Make People Laugh Research Articles

Les crucifix comiques dans quelques textes du Moyen Age français

The presence of the crucifix in comical literature is a special case of an encounter of the sacred and the profane. It appears in several French medieval texts, where it is associated with sexuality or with food, it is treated with familiarity and even casualness, which is not meant to outrage the public, but to make people laugh. The profanation with which we are dealing here has many aspects, depending on whether it can be assigned to a particular personage or to the author, since it is included in the story itself. In the former case, much can be justified by simplicity, but the intentions of the personage do not always seem pure. In the latter case, contrary to expectation, the sacrilege is not necessarily associated with anticlericalism. However, what is the most interesting is the question of the reception of this kind of texts in a profoundly Christian society.

What's So Funny Now? The Strength of Weak Pronouns in Catalonia

John Gumperz's foundational analyses of linguistic convergence and of code‐switching in bilingual and multilingual settings continue to influence work in interactional sociolinguistics, where these phenomena are seen as systematic mobilizations of the bilingual repertoire to cue interlocutors to the ongoing construction of situated meaning. However, the utility of Gumperz's approach is not restricted to interactional, micro‐social questions. As Gumperz's own earliest work showed, varying patterns of code‐switching and of linguistic convergence can reveal significant macro‐social differences in communities across space as well as changes within a community across time. In earlier work, I have used code‐switching and convergence as tracers to help gauge sociopolitical change in Catalonia across several decades, particularly by examining the changing patterns of mixed‐language practices that make people laugh. In this article, I analyze new Catalan mass‐media data (2006–2013) in order to assess the evolution of the serio‐comic situation of Catalan three decades after I first investigated it as a student of Gumperz at the moment of the return to Catalan political autonomy.

Random Samples

The 2013 Ig Nobel prizes honor research that "makes people laugh, and then makes them think." Among the winners: scientists who discovered that dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate, and a team that found that mice with heart transplants lived three times longer when exposed to opera music.

2013 Ig Nobel Prizes

Scientists studying the tear-jerking power of onions, dung beetle directionality, and what happens when one devours a dead shrew all took home top honors at this year’s 23rd Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The prizes, awarded for “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think,” were handed out on Sept. 12 at Harvard University’s San­ders Theatre. The event was orchestrated by maestro Marc Abrahams and his minions of whimsy at the Annals of Improbable Research. If slicing into an onion makes you weep, take comfort in the fact that scientists have been hard at work deciphering the complex biochemical process that gives the veggie its power—an achievement that won this year’s coveted Chemistry Prize. A team led by Shinsuke Imai of Japan’s House Foods Corp. discovered, according to the Ig Nobel citation, “that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists ...

Comment from the Field

I consider myself a disability activist who is using the arts to effect equality. More specifically, I have chosen the vehicle of comedy and humour as a way of bonding with an audience in order to promote critical thinking and dialogue around the meaning of disability. According to the late comedian Victor Borge, humour is the shortest distance between two people.1 I remember discovering at a young age the power of laughter to make others feel comfortable around me. I realized that if I could make people laugh, they were more flexible in including me as a disabled person.My performance career began over 20 years ago in stand-up comedy. Though I have since branched out into theatre and storytelling, comedy and humour remain prominent features of my performance practice. I have performed in a variety of venues such as night clubs, professional theatre halls, high schools, as well as conference and community settings across North America, Australia, England, Bermuda, and Taiwan. My comment here focuses on the artistic and cultural choices that I make within my work to engage audiences within a critical discussion around impairment and disability. Evidence of actually promoting critical dialogue, however, lies only in the circumstantial evidence of my having sustained a 20-year career, plus a handful of reviews, and feedback from the audience. This comment is divided into two parts. The first section focuses on my stand-up comedy, while the second covers my theatre practice.Stand-up ComedyModern stand-up comedy is dominated by personal and social commentary. Most comics discuss issues and topics that they feel strongly about, which may include their gut feelings, their fears, their anxieties (Carter 4). The issues I have chosen to discuss highlight the barriers that I face as a disabled person. For example, I typically begin my act by recounting going out to dinner with my brother:When we sat down, the waiter addressed my brother with the question, How many menus do you want? I decided to answer that question with, Well, there are two of us sitting at the table. Why don't you bring us four menus?I start this way because the subject of the joke is an everyday activity to which everyone can relate. People expect to be able to walk into a restaurant, be given a menu, and be served without incident. I tell the story as if I expect to be able to do this as well. My delivery is light-hearted, told with a funny thing happened to me type of tone. The humour arises from my exaggerated response. Yet, it is precisely my response that frames the way the waiter reacts to me as ludicrous and absurd.Beginning my act in this way works to establish a rapport. Since I typically perform in mainstream venues, I am likely to be seen as an outsider by much of the audience. John Morreall notes the bonding effect of shared humour, especially when it is based on either some perceived strength in the or some shortcomings in opponents of the group (67). Here, the shortcoming is in the waiter. I tell the story as if members of the audience would never do what the waiter did. They are treated as my confidant -- as if we are in this ludicrous situation together. My tone is not instructional. I am obviously enjoying the waiter's awkwardness and I am inviting the audience to share this enjoyment. The majority of my audience likely shares the viewpoints that I am ridiculing. The nature of this joke forces the audience to identify with me not getting a menu. Yet, they probably also strongly identify with the waiter's uncertainty about how to deal with me because of my impairments. This joke always gets a huge laugh precisely because the audience identifies with the waiter. Comedy and humour has allowed me to make fun of the audience's own ideas of disabled people.Disability oppression is not a hot topic within comedy by any stretch of the imagination. Impairment and disability still remain taboo topics within our culture -- particularly when combined with intimacy and sexuality. …

Lesbian Generations—Transsexual... Lesbian... Feminist...

Lesbian Generations— Transsexual... Lesbian... Feminist... Susan Stryker I interpreted quite literally, perhaps tooliterally, Leila Rupp's kind invitation to "speak informally for about ten minutes" in the roundta ble on lesbian generations by putting the emphasis on "informally" and extemporizing some rather haphazardly organized thoughts on what generation of lesbian I considered myself to be. The venue being the Big Berks and the personal, of course, still being political, I assumed in framing my remarks that an ample amount of autobi ographical reflection would be, it not original in its methodological implications, then intelligible or at least excusable under the circum stances. When my turn came to speak, I offered an impromptu per formance in which I sought to cite generational, ethnic, national, and class-based competencies of lesbian identity, while simultaneously ironically distancing myself from those very norms through a calcu lated and strategic cultivation of affect. By which I mean to say: I tried to make people laugh, and I was pleased to have succeeded through a variety of techniques (gesture, expression, phrasing, timing, embod ied context) that don't render well on the printed page. You had to be there — but what follows is a loose rendition of that performance into text. I tried to be funny (1) to demonstrate that lesbian feminists can, in fact, have a sense of humor, and (2) because ironic distancing—a self-protective critique from within of something I actually care about FeministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 375 376 Forum: Lesbian Generations being part of—has been a mode of survival for me as the particular sexual and gendered subject that I am. As decades of feminist injunc tions to be mindful of intersectionality have taught us, all identities are complicated; none can be articulated in monolithic purity and isolation, nor can the messily lived complexity of identity's inter mingled attributes be disarticulated and hierarchically arranged other than by conceptual and narrative operations that are always political and often violent. While I don't deny that my whiteness, upward eco nomic mobility, level of educational and professional attainment, or coastal cultural mores inform my lesbian identity, these intersec tions have not been particularly difficult to occupy; they are, after all, forms of privilege. Being transsexual—well, that's presented more of a challenge. Being transsexual and lesbian, with one identity being no more or less ontologized than the other and no more or less con structed, has been a fraught identitarian intersection indeed. Hence, as Donald O'Conner put itso eloquently in Sincjin' intheRain, "make 'em laugh." Contemplating other approaches to this conversation just makes my stomach churn. Taking things too literally, by the way, such as the way I took Leila Rupp's invitation to participate on the lesbian generations roundta ble, is something transsexuals are often accused of doing—literaliz ing that which is properly metaphorical. For example, I might, when called upon to do so, defend my practices of embodiment or stake my claim to gender authenticity by protesting that Simone de Beau voir herself said, "One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one," to which a critic would reply, "But she didn't mean it like that. Why do you always have to be so literal?" I was born in 1961, which means I'm turning fiftythe summer that I'm writing this. I graduated from high school and started college in 1979. The words feminist, lesbian, and transsexual were the labels available to me in my native English at the time that I was doing my formative identity work, and they all stuck. Eventually. Transsexual was the one I consciously wrestled with from the earliest age. I came across the term in a Dear Abby advice column published in my hometown newspaper in southwestern Oklahoma in the early 1970s when I was about eleven. I had always felt transgendered, but had never before that moment seen reflected back to me from the world one scrap of evidence that such feelings might map onto an objective reality shared Forum: Lesbian Generations 377 by others, rather than being just a subjective perception of my own. I immediately rushed down to my public...

Frank Michio Yatsu, MD

Frank Michio Yatsu, MD, died unexpectedly but peacefully during a nap on Friday, March 9, 2012; he was 79 years old. He had been recovering from complications stemming from a kidney transplant he received several years ago. Frank had retired last year becoming Professor Emeritus of the Department of Neurology at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston but was still coming to work several hours a week to attend conferences, work on manuscripts, oversee his laboratory, and other administrative duties. Frank Michio Yatsu, MD Frank was born in Los Angeles, CA, on November 28, 1932, the son of Frank K. and Iwao Yatsu who had immigrated to the United States from Matsushima, Japan, in 1906. His family had owned a bank in Japan but Frank's parents were forced to work as “domestics” in Los Angeles and later in Cleveland. During World War II, the Yatsu family was relocated to an internment camp in Arizona. His older brother fought in a Japanese–American unit in North Africa and Italy where he was wounded. These experiences actually strengthened Frank's desire to become integrated into the fabric of American society. Throughout his education and early career, Frank was often the first Japanese–American to gain positions of prominence, and he was intensely patriotic and proud of his American identity. At the same time, his childhood experiences established a lifelong commitment to tolerance and diversity in all forms. Frank was always an outstanding student and won a full scholarship to Phillips Andover Academy and Brown University where he majored in English literature (he turned down a scholarship to Harvard because he liked the wrestling coach better at Brown). He remained an active alumnus of both institutions throughout his life and was the first Asian American appointed to Brown's Board of Trustees. Wrestling and English …

TV시리즈 애니메이션 <심슨가족>에 나타난 시트콤의 특성

TV시트콤 애니메이션 <심슨가족>은 동서양, 학력, 나이, 성별을 막론하고 다양한 수용자층을 확보하며 대중적인 인기를 누리고 있다. 5명의 주인공 가족과 다양한 주변인물들은 매회 등장하여 폭넓은 주제에 대해 이야기하며, 미국의 사회, 정치적 이슈가 되고 있는 무거운 주제들을 패러디를 사용하여 일반인들이 쉽게 받아들일 수 있도록 표현하고 있다. <심슨가족>이 전 세계에서 이와 같이 사랑받고 있는 이유를 시트콤 애니메이션이라는 새로운 형식의 스토리 전개방식과 캐릭터의 특징, 그 외의 재미요소들을 통해 분석하고, 이를 활용한 국내 시트콤 애니메이션의 전망을 살펴보고자 한다. TV sitcom animation <The Simpsons> is a immensely popular to any religion and age, sex. The five yellow main characters and a great amount of sub characters appear to tell their broad stories every sequence. It makes people laugh using parody and pastiche with the American social subjects and political issues. This paper examines the study of story structures for sitcom animation and main factors of the Simpsons' popularity. The case works are focused on 'The future of korean TV sitcom animation'.

Personal Accounts: Schizophrenia: A Terminal Disease?

Personal Accounts: Schizophrenia: A Terminal Disease?

Humorous Maps: Explorations of an Alternative Cartography

Maps are generally viewed as functional artefacts. They are considered accurate and useful conveyors of information, helping individuals find their way, understand environments, and inform decisions. However, maps also have a strongly pleasurable component. They generate and support narratives, they are tied to emotions, memories and adventures, and sometimes they make people laugh. In this paper, we engage with a very specific form of alternative cartography: humorous maps. We begin with an interdisciplinary review of the general theories and functions of humor to discuss the three major impediments of the use of humor in cartography: (1) the lack of recognition of the potential of humor; (2) the complexity of humor creation; and (3) the scientific orientation of modern cartography. We then turn to alternative forms of cartography to emphasize the function of humor in mapmaking through a chronological review of some examples of humorous maps. Through this review, we demonstrate that humorous maps caricature scientific cartography by drawing on the latter's persuasive power. In this sense, humorous maps can destabilize the scientific and technological bases of contemporary cartography. Freed from scientific constraints, humorous maps provide societal commentaries rather than geospatial facts. We conclude by arguing that humor—along with other forms of expression—can be combined with scientific maps to generate hybrid forms of cartography; these new representations could help us to represent anew the worlds we inhabit.

A Conversation with Andy Jones

“My performing experience came from the oratorical contests held at St. Bon’s. Greg Malone and I were rivals for top honours and Greg usually won. He and I go back to 1954, and I’d say Greg’s been the most influential person in my career. I did Brutus’s speech; The High way Man, by Alfred Noyes; The Children’s Hour , by Longfellow; and a lot of British comedy. I knew Beyond the Fringe by heart. Greg says I wasn’t the class clown though. He was. I was too busy trying to be a good boy. I could make people laugh with the Stanley Holloway classic, Albert and the Lion. I loved doing Albert and the Lion.

Old Comic Elton and The Age of Fun: Robert H. Elton and the Picture Book

Old Comic Elton and The Age of Fun:Robert H. Elton and the Picture Book Michael Joseph (bio) An undifferentiated stream of small paperbound books, mediated by the enterprise of uneducated tradesmen and shopkeepers, constituted a significant part of the children's literature of Jacksonian America. Why these individuals chose to specialize in children's books, rather than in another entrepreneurial category, remains a mystery. Or, rather, it remains an unasked question. With few exceptions, this literature has been omitted from consideration in American bibliographic and American children's literature studies alike, although the reasons for this are obvious. The popular children's literature of this period tends to reproduce well-worn stories, rhymes, socializing tales and the like, whose significatory codes have been engaged with in other forms. They are derivative and the book objects are drab-looking, whether placed beside the elegant British originals of the period, the precious Colonial books of antiquarian interest, or the later, more familiar picture books of superior artistry. Produced randomly, cheaply, and in small numbers, they consist within a passage of publishing history that is both confused and attenuated; and consequently, the compilers have remained anonymous. The purpose of this paper is to delineate one such minor though exemplary figure within this significant moment in American history, Robert H. Elton. Self-styled "The Old Comic," Elton illustrated and published several series of children's books between 1835 and 1850. By emphasizing the importance of illustration over text and valorizing technical novelty, Elton's publications signal a distinctive turning of demotic literature in the 1830s and 1840s and prefigure the formal properties of the twentieth-century picture book. Born on June 6, 1806, Robert Henry Elton began his career in the New York book trade in 1828 as the owner of a small shop on Canal Street, where he sold printed ephemera such as plays, prints, and song sheets.1 In 1833 he became the first New Yorker to publish a genre of periodical humor that combined anecdotes, jokes, cartoons, and caricatures with the usual astrological and agricultural data found in almanacs. It was in the punningly titled Comic All My Nack (1834-1853) that Elton wrote of himself in the third person as "the Old Comic," or "Old Comic Elton," a sharp-witted flaneur of lower Broadway.2 He also illustrated the All My Nack with his own wood engravings. Although conceived in imitation of English periodical humor, the All My Nack evolved over the years into a satirical record of urban theater in cosmopolitan New York.3 John Tebbel notes that comic almanacs achieved the largest circulation of all the specialty periodicals and observes that they "showed the direction American humour would take for the next half century" (547). In essence, Tebbel merely repeats the assessment made earlier by Constance Rourke, who writes that "few materials are more important for a view of American humor than. . .comic almanacs" (301). Acknowledging Elton's impact on the development of American humor, Rourke describes him by a curiously fay term, "sprightly" (301). Focused on the modest urge to make people laugh, the All My Nack served as the local standard bearer to what Lewis Gaylord Clark named in 1846 "The Age of Fun": "Everybody deals in jokes, and all wisdom is inculcated in a paraphrase of humour" (181). Clark's characterization of "fun" immediately evokes the traditional rationale for children's literature, i.e., to instruct and delight (Newbery's "delectando monemus")4; but one wonders whether there is a signifying irony in Clark's comment. It is surprising, perhaps, to see "fun" deprecated in Johnson's dictionary as "a low cant word" that, according to the O.E.D., originally (1700) meant a practical joke or a hoax. At the time Clark was writing in the Knickerbocker Magazine, "fun" still retained a sense of its "low" origins. His contemporary, Samuel Carter Hall used it disparagingly in his The Book of Gems: Poets and Artists of Great Britain, writing of one poet, with what seems a genteel sneer, "his wit and humour [are] delightful, when it [sic] does not degenerate into 'fun'" (90). It seems that "fun" still implied a significant lack, a violation...

From Student to Teacher in Thirty-Four Years

Back in the early 1970s I applied for a spot with the Teacher Corps Program on our reservation. The program stated that I could go to school in the morning and be in the classroom in the afternoon. It was an accelerated program, and I would be a teacher in less than four years. I had graduated from high school in 1969, went on to technical college and received an associate degree in residential design, but I had always wanted to be a teacher. Thus, this program seemed to be well suited to my plans. I filled out an application and was selected to be interviewed for the program. From what I can recall, the interview panel was made up of people from our reservation, teachers and administrators. The gentleman leading the interview was a teacher at the grade school on our reservation, and I had known him for quite some time. By the way, he was a white man. As the interview was progressing, he said, "OK Rich, let's do a 'what-if' question . . . let's say you are standing in the hallway outside your classroom and I'm standing outside mine, which is right across the hall from yours. The bell rings for recess and all the kids start running as kids do and I say, 'Hey, children . . . slow down . . . you're all running like a bunch of wild Indians!' What would your response or reaction be to my comment?" Well, because I have always used humor in my life, I said, "Well, sir, I'd probably say, 'Hey you kids, slow down . . . you're running around like a bunch of wild Polacks!'" I then laughed, as did the interview members, and then I went on to explain how I would really handle his, "what-if" question. Needless to say, I was not chosen for the program. But this is not where the story ends. [End Page 373] A few weeks later at a social gathering at someone's house, a young lady came up to me and said, "Excuse me, but did you interview for the Teacher Corps Program a few weeks ago?" I told her yes, and then she said, "Do you know why you were really not chosen?" I told her no. Here is what she told me: "Remember when you were asked that question about recess, the kids and that 'wild Indians' comment?" I told her yes . . . she then said, as she began to laugh herself, "Well, you really pissed off the guy who asked that question because he is Polish!" I then started laughing myself and said, "So, wasn't that a double standard? Worse yet, he made it a 'what-if' question and then turns around and uses my 'humorous' comeback against me? What a jerk!" She then went on to tell me that everyone on the committee explained to him that my initial response was in jest, just to make people laugh, but he would have nothing to do with their feelings. I was out! I could go on and on about other situations and experiences I have been involved in my whole life, but here is what I feel is more important to share at this time. I have just been hired to teach Native American studies in the Pan-African Department at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. I am truly honored to have been hired, but here is what is most significant to me: I have no other degree except my two-year degree in residential design. I have no master's, no bachelor's, or any other type of certificate. As I told the staff at the university during my interview, "All I have are the scars on my back and the holes in my heart from my time here on Mother Earth." I went on to tell them that my approach is very grass roots. As a matter of fact, when I was told...

Where the brain gets jokes

“Why don't sharks bite lawyers? Professional courtesy” and “Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants? He had a hole in one” are both jokes and make people laugh (well, some people, at least), but the type of humor is quite different in each case. Is there nevertheless a central brain mechanism responsible for finding something funny? It appears so, according to a recent study by Vinod Goel and Ray Dolan [Nature Neurosci.(2001) 4, 237–238]. Using single-event fMRI, these authors studied the brain activation of subjects who listened to jokes (but not extremely funny ones, to keep them from moving their heads). Semantic jokes (such as the one about lawyers) and puns (the golfer joke) activate different networks in the brain, but when subjects find either kind of joke genuinely funny, another brain area is activated – the orbital prefrontal cortex, which has been associated with reward – and the funnier the joke (as rated by the subject), the stronger the activation. MW

Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100 B. C.-A. D. 250

What did sex mean to the ancient Romans? In this lavishly illustrated study, John R. Clarke investigates a rich assortment of Roman erotic art to answer this question--and along the way, he reveals a society quite different from our own. Clarke reevaluates our understanding of Roman art and society in a study informed by recent gender and cultural studies, and focusing for the first time on attitudes toward the erotic among both the Roman non-elite and women. This splendid volume is the first study of erotic art and sexuality to set these works--many newly discovered and previously unpublished--in their ancient context and the first to define the differences between modern and ancient concepts of sexuality using clear visual evidence. Roman artists pictured a great range of human sexual activities--far beyond those mentioned in classical literature--including sex between men and women, men and men, women and women, men and boys, threesomes, foursomes, and more. Roman citizens paid artists to decorate expensive objects, such as silver and cameo glass, with scenes of lovemaking. Erotic works were created for and sold to a broad range of consumers, from the elite to the very poor, during a period spanning the first century B.C. through the mid-third century of our era. This erotic art was not hidden away, but was displayed proudly in homes as signs of wealth and luxury. In public spaces, artists often depicted outrageous sexual acrobatics to make people laugh. Looking at Lovemaking depicts a sophisticated, pre-Christian society that placed a high value on sexual pleasure and the art that represented it. Clarke shows how this culture evolved within religious, social, and legal frameworks that were vastly different from our own and contributes an original and controversial chapter to the history of human sexuality.

Commentary: Economic and Literary History : An Economist's Perspective

A recent New York Times article examined an academic discipline and found that it resembled a secret society, initiating curious entry-level graduate students into the practice of a craft that was unintelligible to the outside world, speaking a bizarre language, learn ing highly stylized modes of analysis that seemed to have little relevance to the world as outsiders experienced it and to have little practical application. These graduate students entered the field believing that they would be studying something familiar to their experience and found that they had little idea about how the profession was actually practiced. This description could apply to a number of departments as commonly viewed, and it would surprise few if it were about Literary Studies. In fact, of course, it was about Economics.1 In another article in the New York Review of Books, Andrew Delbanco quotes the Provost of the University of California at Berkeley to the effect that [o]n every campus there is one department whose name need only be mentioned to make people laugh. She went on to warn: You don't want that department to be yours. It would not surprise those at some universities if his article were about Economics, but of course Delbanco is concerned about the fate of Literary Studies as it is currently practiced, with the spread of theory.2 In his essay for this New Literary History issue, Scott Meikle notices that economists have a distinct way of thinking. Indeed, to outsiders econo mists are often a tribe apart, speaking and writing in an arcane tongue filled with Greek letters and bizarre formulations that seems designed to repel the outsider, displaying a disdain for the outside world and the general intellectual public. But it could be said that almost any academic discipline as currently practiced has a distinct method of analysis. Every academic discipline has become increasingly specialized, or profession alized, in the true sense of professionalization; that is, turned into a distinct body of practitioners, with its own rules of admission, its own

False starts

False starts

The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh

The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh

An Interview with Eric Bogosian

AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIC BOGOSIAN Eric Bogosian Three time Obie-award-winning monologist and actor, Eric Bogosian, is also a distinguished playwright, author of Talk Radio (made into a film by Oliver Stone), subllrbia, The New World and Griller. His work has been published and staged around the world. Bogosian stars occasionally on film and television, notably as Lt. Greenberg in Robert Airman's Cain Munity Court Martial, and opposite Steven Seagal as the evil Travis Dane in Under Siege 2. This interview was conducted by Kay Bonetti in the summer of 1996 for the American Audio Prose Library, which has recordings of readings by and interviews with over 130 contemporary writers. For more information about AAPL listings, write P.O. Box 842, Columbia, MO, 65205, or call 800-447-2275. An Interview with Eric Bogosian/iCay Bonetti Interviewer: In the introduction to subUrbia you talk about growing up in Woburn, Massachusetts. Can you fill us in a little bit about where you came from? Bogosian: I come from around the Boston area. My family, as I was growing up, was moving out farther and farther away from the center of the city into the suburbs, and I ended up spending most of my adolescence in Woburn. It's very middle-class, a lot ofblue-collar. Those are the kids and the values that I grew up around. It seems to me looking back—I didn't really understand this until I went to college—that I got kind of pushed and pulled in my feelings about things growing up there because I was very bookish and very verbal. I've come to believe thathas something to do withbeing from a Mediterraneanbackground, which wasn't common in that town. I'm Armenian, and my family is very close, with extended family, cousins and aunts, uncles, grandparents all over the place. I was used to talking a lot and being celebrated for being amusing. I grew up around all these kids that were from families where if you could make people laugh or you talked a lot, that was seen actually as a weakness. I was hanging around with kids who were pretty physical and not so book-oriented, and I was the odd man out. Interviewen How did that affect you? Bogosian: I spent a lot of time by myself. Until I was in high school and they put a name on it, and called it acting, what I was doing to amuse myself was hanging out by myself in my room, looking in the mirror, talking to myself, making up these voices. All the people that I knew, no matter whether they were relatives or people in TV, kind of entered me and came out again as these characters. I've always been fascinated, completely drawn to the diversity of people. I find it amazing that there are so many people with their own little motors running inside them. That's what theater is all about, putting yourself in the The Missouri Review · 97 shoes of somebody else—not only I, as an actor, but also the audience feels empathy for the characters on stage. That's the theater experience —catharsis, or whatever you want to call it. Interviewen In the introduction to subllrbia, you describe Woburn as a place that is becoming less and less of a community. The mini-mall where you first hung out had a barber shop, a pharmacy and a furniture store, which bespeaks home, family, community. Now it's a Seven-Eleven, a Burger King and a car dealership. There's a lot of talk about generation these days—Generation X, the Slackers—how do you see yourself as being one generation back from these kids in Woburn that make up the characters in subllrbia? Bogosian: It seems to me that there's a religion in this country that we all have absorbed, if we don't completely believe in it. It's a religion of money, and possessions, and having. When I say "religion," I mean if you have these things, they will save you. What I have in common with the generation that's out there right now is that in...

Hefty Hefty Hefty-Wimpy Wimpy Wimpy: An Interview with Charlie Morrow

MORROW: Only when I can be transcendent in the work that I do. I would say that that persona comes through most strongly when I can be humorous. As a commercial artist, my strongest feature is my sense of humor and so when I can make people laugh with Hefty, Hefty, Wimpy, which is one of my better known giggles [for Hefty garbage bags], I feel that I've accomplished something as an artist as well.