Laugh

YOU CAN always expect a good laugh from Milton Street, the mayor's brother - the latest being trying to use another firm's ramp to launch his own tour boat. I guess Milton forgot that fair competition means using your own equipment. One laugh after another, but one person who is not laughing is Mayor Street. Frank Conforti Philadelphia

Some people laugh at religion. Others laugh religiously. Freelance cantor Charles Smolover finds that his religious work helps his improvisational comedy - and vice versa. As a cantor, whose primary responsiblity is to conduct a congregation in prayer, "you have to project an air of confidence and of peace. There's a little bit of performance involved in that," he said. "In improvisation, you have to establish a presence in front of an audience. " Smolover, 29, has been the cantor for a small congregation in the western Pennsylvania town of Indiana for seven years.

YO, Iggle fans, keep celebrating "In-season, Meadowlands Miracles" while N.Y. Giant fans continue to celebrate Super Bowls. See you guys in the playoffs! J.R. Shiek Washington Crossing

HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. Brian Lockrey Collegevile

We can't claim a bayou or a delta, but there will be blues aplenty this weekend - seasoned with a dash of rock 'n' roll - when the Southern Comfort Rocks the Blues 1996 Tour hits the Great Plaza stage on SATURDAY from 1 to 10 p.m. The legendary Taj Mahal, along with guitar man Keb' Mo', the Phantom Blues Band, the subdudes, G. Love and Special Sauce, and Gingham Shmuz headline this day-long event. In addition, local blues brothers will perform, and the usual (and unusual) vendors of food and novelty items will be on hand.

THE GRITTY TABLOID that has served Philadelphia so well over the past 87 years was placed in the lap of Penguins center Sidney Crosby on Wednesday morning. Crosby, 24, said he had not seen Wednesday's Daily News - which featured him dressed as the Cowardly Lion with the headline "The Cowardly Penguin: Time to Finish Off Sniveling Sidney. " Crosby picked up the paper and laughed. "That's probably one of the nicer things they've said about me here," Crosby said.

Mike Schmidt says not to bother asking him how his left rib cage feels anymore. "The answer will be the same for at least the next six weeks," he said last night. "It hurts. I've got to steel myself for a jolt of pain when I sneeze, cough or laugh. I won't be doing much laughing and I hope I don't catch a cold. The only way for this kind of injury to heal is for me to not play for a couple of months and this team is not in a position for me to do that. Hopefully, one day I'll be out there and say, 'Hey, I can't hardly feel it today.

The movie "The Birdcage" is a hysterical, occasionally moving, adaptation of the French film, La Cage aux Folles, in which a gay man's son comes home from college to announce he is engaged to the daughter of an ultra- conservative senator who would make Pat Buchanan look warm and fuzzy. When the future in-laws plan a visit, the son asks his father to get rid of a few obvious gay artifacts around the house - including Dad's swishy lover, who has been like a mother to the boy. In this hilarious film, Robin Williams (as Armand, the gay father)

James is a fun-loving 14-year-old with a bright smile that draws people to him. He is known for his great sense of humor and delights in making others laugh. Although he may appear to be shy when first meeting you, he soon warms up and is talkative once he becomes comfortable with you. This teenager has many interests, including karate, football, basketball, baseball, video games and biking. When not engaged in athletic pursuits, he enjoys writing in his journal and listening to rap music.

Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith, back home yesterday after a scary injury the night before in Chicago, was able to joke about it after tests found no serious damage. Smith was injured Monday night with less than four minutes to go in a 22-6 loss to the Chicago Bears when he dived over the line of scrimmage as a decoy and landed on his helmet and shoulder pads. "I did it to myself, no one else did it to me," Smith said with a laugh after tests proved negative for brain or spine damage.

At 86, Mel Brooks still looks like the Marx brother from another mother, his sunset years lit by kliegs. He is the subject of an American Masters special ( Mel Brooks: Make a Noise , airing Monday on PBS), recipient of an American Film Institute life achievement award (on June 6, to be shown on TNT later next month), and librettist of a proposed Broadway musical based on his 1974 movie hit Blazing Saddles . How do you measure this singular talent? Short in stature (65 inches)

Every lifetime should have at least one: The great teacher, the one who inspired, the one who changed your life. For decades of students in Delaware County, Robert Malkovsky - Mr. Mal, or just Mal - was such a teacher. Six-foot-four with a booming voice and a big laugh, he was a gentle giant who ignited a fire for physics in his students. He explained the incomprehensible. He would quietly foot the bills for prom dresses. He made all kids feel as though they were worth listening to. And so Mal's death - so unexpected because he appeared to have won his long battle with pancreatic cancer - was devastating news to those who knew him, as though a light had gone out for them.

SIX YEARS AGO, Mouphtaou Yarou remembers, there were many, many difficult phone calls home to Benin. He came here from that small West African country for high school, and for basketball, and for all of the attendant opportunities, but he wondered sometimes what he had gotten himself into. He wondered whether it was worth all of the anxiety. "I was very homesick," he said, a couple of days before the Villanova Wildcats begin another NCAA Tournament journey. Yarou, 22, is their senior big man, the oncourt leader of a team that swung wildly between disaster and elation - sometimes in the same week.

Think Martin McDonagh without the accents. Think Quentin Tarantino without the cars. Think, in other words, about stupid people with foul mouths, big guns, and big ideas. What you have is Jason Wells' The North Plan , a very scary and very funny political satire that just opened at Theatre Exile. The place is a jail in a tiny town in southern Missouri. In one cage is a self-justifying drunk named Tanya Shepke (Madi Distefano at her yeehah! motor-mouthed best). If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's do not mess with Tanya Shepke.

THEY SAY 90 percent of a movie is casting, and it's at least 99 percent of "Identity Thief. " This a flimsy road movie whose main achievement is to pair cinema's most adroit straight man with its biggest comedy wild card. Jason Bateman is the former - stoic, unflappable, with the low-key verbal dexterity that makes him a peerless counter-puncher paired with zanier co-stars in movies such as "Horrible Bosses. " Here, he shares the screen with the volatile Melissa McCarthy, a rumbling volcano of out-there energy, the X-factor in movies such as "Bridesmaids" and recently released "This is 40. " The premise, in broad strokes, plays to their strengths.

PASADENA, Calif. - In his forthcoming NBC comedy, Michael J. Fox will play a newscaster who had quit his job due to Parkinson's disease but returns to work in the show's first episode because a new medical regimen has helped him control many of the disease's symptoms. It mirrors the life of the former Family Ties and Spin City star, who said last year that drugs had helped minimize the physical tics of Parkinson's and had enabled him to take on more acting jobs. The yet-to-be-named sitcom is a key piece of NBC's strategy to build upon a revival that has brought the network back from many years in the ratings wilderness.

THE family-friendliest comedy this holiday-movie season is also the sappiest and schmaltziest. And thanks to Billy Crystal, the shtickiest. "Parental Guidance" is a mild-mannered riff on parenting, then and now. It contrasts the top-down/career-first mentality of one generation with the coddled "nurturing" of today, but never takes a stand on which is better. Basically, it's a vehicle for Billy Crystal, and to a lesser degree Bette Midler, to riff on the spoiled, overindulged and sometimes-uptight kids their kid is raising.

SO THIS GUY walks up to me in the gym with a worried look on his face. "You think Bynum will ever play this year?" he asks. "No," I say, smiling. "That sucks," he says. He is not smiling. He is sad. It is Christmas season and he is sad because Andrew Bynum, the center who was supposed to make the Sixers whole, has instead become a hole. A giant one. And so . . . The Sixers are a mess. Again. About the time a young Delaware Valley sports fan receives his first authentic Eagles, Flyers or Phillies shirt, he or she are given these simple words to use on those rare occasions the name of the town's NBA franchise comes up. The words are a very handy sports tool.

Sean Altman is embracing his Jewishness in his own way, thank you very much. And that way is through the creation of Jewmongous, a concert performance that employs the New Yorker's talents as a singer, songwriter, and musician to both poke fun at and celebrate his heritage. "Jewmongous is the way I'm able to connect with whatever Jewishness is inside me," Altman says from his home in Harlem. "I'm culturally Jewish, but I'm not religious. . . . This is sort of my way of connecting with my heritage without going to synagogue or without having to pray.

'It's kind of like Laugh-In with the Polyphonic Spree as the soundtrack. " That's how Tim DeLaughter describes the Polyphonic Spree's Holiday Extravaganza, which comes to the Trocadero Friday night. But while Laugh-In of '60s TV possessed a skewed adult sensibility, the Polyphonic Spree aims for all ages, with animals, science demonstrations, cartoons, and other diversions. "It's a family environment, for ages 1 to 92," DeLaughter says from a truck stop in Nevada, where the band is en route to a gig in Chicago.