Browsing Tag

humour

Happy Holidays!

It’s a busy time at Western, but here’s some holiday cheer to brighten your weekend.

This week on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the host and Rashida Jones from Parks and Recreation performed a satirical medley of Top 40 hits by One Direction and Taylor Swift among others. Watch the comedians joke about holiday sweaters, spin a dreidel, and wear Santa Claus hats.

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Chrismukkah or something else, enjoy!

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2aBtx4URYg’]

Back to School Inspiration

When a teacher encourages students to pursue their passion, their influence deserves to be recognized and shared. The Our Kids Private School Expo blog hop provides a great opportunity to express why my media studies teacher, Alice Trachimovsky’s classes are among my best high school memories.

Once I saw how Mrs. T handled a group of immature boys while substituting for one of my grade ten classes, I knew she was a woman from whom I wanted to learn. The following year in grade eleven, her exciting creative assignments ranged from a shopping mall analysis to a full-fledged public service announcement campaign, for which I learned how to create a teaser. Leading enjoyable discussions is one of her specialties, especially when it comes to Lady Gaga and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Her observational humour always piqued my friends’ interest in how the media industry operates, making it unsurprising that many of my high school classmates study MIT at Western now.

Smaller classes make it easier to form meaningful bonds that promote keeping in touch post-graduation. Three years later, Mrs. T and I still meet for coffee every summer to catch up (most recently at Aroma).

Mrs. T always supported my ambitions to ensure Hot On The Street lived on after its print editions and I’ll never forget when she challenged us to summarize an article in 140 characters.

A magical formula doesn’t move private school students from school A to first choice university B, and then onto dream job C – teachers play a fundamental role in helping students get there.

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Are You There, Chelsea? I’m Not Laughing Yet.

Since the People’s Choice Awards and One Tree Hill aired back to back on Wednesday, both of which I insisted on watching live, I didn’t get a chance to watch NBC’s new sitcom Are You There, Chelsea? until today. Given that the first two of the aforementioned shows were less than satisfactory to say the least, I wondered if I’d made the right decision; maybe the sitcom would’ve brought more cheer to my otherwise lacklustre evening. However, after watching the sitcom, I can’t help but feel cynical because I didn’t even laugh once.

Whenever I occasionally watch reruns of That 70s Show, I always identify with the redhead, Laura Prepon’s character Donna, the most. I don’t remember why anymore, as I prefer watching Two and a Half Men and Seinfeld in syndication now, so I haven’t seen the retro-based comedy in a few years, but that much I know. As such, I was pleased to learn that Laura Prepon would be starring in NBC’s new mid-season show.

In September 2010 I watched Chelsea Handler’s stand up routine at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas confident that she’d make me laugh on my birthday, given her reputation as a comedian and author. Now that some of those same stories she jokingly shared over a year ago now serve as material for the NBC sitcom she produces and has a recurring role in as the protagonist’s catholic sister, I hope the show will exceed expectations, just as Chelsea did when I saw her live.

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I Creeped Rashida on MTV, But I Ain’t Following Her

It’s one thing to upload only the photos that showcase your most attractive features or selectively tweet links related to your industry, but it’s quite another to publicly over-share the minutiae of your daily life. Too few social media users consciously filter the information they post online – a pattern which MTV Canada’s producers are capitalizing on to capture viewers’ attention in the network’s latest show, Creeps.

MTV used their ever so popular Jersey Shore as the lead-in for Creeps’ series premiere on January 5. Creeps proves that Canadian broadcasters indeed have a knack for creating engaging, interesting and timely original content, as it revolves around the over-sharing trend that we are all too familiar with in 2012.

Each episode examines young Canadians’ social media profiles and introduces viewers to Facebook-aholics and Twitter junkies. For example, in the first episode, we met Rashida James (@thatsSOrara) who has 300+ Twitter followers. In a recent tweet, she admitted she “doesn’t know 90% of the people” appearing in her news feed.

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Watch Your Language, Girls!

McDonald’s Canada’s Originals and Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy are only a couple of web series garnering lots of online attention and buzz. I just caught the first episode of Shit Girls Say and now I understand why it deserves a place on everyone’s YouTube playlists – male and female viewers alike.