The previous two entries I’ve posted dissected a really crappy right-wing comedy show where the other talked about how comedians in Canada are consistently expected to not get paid for their work. So, let’s talk about something fun for once.
I have a thing where I will remember jokes, entire sketches, or just a two-second funny moment from anytime in my conscious history. My mind just keeps them in a box somewhere and will throw one of them at me at the most inopportune moments to make me laugh.
“What are you giggling at?”
“I just remembered Kyle Kinane’s joke about gentrification.”
“Well, stop it.”
“Okay.
…
May we continue having intercourse?”
“Shut up.”
This happens to me all the time, and I hope artists in other art forms have this as well. I picture one of my musician friends at a funeral suddenly getting hit by his aunt’s purse for humming the guitar solo from ‘Paranoid Android’.
The COVID pandemic has forced us to be left with our own thoughts. A lot. Like “Locked in a car with a guy while driving through Saskatchewan” trapped. Because of this, I’ve had a lot of these comedy moments bubble to the surface. I’ll be walking my dog in a socially distanced park and then BOOM! I’m hit with a Monty Python sketch and blurt laugh while tying up a full dog poop bag. I will laugh through my mask in a grocery store queue about a line from “Night Court” (Kids, ask a Gen-Xer) which then forces people to socially distance from me further.
For whatever reason, I’ve been tracking funny television moments for the past while, so I decided to come up with a list of five of them. They’re not in any order, and they may not even be five that I would consider the best over the course of my life. They’re just the five moments in television that recently have consistently brought me joy and make me laugh when I think of them. Let’s go.