My friend, Captain Michael Lodington Soares, USN, was the most naturally gifted comedian I’ve ever known. With no effort, he set the table on a roar and, when he got brain cancer, doctors and nurses wanted to see him simply because he made them laugh. Surveying a waiting room full of desperately ill patients, he exclaimed, “Why are these fucking people so gloomy?” But it was dangerous to be in public with him because, on the second Martini, his humor could be loud, gravely inappropriate and weaponized. Once, dining at a small family restaurant in Manhattan’s Little Italy, he used a theater voice to announce that “none of these guys look like criminals”. Another time my first wife set him up on a date with a colleague at EF Hutton, a woman of prodigious physical proportions. He had pregamed and, meeting her, greeted her with, “Hey, it’s great to meet you, Ellen. Your tits aren’t that big!” Obviously, these forays could be problematic, but Mike was interesting for other reasons.
© 2024 John Oliver
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