...never, never, never step on laughter. Read More

Last year I learned that the DMV will suspend your license if you receive a diagnosis of dementia. You get a letter and are offered the chance to appeal their decision. Doctors are required by law to notify the DMV once the diagnosis is made, and so the letter may come as a surprise, depending… Read More

Comedy, for me, is reified in the Animal Crackers scene when madcap Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) steps away from staid Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) and  Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving) saying: “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”  You know, recently I’ve favored cremation over burial, but burial’s preferable if I can have Groucho’s line carved… Read More

Turning Left in London I’ve written about our magical year in the early 1970s when my husband Danny worked in his company’s London office.  (See Laundry Day in London, Valentine’s Day in Foggytown, Kinky Boots and Intro to Cookery) Here’s another story. Before we left for our London sojourn we went to the DMV,  presented our New York drivers licenses,… Read More

Peanuts came in two varieties as a kid: one to munch on at the circus, and the other to devour in the comic strip by Charles Schulz. I liked the latter better. Read More

Spoiler Alert! When Chevy Chase’s movie European Vacation  came out I watched it with my son and we thought it was hilarious. My husband hadn’t seen it and we regaled him with all the funny bits.  Sometime later we watched it together,  but to our surprise he didn’t find it very funny. Then he told… Read More

I have been told that I have the soul of a Borscht Belt comedian. Read More

Ah, comedy. The universal language of amusement, the oil that keeps the gears of social interaction turning smoothly (except when it throws monkey wrenches into those gears, but that’s part of the fun, right?). Laughter has been echoing through caves and amphitheaters since well before punchlines were even a twinkle in some early human’s eyes.… Read More

I guess a show that has been on the air for 49 years has to evolve, and each generation has its own concept of what is funny. Read More

In the summer of 1978, I took a group of students to Taiwan for a work-study trip.  Among them was an older female ROTC grad with the officer’s rank of Second Lieutenant.  With me posing as her husband, we entered the American Military”s Officers Club. A hub for the social and political elite, its members… Read More