Emergency Laughter

Mike Cyra takes us on another hilarious grand tour of the strange medical humor in the real-life world of emergency medicine and surgery. Whether he's assisting trauma surgeons who are singing “Take me out to the ballgame” while removing a well-placed iconic symbol of America’s greatest pasttime, learning how fast he can run after being shot at by an angry couple who called for an ambulance, working with a prankster-loving urologist who demonstrates how bladder problems were diagnosed before modern urinalysis, or screaming like a little girl while doing night rounds with a dead flashlight on a psychiatric ward, Cyra’s comedic style of storytelling will make your cheeks sore. Emergency Laughter: Stories of Humor Inside Ambulances and Operating Rooms shows why most health care professionals have such a twisted sense of humor and how critical laughter is to the survival of both patient and care giver. This is the second book in the Emergency Laughter Series.

Frank E. Burdett is a survivor from seriousness. This is no laughing matter and only needs a simple explanation. Frank decided to divorce himself from all seriousness in an effort to gain control of his sense of humour. Once he attained his sense of humour he realised that the amount of absurdity and nonsense that abounds in society can only be diagnosed, in the gentlest of terms, as over-seriousness of epidemic proportions. Frank has researched and evaluated the importance of nurturing your sense of humour in order to balance the well-being of people everywhere, especially against the high degrees of stress, both emotional and work-associated challenges that attack everyone today. He came to the conclusion that people of all persuasions have completely lost the knack of being able to step aside and have a good and free laugh at themselves. Therefore, the time has come for you to learn to laugh at yourself and live longer! Frank knows the effects of harrowing trauma, being attacked, mauled and carried away by a man-eating tiger and, curing himself of spreading melanoma cancer of the neck/shoulder, both lungs, liver and bowel cancer. He had been diagnosed by orthodox medicine as stage IV and given six months to live. He tuned to find an alternative cure. He has now been four years free of cancer. Frank devised a technique whereby, even you, can benefit and learn to laugh at yourself. You have nothing to lose, except your overpowering seriousness. Frank spent three years delving into the properties of laughing at yourself and he soon realised that there is more to laughing than showing a set of teeth. Laughing at yourself allows you the complete freedom to see stress and serious-ness in their proper light, as a threat to your long-lasting happiness. This is your opportunity to take a real look at yourself by using Frank’s technique to step on the path towards learning the Art of Happiness. You either want to be free from the pangs of stress and seriousness, or you do not! Your choice!

The success of Steve Allen's How To Be Funny led first to the republication of that book, and now occasioned a companion volume, Make 'Em Laugh. This new how-to book about the art of comedy includes an even richer assortment of examples of the author's unique humor. In Make 'Em Laugh, Allen laces his formal instruction with hilarious ad-libs, written jokes, TV comedy sketches, satires, song parodies, humorous essays, amusing autobiographical reminiscences, one-act plays, witty speeches, and stand-up monologues from his comedy concerts. Noel Coward called Steve Allen the most talented man in America, and he is probably the most borrowed-from comedian of all time. The perceptive reader will recognize many of the comic ideas that Allen originated during the "Golden Age" of television comedy - ideas that are still influential in the 1990's. If there were a college course in creating and performing comedy, Make 'Em Laugh would be the ideal textbook.

"Containing the public messages, speeches, and statements of the President", 1956-1992.