httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1loyjm4SOa0

“The Bright Side of Life” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian

It’s Good Friday and it seemed a good idea a couple of days ago to post some Christian standup. Christianity may be a divine comedy, but on the evidence provided by YouTube, there isn’t much that’s funny about Christian comedy. It’s like what Howard Stern says about country music: think of the worst song on an Eagles album — that’s country music. The rubber chicken and corn shtick that comedians gave up on fifty years ago (including an ominously unself-aware subtext: e.g. dad taking off his belt to give someone a good whipping) is like a mobile meth lab to Christian comedians. The laughter it generates certainly sounds chemically induced.

This bit from Monty Python may not be the funniest piece of religious satire ever conceived, but it is one of the most cheerful, and that seems appropriate enough. It is Easter Eve Eve after all.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zskO9O3hF78

It’s Charlie Chapin’s birthday, so the TGIF slot is his.

Just about anything we posted would be worth seeing, but this is still an amazing sequence: the boxing match from City Lights.

Previous posts on Frye and Chaplin here, here, here and here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqggW08BWO0

From the Onion News Network

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWkVWjcaVZs

Tina Fey’s easy to take any time. Here’s what her character Liz Lemon from 30 Rock was doing in the 1990s.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAYMJnO9LBQ

Our reference yesterday to Canada being the world’s laughing stock for our annoyingly dull niceness invites at least a couple of examples, which the Americans in particular always seem glad to produce; although Scarberia-born Mike Myers provides a sweetly self-deprecatory characterization that perhaps describes us best, observing that we’re the country that loves its silver medals: “Yay, second place!”

Above is the Oscar-nominated “Blame Canada,” from the South Park movie.  This being South Park, the issue here is Canadian liberalism, which distresses the aggressively conservative side of the American mindset (just listen to any Republican member of Congress angrily grind out lies about Canadian health care). For me the funniest thing about the ongoing satire involving Canada on South Park is that the Canadian antagonists, Terence and Phillip, speak with English accents. The point seems to be that American ignorance about Canada is so profound that even the stereotyping is wrong.

A couple of gratuitous jabs from Family Guy after the jump.

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4xhsYvU2g

Typical of Radiohead, material from their new album seems to float around freely with a life of its own.  The entire album is currently up on YouTube at the above link.

You can also see the new video, “Lotus Flower, here.

Rolling Stone review of the album here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo

From the Onion News Network: meta-news.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Euj9f3gdyM

Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs.”

Last Sunday the improbable bohemian musical project from Montreal, Arcade Fire, won the Grammy for album of the year.  They beat out multi-platinum performers Katy Perry, Eminem and Lady Gaga.  Finishing ahead any one of them would have been a feat.

In other good Grammy news involving Canadian artists, Stratford’s Justin Bieber mercifully did not win best new artist.  That went to another outsider, Esperanza Spalding.  (Thanks to Kori Pop for the tip on just how amazing she is.)  You can see Esperanza after the jump.  She plays the upright bass, which she makes croon.

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6n1rnMKlcc

Happy Black History Month from The Second City Network.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84phU8of02U

We’re posting the newly launched Onion News Network again this week because its satire of cable news is not only breath-takingly detailed but infallibly deadpan.  It’s hard to believe they can hold it together so well.

In this bit, anchor Brooke Alvarez represents the now-stereotypical stilettoed faux-blonde scold whose politics lean toward the authoritarian; that is, the endlessly cloned norm at Fox News.  Rush Limbaugh coined the term “feminazi” to mock feminists on the left, but it is here the term finds its real home.