By Tim Sanders

Several readers have asked me how a humor columnist decides just what is and isn’t funny. Okay, so nobody has actually asked me that, but I’m sure the thought has crossed a few minds when one of my columns has turned out to be a real clinker. I recently read an old Dave Barry column in which he proposed that men and women find different things funny. Barry’s contention was that men find the Three Stooges funny, while women find Hugh Grant funny, and therefore the two sexes can never live together in harmony ... or something like that.

At first I was a little surprised at his analysis, since I am a man, and I always found Hugh Grant, the WJM news director on the old Mary Tyler Moore show, very funny indeed. But then, of course, I realized I’d mistaken Ed Asner’s gruff, hard-boiled Lou Grant for the foppish, soft-boiled British actor Hugh Grant.

So maybe Barry had a point. And not just where Hugh Grant and the immortal Stooges are concerned, either. For example, a female comic can joke about PMS and have other women howling with laughter. But we men, many of whom have barely survived life-threatening bouts with our wives’ PMS, find nothing humorous about the condition. It frightens us.

On the other hand, there are, I believe, a few universally funny things which humor columnists draw on from time to time. Let’s call them gender-neutral sources of humor:

1. Both men and women agree that gerbils are funnier than hamsters. Say the word "gerbil" aloud several times (not if you are in line at the checkout counter, or consoling a bereaved spouse at a funeral, but when you are home, all by yourself). Now do the same with the word "hamster." See?

2. Cats are funnier than dogs. When a humorist is at a loss for material, he remembers the cat and the pain killer episode from Tom Sawyer. He knows he can always send a character outside at night in his underwear to throw a brick at a cat. That is funny. If his protagonist were throwing a brick at a dog, that would simply amount to animal cruelty. We feel this way about cats and pain killers and bricks because cats are self-absorbed and contentious, and squall whenever they want, for no good reason except that they enjoy annoying their humans. Dogs, on the other hand, do not bark to annoy us, but to warn us of impending danger. Like, for example, the danger posed by the smell of a Pomeranian who passed through the yard a week ago, the new moon, which doesn’t look quite right, the neighbor closing his car door, or a leaf falling to the ground.

3. Dancing chickens are funny. Dancing Baptists are funnier. At least that’s what my wife would tell you, because I became one several years ago; a dancing Baptist that is, not a dancing chicken. It all started with a pair of sandals, a lawnmower, and a fire ant hill. It all ended with two dancing feet in a bucket of Clorox bleach.

4. Last week Britain’s Prince Charles and his powerfully-built, well-shod stable mate, Camilla, visited the White House. They were treated to a fine meal of watercress salad, with two buckets of oats for dessert. Now, I firmly believe that loyal Americans of whichever gender–men, women and undecided–can agree that the British royal family is funny. Especially this couple.

5. Odd numbers are funnier than even numbers. That is why there were three blind mice, not two. The seven dwarfs are funny, as are the nine Supreme Court justices, especially Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who bears a striking resemblance to Gladys Bader Ormphby from the old Laugh-In show. In a recent poll, Americans selected twenty-three as the funniest two-digit number, with seventeen coming in a close second, followed by forty-one. There was not a single even number in the top ten, which we savvy humorists like to call the top nine plus one.

6. "Comedians" who rely on vulgarity are not funny. Not long ago I watched as much as I could stand of a Comedy Central Roast of that venerable Hollywood icon and concerned PETA representative, Pamela Anderson. (I believe she is currently on a crusade to save the endangered Malibu tufted gnat.) Towering intellectuals like Jimmy Kimmel, Courtney Love, Bea Arthur, and a whole lot of others I’d never heard of before, put their limited vocabularies on display. What they had in common was that not a one of them–at least none that I listened to–could utter more than three words without resorting to a four-lettered reference to a bodily orifice, and things which could be inserted therein. I guess the only reason nostrils and crayons weren’t mentioned was that nostrils are, for the most part, located in the body’s Northern Hemisphere. I learned about orifices in the Southern Hemisphere I didn’t even know we had. That was what these folks, whom I believe are proof positive that our national gene pool is fouled beyond remedy, consider funny. It was as though I’d been transported back to my childhood, and was hanging around a group of pre-pubescent kiddies with no common sense and even less wit, making poo-poo, nay-nay and booger jokes. Wordsmiths like Groucho and W.C. Fields were undoubtedly spinning in their graves. Juvenile and tasteless does not equal funny; it only equals juvenile and tasteless.

7. Rutabagas, on the other hand, are funny. The 9th Annual World’s Rutabaga Curling Championship is tentatively scheduled for December 24, 2005 at the Ithaca, New York Farmers’ Market. Last year’s three-round event was won by 10-year-old Eric Nicholson, who beat out 93 other athletes with an excellent roll of the root which came very close to the target, a small blue circle 79 feet away. International Rutabaga Curling Foundation Commissioner and Founder Steve Sierigk said that when he developed the sport over nine years ago, he and fellow sporting enthusiasts experimented rolling potatoes, tomatoes, turnips, and even frozen chickens down the wooden Farmers’ Market floor. Last year’s event had plenty of drama, when the champion, Eric, pulled a hamstring in the second round. Fortunately it was not his own, and he was able to forge ahead to victory.

8. The very funniest South American country is Brazil. Consider the following joke:

"During a White House briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan tells President Bush ‘Yesterday evening three Brazilian soccer fans were killed when stadium bleachers collapsed.’

‘OH NO!’ Bush exclaims. ‘That’s terrible!’

Stunned at this uncharacteristic display of emotion over a soccer tragedy, the President’s staff sits in silence as he buries his head in his hands. After a few moments he looks up and asks, ‘Exactly how many is a brazillion, anyway?’"

I’ve tried that same joke with Venezuelans, Colombians, and Ecuadorans, but it just doesn’t work.

9. Shaved ice is funny. Hairy ice is funnier.

So there you are–some humor rules which, much like Michael Jackson and Massachusetts weddings, are not gender specific. You can’t get any more politically correct than that. (By the way, Political Correctness would have been the topic of humor rule number nine plus one, if I’d had the room.)