humor

Can being broke be funny, after all? 

Monday’s post on 2 Broke Girls generated a lot of comments—from fans of the show who felt I was being too harsh, and from others who felt I was too forgiving of the show's many flaws.  One commenter said, "You can’t expect a comedy to be so heavy and grounded in real life struggles."

Well, yes. I can.

Last year in Canada, there were two nation-wide campaigns to fight mental health stigma.

The first focused on the financial cost of mental health. It was launched by one of our major banks, and had a slick advertising campaign full of dark colors and statistics. There were multi-page discussions in the national newspapers, as well as multiple bus shelter advertisements driving home the point: Mental illness is a cost to the Canadian economy.

The other, Stand Up For Mental Health, was launched by actual people with mental health conditions. The program is open to people with a variety of diagnoses, and trains them to become stand-up comics, making jokes and wise-cracks about the experience of being mentally ill, as well as other aspects of the lives of the comics. Last year, Stand Up for Mental Health did a cross-country tour to university campuses in the hopes of raising enough awareness to get a Pepsi Refresh Grant so they could get more funding for their work.

I encountered both of these programs at university.

Is Oprah's last season a gift to her viewers, or a gift to herself?

Ugh. Family Guy. It’s a terrible, terrible show in my opinion. I still watch it regularly, out of long-held habit. But it’s just. It’s lazy, it’s aesthetically not pleasing. It’s not very funny. And it’s offensive on an consistent, regular basis.

But for some reason, folks really like it, and Seth MacFarlane, its creator, seems particularly proud of it. It’s currently in the midst of an Emmy campaign, and it is promoting itself by mocking Precious:



This is racist on more than one axis.

Calling himself an "ambassador for conscious Arab hip-hop," Narcy makes music with the purpose of blowing something up: your mind, sucka.

If you are not one of the millions who has viewed Where the Hell is Matt?  you're in for a treat.