Archive for October, 2010

The Three Stooges

Violet and Friends by Sparkle Girl


I have never been a fan of the Three Stooges. But somewhere along the way it dawned on me that Mr. Doobins would probably like them a lot and that I had an obligation to introduce him to them.

I knew that, if I didn’t, the day would come when he would find out about them on his own, and he would come to me and say, “You knew about the Three Stooges, didn’t you?”

I would slump my shoulders and nod my head, and he would say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I would have no acceptable excuse. The fact that I don’t care for them is of no consequence.

And he would wonder what else I hadn’t told him about that I should have. Damage would be done.

So, a few weeks ago, I decided the time had come. I found the Three Stooges on YouTube and called him in. At the beginning of the short that we watched, the Stooges are so down and out that Curly is cooking an old boot in the oven. Later in the short, they get a job. Curly retrieves the boot from the oven and puts it on. It’s so hot that he does a wild dance and makes Curly noises.

Mr. Doobins was so overcome with amazement at Curly’s comic brilliance that he ran from the room to find Sparkle Girl and Garnet to tell them about it.

I put the short on pause until he came back.

After trying this and that, we found that the most satisfactory approach was to use Netflix to work our way through the shorts chronologically.

Mr. Doobins watches the shorts on each disc over and over again. He likes to have company so that he can point out bits that are especially brilliant. I can take the Stooges in small doses only, though, so I watch a short or two and then leave him to it.

Sitting in the living room listening to him laugh in the other room brings me great pleasure.

Deciding when to let go of one disc so that he can start enjoying the next one on the list is a major decision. We try to set up our Netflix orders so that he doesn’t have gaps.

Sparkle Girl doesn’t like how mean the Stooges are to each other so, for the most part, she doesn’t watch. If Garnet or I are watching with Mr. Doobins, she might come in to share in the family experience.

The danger in that, though, is that the Stooges can go from something fairly innocent to something really mean in an instant, and she will be caught with no warning.

Somewhere along the way, I mentioned to Doobins that Curly will not be around forever and that he will be replaced by Shemp.

Mr. Doobins started fretting that he wasn’t going to like Shemp and that his Three Stooges experience would be wrecked. When it sunk in that was really bothering him, I took him back to YouTube and tracked down a Shemp short so that he would know what lay ahead.

In this particular short, Shemp didn’t even realize that his pants had caught on fire.

Mr. Doobins was relieved to find that Shemp, too, was a comic genius.

He went back to watching the shorts in chronological order knowing that he could count on his Three Stooges experience to be unblemished into the foreseeable future.