Laugh

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.

When Glen Stockton, a retired telephone worker, suffered a stroke in 1987, it was, by his accounts "no laughing matter. " But when he entered the stroke rehabilitation program at Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, Calif., he discovered that the ability to laugh not only made his physical condition more bearable, but actually contributed to a speedier recovery. "The stroke devastated me, but I decided to look on the bright side and recover as much of my physical abilities as I could," says Stockton, an avid golfer who through rehabilitation therapy and perseverance now can drive the ball nearly 180 yards.

Corbett Monica has been making people laugh for the last 37 years. It began when he was 23 and saw his first live comedy show in his native St. Louis. Monica was a Fred Astaire dance instructor at the time, but he was awed by the guy on stage making him and everyone else in the club laugh. That was the life for him, Monica thought. And so on Wednesday night, Monica stood on stage in the Bay Cabaret at Harrah's Casino/Hotel. His material wasn't slick. It certainly wasn't cerebral or sophisticated, and it definitely wasn't raunchy, as so much comic material is these days.

Diane Ford had her first lesson in making people laugh when she was 4 or 5 years old. You could call it the school of hard knocks. Literally. She and her two brothers were watching The Ed Sullivan Show one night and there was this comedian who kept bouncing off the wall. "My brothers thought it was the funniest thing they ever saw," Ford said. "They just kept laughing, and finally I decided to try it. What I didn't realize is that the comedian actually hit the wall with his foot, not his head, and then bounced back.

After seeing Montgomery Theater's production of Sean Grennan's Making God Laugh , I think biblical standards of humor have declined a bit since Job's time. Grennan's play spans 30 years, beginning at Thanksgiving 1980 and progressing through Christmas 1990, New Year's Y2K, and Easter circa 2010. On each of these holidays, a trio of siblings learn the painful lesson that you can't go home again. The audience, watching the characters' lives move from youthful promise to adult discontent, gets beaten over the head with Grennan's continual insistence on his theme: If you want to make God laugh, create plans, so he can delight in frustrating them.

The jury received permission to laugh, and laugh it did during yesterday's testimony in the 2 Live Crew obscenity trial. But the jurors didn't get a chance to laugh at one detective who declined to get off the witness stand and dance to the music. The six jurors, who sat silently Wednesday as they strained to hear barely audible recordings of the group's nightclub act, had written a note to Broward County Court Judge June Johnson requesting permission to laugh. "The jurors have an unusual request," the judge told attorneys.

LOS ANGELES - Alan Sues, who brought his flamboyant and over-the-top comic persona to the hit television show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" in the 1960s and '70s, has died. Sues died Thursday of cardiac arrest at his home in West Hollywood, Michael Gregg Michaud, a friend since 1975, told the Associated Press. "He was sitting in a recliner watching TV with his dachshund Doris, who he loved, in his lap," Michaud said. Sues had various health problems in the past several years, but the death came as a shock to friends, Michaud said.

WHEN THE NFL lockout is resolved, and Kevin Kolb gets traded, I hope his career takes off. He backed up a head case QB in Donovan McNabb for three years, and, last year, after getting barely a chance to play, he backed up a convicted dog-killer. I hope he sticks it to the Eagles and goes on to win a Super Bowl while we're still listening to Fat Andy's monotone excuses week after week. ("I need to do a better job of putting guys in position to make plays . . . . ") Mike Betz, Philadelphia

Early this season before a Penn Charter football game, No. 78, at 6-3, 235 pounds, and wearing full equipment, released some pregame tension by running over to a goalpost, jumping up and grabbing the crossbar. "Who is that?" someone asked. "As a ninth-grader," coach Brian McCloskey said that day, "that kid couldn't get down in a three-point stance. We came close to telling him, 'It's not going to work. Find another sport.' " No. 78 is Kyle Chaffin. Next year, because of his talent and academics (2.9 grade-point average, 1,230 score on the Scholastic Assessment Test)

Julia D. "Jewell" English, whose opinions were as strong as her coffee and her heart bigger than her bluster, died Tuesday. She was 78 and lived in Port Richmond. Jewell English was born and raised on Ann Street near Cedar, the eighth of 10 kids. Anyone in the bottom half of an Irish flock that big either developed a powerful personality and voice or risked starvation or being left behind somewhere. Jewell made herself known then - and for the rest of her life. She was one of those women who is a presence in any room, and when the room got too quiet or dull, people looked around to see if Jewell was still around.