Open your heart and wallet this season
Category: Humor
Is porcelain pot key to excellent eggnog?
From red fezzes to screaming goats: The wild world of ‘Law Talk With Mike’
If you haven’t caught “Law Talk With Mike,” you’re missing the fun boat.
Michael J. Gravlin, Chicago’s legal YouTube maestro, turns courtroom Latin into barroom English quicker than you can shout, “Objection!” The show? Think of it as a comedy club where the American justice system is both the joke and the punchline.
“Law Talk With Mike” is one of those YouTube channels you can’t help but binge, like a “Breaking Bad” season, but with less meth and more legal jargon.
Gravlin’s channel features a compilation of proceedings from our nation’s courts. And, boy, does this guy have a knack for keeping the show rolling. Sovereign citizen starts spouting nonsense? Boom! Out comes the red fez. Something bonkers happens? It’s time for the screaming goat toy. Yeah, you heard me right, a screaming goat toy. It’s like a courtroom version of a laugh track, only always on point.
One recent episode — Gravlin titled it “Vaseline!” — had me in stitches. It involved a defendant caught doing something so embarrassing in his car, parked in a CVS lot, it’d make a Kardashian blush. Gravlin tore into the case with the snark you’d expect from a late-night host, only with a law degree.
But here’s the kicker: Gravlin’s not just some talking head. He’s built a community around these online court shenanigans. The guy’s got over 1,400 episodes under his belt and is closing in on 200,000 subscribers. And amid the humor, he provides genuine insight into the legal process in which he’s been involved as a prosecutor and a personal injury and workers’ compensation attorney.
Thanks to Gravlin’s success, he’s helped turn judges, prosecutors, and even serial defendants into minor celebrities. It’s like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but for people who can’t fly or shoot lasers from their eyes.
The guy’s got a new episode almost every day, sometimes more. So, if you’re tired of the same old reruns and want something that’ll make you laugh, think, and occasionally cringe, do yourself a favor and check out “Law Talk With Mike.”
Trust me, it’s the kind of ride you won’t want to get off.
Does clinic app want me to join the 500-pound club?
So, there I was, thumbing through my clinic’s app, trying to schedule an echocardiogram stress test.
Boring stuff, right? Until I got to this gem: “Certain locations have weight limitations, please select the range of your weight.”
The options?
“500 lbs and over”
“450 lbs and over, but less than 500 lbs”
“Under 450 lbs”
And get this, the default? “500 lbs and over”
Was the gravitational pull stronger? Did someone toss a black hole in my pocket when I wasn’t looking? I checked my mirror. Still the same old guy. Attractive in a rugged, 2 a.m. beer-googles way, not in a “might-break-the-medical-equipment” way.
Default settings can be a riot, especially when you’re obliged to scroll through a drop-down menu of almost every country on the planet before locating “United States” beneath “Uganda.” I see that one all the time. But having to choose among “Large,” “Extra Large,” and “Omigawd, he’s heading our way!” was new to me.
In the end, I clicked “Under 450 lbs” and chuckled. Whoever programmed that app, cheers to you for the unexpected laugh.
Newspaper jokes: From punchlines to flatlines
When the highlight of a morning coffee ritual is the bitter aftertaste brought on by the “joke of the day” column in your daily paper, one can’t help but wonder: “When did humor retire and forget to tell the newspapers?”
Joke columns, those tiny blocks of text nestled in the corner of the front page, are a moth-eaten relic from a bygone era — not charming antiques but the stuff of musty basements.
The so-called “jokes” they sputter out have aged worse than a water-damaged Shakespearean folio, and even that would be a more amusing read.
One might argue, “They were funny in 1930!” If you hold this opinion, I’d recommend a thorough reality check, accompanied by a comprehensive sense of humor transplant. These chronically recycled jests’ monotony and predictable punchlines are as engaging as a Kamala Harris word salad.
Worse, these chestnuts make “dad jokes” look like comedic masterpieces.
The brilliance of humor lies in unexpectedness, novel insight, and clever subversion of reality. The comedy peddled by these columns delivers none of this.
We’ve advanced in leaps and bounds in every other field, so why do we settle for subpar humor in our daily dose of news?
L.T. Hanlon 