In honor of Blog Action Day - aka BAD - I'm guessing that a lot the posts will be pretty depressing or somewhat sanctimonious, so I chose to explore the humor and absurdity of our eco-existential angst. What better way to represent that than a personal "Best of" list of environmental comedy - could there be anything more absurd than laughing at our self-destruction by using an overused cliché formulation? So I scrounged together some nuggets over the weekend while juggling two kids and my carbon footprint, and came up with random candidates in the categories of website/blog, novel, film and video/TV (English-language only for now). I was inspired by David Roberts' knock knock entry and the responses on Grist from 2005. Happily, Grist seems to finally be attracting some mainstream company in poking fun at our planetary predicament. Witness Comedy Central's recently launched Address the Mess (the environmental best of Stewart, Colbert, South Park, etc), the first annual Environmental Comedy Festival that took place in Seattle this year or Earth to America on TBS. If you buy into the 5 Stages of Climate Grief outlined by Steve Running (one of the authors of the Nobel peace prize winning IPCC report), then comedy probably falls somewhere between depression and acceptance, which is a pretty good breeding ground for producing some twisted stuff. So here they are:
Web/Blog
- Grist - the Onion of environmental humor, Grist is the king of the hill without a doubt.
- Cheat Neutral - Infidelity meets carbon. We are after all carbon based creatures.
- Ideal Bite - "Sassy" is their buzzword, and they deliver. And the ladies who run this green Daily Candy are based in
Montana. Need I say more? - Crap at the Environment - Just for the title alone, this one gets a nod, although I have no idea what it does or if its funny.
Video/TV
- Will Farrell doing "W" doing Global Warming - this is almost as good as waste-to-fuel.
- History of Oil Propaganda by Plenty TV - the video version of Toxic Sludge is Good for You. How gullible are we?
- Store Wars - floating produce is hard to ignore.
- Green Pieces: an Eco-Comedy - good reviews on this Canadian offering, but I couldn't find a copy.
- The Meatrix - the While Rabbit meets red meat.
Film
- Blue Vinyl, a documentary by my friend Judith Helfand, maker of what she calls the Toxic Comedy. Who knew PVC could be so deathly funny?
- I Heart Huckabees - if a movie is shown in a theater, but no one is there to see it, is it still funny? Good question. I haven't seen this movie, but I think the answer is yes.
- Toxic Avenger - arguably the poster child of environmental misfits, Lloyd Kaufman's creation is so bad its good.
Novels
- This Other Eden, by Ben Elton, this is a surprisingly insightful (it came out in 1993), and frighteningly funny novel from the British stand-up comedian. Plastic Tolstoy and Jurgen Thor are characters to die for. Stark and Gridlock are other Elton works along similar lines.
- The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey, this is a bit dated (1975), but its still one of the funnier treatments of the environmental movement
Best Performance by a Family Member
Disposable Backpack - my cousin Nick made this at college. I couldn't resist.