Laughter As the Best Medicine

Laughter really has a healing quality for me, and so I keep track of the things that make me laugh. I have document after document on my computer of my favorite funny quotes from movies, friends, TV, and books, and whenever I need to, I just read through those.

I also keep my favorite funny videos in playlists on YouTube. So far I have over 500 videos saved among my various "LOL!" playlists, and even though I have seen most of them multiple times, they still make me laugh. What is included in these playlists?

Well... these kinds of things.

People Doing Strange Things

• John Daker, who has forever ruined the song "Christ the Lord Has Risen Today" for me
• The cop who doesn't know the national anthem
• That random clip of crowds running at people in the street
• The "I am your brother" song on American Idol
• "I was robbed by two men."
• Another thoroughly bizarre American Idol contestant
• A group of people COMPLETELY UNABLE to do jumping jacks
• The best edited-for-TV dialogue choice ever and a few runner-ups (and a sketch parodying choices like that)
• An incomprehensible American Idol contestant who just keeps yelling, "CAN YOU DIG IT?"
• That absolutely ridiculous Windows 386 promo video
• A guy trying to pick up girls with Blink 182 lyrics
• Nathan Fillion showing up in every shot of this Firefly scene
• Andrew Hales singing badly at people and asking their opinion (his whole channel is pretty entertaining)

An Abundance of Monty Python Sketches

• The Ministry of Silly Walks
• The Four Yorkshiremen
• The mattress sketch
• The guy at the restaurant who wants another fork
• Thripshaw's Disease
• The self-defense class
• The semaphore version of Wuthering Heights

An Abundance of Whose Line Is It Anyway Sketches (I used to have more but they kept getting removed from YouTube)

• Three-Headed Broadway Star: I Lost My Leg Warmers
• Three-Headed Broadway Star: Quicksand
• All In One Voice: Lucy and Ricky Ricardo
• The YMCA song where everything goes wrong
• Whose Line: Going through customs
• Moving People: The Lone Ranger and Tonto
• Colin cracks Ryan up with his "Arctic tern" answer

An Abundance of A Bit of Fry and Laurie Sketches

• Derek Nippl-e, whose last name is not pronounced how you'd expect
• A parent complains to a teacher about his son's sex ed class
• The psychic who bends spoons with his mind
• Lie Detector (the very funniest Tony and Control sketch)
• The jewelry shop
• The Letter
• Finding suitable poetry
• The very enthusiastic silhouette people
• The Day I Forgot My Legs
• Stephen Fry teaches a comedy masterclass

Mash-Ups, Edits, and Re-Cuts

• Mary Poppins as a horror film
• Napoleon Dynamite dancing to the Numa Numa song
• The Shining as a cheery rom com
• Star Trek/Monty Python
• Star Trek/Ke$ha
• Newsies dancing to Lady Gaga
• The Rifftrax version of Edward's song for Bella in Twilight
• All the best clips of Nicolas Cage freaking out (warning: lots of language in here)
• A bunch of movie lines that rhyme with each other
• Bill Nye/Gangnam Style
• The Magic School Bus: The Movie
• The Sims as a horror movie
• The Hangover as a horror movie

Music-Based Stuff

• William Shatner doing Rocket Man
• The rant against Pachelbel's Canon
• Baby Got Back, in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan
• Alanis Morissette's cover of My Humps
• Donnie Darko, by Tim Minchin
• Head Over Heels, the literal music video
• Sam Harris reading the lyrics to Crank That as if it were great literature
• The song version of the awful Doom: Repercussions of Evil fan fic
• Donny Osmond dancing to White and Nerdy
• Flickr by Jonathan Coulton
• The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song
• Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? by The Guild
• Les Miserables bloopers - you'll mostly just want to listen at the spot I've linked to, which contains a note that I'm not sure has ever been sung before
• Trololo, of course (and the sing-along version)
• Alex Day dissecting the lyrics to "Telephone" by Lady Gaga
• Caramelldansen with misheard lyrics that are all about Doctor Who
• The Lonely Island: On the Ground and Jack Sparrow
• Josh Groban singing Kanye West's tweets
• Weebl's Farmer song
• How to Write a Worship Song
• The worst jazz scatting I have ever heard
• Taye Diggs Ruins Hip Hop

Japanese Ads, Which Are the Strangest Things Ever

• Michael J. Fox
• Dennis Hopper
• Nicolas Cage (the one with the dancing robots)
• Nicolas Cage (the one with the triplets)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is INSIDE YOUR DRINK
• Paul Newman

Those Clips Where Weird Al Pretends To Interview Someone

• Paul McCartney
• Eminem
• Jessica Simpson
• Celine Dion
• Cher
• Michael Stipe
• Uma Thurman and Nicolas Cage
• William H. Macy

Musical Madlibs

• John Tartaglia sings Be Our Guest
• Natalie Cortez sings Nothing
• Molly Ephraim sings I Know Things Now
• Bebe Neuwirth sings All That Jazz
• Will Chase sings Imagine
• Alex Gemignani sings Bring Him Home (my favorite)

Way More Cute Kid Videos Than I Thought

• A girl singing very emphatically in a language I don't speak
• The 3-year-old explaining Star Wars
• David After Dentist, Tunnel Baby and Charlie Bit Me, of course
• Kittens! Inspired by Kittens!
• "Blood! Not funny!"
• Kid singing Jonathan Coulton. WIN.
• The kid who called 911 to ask for math help
• The little boy who is very sad that he's not a single lady
• The child who is terrified of Mom blowing her nose
• The epic story of Jack the Monkey
• These kids, who were the best part of the Jimmy Kimmel "I told my kids I ate their Halloween candy" prank
• The kid having a tantrum because her bowl is just TOO HEAVY to take to the sink
• Written By a Kid: Scary Smash, Sort of Friends, and the best story EVER, La Munkya
• The Russian kid who won't stop dancing
• A little kid who cannot say "banana"
• A little girl who is REALLY excited about trains
• The kid who wakes up instantly dancing to Gangam Style
• The baby dancing to reggae music

Julian Smith

• 25 Things I Hate About Facebook
• Britain's Got Talent
• Rerun
• Techno Jeep
• His songs, especially Jellyfish, Eat Randy, and Never Get Naked In Your Shower

Things Going Wrong

• A production of Peter Pan where the flying did not work as planned
• The guy who accidentally went on TV when all he wanted was a job interview
• This is why pauses are sometimes useful when speaking
• A hilarious clip about a guy desperately trying to argue his point on TV when it becomes clearer and clearer he has no idea what he's talking about
• The organist who goofs up during The Messiah
• The worst Christian game of all time: Zoo Race
• Two artificial intelligence bots talk to each other
• "I so pale"
• The ATM that won't stop printing smiley faces
• A guy jumping in a puddle
• Larry King's awesome story about an encounter he had with a woman while he was radio DJing

Bad Lip Reading

• Friday by Rebecca Black
• Michele Bachmann
• Mitt Romney
• Herman Cain
• Twilight
• Paul Ryan
• The first presidential debate
• The NFL
• The Amazing Spider-Man

The New State Plates series by Andrew Huang and Andrew Gunnarolla

• Utah
• Texas
• Wyoming
• South Carolina
• Kentucky
• Oregon
• Delaware
• Wisconsin
• Indiana
• Rhode Island
• Massachusetts
• Alabama
• Idaho

A Bunch of Random Other Ones That Didn't Fit Any of Those Categories

• The guy playing the hardest Super Mario level ever... and the guys trying to play Surgeon Simulator (warning: SO MUCH SWEARING in both)
• Ross Noble warns you to never put a blanket over an owl
• The Catherine Tate/David Tennant clip for Comic Relief
• The "strange noises with my mouth" deleted scene from Doctor Who
• Ali G's interview with Buzz Aldrin and Bruno's inconsistent fashion interview
• Eddie Izzard on British vs. American movies and on learning French
• Patrick Stewart and Orlando Bloom on Extras
• Fuuuudge...
• A Monologue For Thee and A Monologue For Three
• Who's On First?
• The trailer for Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever
• Things you can't do when you're not a dog/not in a pool
• The live action filmed version of After Today from A Goofy Movie
• Merton's first Chat Roulette song video
• That 8 Reasons I Don't Share My Faith video my youth group used to watch in high school - still makes me laugh
• "You make me touch your hands for stupid reasons"
• Tripp and Tyler visit Donald Miller
• Jake Gyllenhaal explains how to pronounce his name
• Two guys trying to put as many rubber bands as possible over both of their heads
• Ricky Gervais sings Elmo a celebrity lullaby
• The Walkathon sketch from MST3K
• The shampoo prank
• "Tell me everything."
• My favorite of Rhett & Link's Caption Fail videos
• Nick's bathroom coach
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, translated all over the place
• A live action version of the Skyrim bucket-on-the-head glitch
• Daniel Radcliffe gives us some useful tips on what it's like to be him
• A 5-second movie about how people would really use time travel
• Michael J. Fox keeps thinking he's in Back to the Future
• Baj and Gunn, who should have been a buddy cop team

Those are the highlights of my funny videos playlists. Still not all of them, as there are definitely a few that are probably only funny to me, so I've left those out. But this is the majority of the ones I've shown or wanted to show to other people. Hopefully at least some of these can cheer you up. I know they make me happy. Rewatching so many of them as I typed up this blog definitely brought a smile to my face.

(If you'd rather just watch all 28 hours, 52 minutes and 16 seconds of things I find hilarious in a row, here are the links to the playlists themselves, not organized in any way: Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3.)