Saturday, January 19, 2019

Weekend Post

This video made me laugh really hard.  A woman tries to put gas in a Tesla. 

Also, this video shows the value of some sort of laugh track.  When you watch the first time keep the sound on.  The guys' laughter is infectious.  Then watch it again on mute.  Not nearly as funny, is it?

I hate a laugh track as much as anybody, but I do have to concede the point that hearing laughter promotes laughter.

Enjoy.



MEANWHILE....

Rehearsals are going well on my play, UPFRONTS & PERSONAL that opens Thursday night at the Gallery Players Theatre in fabulous Brooklyn. I'll be there all weekend. Come for laughs and stay to say hi. After the show next Sunday there's a talkback where you can heckle. Here's where you go for info and tickets. Thanks. Hope to see you there.

25 comments :

Jen from Jersey said...

There’s often one guy in the studio audience of Cheers that is laughing harder and longer than anyone else. I know it’s not the same guy, but there’s always someone who can’t stop laughing. When I hear this, I crack up even more. Today’s shows seem more canned with the laughter.

Tom said...

On this occasion, I have to disagree. I was unable to endure the audio for a non-negligible amount of time — the laughter was intrusive and irritating.

On a similar front, and possibly because of my conditioning as a UK native where it was broadcast without, I find that the streaming versions of MASH which include a laugh track feel more paunchy and much less engaging.

Mike Bloodworth said...

I hope your new play is a big success. When it comes to L.A. maybe you can get me a discount since you know the author.
M.B.

sanford said...

Pretty funny. The video was published a month ago and over million views. How could she not know she was not driving an electric powered car. And what made her think the tank was empty. I am guessing there is no gage except to tell her the charge is running low

Buttermilk Sky said...

You know what would be even funnier? Two women laughing at a clueless man. Especially if he was old or disabled.

YEKIMI said...

While it IS funny it's also sad. Makes me wonder how she was even able to pass a driver's license test. Surprised I didn't see a Trump bumper sticker on the car.

Anonymous said...

I love the comment at the end.. "Oh, Portland...."

-Paul (from Portland)

Mike Doran said...

Because I am a lifelong and devout non-driver, I don't understand this clip.

That said, I fully get that hearing laughter does indeed promote laughter.

Remember Nixon's "kick-around" speech from 1962, when he lost the California governorship to Pat Brown?

Somebody got hold of one of Charley Douglass's "laff boxes" and added a track to the speech (with howls of laughter, and cheers and applause to boot) and released it as part of an LP; here in Chicago, Dan Sorkin played it on his morning radio show for weeks afterward.

Not that anyone who reads this should get the idea to do something similar with our current President's public utterances, you understand …
because that would be wrong …
(Fun, but wrong …)

Todd Everett said...

Still, I wonder how legit this and the clip of millennials trying to figure out a rotary phone are. Maybe she borrowed someone's Tesla, though I'd never even lend someone my Chevy. But if were hers - and even if it weren't - what are the odds that (a) she didn't know it was an electric car and (b) someone was standing there, ready to record it.

Or, I'm just too damned cynical.

Patrick Wahl said...

Mostly what I got out of that is the guy laughing is kind of a butthead. Get out and help her.

Peter said...

Sorry to get political - Jen from Jersey, look away now - but I'm sickened to read that MAGA hat wearing teenagers from a Christian school on a trip to a "pro life" event surrounded and harassed a native American man who's a Vietnam veteran and they chanted "Build that wall".

Christians attending a "pro life" event and chanting "build that wall" at a native American veteran. You could write an entire doctorate unpacking and analyzing the multiple levels of sheer moronic stupidity and evil right there.

But hey, Obama wore a tan suit and we should never forget that atrocity.

Calm down, Jen.

Aaron said...

Has to be staged. Unless there's a faux gas gauge on the dashboard.

therealshell said...

The "one guy in the studio audience of Cheers that is laughing harder and longer than anyone else" was/is James L. Brooks.

Dr Loser said...

Tom's point bears repeating, I think. I'm sure a Brit (Tom, me, some other) has pointed out that "Mash" was broadcast in the UK, _all the way through_, without a laugh track. (Friday Question: Why not?) In fact, I didn't realise, and I assume the other 10 million who watched it over here didn't realise, that it was even a "comedy."

(Annoying snark: the wrap-up "letters to home" episodes were strong evidence that it had no sense of humour at all.)

My personal sense of aesthetics happens to coincide with a laugh-track-less Mash. It didn't stop me laughing; any more than the sob-track-less final episode with Winchester and the Korean refugees playing Mozart's clarinet quintet stopped me sobbing.

And yet ... in series 8 of Red Dwarf, an excellent British comedy, they lost the laugh track and ... well, it wasn't very funny. I don't think the scripts were worse. I don't think the actors were at fault. I have no idea why this is.

Jen from Jersey said...

Peter, clearly you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Where’s your outrage over the Women’s March aligning with Farahkook? Where’s your outrage that the left like Ocasio Cortez are increasing anti Israel!?

Peter said...

I just re-read my post.

....

No mention of Trump.

Derangement you say? :-D

You obviously missed my reply to you last week in which I said I don't agree with every Democrat and I condemned Ilhan Omar. And I've previously commented several times about the British Labour party being led by a vile anti-Semite who calls Hamas and Hezbollah his friends.

It speaks volumes that you can't even bring yourself to at least condemn the disgusting racist harassment of a veteran by redneck chickenhawks who think native Americans and Mexicans are the same.

I do find it deliciously ironic that every expression of anger over racism or injustice is dismissed as Trump Derangement Syndrome by monomaniacs whose only reaction is to just scream "Trump Derangement Syndrome". Almost as if they suffer from....a derangement syndrome.

If Emmett Till was murdered today, you'd probably say his grieving parents are clearly suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome too. "So what he got lynched?! Where's your anger over SNL mocking our Commander in Chief?!!"

Why do I have the feeling you're the kind of person who refused to eat at any restaurant in 2003 that served French fries, because France refused to join Bush's coalition of the willing, and instead only dined at places serving "Freedom fries". Comedy gold.

By Ken Levine said...

The Trump thread ends here. Anything more will be deleted. This is a post about someone trying to put gasoline in a Tesla.

MikeN said...

Maybe she got confused and thought she was driving a Chevy Volt.

Michael Hagerty said...

Clearly, she borrowed (or rented) the car and didn't know. She laughs when she's told by one of the two morons who should have laughed for ten seconds and then gotten out of the car to help her. But we're now at the point where a stranger needs to suffer long enough to make it good for YouTube before we actually are decent people.

Eric Solomon said...

First time/long time; just bought my tickets for the Sunday showing of your play and can't wait to see it!

Anonymous said...

Well, she' blond, so thre you have it!

Andrew said...

"...with Winchester and the Korean refugees playing Mozart's clarinet quintet stopped me sobbing."

For some reason Winchester's story in the Mash finale affected me more than all the others.

Jahn Ghalt said...

The laughter was infectious for me. And the trunk release really got me - full ten-second belly laugh.

But get this:

I kept thinking the fill spout was on the other side!

Then I read "Tesla"

(oh)....

Jahn Ghalt said...

And I'm NOT (never have been) BLOND!!!

Bryan Thomas said...

Well, the video is no longer available. But best of luck with your play.