Download or read book Why is that So Funny written by John Wright and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2007 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Book). This unique exploration of the principles and practice of physical comedy starts with a discussion of the various types of laughter that can be provoked by performance. It then presents graduated sequences of over a hundred games and exercises devised to demonstrate and investigate the whole range of comic possibilities open to a performer. The result is an intensely practical and thoroughly stimulating investigation of how comedy works in physical terms.
Download or read book What s So Funny written by Tim Conway and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six-time Emmy Award-winning funny man Tim Conway—best known for his roles on The Carol Burnett Show—offers a straight-shooting and hilarious memoir about his life on stage and off as an actor and comedian. In television history, few entertainers have captured as many hearts and made as many people laugh as Tim Conway. What’s So Funny? follows Tim’s journey from life as an only child raised by loving but outrageous parents, to his tour of duty in the army, to his ascent as a national star. Conway’s often-improvised humor, razor-sharp timing, and hilarious characters have made him one of the funniest and most authentic performers to grace the stage and studio. As Carol Burnett, who also provides an intimate foreword to the book, has said, “there’s no one funnier” than Tim Conway. What’s So Funny? shares hilarious accounts and never-before-shared stories of behind-the-scenes antics on McHale’s Navy and The Carol Burnett Show as well as his famous partnerships with entertainment greats like Harvey Korman, Don Knotts, and Dick Van Dyke; and his friendships with stars like Betty White and Bob Newhart. Filled with warmth, humor, and heart, What’s So Funny will delight and inspire fans everywhere.
Download or read book Only Joking written by Jimmy Carr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain’s hottest young comedian presents a seriously funny, up-close look at joking matters—from the social origins of laughter, to the art and craft of humor, to why we can never remember the punch line—featuring over 300 jokes. As the host of the hit game show Distraction (now in its third season on Comedy Central) and one of the premier stand-up acts working today, award-winning comedian Jimmy Carr has won over millions of fans around the world with his trademark rapier wit, laced with "exquisitely economical and perfectly timed one-liners" (The Guardian). For this book he teams up with friend and fellow comedy writer Lucy Greeves to take an in-depth look at where humor comes from and how it works, through exploring its purest form: the joke. Only Joking begins with the mechanism of laughter—how it happens and why even infants do it—then delves into the power of the punch line, exploring the basics of all jokes, from the use of shock and surprise to advanced stand-up techniques such as the "pull-back/reveal." Carr and Greeves go on to explore taboo humor, jokes that bomb, and the psychology of finding something funny. They look into the long-standing connection between politics and humor, and discuss the survival prospects for contentious jokes in the current political climate. Throughout the book they conjure up a supporting cast of colorful joke enthusiasts, from Sigmund Freud to Lenny Bruce, and discuss their influence on the jokes we tell today. Surveying across national, ethnic, and gender divides, this rollicking analysis of why joking will always be close to the human heart is an irresistible exploration of humor that makes clear why we need a good laugh now more than ever.
Download or read book What s So Funny About Getting Old written by Ed Fischer and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One bonus of getting older is that it gives us a great perspective on life . . . and that includes plenty of humor! This collection of cartoons, quips, quotes, and insights introduces a new comedy genre: elderhumor. It captures the wry hilarity of our real-life sitcoms. Generational vocabulary gaps, miscommunications, preoccupation with health and comforts, foibles, disguises (for aging), even physical limitations -- all can have their funny sides when we're laughing at ourselves. One bonus of getting older is that it gives us a great perspective on life . . . and that includes plenty of humor! This collection of cartoons, quips, quotes, and insights introduces a new comedy genre: elderhumor. It captures the wry hilarity of our real-life sitcoms. Generational vocabulary gaps, miscommunications, preoccupation with health and comforts, foibles, disguises (for aging), even physical limitations -- all can have their funny sides when we're laughing at ourselves. This book, a light-hearted gift for anyone who's 50-plus, is a memoryjogger too. Remember the Katzenjammer Kids? Jack Armstrong? Apple Mary? Check out your friends' ages by their responses to a "Vanishing Words" test (examples: "spider," "broomstick skirt," "running board," "the shag"). If you're still calling the refrigerator an "icebox," it's a giveaway -- you're probably over 60. What's So Funny about Getting Old? is brought to you by a comedy team of two. Ed Fischer is an award-winning cartoonist. Jane Thomas Noland, author of Laugh It Off (what's so funny about trying to lose weight?) is a books editor and a former Minneapolis Star Tribune feature writer. Both have delicious ways of looking at life. Both, like all the rest of us, are getting older. Laughter heals. Laughter helps. Laughter keeps us in shape emotionally and physically. Read this book and try it. You'll be convinced, as these authors are, that there's only one way to grow older -- with a healthy sense of humor!
Download or read book Step by Step to Stand up Comedy written by Greg Dean and published by Heinemann Drama. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you think you're funny, and you want others to think so too, this is the book for you! Greg Dean examines the fundamentals of being funny and offers advice on a range of topics, including: writing creative joke material rehearsing and performing routines coping with stage fright dealing with emcees who think they're funnier than you are getting experience and lots more. Essential for the aspiring comic or the working comedian interested in updating his or her comedy routine, Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy is the most comprehensive and useful book ever written on the art of the stand-up comedian.
Download or read book What s So Funny written by Nancy A. Walker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1998 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical studies attempting to define and dissect American humor have been published steadily for nearly one hundred years. However, until now, key documents from that history have never been brought together in a single volume for students and scholars. What's So Funny? Humor in American Culture, a collection of 15 essays, examines the meaning of humor and attempts to pinpoint its impact on American culture and society, while providing a historical overview of its progres-sion. Essays from Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner, Joseph Boskin and Joseph Dorinson, William Keough, Roy Blount, Jr., and others trace the development of American humor from the colonial period to the present, focusing on its relationship with ethnicity, gender, violence, and geography. An excellent reader for courses in American studies and American social and cultural history, What's So Funny? explores the traits of the American experience that have given rise to its humor.
Download or read book Funny The Book written by David Misch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FUNNY: THE BOOK - EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT COMEDY
Download or read book What s So Funny written by David Sipress and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a longtime New Yorker staff cartoonist, an evocative family memoir, a love letter to New York City, and a delightful exploration of the origins of creativity—richly interleaved with the author’s witty, beloved cartoons A wry and brilliantly observed portrait of the budding young cartoonist and his Upper West Side Jewish family in the age of JFK and Sputnik. Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his father, the meticulous, upwardly mobile proprietor of Revere Jewelers, and in the face of the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother. With self-deprecation, wit, and artistry, Sipress paints his hapless place in his indelibly dysfunctional family, from the time he was tricked by his unreliable older sister into rocketing his pet turtle out his twelfth-floor bedroom window, to the moment he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to begin his journey as a professional cartoonist. In What’s So Funny?—reminiscent of the masterly, humane recall of Roger Angell and the brainy humor of Roz Chast—Sipress's cartoons appear with spot-on precision, inducing delightful Aha moments in answer to the perennial question aimed at cartoonists: Where do you get your ideas?
Download or read book What s So Funny written by Stephen Hoover and published by . This book was released on 2013-11-16 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we laugh? How does comedy work? This book examines the theories from philosophers to scientists on why we need to laugh and how we laugh. For the comedy fan or comedy writer, this enjoyable and fast read will fill you in on all of the theories of humor.
Download or read book Furiously Happy written by Jenny Lawson and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. As Jenny says: "Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos. "Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you'd never guess because we've learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, 'We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.' Except go back and cross out the word 'hiding.'" Furiously Happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair." It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy." Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right.
Download or read book Planet Funny written by Ken Jennings and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year The witty and exuberant New York Times bestselling author and record-setting Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings relays the history of humor in “lively, insightful, and crawling with goofy factlings,” (Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go Bernadette)—from fart jokes on clay Sumerian tablets to the latest Twitter gags and Facebook memes. Where once society’s most coveted trait might have been strength or intelligence or honor, today, in a clear sign of evolution sliding off the trails, it is being funny. Yes, funniness. Consider: Super Bowl commercials don’t try to sell you anymore; they try to make you laugh. Airline safety tutorials—those terrifying laminated cards about the possibilities of fire, explosion, depressurization, and drowning—have been replaced by joke-filled videos with multimillion-dollar budgets and dance routines. Thanks to social media, we now have a whole Twitterverse of amateur comedians riffing around the world at all hours of the day—and many of them even get popular enough online to go pro and take over TV. In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.
Download or read book So Far So Funny written by Hal Kanter and published by McFarland. This book was released on 1999 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 18, Hal Kanter first came to Hollywood to work as the ghost writer for a comic strip for the princely sum of $10 per week-before he was fired. It was then he heard an Eddie Cantor radio show and realized that he could write better jokes than the famed comedian's writers were providing him. Interestingly enough, Cantor's writers agreed with him, at least to some degree, and hired the brash young man to work with them on the Jack Oakie radio show. Thus was born one of the more interesting and varied careers in Hollywood. Kanter's writing career went from radio shows to screenplays to television series. Along the way he worked with such luminaries as Bob Hope, Frank Capra, Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and a host of others. Awarded an Emmy for writing The George Gobel Show, he was the creator of Julia, the ground-breaking television series. Though he went on to enjoy great success as a producer and director, Kanter always considered himself, first and foremost, a writer. And just how many scripts has he written? "More than I can lift," he says.
Download or read book What s So Funny written by Donna M. Jackson and published by Viking Juvenile. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains why our brains think something is funny, what happens to us physically when we laugh, why you can tickle your friend but not yourself, and much more.
Download or read book Giggle Giggle What s So Funny written by Ben Mantle and published by Campbell. This book was released on 2012 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An hilarious hand-puppet book! Giggle, giggle, what's so funny? Is it two barmy ballet dancers jumping and jiggling? An exercising octopus all puffed out? Or perhaps there is a totally tickle-tastic answer? Put your fingers into this glove puppet and wiggle them to animate the pictures, be it the legs on one page or a head of crazy hair on the next. Great fun for sharing and making little ones laugh, you can easily bring this madcap book alive!
Download or read book That s So Funny I Forgot to Laugh written by Allen Cohen and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Not So Funny When It Happened written by Tim Cahill and published by Travelers' Tales. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In more than 30 scathingly funny pieces, a diverse array of authors shows just how quickly a pleasant vacation can turn into an embarrassing anecdote.The stories show that when traveling, even the best of plans fall by the wayside.
Download or read book To Siri with Love written by Judith Newman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 From the author of the viral New York Times op-ed column "To Siri with Love" comes a collection of touching, hilarious, and illuminating stories about life with a thirteen-year-old boy with autism that hold insights and revelations for us all. When Judith Newman shared the story of how Apple’s electronic personal assistant, Siri, helped Gus, her son who has autism, she received widespread media attention and an outpouring of affection from readers around the world. Basking in the afterglow of media attention, Gus told anyone who would listen, "I’m a movie star." Judith’s story of her son and his bond with Siri was an unusual tribute to technology. While many worry that our electronic gadgets are dumbing us down, she revealed how they can give voice to others, including children with autism like Gus—a boy who has trouble looking people in the eye, hops when he’s happy, and connects with inanimate objects on an empathetic level. To Siri with Love is a collection of funny, poignant, and uplifting stories about living with an extraordinary child who has helped a parent see and experience the world differently. From the charming (Gus weeping with sympathy over the buses that would lie unused while the bus drivers were on strike) to the painful (paying $22,000 for a behaviorist in Manhattan to teach Gus to use a urinal) to the humorous (Gus’s insistence on getting naked during all meals, whether at home or not, because he does not want to get his clothes dirty) to the profound (how an automated "assistant" helped a boy learn how to communicate with the rest of the world), the stories in To Siri with Love open our eyes to the magic and challenges of a life beyond the ordinary.
