Just about every corner of the globe is experiencing negativity – with mass shootings, political and personal conflicts and just-plain social unrest breaking out every minute.
Hardly a good tone for the holidays, huh?
Well, except that in the midst of it all, Melanin Bee has been forcing yuks and guffaws, right and left.
And all for the benefit of good health.
As it turns out, what begins as contrived and (not-fun) silly, soon gives way to genuine laughter, and all the clinical benefits contained therein, as Santa’s rosy complexion can attest.
Bee, a comedian and motivational speaker, practices and offers instruction in her own form of yoga, which she calls “Laughaste.”
It’s easy, Bee said. Just curve your spine, like a stretching cat after a long nap, and let it out: “Oh, hoo hoo hoo, eeh, ha ha ha …”
Before you know it, manufactured giggles will give way to real ones.
Of course it’s going to be awkward at first, she added. That’s the point.
“It’s about allowing yourself to be OK with being awkward,” she said.
“Then you’re going to find some form of silliness within that is going to allow you to laugh involuntarily.”
Star-struck
Larry Nelson let out a laugh when he heard of this new approach.
“Really?” the Morgantown entertainer and longtime radio personality asked. “That’s a thing? Hey, whatever works, you know? God knows we need it.”
Nelson, meanwhile, publicly practiced laughter therapy for nearly four decades behind the microphone in Morgantown radio, doing morning show stints at WAJR, WCLG and WMQC.
He grew up a show business kid in New York City.
His father was Jimmy Nelson, the gentlemanly ventriloquist (his sawdust partners were Danny O’Day and Farfel, the dog), who was part of the troupe of players on the “Texaco Star Theater,” hosted by manic Milton Berle.
Back in those TV-infancy days, when the medium was still building kinescope bridges from vaudeville to your living room, all the shows were broadcast live, which meant rehearsals were critical.
Jimmy Nelson would sometimes take his sons Larry and Lee to those rehearsals.
Because Berle was a taskmaster, the dad would instruct the wide-eyed lads not to speak to the star – unless the star spoke first.
Of course, Berle would come over. At first, it was slapstick. Silly faces, silly noises and the like.
As the brothers got older, Berle upped the act, Larry remembers.
“He’d say, ‘Now boys, who do you love more – your dad or your Uncle Miltie? And remember, I’m the one signing the checks.’ Then he’d wink, and wheel off.”
Take me home
Nelson enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after his graduation from Long Beach High School in Long Island, N.Y., where his classmates included once-and-future Rob Reiner pal Billy Crystal.
His parents had divorced by then and his mother was remarried to a real estate professional who helped develop Morgantown’s South Hills neighborhood.
“That’s what got me to West Virginia,” he said. “I flew down to see her when I was on leave and I fell in love with the place.”
Not that Los Angeles didn’t beckon for a time in the early 1970s. A old writer pal of his dad’s was in California. Jimmy Nelson called in a favor for Larry, who wanted to make a go of stand-up comedy.
The friend got him a job in the CBS typing pool.
He’d hone his act in the clubs on nights and weekends, while clacking through scripts during the day for all of the network’s hit shows, including “All in the Family.”
During breaks he’d look in on Meathead and Archie, going at it during rehearsal.
“You knew it was special, what you were watching.”
Grin and bear (while laughing, too)
What’s special these days for the 77-year-old Nelson is that even in retirement, he can still make people laugh.
Laughter, he said, is what’s getting him through a second Christmas without his son, Jerry, who died at the age of 53 on Dec. 8, 2024, from injuries sustained in a fall.
“I’ll never stop missing him, but if I can make someone smile, even if we’re just talking in the hallway, it makes it easier. And bearable.”
He loves that there’s a belly laugh guru out there in the world during this holiday season of 2025 when everyone — now more than ever, as he is wont to say — needs a good laugh.
“I’ve never taken myself seriously,” he said.
“When you do that, it just gets in the way. To me, laughter is an instant vacation. You may not know where you’re going, but you always know it’s gonna be interesting.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
