pearly white,” then clearly forgets the rest of the song and keeps singing this bit over and over. After two or three times through, he spices it up by making shark shapes with his hands and having them swim around. It was so dumb and so reminiscent of my father that my mother and I almost died. One of my brothers, on the other hand, found it totally unfunny. As a result, it’s been a family in-joke for 10 years.
My senior year in high school, I played Juliet’s father in… do I really need to tell you the play? Anyway, I had an understudy. Since this was high school theatre, the understudies rarely got any rehearsal time. As a result of that - or maybe I should say in spite of it - they did get their own performance. I got to sit in the audience that day, and for most of the show, he was no worse than anybody else. But there’s a scene where Juliet tells her father she’s not going to marry Count Paris, and he flips out on her. (That was my favorite scene to play.) This guy could hardly be blamed for not knowing his lines, and when he blew them in this scene, he didn’t know what to do to recover. The whole show was struggling along anyway, so… he played the scene for laughs. Lines like “Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage! You tallow-face!” turned into “Oooh, I am so mad! Oh boy, you make me so angry!” The crowd laughed like crazy. I was beyond laughter. I ran backstage and told him he’d managed to turn the show into a comedy. And for the rest of the year, we called Romeo and Juliet “Shakespeare’s secret comedy.”
But the big winner might come from my college days. An attractive young blonde decided to perform a sultry jazz-y thing called “Peel Me a Grape.” She’s got a guy playing piano, and she’s singing in the huskiest voice she can. It’s rather seductive at first. But little things keep going wrong with the performance. The microphone cord wraps around her leg and she has to hop out of it while singing. She decides to lie down on the piano - but struggles to get onto it. And her efforts are clearly annoying the piano player. And these tiny things keep going wrong throughout her attempt to be sexy. She never gave up, and I don’t think she ever realized how completely the illusion had evaporated. I can’t describe all the minor details anymore, but if you saw this scene in a Christopher Guest movie, people would have died laughing.
I don’t remember the specific episode, but I was laughing so loudly at ***Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In ***one night that my mother came upstairs to see if I was okay.
When National Lampoon’s Animal House first came out, some friends and I went to see it at a drive-in. As the cliche goes, we laughed so hard we cried. (Although I must confess that certain, er, destabilizing compounds were ingested that evening).