Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
My wife and I were late to get started. All of our friends were watching and telling us how great the series was but the idea of an American Football coach going to England to coach soccer real football seemed pretty silly. But finally our friends talked us into it. Since it was already late into season 2, we were able to binge watch a lot of episodes in a row. And that’s exactly what we did.
My wife and I don’t watch a lot of shows together, mostly because she gets tired of waiting for me to join her in front of the television. I will go through long stints where I really don’t watch much at all. But Ted Lasso hooked me right in. The humour is so well written. The characters are absolutely wonderful, and the show has a way of being endearingly wonderful, and ‘feel good’ without being cliché.
It went from a show I hesitated to begin watching to one that is an all time favourite. You don’t have to be a sports fan, you will find yourself rooting for the characters more than the team. That’s what makes this show so great… it’s filled with characters you want to see succeed, and even when they don’t the show is heartwarming and funny.
This was easily one of my favourite television escapes in a very long time.
There is all kinds of talk about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards because Chris told an insensitive joke about Will’s wife. I’m not going to discuss the issue of choosing a physical attack. I’m not going to judge, everyone seems to have an opinion, and no matter how you look at it, it could have been handled differently. But I am going to say that sometimes an extreme event needs to happen to change an unhealthy pattern.
For the last few years, comedians at these events have followed a pattern. They have all used the opportunity to get in front of famous people and roast them.They use their host position and their comedic skills to attack the audience. As Ricky Gervais said, “Let’s have a laugh at your expense, shall we? Remember, they’re just jokes. We are all going to die soon and there’s no sequel.”
The thing is, there have been many sequels. More and more, these award shows have become venues for jokes that are lowbrow attacks on famous people. They are funny in a disparaging way. They are hurtful. They are mean.
This isn’t the only kind of comedy. Being famous doesn’t give others permission to use this form of comedy.
This was not a good move by Will Smith. I’m a fan of his work and this is the most out of character thing I’ve ever seen him do. But maybe some good will come from this. Maybe hosts will try to be more highbrow with their comedy, and still be funny without attacking the audience. Funny doesn’t have to be at anyone’s expense. Funny doesn’t have to be mean.
When I was a kid I used to watch Get Smart, a ridiculous comedy about a bumbling secret agent who seemed to always accidentally solved his case. Whenever his boss was going to tell him something top secret, Max, agent 99, would insist on using the cone of silence… a device that succeeded in preventing them from hearing each other, and could always be heard from the audience’s perspective, outside of the cone.
I sometimes try to put myself in a cone of silence, not watching the news, not paying attention to social media posts related to news events, not discussing anything related to the news. I try to block things out for a couple days and just live in blissful ignorance of the world beyond my daily life.
Does it work? Not always. But every now and then it’s fun to try.
Last night I went to see Trevor Noah live in Vancouver. My wife and I had a little escape from our house under renovation, and we enjoyed the weekend downtown. These tickets were bought months ago for my birthday, and this was the first large event gathering either of us have done in a couple years.
It felt weird to be around so many people, as I shared in this tweet about the Trevor’s ‘Back to Abnormal Tour’.
(Follow the link in the tweet here for a cute laugh.)
Watching the comedians, Trevor and his two clever lead-offs, it occurred to me that comedians are but a few people that can tread on hot topics without eliciting anger. They can broach topics and say things that would come off as inappropriate by anyone else, then they shed some insightful light on the topics. They can provide perspectives about hot topics while eliciting laughter instead of anger.
I don’t think we should live in a society where we need to rely on comedians to provide rational insight on hot topics. We should be able to have these conversations openly without name calling and yelling. But a couple hours before going to the show we were out for lunch, and on the way back to the hotel passed some anti-mask protesters. One of them was having an exchange with someone walking past. I have no idea who started it but they were both throwing F-bombs at each other. Nothing civil about that. Nothing insightful shared. Nothing funny about it.
A few hours later, I’m having a good laugh, listening to Trevor make insightful comments about topics others just bicker about. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of us could do that?
Growing up, every sitcom I watched had a laugh track. In fact, I think most of them had the same laugh track. My wife was watching a show and left the tv on. What followed was a new show I’d never seen before. The humour was bad, and the laugh track made it even more painful. I think the last sitcom to use a laugh track that actually didn’t take away from the comedy was The Big Bang Theory. But even there, I think they could totally have pulled it off without one.
Then came the commercials. Wow, they are awful. I really don’t watch a lot of TV, and when I do, it’s usually Netflix or some other streaming service that I don’t have to watch commercials on. Is there some sort of strategy whereby really bad commercials somehow work better than good ones?
Bad laugh tracks, bad commercials, bad sitcoms. How is TV going to survive in the next 5 years? Streaming services will be the way everyone watches their shows. I think most TV stations are going to go the way of the laugh track… and it won’t be a funny thing for them.
On the other hand, the old sitcoms I used to watch, like Friends, Seinfeld, and Cheers, are now the shows that my daughters are watching, or have watched. What’s funny about that is that I missed a lot of the shows because I didn’t see them on the night they played, and didn’t catch all the re-runs, but my kids watch episode by episode on demand. And that’s the difference now, shows can be watched any time, and without commercials.
The laugh track will live on in re-runs, but I think the days of the laugh track are long gone, and any good quality comedies of the future will rely on good humour and not a fake audience to cue the laughter of the viewer.
45 minutes before my morning alarm, I woke up from a dream smiling. At first the dream was like I was watching TV, the stars of the dream all unknown to me, and I was an observer, not a participant. It was a story of two thieves in the late 1800’s, and after escaping with stolen property, one was in tears because he had failed to do his part. The other was consoling him, when they were interrupted by a female pickpocket.
Comedy ensued as she stole items from them while the main protagonist stole them back in a display of slight of hands that would not have been possible were this not a dream. Then they were caught by an inventive farmer and his mechanical, human looking robot, and sent to a jail that was something more like a modern day rehab centre.
Here they all ended up in a scene that was right out of a movie they had all seen, one where a bus outside passes a window and one of them realized that this scene involved a shooter getting out of the bus and shooting up the place. So he warns the others that this is going to happen, just like in the movie, and all of them having seen the movie drop to the floor to save themselves… nothing happens, and one of them, a different protagonist than earlier but somehow the same person in my mind, scolds the person who warned them to drop to the floor, calling him an idiot for somehow thinking that they were in a movie. Others start laughing at the absurdity of this, and I’m laughing too as I wake up.
How does our brain entertain us in this way in our sleep? What kind of mental gymnastics musts our minds do in order to create comedy where we ourselves don’t know the punchline, or don’t see the elements of the dream that amuse us, coming before the funny moment occurs? How does my brain partition the joke creator from the joke appreciator such that comedy can occur?
This doesn’t just happen with comedy, how do we scare or surprise ourselves? How is it that our brains can convince us that dreams are real, and that we must somehow cope with the bizarre and unrealistic issues we face in them. How do we jump back into a dream after temporarily waking up?
I subscribe to the idea that we are made up of many parts. In simple form, part of us wants to work out, while part of us is lazy; part of us wants a second helping of dessert, part of us thinks we’ve had enough; part of us wants to sleep longer, while part of us knows it’s time to get up. Part of us creates the dream, and part of us is a participant in it. But even knowing this, how does part of us share a joke or funny scene in a dream, and the other part not see it coming?
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the whole world is watching as a few states count their final votes in the US Presidential Election.
Here are some creative people poking fun at Nevada taking so long…
Warning: This last one is rude, but it cracked me up and it’s where I got the title for this post.
And here’s a news flash, it looks like both Pensilvania and Nevada have finally counted enough votes and the election is now decided… Back to the serious politics we go!
((Source: The Guardian at 9:25am PST, Nov. 7, 2020))
It was 5 years ago yesterday. I remember the exact day because it’s not every day that a DeLorean appears out of nowhere, flying down your street. There was a thunderous ‘crack’ that echoed through the neighbourhood, and I opened the front door in time to hear the soft rumble of the flying car hovering above our street. It landed and turned into my driveway. The x-wing shaped door on the driver side opened up and I was shocked when none other than Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, Ph.D, came springing out of the car, heading directly for me.
Doc: Are you Dave Truss?
Me: Ummm, yeah.
Doc: I’ve got a USB zip drive, can I use your computer.
Not waiting for a response, he rushed through the door, passing me and headed into my living room. He stood there dishevelled, holding a key chain with a zip drive dangling along with a couple keys next to it.
Me: OK, um, this way.
I lead him to my dining room table, placed my computer between us, logged in and pointed the keyboard closer to him. He shoved the zip drive into the USB slot on my computer. He seemed rushed.
Doc: I’m going to show you something. It’s from the future. Five years from now there is going to be a pandemic as bad the 1918 Spanish Flu and President Donald Trump is…
Me: Wait, what? Donald Trump is President… of what?
Doc: The USA! I tell you there’s going to be a global pandemic in 5 years and that’s what you ask me?
Me: Sorry, I thought you were being serious.
Doc: I am! Shut up and let me finish. President Donald Trump, he makes things a lot worse, I mean A LOT WORSE. But you can stop it.
Me: You are pranking me. I’m on Candid Camera, right? Who put you up to this? Where are the cameras? Those aren’t real goggles are they? You’re hiding a camera in them, aren’t you?
I reach for the goggles on his head and he pulls away.
Doc: Listen, the fate of the world is in your hands, did you not see the video I just showed you, it’s from 5 years into the future, your future, and…
Me: …and it’s a skit from Saturday Night Live!
Doc: What?
Me: Or a sitcom? Or from Late Night with Seth Meyers… it’s a comedy skit. It’s funny, made me laugh. Good one.
Doc: No! No-no-no, this is the future. This is going to happen in 5 years. This is your future, and you can change it.
Me: You’re funny.
Doc: …Your’s an idiot, do you not understand the seriousness of what I’m telling you.
Me: Are you really trying to tell me that ridiculous video is from the future? …And you want me to take you seriously?
Doc: YES!
Me: Hey Doc, if that’s “The Future”, come back and find me then, and I’ll give you a million bucks.
Doc: I don’t want your money, I need your help!
Me: Well I don’t think you are getting either. I think it’s time for you to reveal the Candid Camera cameras, and let’s both have a laugh, or it’s time for you to leave.
Doc: Unbelievable.
Me: Exactly.
Setting the stage for Part 2: April 24th, 2020
Yesterday: I arrived home from work, parked my car and started walking up my front steps… Then it happened. It had been 5 years, but the sound was unmistakable. There was a thunderous ‘crack’ that echoed through the neighbourhood, followed by the rumble of the flying DeLorean, hovering above our street. The car lands and turns up my driveway. The driver side x-wing door opens and a not-too-impressed Doc greets me.
Doc: Hello David…
End.
____
“There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.” ― Neil Gaiman
I don’t get it? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel I’m in on it.
I went to a movie tonight, it wasn’t a comedy, but it had a few laughs in it. One of the funnier moments was also in the movie trailer and it got the biggest laugh of the night… but not from me.
Why not from me? I’d seen it already. To me it is much less funny the second time. But I’ve noticed for years and years of going to movie theatres that the pre-watched comedy in the movie trailer often gets the bigger laughs.
Why is that? Is it because theatre goers want to share their experience with others? Is it ‘safe’ to be vocal because everyone knows the punchline? Is it fulfilling because everyone gets to be in on the laugh?
What is it in human nature that makes this a thing? Whatever it is, I don’t think I have it. I don’t feel like I’m in on the laugh… but a lot of people do.
