On my final day of this serious question of gratitude, I shall concentrate on giggling, chuckling and hooting. (1) I give thanks for all the clowns – the great comic and yet insightful performers who have cheered me up over the years – from the original Barabbas troupe, Veronica, Mikel and Raymond to John Nee to many fabulous performers I have seen on the streets of Europe and dont know who they were to the movie heroes I discovered my teens and twenties, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Bros and above all, Jaques Tati. (2) For the following humorous books that did not make it on to my top ten last week, The Good Soldier Swejk; Gargantua and Pantagruel; Denis OShaughnessy Going to Maynooth; Ballygullion; Three Men in a Boat; Puckoon and The Third Policeman – from all of which I not only drew pleasure but also learned a little about the art of comic writing, and (3) For anything at all that gets us laughing: the cat drinking from the bath tap, the dog chasing her own tail... I remember going with trepidation in my heart once to see an amateur theatre group in Scotstown, County Monaghan on a bleak winter night and they performed a forgotten Abbey play called Professor Tim by George Shiels with a comic actor called Pat Deery in the lead and I joined with abandon in the appreciative laughter of the audience and felt good for 2 days afterwards. Since, to my knowledge, none of the 8 people I have nominated so far have taken up the gratitude challenge, tonight I shall nominate nobody and instead allow this adventure to end here with the original trailer for a comic movie I loved when I first saw it on CineClub on RTE a hundred years ago. https://youtube/watch?v=bCu4IH9rkr8
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:01:19 +0000
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