Puns vs Bad casting

GOOD THING: PUNS
Forget parody, irony and satire - when it comes to humour, the simple pun is king. I'm a sucker for any joke that involves punning, however stupid and childish. For example: "A man walked into a bar...ouch!", and...well, now I have to think of them I can't come up with any decent examples, but you get the picture. My mum's favourite joke is the one that asks "What do you call a man with custard in one ear and jelly in the other?" (A trifle deaf, of course.) I aso have a soft spot for shops and businesses with cheesily humourous names, my current favourite being the gift shop on Edinburgh's Royal Mile called Thistle Do Nicely. Hairdressers are of course the chief offenders when it comes to punning names, and there is an apparently endless number of them; take your pick from Curl Up & Dye, Hair Today Gone Tomorrow, Bangs for the Memories, Streaks Ahead, The Cutting Edge etc. Genius. A very good book on the subject (for people with nothing to do in their evenings) is Shop Horror by Guy Swillingham, which contains such brilliant entries as It's Curtains for You (a curtain shop, obviously), Brief Moments (undies), Battersea Cods Home (chippy), Junk & Disorderly, The Prawnbrokers, Vinyl Frontier, Cliptomania (another hairdresser) and - possibly my favourite - the deceptively simple Wok This Way. Anyone who is feeling down about life only needs to spend an afternoon pun-spotting to change their outlook (though it may lead to an obsession that requires expensive treatment...)

BAD THING: BAD CASTING
I probably watch more TV than I should, and one thing that has really begun to get on my nerves is bad casting decisions. By this I mean that the actors chosen to portray certain characters are just totally inappropriate in some way, and therefore completely distract from the show or film they're in. This falls into several categories, most of which can be illustrated by Neighbours, which I'm ashamed to say I am somewhat of an aficionado of. The first is related to age of the characters/actors. For example, casting someone as a parent when they are clearly only about 5 years older than their screen child (this happens all the time in Hollywood too - Sean Connery as Harrison Ford's dad can be forgiven; Angelina Jolie as Colin Farrell's mum can't) - in Neighbours, Max's father looked more like his brother, and looked especially young compared to the woman who portrayed his supposed ex-wife. Again in that giant of daytime TV, Steph Scully is clearly about 35 in real life, but portraying someone about 26 - which means that her onscreen mum, at about 45, looks far too young. Similarly, in Desperate Housewives, a flashback to 8 years ago should have seen Susan's 14-year old daughter shown at 6 years old. So why did they cast a child of about 3?! It bugs me, because it's so damn easy to avoid. Another crime relates to the looks of supposed on-screen family members, i.e. when they don't look like they could possibly be genetically related (and come on, we viewers shouldn't have to suspend our disbelief to that extent!) Perhaps my favorite example is Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves playing brothers (albeit half-brothers) in Much Ado About Nothing, but this sort of thing happens all the time. Often it's because programme makers demand that the younger actors in particular be incredibly hot, despite what their on-screen parents look like. Again, back to Neighbours, where the three blonde and attractive Scully sisters and their handsome son Jack somehow sprung from the loins of dowdy Lyn and plain-ugly Joe. If casting agents are really that desperate, perhaps I could give them a hand?