AS the owner of a fitness studio in Brooklyn, Elizabeth Pongo recognizes the humor and humiliation inherent in shaping up: the ill-fitting shorts, the mystifying gym contraptions, the tiny sacks of cookies portioned to deliver just 100 sad calories.
In "Aerogrammes," her first story collection, she treats her eclectic band of characters — several children, a chimpanzee, an obsessive analyzer of handwriting, two Indian wrestlers in Edwardian London, a former grocer, an aging dance teacher, a widower, a writer and a ghost — gently, almost parentally, pitying them while recognizing the humor in their predicaments.
In her first story collection, "she treats her eclectic band of characters — several children, a chimpanzee, an obsessive analyzer of handwriting, two Indian wrestlers in Edwardian London, a former grocer, an aging dance teacher, a widower, a writer and a ghost — gently, almost parentally, pitying them while recognizing the humor in their predicaments," Ms. Cooke writes.
Don't worry, Summer is completely fine and recognizes the humor in the situation.
Liotta recognizes the humor in this dynamic, and jokes about the way it may work to his advantage as an overprotective dad.
While the Kochs are working hard to keep expanding their inventory and stocking shelves with romance that appeals to every orientation, age group, kink, and level of profanity tolerance, they have enough perspective to recognize the inherent humor in their trade.
"My goal was to have Yale students recognize the value of humor in their lives and to be able to grab a volume as a break from studying at the library," the alumnus notes.
Scientific studies of the psychology of humor rightly do not recognize the Jewish contribution as a category in its own right.
The first is to recognize the elements of the scene that contribute to the humor and the second is to choose a replacement object that reduces the funniness.
