This review hit the part of my brain that loves Mark Twain.

The DeMoulin Lung Tester was a plain, serious-looking box with a nickel-plated mouthpiece and a calibrated dial on its face. Its ostensible purpose was to measure a man’s lung capacity, the bulky antecedent to today’s spirometers. Its real purpose was to measure a man’s ability to maintain his composure after being made the butt of a joke. When an unsuspecting mark blew into it, a .32 caliber blank cartridge exploded and a blast of flour hit him squarely in the face.

It is important to note: for me this is strictly third-person hilarity. This is epic humor.

Scenes are surveyed from a distance. In each one crass men do terrible shit to each other in miniature self-contained exhibitions of minor cruelty. The thought of participation has no part in it. Being there would make it less funny. There is no interior aspect, whatsoever. It is all imagined externally as a sort of conceptual sight gag.

The worse the behavior — the more it exposes the innocent depravity of human nature — the funnier it is to me. It is the pure fact that people are like this that cracks me up.

It is very possible this sense of humor is a symptom of being a bad person.