Why? Because in the Resurrection, God has the last laugh on Satan. You can read about the custom here.
So that set my mind to wandering . . . and since my mind is always searching for the next top five list for a Tuesday blog, it wandered on this day to those movies that I have found to be the most laugh out loud funny.
In putting together this list, I tried to balance between a) remembering this is a preacher’s blog, after all and b) not becoming such a prude that Lassie made the list. So . . . here goes: in honor of cosmic joke day, here are my top five motion picture comedies:
5. Young Frankenstein. “That’s FRONK-EN-STEEN.” The perfect movie for a seventh grader, which is what I was when I saw it. I also remembering first-hand that when you try to re-create how funny a movie was by telling someone all about it . . . they quickly lose interest.
4. Airplane. Tasteless, irreverent, probably couldn’t be made today. Or be as witty. Who knew Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could act?
3. Beverly Hills Cop. Eddie Murphy’s laugh alone made me want to relocate to Southern California.
2. Ghostbusters. Julie and I returned from our honeymoon in the summer of 1984 to find the country in the throes of Ghostbuster Mania. Turns out it was easy to see why.
1. Bernie. The best movie nobody’s ever heard of. Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey and a cast of locals from Carthage, Texas form an ensemble for the ages. This description of the “Five States Of Texas” is itself worth the price of admission: