It has always been a matter of some pride that the persons of my loinage, along with the man I decades ago culled from hundreds of applicants to be my life-mate, are intelligent beings, well read and well educated. They are conversant on many subjects, ranging from the complexities of Buddhism to an adequate debate over whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote all those great words. I love and respect these guys — they’re all male — and am proud to be seen and heard with them anyplace.
But. But, they have this one tiny flaw, quite fixable really if only they’d try, which they obstinately will not. These brainy guys, I’ve even seen them on the inside of a church or two, champions of children’s causes and sometimes blood donors are simply nutsy, witless and foggy-blind about yes, The Three Stooges. They actually find them hilariously amusing.
This has been my shameful secret for lo these many decades. How could I have known when I stood next to my Dearly Intended and promised undying fidelity that he had this hideous, dark secret, one which he fully intended to pass via his seed to our future progeny?
How could I have known three years later when an exhausted OB handed me the first of squalling, wet blobs that would turn into our glorious male children, that they’d grow to worship at the Nyuck Nyuck shrine in a very few years? Would I have gone through labor for that? I often wonder. Quite often.
Last night ,I found the four of them shrieking maniacally and twisting across the living room rug in what seemed to be a mass seizure.
Alarmed, I shouted questions. Were they hurt? Was it something they ate? Did they need Heimlich? CPR? An ambulance? What? I glanced at the TV, and sighed.
A Three Stooges movie was in full sway, and my spouse and heirs were exhibiting apoplectic conniption fits at the sight of three middle-aged, overweight, short, seedy, dirty looking men executing poorly choreographed acts of violence upon one another. I was then, as I have been since childhood, appalled at the spectacle. And luckily for the four convulsants, it was to be a “Three Stooges” marathon that evening. I could get to see this ghastly display both on and off the screen for a full 24 hours, nonstop, commercials notwithstanding. Wowee.
The three actors, at least in the older versions of TTS, consisted of one who has a perpetually enraged countenance and a black bowl-cut “do” which looked completely dreadful back then, but seems oddly stylish today. The second gentleman sports a wild, electric-frizzy do, which is again, frighteningly au courant. I see it at the mall all the time. The third man is bald, and he’s the one who receives the worst of the violence to which he reacts by dancing a horrid jig and uttering hideous sounds of rage or joy, (I cannot tell which,) and that are widely imitated today, also heard reverberating about the malls. Honestly, I do not know which man is which. I cannot name them. I suspect maybe someone with a misplaced sense of unfunny irony named the bald guy Curly.
The plots for these useless bits of filmdom vary only slightly. Larry, Moe and Curly are l. painters, 2. plumbers, 3. at a formal party, 4. chefs, 5. potential husbands, 6. construction workers, 7. chauffeurs, 8. factory workers. In short order, as these men plow their way into the sophisticated labyrinth of the movie’s intriguing plots, they visit torture and mayhem on themselves. Mercifully, the misery they inflict seems to be mainly on each other, but the innocent bystanders in the film suffer the runoff.
As the stories are made clear, (several seconds into the film,) this group of misanthropes stab each other’s eyeballs out with stiff fingers, smash each other’s skulls with frying pans, planks, rivets, hammers, poles, pots, pipes, chairs, stools — anything hard that would fell a normal person permanently. They shove impossible objects down each others’ throats, smash all their digits, and endure bone-crushing crushings that no human or animal could possibly survive, and in general behave stupidly and shamefully. Occasionally tall actresses appear, obviously embarrassed and probably wishing they were in “Gone With The Wind.”
It’s evident their contracts have stated they must, if they wish to be paid, kiss and/or marry these 3 grotesque morons. The true heroines of these films, they definitely suffered for their art. The Stooges cut, maim, cripple, lacerate, scald, disable, mutilate, punch, mangle and wound each other in a staccato succession of impossible situations. While these three repulsive sub-humans routinely and briefly fall senseless to the floor, they thankfully never seem to bleed.
“Why is all that funny?” I enquire of my firstborn. “How can you possibly be amused at three idiots causing each other such awful pain? The things they do are agonizing.”
“Agony, Mom, ” he solemnly answers, “is funny.” It is? Oh, what have I birthed? Perhaps we should have named our sons Larry, Moe and Curly. I worry they’d have been grateful.
LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.
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