Fresh Ideas, Real Stories, and a Lot of Laughs

Our Top 3 Laughter on Call Jokes

I was late to altar, so to speak, meaning it took me a long time to settle down and get married. Apparently, my mother no longer remembers that I did.

Q&A With a Loc Comedian

Jackie Monahan is a comedian and writer. She has been working for Laughter On Call a little less than a year. I was lucky enough to catch up with her between her time with Carmen, who she makes laugh between 10-12 hours a week, and the rest of her jam-packed writer/performer schedule.

Send in the Comedians

Not what you’d expect to hear from someone who created a company that hires comedians to use their talent to make people with Alzheimer’s, their caregivers, and their families laugh. And yet, every time I visit my mother, now in the late stage of the disease, I am reminded of just how relentlessly sad it is.

Sundays with Muriel

If you’re old enough to have a parent who is a senior, you may remember the seminal book Tuesdays with Morrie. This memoir, recounting the wise and intimate conversations that the author Mitch Albom had with his former college professor Morrie Schwartz in the last months of his life tugged at the heartstrings of popular culture with surprising vigor.

Training Day!

On Sunday a group of Improv comics met at my house in Atwater Village for some Interactive Storytelling training. As you can see, it was awful. Fortunately we also had snacks!

Washington Post Read: Promoting a Joyful Approach to Alzheimer’s

READ THE ARTICLE

When Losing Keys Makes You Sweat

“A person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 65 seconds now,” Yael Wyte said to me the other morning over coffee. She’s a geriatric social worker who, among many responsibilities, runs support groups for the Alzheimer’s Association of Los Angeles so she should know.

When There Are No Words. Literally.

“Thank you,” my mother said to me a few weeks ago as I pulled my face away from hers, having just given her kisses, one on each cheek. I didn’t know I’d be blinking back tears, but there they were. Happens to me a lot now.

December 13, 2021

SNORING AND THE PANDEMIC

Let me first acknowledge that families are facing much worse challenges in the pandemic than snoring. When you can’t breathe on your own, snoring could feel like a victory. But when you’re sleeping in the same bed with someone for over 20 years, someone you are now spending 24 hours a day with and have been for 9 months, it can be a little, shall we say, grating.

July 1, 2021

LAUGHTER AT WORK? BUT I DON’T WANT TO LOOK FOOLISH!

Most comedians traffic in foolishness. It’s woven so tightly into the fabric of what we do we don’t think twice about it. When one of the touchstones of your art form is slipping on a banana peel, a body losing control unexpectedly with arms akimbo, looking foolish is part of the job description.

April 1, 2021

NOT SO SILLY SCIENCE – BELINDA CHIU

It’s April 2021. Times like these aren’t very funny. In fact, they can be downright scary and sad. But, April is National Humor Month, and May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

February 1, 2021

“WHAT THE ACTUAL F*&K WAS THAT?!”

Yesterday, at the tail end of our fourth event of the day and our 70th in the last month and a half, with people laughing and dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire, people who the company told us might be too depressed to participate, a young woman’s voice broke the festive mood.