At times like these, it really helps to have a sense of humour.
Not only is Whistler limping through one of its all-time worst seasons, new snow notwithstanding, our main source of aprés excitement, NHL hockey, is still taking a time-out.
The world’s in not such hot shape either. Ultra-conservative nutcases have taken over the free world. Hundreds of thousands are still homeless and jobless after the Dec. 26 Tsunami, the worst natural disaster in history. The modern economy – a completely artificial structure that is critically flawed in its design – is not doing so well, and for some reason that has a real impact on everybody. Add to that the high profile debate over issues like gay marriage and you get the idea that society is stuck in a pointless "values" rut that we may never get out of. Instead of coming together, people are further apart then ever before because we’ve lost the civility to agree to disagree on just about anything and everything.
Underlying all of this are a series of increasingly ominous pronouncements by climate scientists that mankind is on a collision course with forces we ourselves set in motion. The latest bad news comes from the international conference on climate change currently being held in the U.K., which suggests that eight billion people as well the majority of the world’s resources, will be severely stressed by about 2050 when average temperatures increase by just two degrees Celsius.
I try to do my part. I’m taking the David Suzuki Nature Challenge and the Melting Mountains Peak Challenge, I don’t eat meat, I recycle everything, and I’m careful where I spend, invest and donate my money. I feel better for caring and acting, but it’s not enough.
Being in the media industry, I read and watch a lot of news and after a while that can get depressing. Part of it’s the mainstream media’s fault and its need to manufacture one crisis after another to appease the rubberneckers of the world, but it’s overkill and no wonder people are tuning out.
The fact that I’m around so much bad news all the time has seriously affected my overall happiness. I’ve actually absorbed so much bad news at this point that my habit of repeating depressing facts and figures has earned me the nickname Debbie Downer in the office, after the pessimistic Saturday Night Live character.
I used to be the class clown, and now I’m Debbie Downer.
I’m not at the Prozac stage just yet, but I do have to work harder to keep my sense of humour stimulated. Luckily there is no shortage of things to laugh about when your standards are as low as mine.
My favourite joke is also one of the shortest: "A horse walks into a bar to get a drink and the bartender says ‘hey buddy, why the long face?’"
For some reason I think it’s the most brilliant joke in the world, and I’ve spent hours wondering where it came from, turning it over in my head, and marveling at how perfectly it works on so many levels. It’s loaded with irreverence and pathos, transposing a metaphor for human sadness onto an animal that does happen to have a very long face.
Every time I see a horse, I always laugh a little. When they made a reference to this joke in Shrek 2 when Shrek and Donkey went into a tavern, I howled with laughter. I think I was the only person there that picked up on it – or maybe everybody got the reference, but nobody found it as funny.
What this says about me, I don’t know, and better yet I don’t care. A sense of humour isn’t always logical, and it’s definitely not "one size fits all". Some people like Carrot Top. Some people like Chris Rock. Some watch Letterman, and some watch Leno.
I didn’t find Meet the Parents all that funny, but some people loved it enough to buy it so they can watch it again and again. At the same time I think Cable Guy is one of Jim Carrey’s funniest movies, while every critic in the world thought it was terrible.
When I rent a movie these days, I steer clear of anything that’s even remotely dramatic – I get enough drama reading the paper and watching the news. Instead I browse for titles featuring guys like Rob Schneider or Bill Murray.
A list of some of the movies I’ve rented recently include Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Anchorman.
Meanwhile, I haven’t seen one of the Best Picture Academy Award nominees, although I might see Sideways because it’s supposed to be good for a few laughs.
My list of favourite movies, posted for all to see at ymdb.com, doesn’t include The Godfather or Scarface, but you’ll find Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Easy Money, Fubar, Zoolander, Slap Shot, This is Spinal Tap, Shakes the Clown, and Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie.
Some of my favourite television shows are South Park, The Simpsons, The Family Guy, Scrubs, Trailer Park Boys, and Seinfeld reruns. The only show I watch regularly is The Daily Show, a fake news show that satarizes the news and the modern media that covers it.
Sometimes, it helps to put all this bad news into perspective, and nobody is better at that than The Daily Show. Laughing is, after all, a proven therapy, and there are shelves of studies proving that happy people live longer in better health.
It occurs to me that laughter is the common language we all speak, and that people need to have a sense of humour now more than ever.
Laughter is what’s going to get us through the tough times, just as it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the mornings.
So why the long face?
