It’s probably very bad form to mention this under these circumstances, but I have to be honest: it’s been years since I thought Dom DeLuise — who passed away last week at the age of 75 — was funny. I used to, a long time ago. But somewhere along the line, I guess I just sort of got tired of his brand of bumbling silliness. Probably around the time he was making all those tedious and painfully self-indulgent movies with Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham. Just thinking about his “Captain Chaos” character in The Cannonball Run is enough to make wince. Ugh.

But as I said, there was a time when I thought he was very funny indeed, and that was in the early ’80s when he was one of the few comedic actors who could actually make my dad laugh. Dad’s always been a tough nut to crack when it comes to comedy; it’s not that he has no sense of humor at all, it’s just very, very hard to push his humor buttons. The one thing that seems capable of doing it with any consistency is a good fart joke. A good fart joke — and good ones are surprisingly rare, actually — can reduce my father to helpless, tearful gasping on the floor.

Dom DeLuise gets off a good fart joke — as well as a belch joke and a number of other gags based on general slovenliness — in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I, where he played a flatulent, venal, gluttonous, horny, petulant, and incredibly bored Roman Emperor. I knew it was a good joke because Dad insisted on rewinding the film — this wasn’t too long after we discovered the wonders of home video — about a dozen times, until he was, as I described, helpless and gasping on the living room floor with tears rolling down his cheeks. I suspect we probably wore out that particular groove of the RCA videodisc we’d rented from Sharon’s TV and Appliance down the street. Mom and I had stopped laughing on about the fifth viewing, but Dad was having so much fun it seemed churlish to tell him to let the damn thing resume playing.

Looking around the ‘net, I’ve seen many stories about what a nice guy Dom was, and I’m pleased to hear that. He was apparently loved by everyone who was fortunate enough to meet him, and you can’t ask much more of a life than that. Even though I personally outgrew his schtick, I always liked him, and I cherish the memory he gave me of my dad, clicking that rewind button over and over and over, and laughing just as uproariously at Dom breaking wind and scratching himself with the imperial scepter every single time. Thanks for that, Dom…