Humor

AMILD-MANNERED Comcast ad spoofing the TV show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is insulting to gays and lesbians according to Rita Addessa, executive director of the Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Task Force. She said, "Clearly, the message is that gay men are effeminate and care only about fashion . . . This is simply not reflective of the community. It is a tired old stereotype. " Unfortunately, knee-jerk complaints like Addessa's tend to reinforce the tired old stereotype that activist lesbians have no sense of humor.

Bobby is a friendly 16-year-old with a great sense of humor. He is a pleasant young man who usually keeps to himself. However, though he can be an introvert at times, he works well with others and enjoys socializing with his friends. Bobby is skilled at using computers and playing basketball and football. Other favorite pastimes include watching television, singing and dancing. Enrolled in the 10th grade, Bobby likes going to school, where he receives individual attention in a classroom with a small number of students.

Competitive and athletic, Docquez, 14, dreams of becoming a professional athlete one day. Baseball is his favorite sport, though he is also a talented basketball player. Known as Doc to his friends, Docquez has a great sense of humor. He loves listening to music and enjoys singing along with the artist. He also enjoys playing video games and working on the computer. Docquez takes part in a residential therapeutic program to help him cope with behavioral challenges and to focus his attention more effectively.

E-mail is changing the way we disseminate jokes and funny stories. In this regard, it has replaced the faxes and telephones of just a few years ago. But are we - thanks to the new-found ease of forwarding the latest jokes all over the planet - losing touch with our inner funny bone? The Internet and e-mail have led to the almost instantaneous spread of information. With very little effort I can reach out to my sister, cousins, long-distance friends - and my coworkers 10 feet down the hall.

As Julius kneels on the rug holding a small car, he's asked where the starting line is. "Over there," he says, pointing. The competing cars are lined up and the race is about to begin. Then Julius shows his sense of humor by sitting on the other cars so his will be the one to win. He beams when there's laughter, as he loves positive attention. Julius, 4 1/2, is doing well in preschool classes. "He has mild developmental delays," his worker says. "He's functioning on about a 3-year- old level.

Roz Warren loves to check her mailbox. And who could blame her? Tucked among the usual bills and junk mail might be found a knee-slapper or two. Every day, cartoons, essays and stories are sent to her from women across the country - and a few from around the world - in the hopes they might be included in one of the anthologies of women's humor that Warren has edited. Her first book, Women's Glib, a collection of feminist cartoons, essays and poems, was published in 1991. Its sequel, Women's Glibber, will be out in the fall, and her newest book, Kitty Libber, cartoons about cats by women, were to be available by today.

Advance publicity surrounding the season premiere of "Murphy Brown" having fallen just short of "who shot J.R. " hyper-hype, the impending arrival of last night's show brought on physical sensations akin to morning sickness. Like Frank Fontana told the country's most famous fictional unwed mother in the second half-hour, we were thinking, "Murph! It's Dan Quayle! Forget about it!" Of course Diane English and company didn't. Given the unprecedented weirdness of the vice president of the United States making a sitcom character a campaign issue, they couldn't.

It takes a while to get used to what is going on in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, the current production of the South Jersey Regional Theater. Here are the parents of a girl so severely handicapped that she's almost in a vegetative state, and they're making jokes about it. Soon, however, it becomes obvious that it is by laughing that they manage to cope - laughing not so much at their daughter, Jo, whom they call Joe Egg, but at the cruel misfortune...

Something about the sport of golf - the act of whacking a little white ball with a stick - inspires humor. Comedian Tim Conway seized on this fact about five years ago and came up with Dorf on Golf, a collection of slapstick skits that take place on the links. The success of Dorf overshadowed all comers, including a 1988 release from Paramount Home Video called Thom Sharp's Golf: I Hate This Game, but now Sharp's tape is getting a second chance. This month, Paramount is dusting it off for re-release (perhaps with an eye to Father's Day next month)

The black SUV that transported Gov. Christie got a flat tire as he was on his way to catching a train bound for Washington on May 4. Where was Newark Mayor Cory Booker when you needed him? Three weeks earlier, Booker had made headlines for rescuing a woman from a burning building in his hometown. A new Twitter meme sprouted: Booker was so tough he could single-handedly fight fires, intercept North Korean rockets, and end the Greek debt crisis, the joke went. Surely he could fix the governor's flat tire.

Jen Lancaster is up on her high horse again. Fans of the witty memoirist are delighted to see her back in the saddle. Her just-published book, Jeneration X (NAL, $25.95) is a plea for her contemporaries to stand apart from the willfully infantile generations that bracket them -- the boomers and the millenials -- by acting like adults. "We're differentiating ourselves by becoming the only grownups in the room," says Lancaster. "We're tired of seeing all these baby boomers running around talking about their feelings and these Gen Y kids that you have to constantly coddle or they'll have a meltdown.

Don't Talk to the Actors marks the third time playwright Tom Dudzick visits Montgomery Theater's stage. This time, he's also in the wings, as the show's director. Following 2009's Over the Tavern- the company's all-time best-seller - and last season's Hail Mary!, both of which examined the lighter side of Catholicism, Don't Talk to the Actors is a strictly secular affair. However, if theater happens to be your religion, be aware, this backstage comedy depicts some desecration in the temple.

Did you hear the latest joke about New Jersey? A group of investigative journalists released a report calling it the least corruptible state in the country. How did that happen? Easy. We bribed them. All kidding aside, this is a state where in 2009, three mayors, two assemblymen, and five rabbis were among 44 charged by the FBI in a single money-laundering and bribery stin. One mayor, Peter Cammarano, was from Hoboken, where I live. Five years before his arrest, another former Hoboken mayor, Anthony Russo, pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

The New Republic By Lionel Shriver Harper. 373 pp. $26.99   As a prefatory note from the author makes clear, Lionel Shriver's new novel, The New Republic , is not so much a new novel as a 14-year-old novel whose publication time has come. Originally completed in 1998, it suffered from both Shriver's poor sales record (as she reports - I am not carping here) and then, perhaps more important, from being a farcical take on international terrorism.

THERE MIGHT not be many jokes in the Bible, but all those fortunate enough to have studied religion at Villanova University under Donald Robert "Dutch" Schultz were assured of plenty of laughs. This jovial professor was one of the most popular teachers at the university, revered for his rich sense of humor and knowledge of his subject. Dutch Schultz died of cancer Feb. 15, at age 84, in Cornville, Ariz., where he and his wife, Juanita Quigley Schultz, had been living since he retired in 1991.

INDIANAPOLIS - It's as prominent a facial feature as Joe Paterno's nose. The players closest to Bill O'Brien often tease him about it. They even have a nickname for his cleft chin. "Butt chin," Patriots quarterback Brian Hoyer said. Tom Brady also likes to pick on O'Brien's receding hairline, according to Hoyer - not that the Patriots' offensive coordinator is the butt of every joke. He likes to give as much as he takes. It's the kind of atmosphere O'Brien has fostered with his quarterbacks, and one that stands in contrast to his public persona as a fiery, intense competitor.

WELL, HE didn't really look like Groucho Marx. But one of his advanced-calculus students said Marvin Knopp had a "Groucho-like" delivery. He might not have been as funny as the Marx brother either, but his rich sense of humor was known to keep his students riveted on a subject that most people would not find very amusing. Marvin Isadore Knopp, a nationally known mathematician who, as a professor in the math department of Temple University since 1976, and other schools before that, managed to make the intricacies of higher mathematics a fascinating subject, died suddenly on Christmas Eve on a family vacation in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 78. Before coming to Temple, Marvin taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and at the University of Chicago.

ONE SAYS, "Poe-tay-toe. " The other says, "Julienned tubers lightly sautéed in Irish butter, finished with finely ground sea salt. " On Sunday, Andy Reid, the worst interviewee in the history of sports, will lead his Eagles against the Jets and Rex Ryan, the funniest and cleverest jock boss ever. Where Reid recites tired mantras about improving and assigns blame to himself for everything except the Occupy movement, Ryan generally answers questions frankly; sometimes with arrogance, sometimes with self-deprecating humor.

The first in a series of three guest-artist exhibitions at Vox Populi Gallery has no title, but all four of its artists share a subversive sense of humor. Michael May tells the story of a mental-patient character he has invented, through a group of oil paintings depicting the character's misbegotten cures and inventions. As in mid-20th-century instructional posters, each of May's paintings is divided into several parts demonstrating the steps involved. In Extracting Spirits from Photos of Native Americans , for example, three measuring cups and bottles of denatured alcohol and mineral spirits sit on a counter; on the adjacent stove is a glass baking dish containing portraits of American Indians, with a vacuum-cleaner hose attached to its base.