My go-to laugh inspiration

I’ve got to write again about this prompt about jokes: I have a particular website that I go to for laughter inspiration: Television without Pity (TWOP). They have many writers who review television shows and some movies, and I can usually get a laugh or two off their reviews – I like them.

I am a child of the 80s, and had some formative years while Dawson’s Creek was on. On TWOP, there were two people in particular who recapped the four early seasons, the ones I knew best. It seemed like they were friends, because they would refer to each other throughout the recap and were kind of unified on their opinions and nicknames of the characters which was woven throughout the recap. They also interjected their opinions throughout the recap, and that was possibly the best part. It was so funny.

I was working at a homeless shelter after college when I found this site and the reviews of past episodes. (And this was right around the time Dawson’s Creek ended, so I was reliving the series.) I was sitting at the desk on the first floor, and laughing all night. I kept reading after ‘lights out,’ though I tried to quiet myself since the women’s dorm was down the hall. It didn’t work. I was actually howling, I was laughing so hard. Howling, people. I was laughing so hard that I actually came off the seat and onto the floor behind the desk.

I loved it so much that I actually set up a separate word document for my favorite passages, and i pull it up on my computer from time to time when I need a break.  Here is a sampling of my favorites:

in the foyer of my apartment, Tiger Woods takes a few practice swings with the Pitching Wedge Of Parallel Plot Development.

As the Donner party emerges stunned from Dawson’s left nostril

Dawson gets out the bar of self-righteousness soap and starts to work up a lather:

He just arches The Eyebrow Of Impending Spontaneity at her. Oh, no.

Gee, I forget, but I can tell you which one of you is breaking ground on a sixteen-bedroom villa on my last. NERVE.

Oooooh, a pity party — who’s got the hats?

Pacey then kneels, crosses himself, and recites The Litany Of Childhood Trauma

So we once again learn that, if continuity be the food of good writing, the DC creative team has gone on hunger strike.

Symbolism comes in and tells me it’s a friend of Foreshadowing’s and can it use my bathroom as Gretchen points out that the girl hired the guy to kill her…Symbolism yells all echoey off the bathroom tile, “Everything okay out there?” and I yell back, “Yep, don’t get up, I GET IT,”

Yeah, it’s tough to look after a child with a crown of thorns digging into your forehead.

She preens and simpers on the bed for a while, and then takes her linebacker’s shoulders and her mismatched breasts and climbs out the window. Glark tells her, “Try not to suck any dick on your way through the parking lot!”

Dawson objects, “I am raw and dark.” No, really. He really said that. Jen, to her credit, laughs in his face….

I loved their references to other things in pop culture, like Clerks, and I loved their references to things like Foreshadowing and the pitching wedge of Parallel Plot Development. They were reviewing the way the show was put together in such an offhand and creative way, and I loved it.  http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com  Especially if you didn’t like Dawson. 🙂