Louie Louie Louie: Joan

As Season Two of Louie continues on FX, John S and Josh will be offering NPI readers their reactions to each episode. At the end of the season, they will rank the episodes. Get excited.

A Brief Explanation of Toilet Humor

The popularity of “toilet humor” is a commonly accepted, and often lamented, fact of comedy. Some—particularly fans of “smart” comedy—complain that a meticulously well-crafted punchline will sometimes get less of a laugh than a hackneyed fart joke.

People also tend to read a lot into the popularity of crass humor, citing it as an example of society’s declining intelligence, or its immaturity. They accuse a certain type of comedian of pandering, or doing cheap jokes.

A scene from Bridesmaids provides a perfect recent example: Nearly every review I have read of this film has specifically mentioned a scene in which the bridal party gets food poisoning—of a particularly graphic kind—while trying on dresses at a fancy bridal shop.

The Drawing Board: Abortion

Oh, great. Another MAN weighing in on abortion. Well, ladies, if you don’t like it, exercise your “right to choose” to not read it. But as it turns out, this man has the answer. And no, it’s not one of those stupid joke answers like “dude we shouldn’t make abortion legal, we should make it mandatory hahahaha!” That’s dumb, the population would run out. What I will offer instead are a few points of clarification from the legal and moral perspectives, points that will cause you not to reconsider your stance on abortion, but rather to reconsider whether abortion is even a real issue. Sounds interesting, huh? Remember this whole thing is a joke though.

First, let’s evaluate the claim that a fetus has a right to life. Ridiculous. But let’s grant for a second that the fetus is a human being, which, come on, that’s like saying a baby chicken is the same as a real chicken. Regardless, let’s give them that and consider the right to life from a legal perspective. Now, abortion isn’t a pleasant issue, and this could get ugly, so you might not be well suited to this if you have a weak constitution (looking at you, France!). That was a funny joke, huh? But it also segues into me talking about the actual United States Constitution. In one part it says, no kidding:

In Defense of Brüno

Brüno’s been getting mixed reviews, many of which are unjustified. Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post reflects the critical reviews well by claiming: “In Borat, Cohen created a weird but mostly likable naif, whose bumbling travels revealed the roots of fear and ignorance that grow into larger and more dangerous hatreds. Brüno is no Borat. His narcissism, combined with the fact that the scenes in ‘Brüno’ are far more obviously staged than in the previous movie, give the entire enterprise a nasty and, worse, irrelevant tone… ‘Brüno’ could have been a flawlessly timed satiric contribution to the conversation about gay civil rights.”