The milk has gone sour, the beer has gone skunk, your goldfish ate your rare prize piranha, and your significant other has left you for a street busker in the vehicle you just paid off that morning. What is that one bit of humor you turn to that will make you laugh in any situation? Audio, video, readio…what is your Emergency Funny?
I’ll just get your hors d’oeuvres: hors d’oeuvres which must be obeyed at all times, without question…
Dennis Leary’s ‘No cure for cancer.’ It’s a dark, dark happiness of ‘yeah, the world is bleeeep’ but it helps me put things in perspective. A sample quote below in spoiler-vision due to profanity.
Summary
“Happiness comes in small doses folks. It’s a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. You come, you smoke the butt you eat the cookie you go to sleep wake up and go back to fucking work the next morning, THAT’S IT! End of fucking list! ”
Anything that John Finnemore wrote.
Cabin Pressure, where Roger Allam and Benzedrine Cumberbund are hilariously mismatched pilots.
John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, a sketch show.
Both of those were live radio shows on BBC 4.
Oh, and Double Acts, where he writes for a pair of performers. The one with Michael Palin and Doc Martin (Clunes?) is so sweet.
Check out his new idea for dog shows, Pooh’s intervention, and the Ice Cream Van Painter!
Mine will always be Tim Conway’s elephant story. He was good…but Vicki Lawrence topping him brought down the house:
Carol Burnett Show outtakes - Tim Conway’s Elephant Story - YouTube
Galaxy Quest. I know it by heart. It’s never not funny.
I know this is going to shock everybody, but… Futurama.
Excellent choice.
Why do Norwegian ships have barcodes on them?
…
So that when they come back to port, they can…
Scandinavian.
…
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this one. The first time I saw/read it, I went to work the next day and tried to tell it to my co-workers and couldn’t stop laughing at it long enough to actually tell the joke, which ended up making everyone else laugh. So at this point, I’m not even sure if it’s actually that funny on its own or if it’s like the Debbie Downer sketch, where it’s pretty funny, but mostly memorable for the way it all descended into chaos.
Also, one of my friends (who was there at the time of the original attempted joke telling) will send it to me at random or if she knows I’m having a bad day. So it’s a goofy joke, a happy memory, and a message of love all rolled into one.
Also, any and all QI can be excellent for getting out of my head and forgetting about the world for a little while.
When I only have two minutes to laugh, this is my go-to:
It’s not just funny; watching Conan become incapacitated with laughter really puts this over the top for me.
Mock The Week : Scenes We’d Like To See supercuts, preferably from the Frankie Boyle era.
Small sampler:
YES!!! This is mine.
For random funny I start searching for gag reels. The ones from IT crowd are particularly good.
My go-to for when I’m sick is Bones, Season 1, especially the Christmas episode. Dr. Goodman’s statement, “You are stoned, Agent Booth” brings a smile to my face.
That is one of my favorite QI clips of all time.
Another good source of laughs from British TV is Would I Lie to You, particularly any story told by Bob Mortimer.
Great choice (i.e., Tim Conway and the elephant story).
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
My Favorite Year, about a washed-up, stage-shy Errol Flynn type having to do a comedy show a la Sid Caeser’s Your Show of Shows, to save his ass with the IRS and thus get to stay in America.
Stan “King” Kaiser (Caesar/Kaiser, get it?) winding up with the “shotgun” kills me every, single time. And the whole movie is hilarious.
An absolute emergency? Just over a minute of cricket commentary, which I’m sure must have been posted here many times before.
j
The inadvertent use of the phrase “get his leg over” (a euphemism) is what sets them off.
My emergency funny is this classic five minutes from WKRP in Cincinatti.
But here’s a whole thread devoted to Yakety Sax.
Certain episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will do the job for me. Charlie Day is one of the funniest people who ever lived in that role. If he doesn’t make you laugh your ass off then you never met a real idiot before.
I started watching Community (again after the first-run) on Netflix. Whenever there’s nothing new and worthwhile on Netflix, I’ll watch another episode or two. They always make me laugh.