Appearances can be deceiving, and I am a great fan of the funnies.

Below you can find some of the humour that entertains me currently, and has done so well in the past. Most of it you can dig up on your own from the general site references, or by just looking for the obvious on google or some such. However, for the Can-con material in particular I have set up specific links.

I like cartoons, and typically go to the Washington Post and the United media comics site for my fill of daily and weekly funnies. You know, Boodocks, Overboard, Zits, Sherman's Lagoon, Doonesbury, Shoe, Dilbert, and Pearls Before Swine. I grew up on Pogo (I'm not that old, my dad collected them...), and Peanuts, when it was still good, and not all corporate (like it started being in the 1980's with the shift to 3 panel...). I also am a fan of the New Yorker funnies, though I've let the subscription lapse.

I just picked up a bunch of Goon Show episodes (I was gisjoedotcom at napster, though have cancelled since the distribution died), as well as 3 years of The Great Eastern, and some Spike Milligan, along with a heap of Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy and other Douglas Adams stuff. Classic humour is good. I used to listen to Air Farce, although not for about a decade or so - they kind of got a bit stale on me. The current comedies I currently listen to on radio are the Dead Dog Cafe (until Shelagh started it up again), Madly off in All Directions, the Vinyl Cafe, and Prairie Home Companion. I like NPR's Whaddya Know, as well.

On the tube, it's The Mercer Report, Corner Gas, and Little Mosque on the Prairie on this side of the border, then the Simpsons (alas, down in quality the past few years imho), King of the Hill, Scrubs, My Name is Earl, and Family Guy. Hopefully they'll start broadcasting PJ's in this area soon, as this was a hilariously black humour.

Movies are also a grand medium for humour, and the numbers of decent films are too great to number. However, I tend to lean on the satirical or bleak humour side, with films like WayDowntown, The Croupier, Curdled, Local Hero, King of Hearts, RoadKill, Highway 61, Last Night (yes, a Don McKellar fan...) and on. Some of the more zany/slapstick are also tolerable, as I appreciated to a limited degree the Three Amigos, Blues Brothers, much of Bill Murray's films, including Where the Buffalo Roam and Stripes.

I have heaps of comedy albums. My first major essay in high school (aside from a smug little treatise on the alumino-tecto-silicate Zeolite in 10th grade) was on the work of Tom Lehrer, still one of my heroes. I'm also a big fan of Bob Newhart's stand-up routines from the early days, along with the likes of Andy Griffith, Lorne Elliott, Bob & Ray, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and the rest of that lot.

In terms of reading, the ultimate book is Puckoon, by Spike Milligan. Utterly mad, extremely good. Outside of that, it ranges from Garrison Keillor (Woebegon, Book of Men, &c.) to Max Braithwaite (The Night We Stole the Mounties' Car) to W.P. Kinsella (Born Indian &c.), Tom King (Truth and Bright Water, Green Grass Running Water) Donald Jack's Bartholemew Bandy series (at least the first three), and so on.

Finally, the other ultimate comedy is reality, as found through The Darwin Awards and News of the Weird. Natural selection doesn't work all the time. For that matter, the Harpers weekly update online usually has a pleasantly caustic side to it, and the personals section of the London Review of Books simply has to be read to be believed: so much so that selections from these ads now been made into a book.

Back home...