Christmas Funnies

So before I start actually posting again about, you know the things I post about, I thought I'd share a little holiday story about my grandmother. You see my grandmother is one of the sweetest and earnest ladies I know and every Christmas she gives me the most wonderful gift of all: the gift of puzzlement. She's downright unpredictable. I mean we aren't talking like a sweater no 22 (wow) year old would wear, we're talking about a gift with no precedent in law, in history, or in conceivability.

A necessary preliminary though: when my family was opening up presents Christmas morning there were five tubes all exactly the same under the tree--one for each member of the family. My parents already knew what was inside and once my sister and I picked up the tubes we knew immediately as well. My Dad had won a 5 pack of Pringles and instead of just putting them in the cupboard we each got one wrapped. I was amused because the dog had gotten one.

Later my grandmother came over for dinner, bringing with her the presents I had been anticipating for a few weeks. You see last year, my grandmother had, among several other very nice things, wrapped and gifted me a twelve pack of puddings. The sheer randomness of this gift (especially do to my large disinterest in pudding as a whole) had filled me with joy. That same year she had also purchased my cousin an inflatable camouflaged seat cushion. I was/still am sick with envy.

I tore into the this years presents and discovered a 5 pack of Pringles, providing me in total with more than a year's supply of Pringles. But this was only an appetizer. Next she handed me a grocery bag. She apologized: "I forgot your birthday until this morning, so this is just some stuff from around the house." Now I was stoked. The first of two small packages was a deck of Uno cards. "Have you ever played that before?" I had. In fact one of the most prevalent memories I have of my grandmother are afternoons full of raisins, Racko, and Uno. Often vicious versions of all three. All this of course is nothing compared to the final package: a homemade cardboard box containing all the small change she had around the house. "There's some shiny ones in there."

I love my grandmother and don't think for a minute she's simple--she's the opposite. She's cunning. At her age I can only hope to be half as wily. No longer able to skateboard, skydive, DDR, or compete in the UFC, I too will amuse myself with the bewilderment of others. Perhaps dress up as a sea captain, spend my day at the local Walmart incorrectly using nautical terms, and eventually get forcibly removed by security, giving me the rest of the evening to sew the next day's carrot costume. For instance.

But that's the future. Right now I need to go eat some Pringles and roll some coins.

Now Santa Clause 3: What a Holiday Classic

Surprisingly, there has not been a whole slew of Christmas postings on my part despite both the abundance of time I have on my hands and the ammount of Christmas cheer I'm pounding back every night.

Apologies but I really have nothing biting or insightful to say regarding Christmas laughs. Unlike Halloween, which is not known for yucks, Christmas is a time of year when people do want to be all jolly like, so there are dozens upon dozens of painfully obvious quality comedies. I feel a little lame because I don't have any sort of obscure or indie comedy to suggest, but I thought I'd list the things I like to watch just because my Halloween entry was ever-the-so-popular.

Futurama Xmas Story and A Tale of Two Santas. Xmas Story is one of the finest Futurama episodes available, and because of my reluctance to watch it at any other time than Xmas, all the jokes stay unwarn. Seriously there is a good joke every 4 seconds. Then A Tale of Two Santas, well, has this:I'm also quite a fan of Merry Christmas Mr. Bean. The toy manger and band conducting scenes are pretty chuckle worthy whether you loathe or love the guy. There's also the Muppet Christmas Carol which is funny enough and makes my heart grow a little with nostalgia. And The Venture Bro's Christmas special is both brief and funny, so if you have ten minutes you should check it out.

Then obviously if you still haven't listened to me, maybe you should watch the Extra's Christmas special and while your at it the British Office's Christmas special aswell.

Regarding the classics, my favourites have always been The Grinch and Peanuts. The Grinch is funny enough, has some classicly amusing Doc Suess lines, and that wicked Grinch theme song. Peaunts isn't all that funny but makes up for it by being the fucking peanuts special. And who doesn't like that little dude on the piano hating on Lucy? Also the music is absolutely killer--every year before Christmas break we'd watch this in music class. My teacher loved him some Vince Guaraldi.

So those are my recommendations for your Christmas viewings. I hope you have something to watch with a little more comedy obscurity cred. Perhaps Father Ted or Blackadder? I really wish I had a punchline here.

Whatever. Merry Crimmas!

MIT... a guy...

I found this interesting little video on ill doctrine (a pretty sweet hip hop vlog) where Jay Smooth talks about the ethics of satire.



He's right about it being very easy to just make fun of someone for a laugh. We've all been there (humour me please) where we've said something sorta mean about some random person to get a laugh and then the person turns out to be like no armed or something. But that's really a different issue than mocking celebrities who do make their lives very much part of their ad campaigns (check out the Extras Christmas Special). So it becomes a little trickier, like he says, to know if the respective star has forfeited their right to not be comedically objectified by, you know, saying things like this.

If you got time also check out the ill doctrine video on CNN and WWE.

Walk Hard looks like Shit

Sorry, it does.

When I saw Darjeeling Limited (along with the monkey) they had a few other previews: Juno, which I want to see; Margot at the Wedding, which I probably will see; The Savages, which I really want to see; and Walk Hard, which looks like shit.

Sorry, it does.

And that represents the duality of comedies in my mind. The indie comedrama which offer genuine characters with real moments and then Talladega Nights. I guess Walk Hard has a bunch of people I like from Apatow films and Jack White as Elvis which is pretty cool but a world of muh. I don't plan to see it but this little viral marketing video is actually funny.

This, like everything I usually post, is nsfw.



"Last time I saw Judd run that fast somebody dropped a quarter."

If you haven't already seen the failed casting vids for Knocked Up: Cera and Franco. Also if you're familiar with Undeclared he's used that Mortal Kombat joke before (though it's still a goodin).

ty Stereogum.

Christmas Extras

"Well I was pissed because you called me in early--I was watching a movie."
"Get over it."
"What movie?"
"Oh um, do you know the show Extras? Its Christmas special."
"Ha! You watch celebrity gossip?"
"No no its a British comedy by the guys that did the original British Office. No? Well. The american Office is a remake of a British show created by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais. It only ran for two six episode seasons but they concluded it with a Christmas special and, uh, you're just walking away from me in mid-sentence."
"I'm still listening to you Cam."
"Thank you Jay."
"If only out of politeness."

Extras was a fantastic show, just like its predecessor The Office. If you haven't watched Extras, I don't know why you're wasting your time with my blog, you have more important things to do. Both shows are top-notch comedies not only because they're hilarious but because they use that hilarity to build towards an honest-to-god touching emotional climaxes.

And, just like original Office, Extras was concluded with a feature length Christmas special (just this Sunday) and I was again surprised at how I actually felt those weird human "feelings" as it concluded. The beginning of the special was a little frustrating as it turned Millman into more of a jerk than usual--revealing a pretty petty core personality--and I was afraid the eventual epiphany regarding the error of his ways would just be trite, but I was pleasantly surprised. The necessary "oh I'm a prick" occurred in a non-cliched manner and in a way that's fairly biting of celebrity culture.

I'm continually impressed by how Merchant (who's absolutely brilliant) and Gervais create hilarious TV programs filled with relatively realistic characters and are able to turn all the humour in on itself to be more dramatic than Law & Order tries to be every week.

All in all I'm quite pleased with how this special concluded the series. I actually hope these guys put out something lackluster just so I can have some sort of perspective. I feel weird saying only good things about them.

Also, the show used Sufjan Christmas music. Instant bonus points.

Just a Note on Blog Wars

After his nasty post I thought perhaps I should retaliate in kind, with words drudged dredged up from the most acerbic and condescending part of myself, but then I realized, heh, no one has actually read it but me, why confuse my readers?

*snap* *less of a snap*

Learn to Speak Turkish in Seconds Flat

I saw this over at The Sneeze. It wasn't a post or anything, just an ad on his site.


This makes no sense to me. In what world is this service needed?

Quick! I need to learn Turkish ASAP or else the Earth will be destroyed. If only I could learn like a spy.

Maybe if this was selling Russian or Chinese? I don't mean to be racist but Turkish isn't normally associated in my mind with international espionage. Also I'm left considering the demographic for such an ad. Are blog readers more inclined to purchase speed language learning services?

Why?

You've made a Cuckold out of me

So Dan beat me to the punch on an I Am America (And So Can You!) book review. This could be due to the fact I still haven't read it all yet. I can blame my slow consumption on school work and my secret vampire slaying life, but it's really more of not being overly impressed by it. I agree with most of what Dan says in his review. A lot of what makes Colbert funny is his presentation and reading him just isn't the same. I had the same issue when I read Lewis Black's Nothing's Sacred. You really need to listen to these guys to enjoy their material, reading leaves out a crucial element of their comedy styles.

Another issue I have with the book (and with Colbert actually) is the constant use of satire. Satire is tricky--if you go too far you can come off as pedantic or just eye-roll worthy. I like Colbert, I just prefer the way Stewart lampoons politics and media without overt parody. Both Colbert and Stewart are funny, but Stewart would actually be someone you'd want to have over for dinner. And Colbert's book likely suffered because I enjoyed America the Book so much. Because of its congeniality and varied comedic tone, America the Book is both consistently hilarious and very effective as a piece of political writing .

All that said the book is funny enough. If you like Colbert you'll probably want to read it just out of interest and if you're like me you'll want to own the first edition hard-copy to get that sweet sweet ribbon bookmark.

An Arguement Against Causality

There's nothing I can say to make this right.



What was Alf thinking?

Thanks Shortpacked.