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Pop Culture Happy Hour: Courage, The Awards Show Problem, And Listener Mail

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While we're of the opinion that the Golden Globes ruckus is mostly a fake ruckus anyway, we do use Ricky Gervais' performance there as a jumping-off point for a discussion this about what it really means to be funny and fresh, what it means to be brave in comedy or any other kind of art, and just how highly the odds are stacked against you the minute you agree to host an awards show in the first place. We question whether awards shows are just too goofy not to seem flop-like, and we propose a humble solution for any show looking to set the right tone and keep us happy watching at home.

After that, we take on a topic suggested over at our (relatively new) Facebook page: if we had 15 minutes to kill and only the Internet to spend it with, what sites would we visit? (Down below, there's a list of sites we talked about.) We read a couple of lovely pieces of listener mail, including one about Downton Abbey and one about Patton Oswalt and the death of geek culture, and then it's on to what's making us happy this week.

You can follow me, Stephen, Trey, Glen and Mike on Twitter, and of course, check out that Facebook page, where we have discussions, links, and a rather amazing drawing that's referenced on this week's show.

Some relevant links from this week:

The Belarus Free Theatre

I Am Comic

And Everything Is Going Fine

Parks And Recreation

Here's a list of the sites we mentioned in our 15-minutes-to-kill segment — please be warned that some of these do contain some NSFW language. Note also that one or two of them haven't been updated in a while, but that doesn't mean they're not still great time-killers. Archives, people.

Funny Or Die

The AV Club

McSweeneys

Splitsider

xkcd

Wondermark

Hark! A Vagrant

Dinosaur Comics

Catalog Living

Hyperbole And A Half

Tomato Nation

Passive-Aggressive Notes

FU, Penguin

Cake Wrecks

Garfield Minus Garfield

Comics Curmudgeon

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

The Hairpin

Parabasis

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.