Laughing till your tummy aches

We were talking in the kitchen about a Japanese cartoon called "Excel Sega". I recalled how in one episode they had thousands of Pickachu-look-alike characters invading Earth. They look like little furry dolls with really big, adorable eyes, and they repeat the same baby-like phrase over and over. When the heroes try to slaughter them, they can't. "I can't stand it. They are too cute!!", the heroes exclaim, turning their faces away. Finally the heroes have to blindfold themselves in order to eliminate these adorably menacing creatures. But as soon as these little creatures get killed, their cute little faces explode at once and turn into a face of a dirty old (Japanese) man. And they die gasping one last "AH---" in a deep old-man voice.

Then he pointed out that this wasn't the funniest bit in the episode. The funniest bit was a character called "Space Butler". We burst into uncontrollable laughter at the mention of the name every single time, but we never had any idea why. This time he said, "Let's break it down:" He said the stereotype of a butler has always been kind of funny. And I said that a butler was usually associated with a really private place, like deep inside an aristocrat's country house. Putting together the empty nothingness of the "Space" and a private and form-bearing "butler" is too absurd. And then there's the fact the "Space" is just this concept of a place that envelops everything. It's preposterous that there should be a position for a butler in Space. Obviously no one has asked "Space Butler" to become THE "Space Butler". He just wakes up one day and decides that Space needs some butlering. Then, he picks up the duster, or something, and becomes it.

Make no mistake: while we were analyzing the ridiculousness of this term, we were laughing like crazy people. I was squatting on the floor and his face got so cramped up that he had to ask me to stop. If someone else were in the room, they would probably think that we were retarded.

That reminded me of that time when I was in Hong Kong, I tried really, really hard to convince my brother that "Napoleon Dynamic" was one of the funniest movies on earth. I tried to describe to him the chicken farm scene, where Napoleon, who just started working there, asked the chicken farmer if the chickens had "large talons". While describing the scene, I made the worst mistake a joke-maker can make: I told my bro that it was really, really funny and laughed at the joke before delivering the punch-line. But I couldn't help it— in the movie the farmer looks at Napoleon like he's from another planet. With probably the most hilarious expression in the history of motion picture (which is an expressionless blank stare of a simple countryman), he replies in a country drawl, "I don't understand a word you just said."

Of course after telling the joke, my brother he looked at me, much like the farmer did to Napoleon, like he was looking at an idiot. My nice little brother was too polite to say anything though, which exactly and sadly showed how embarrassed he felt for me.

I still think that “large talon” was one of the funniest things I have heard in my life (considering Napoleon’s obsession for magical creatures). Man, it feels sooooo good to laugh until your tummy hurts; until you have to kneel down and beg, "Please stop! I am going to pee my pants..."

Now I really want to go see the Aristocrat. I was told that it was a joke that never disappointed. I am up for that. Has anyone seen it?