On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:43:43 GMT, "Alan_B" > wrote:

>Michael Odom > wrote in
:
>
>> But an ordinary one? And can you really act in
>> a way that's "redolent of an out-take from a John Candy movie" and do
>> it without artificiality?
>>
>Yes, Life's joys are usually found in the simpler things; a good omlete a
>nice sunset, the laughter of children on the wind. And somedays I think my
>life is a out-take from a John Candy movie, ironic things are forever
>occuring to or happening to me. Life is kinda bitter ...it is laughter that
>makes it bittersweet. But as of up to today my laughing indoscriminatley
>hasn't caused too many to get off the bus, as it were in life.

I understand. I really do. Such things happen with me, too.
Sometimes even the cracks in the sidewalk offer immense aesthetic
pleasure. I don't oppose laughter.

Note that you returned to a good omelette, though, whereas I
stipulated only that the omelette was ordinary. Around Cow Hill, one
seldom finds good omelettes.

But it's the laugh that I was thinking of. The artificial
(intentionally so) quality of John Candy's stage laugh -- perhaps I
should call it a faux-jolly chuckle -- was my object. He used it to
wonderful comic/dramatic effect, and its very artificiality was the
source of much of his screen presence. There was also something of
the bitterness of life in his forced mirth. It was the chuckle of a
man who'd been persistently humiliated and wanted only to get along
with the world in a harmless way. There was suffering in his forced
mirth. I say this as a fan: he was a master of an artificial laugh.

I also rather like Rachel Ray, and not only because she looks good in
jeans. She's a charming woman and an enthusiastic and accomplished
cook as far as I can tell. I can almost forgive her for her $40
dollar day in Dallas that involved a stay at the $500-a-night Hotel
Zaza, but that's another show, as Alton Brown would say. Yet she
sometimes laughs in what I take to be a silly and inauthentic manner.
Thus the John Candy reference. He did it as a comic act; she appears
to want us to believe her jocularity is genuine. Often it patently is
not.

By the way, why is this discussion transpiring under a headline that
reads "Yes?"


modom

"Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes."
-- Jimmie Dale Gilmore