It's a small scene, but it could have been played big and for dumb laughs.
This woman beside me laughed at every dumb joke in whatever show she was watching, literally every joke the show made.
But if Lisette said, "You're going to take me with you, Momma, O.K.?" her mother would frown as if Lisette had said something really dumb, and laugh.
Rinpoche loves a dumb joke and that this crack got a good laugh out of him inspired a twinge of petty jealousy.
He would laugh every time as if he had never heard my dumb joke before.
"I was so dumb," she laughs.
"Oh God, I love dumb!" he laughs.
So, yes, each performer questioning if what they were doing was "dumb" made me laugh because it's exactly what I would be thinking if I was wearing a giant snowflake costume while doing a not-at-all-complicated dance in front of other human beings.
"I call it dumb luck," he laughed, recalling the humiliation he felt in 1983 when he lost a power struggle to a rival executive at Lehman Brothers and was forced out.
