Working Up to the 3,000th Post: the Least Serious Posts!

One of my old friends in the early days of this blog commented that there was a lot of humor that he hadn't noticed at first. Well, yes. There are brief glints of humor and even wit occasionally in most posts. But for some posts I go all out: low humor, Canadian humor, musical humor and yes, moments of wit and of course, lots of satire. So here is a collection of some of the funnier posts.

• This one dates from way back and gives a number of examples of Musical Humor. Sadly, a lot of the links have succumbed to link-rot and back then I didn't provide hints in the text.
• Here is a recent post on satire in music with some great examples from Couperin.
• A post on humor in the personal lives of musicians: The Power of Humor.
• Waay back in the blog I started a series called "Catty Micro-Reviews" in which I just typed an individual letter into YouTube and make a brief comment on whatever came up. I had fun, at least. Here is the first one in the series. I think my favorite comment was on the Kenny G. clip: "Pachelbel on Xanax walks into a smoke-filled jazz club and knocks back three shots of tequila, plus, shouldn't this video be illegal?"
• The next one was really brief, but included this comment on Josh Vietti: "Nicolo Paganini is given a lobotomy and when he wakes up, finds himself doing a gig with a drum machine."
• And finally, a kind of summation of the genre. I think I quit doing them because while I was enjoying them, no-one was leaving comments so maybe I was the only one.
• The Friday Miscellaneas were often home to some funny bits like this item from December 2015: "I don't want to depress anyone unnecessarily, but here, from Amazon, are the Hot New Releases in Classical. By "classical" you have to understand that odd little niche in the current commercial marketplace where you put crossover, classical/pop, Italian tenors, groups of Italian tenors, seasonally-oriented heavy metal, aging Italian tenors and the occasional classical album by Yo-Yo Ma that is crossover oriented. And may God have mercy on our souls."
• Sometimes I do a humorous typology like this one: Hacks, Artistes, Dullards and Con-Men describing different kinds of performers.
• Some of my best efforts went into critiques of various kinds of publicity: Grigory Sokolov, Ready for His Close-up?
• Here is another good one on Celebrity Musicians, branding, publicity and so on.
• I enjoyed writing satirical captions for some musician publicity photos.

One of the funniest pieces ever written is this polka from an early ballet by Shostakovich: