Soitenly!
We McGinns are big fans of the Three Stooges.
Actually, let me amend that — the McGinn men, like all men, are big fans of the Three Stooges.
During the fateful ultrasound a couple of years ago that revealed the sex of our son, the second thing that crossed my mind, right after I was assured that he didn’t have two heads, was, “Finally! Somebody to watch the Stooges with!”
Now that my wife and I have been married for close to 12 years, she’s no longer afraid to tell me that she never thought the Three Stooges were funny.
When a new Stooges disc arrives from Netflix, she now makes no apologies for excusing herself to go read a book in the bathtub.
I had no idea that women hate the Stooges that night back in college when, having just started to date, I dragged her to a buddy’s apartment for a night of their classic Columbia shorts.
We — that is, my friend and I — laughed pretty much nonstop at every slap, every gouge and every time Moe called anybody a “chucklehead.” (Hey, when you’re already laughing hysterically, someone calling another someone a “chucklehead” becomes way funnier than it probably is.)
My future wife just sat there.
Silent.
Understandable — had we been watching one with Shemp in it.
For her, though, there’s no difference between Curly and Curly Joe, which is completely unforgivable.
But what was I gonna do? Dump her and go find a woman who actually appreciates the comic genius of Larry, Moe and Curly?
It’s a good thing I didn’t because I’m convinced such a woman doesn’t exist. (Well, that, and it couldn’t be guaranteed I could actually get another woman.)
In fact, just a few weeks ago at Kevin Smith’s Q&A at Kuss Auditorium, I saw Laura Hays Gordon — daughter of the late, great News-Sun scribe Jim Hays — in the lobby and she eyed the button bearing the face of Larry Fine on my jacket.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “What is it with guys and the Three Stooges?”
Her husband, she reported, had just quoted the Stooges on the way into the auditorium.
So what is it with guys and the Stooges that makes them so funny, 77 years after they made their first short?
The violence. Duh.
But more specifically, it’s the audio that the Columbia sound department used to amp up each act of violence — and I say that having once seen a comedy documentary on PBS that played a scene by the Stooges with and without its audio enhancement.
Seeing Moe yank Larry’s nose with a pair of pliers is funny — hearing what sounds like his nose being ground to a fine powder is a lot funnier.
And so I’m waiting for the right weekend morning to introduce my son to the Stooges like my dad did for me.
We came across the Stooges on cable a couple of weekends ago and I lingered on the channel for a few seconds, hoping he’d find that slap across Curly’s face as funny as I just did.
Instead, he looked up at me, rubbed his head and said, “Oww.”
So on second thought, now isn’t the time for my 2-year-old son to meet the Stooges — we are, after all, trying to teach that hitting isn’t nice.
Verbal insults, however, are fine, which is why I’m teaching him to say “lamebrain.”
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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