Ha Ha

A few weeks ago I decided to write a post about how I was going to watch less tele­vi­sion in 2009.  No sooner than I hit pub­lish, did PBS start hit­ting me with some can’t miss pro­gram­ming  in the form of the series Make Em Laugh.

Let’s face it.  We all can use a good laugh these days.  This 6 part series chron­i­cles the achieve­ments of some of the fun­ni­est peo­ple of the last 100 or so years, and offers insight­ful his­tor­i­cal con­text to that which we call comedy.

Each of the 6 episodes in an hour long, and fea­tures a nice mix of clips, rare footage, and inter­views on a given theme.  Nerds, Sit­coms, Slap­stick, Con­tro­versy, Wiseguys, and Satire — all are cov­ered in an infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing fash­ion.   As I watched, I was over­come with mem­o­ries of repeat­ing these com­edy rou­tines in school, church, or some other place where it was prob­a­bly not appro­pri­ate to do so.  Espe­cially great to re-live George Carlin’s 7 words rou­tine.  Mem­o­riz­ing that one got me in a lot of trou­ble, but also made me a lot of friends.  No sur­prise that I spent con­sid­er­able time in deten­tion and was voted class clown.  From Mar­tin and Lewis to Steve Mar­tin, Cheech and Chong to Sein­feld, Andy Kauf­man, George Car­lin, Jim Car­rey, Robin Williams, Lenny Bruce, and Jon Stew­art — they are all there.

At the time of writ­ing this I have seen the first 4 episodes.  Each one made me laugh out loud.  The two remain­ing episodes will air this Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 28^th.  If you are read­ing this after the 28^th, check your local list­ings for re-runs.  It is totally worth watch­ing, even if you can only catch one or two episodes.

So, the bad news is I am not com­pletely hit­ting my goal of elim­i­nat­ing TV, but the good news is that at least I am learn­ing some things and hav­ing a good laugh.

Make ‘Em Laugh | PBS