Oh my God, is this show funny. I am probably one of the biggest Freaks and Geeks fans in the world, yet I never was able to get into Undeclared, probably because I was in college myself at the time. We rented the first six episodes the other night and it was so freaking funny we had to go back and get the rest. It's certainly more sitcom-y and less realistic than Freaks and Geeks, but it's still a really great show. The attention to detail is amazing– there are always hilarious items in the backgrounds of the rooms. Also, you will recognize every single cast member, with quite a few guest spots from Freaks and Geeks alums. Did I mention I have a huge crush on Seth Rogen?

Whenever I am exposed to other people's college experiences/perceptions of college, I wonder what it would have been like if I had attended a traditional, heterosexual college with sports teams and such. I wonder what it must be like to go to huge parties and get drunk and have one-night stands and a big co-ed group of friends. I certainly got drunk in college, but I was very depressed, and my friends were depressed and parties would always get busted really fast and the dorms would totally clear out on weekends. Everytime I think of myself in college I want to slap the memory and tell myself to stop wasting all this time locked in my room when I could be out doing the stupid, fun things people do in college. I don't know if I still would have been so depressed if I went to some shinyhappycollege somewhere. Eh, probably.

I never saw this show until this season. A disability studies list to which I subscribe alerted me to Josh Blue [careful: there is a video with sound], a comic with Cerebral Palsy who appears on the show. Since I had just written a paper on disability in the films of the Farrelly brothers, I figured I had to check this show out.

First of all this show is terrible. Anthony Clark, who was really funny on Boston Common, is the absolute worst host I've ever seen. He looks like downs a bottle of horse tranquilizers before each show — seriously, I have never seen anyone introduce anything with less enthusiasm. Secondly, most of the comics are awful. I realize they might be really funny in person, but the show edits things to pieces and also, I am sitting in my living room by myself, not surrounded by laughing drunk people at a club. So I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that most of them appear to be horribly unfunny on TV. However, I really like Josh Blue, I think he's freaking hilarious. During the semi-finals, he got the Audience Choice award and received a standing ovation. I kind of thought the standing ovation was a little patronizing, but whatev, he was funny. I have since been scouring the internet looking for commentary on Blue, as I am curious to how different audiences react to him. Disability comedy is tough because a lot of people with no experience with disability find it uncomfortable and don't want to "go there." Similarly, there are some people with disabilities who think it's counter-productive to do disability comedy for largely non-disabled audiences. I think, on the whole, audiences are uncomfortable with disability comedy because we haven't yet carved out a big enough space for it. Comedy clubs are places where sterotypes are exposed and broken down: racial jokes, ethnic jokes and gay jokes that are otherwise offensive and innappropriate are told freely. And the audience knows it's okay to laugh because we're all in on the joke: the comedian is poking fun at his/herself or his/her friends, the comedian is not really a racist. It's different with disability, as I have found in many Last Comic Standing forums. There are a lot of people who say that Josh Blue would be funny, if he would just stop talking about his disability.

Here's an example from a forum commenter Television without Pity, one of the best websites ever:

I really don't like Josh Blue's act. He seems like a really cool and funny person in real life, though. In fact, his interviews about the beds being so close were much funnier the part he's supposedly makes money being funny for. I get that he has a disability, and that's sad. That's it, it's just sad. Something just feels wrong about laughing at someone's disabilities. If someone with cancer got up on stage and started making a bunch of cancer jokes, how many people do you think would be laughing? Sure it's an extreme example, but it's the same principle. Josh Blue needs to move on from the CP stuff and tell a much wider range of jokes. The stuff about his mom being dead was hilarious.

I think this is a perfect example: why would a dead mom be more funny than a disability? There are certainly cicumstances in which a dead mom joke could be funny, but I think most people would agree that dead parents are inherently sad. I don't think disabilities are sad. There are a lot of ways to reinforce disability rights in the greater culture, and comedy is one of them. It might seem like Josh Blue talks about CP all the time because no one else on TV (since Geri Jewell) does. I'm glad Josh Blue is on television (even though he's on this wretched show). I hope he keeps talking about CP until people stop getting uncomfortable.

I encourage everyone to get a Working Assets phone. It doesn't cost anymore than a regular phone, and 1% of what you pay is donated to progressive causes. I just got the cell phone, and it is a nice phone and a cheap plan ($29.99/month). Unfortunately, the reception in my house is pretty spotty (I believe Working Assets uses Sprint's towers, although I am not positive). Working Assets also offers a land line and a credit card. It's a great way to give money to good causes just by doing what you'd do anyway.

I was reading about friendly names over at the Baby Name Wizard blog today, and was pleased to find out I have one: Katie. Generally, people thought that names that ended in "ie" or "y" were names of friendly people: Katie, Mollie, Andy, Charlie, etc., but there were also a lot of old, sturdy names mentioned like Steve and Dave and Dan. I tend to think the "sturdy", monosyllabic men's names are boring. Also I think it's weird that so many of these names are nicknames. So, Charlie is a nice guy but Charles is a pretentious ass? I always liked the name Andy better than Andrew, but I dated an Andy in high school and that name gives me fond memories. On the other hand, there are names that give me painful memories: I dated three guys named Jason and I don't think I've ever even met a Jason (doesn't count if he goes by "Jay"!) that wasn't kind of a putz.

I've always thought names were interesting. Particularly how everyone has their own prejudices but there are also some powerful name-stereotypes upon which many people agree.

Consider this comment:

So what I'm seeing from reading all these posts is that common and traditional names tend to have that "blank slate" quality, that everyone assumes that the person is nice and likeable until proven otherwise.

Funny that I'm not seeing many of the names that we are giving our children - Madison, McKenna, Jayden, Brayden, Jasmine, etc. Are these less likeable? Do they have the same blank-slate quality?

What about names from when we were growing up? How do we feel about the "cheerleader" and "jock" names of our generations?

And later:

My Predictions:

The common nice girl names will probably switch from Laura, Sarah, Jenny and Amy to Emma, Sophie, Olivia and Hannah.

The common stuck up cheerleader names will switch from Tiffany, Heather, Stephanie, and Nicole to McKenna, Madison, Riley and Mackenzie.

The common "low class" or trashy names will change from Angel, Britney, Ashley and Amber to Trinity, Brooklyn and Destiny.

Although I don't agree, particularly about the so-called "trashy" names, it's still very interesting.

Welcome to my latest adventure in cyberspace. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. As I've stated before, I don't know if I am cut out for blogging. I also have questionable technological skills (not that this requires many), and most importantly, I am lazy. I am not usually a fan of capitalization or punctuation and I never learned how to type correctly. At the moment, I have so many thoughts in my head and the important stuff is buried so deeply that all I can do is let loose with the trivial. For example, I really like it when Oprah wears her hair super-curly. She is — in a rerun with Jon Bon Jovi and his feathered bangs — right now and she looks great. What did not look quite so great, however, was the woman walking in front of me on my way home from work who literally had the bottom quarter of her backside hanging out of her shorts. That's not cool. Because then I have to stare, and it makes me feel like a huge pervert. Which I totally am not.

Please check back here for more thoughts on all kinds of things, such as: my unexplained obsession with Baby Name Wizard; my tragic quest to find a natural hair product that works for curly hair; my early-morning CSPAN addiction; and my tortured attempts to channel my vast knowledge of television trivia into a graduate degree.