Psychopathic Television For Sadists

Good grief, what kind of a tv show is this?? And who are these giggling heads that find it all so funny?

I like practical jokes as much as the next goof, but this... this goes way too far.

Years ago, I used to love watching a French Canadian program called "Surprise Sur Prise", which was a French version of Candid Camera, except that it aimed its practical jokes to target celebrities instead of regular folks. Two jokes per episode, with the victim interviewed afterwards, reliving their situation and getting the opportunity to slip in a plug for their latest movie, or album, or concert, or whatever they were up to next (a neat quid pro quo for getting the celebrities to participate for free, and to consent for the humiliation to air on national television up here).

One time the show pretended that a celebrity was being invited to be "in on the gag", to set up a friend, whereas in fact it was the other way around; it was the friend that in on the conspiracy, with the celebrity herself being set up. The celebrity (a tv actress, as I recall) was being shown some "new scenes" revealing the new, "edgy", direction the producers wanted to take the show in, so that she would get an idea of what kind of gag they wanted to play on her friend. The videos she was shown were all set-ups, each more shocking than the last, with the hidden camera focused on the celebrity's growing unease at participating in such cruel practical jokes. The humor was in the celebrity's discomfort, and her disbelief that people could be so sadistic. One of the fake pranks they showed her, as they discussed possible tricks to play on her friend, in fact, was a fake assassination plot not so different than this one in the Japanese tv show: the friend is pretending to be asleep in bed, when machine-gun wielding masked men burst into his bedroom and spray the room (with blanks), with special effects squibs burst all over the bed, pillows and walls, while the friend, playing his part to the hilt, shrieks and thrashes about in mock terror.

The fake assault was all intercut with the shocked expression on the celebrity's face as she begins to question the sanity of the producers of this famous (at the time) tv show.

That program had some wit to it, some redeeming cleverness behind the manipulation of its intended victim. This, below, this to me is just... sadism, straight up. Or am I losing my sense of humor as I grow older?





[HT Breitbart TV]

Laughter Makes Good Medicine

I don’t know about you but I can sure use a few laughs this week.

It’s not good to let ourselves stay depressed when things go wrong, it’s important to at least act happy, for others’ sakes if not our own.... a lesson I was painfully reminded of during our hospital nightmare a few weeks ago. Thank God for the gift of our sense of humor, for otherwise the weight of life's miseries would break us like a twig.

Since I’m the poster boy for being un-hip, I was probably the last guy on the Web to hear about the group Improv Everywhere a few weeks ago, and their large-scale practical jokes that have been regularly posted at Youtube. Being late to the party, I'm having a blast making up for lost time, devouring their grandiose practical jokes with gusto.

Practical jokes can easily turn creativity into cruelty, humor into sadism. When Improv Everywhere are at their best, though, they raise this craft into a fine art. It must be a pleasure to be on the receiving end of their more ingenious pranks.

Today Hot Air links to a new one, and it’s delightful medicine for a gloomy day packed with bad news. They really tap into our competitive male egos with this dream-come-true moment that should make everyone smile: the Improv Everywhere group make two teams of young Little League baseball players feel like they’ve hit the big time in “Best Game Ever”.



Improv Everywhere seems to be most known for their ambitious practical joke, “Frozen Grand Central”, where 200 people simultaneously stood still in the middle of New York’s Grand Central Station terminal for five minutes, to the amazement of their fellow travelers.

But my personal favorite remains their clever attempt to blur the lines between reality and classic Hollywood fantasy with an impromptu musical bursting out in a shopping mall’s food court, in their memorable “Food Court Musical”. There’s a wit and ingenuity on display in this one that never fails to cheer me up when I need cheering the most:



Humor is at its most helpful when you're not so much laughing **at** somebody, but laughing **with** somebody. Like our other senses of hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste, our sense of humor allows us to connect with the world around us, and plug in to the wonder that is the experience of being alive.

To live without a sense of humor must be a deadly handicap indeed...