Some kid on the Price Is Right just bid 420. Har.

...I mean, I'm busy learning about financial management.

in all sorts of Murphy's Law-iness, today my office heat is mysteriously not on. I am comfortable right now, but fear that by this afternoon I will be chilly. cannot win for losing.

My office is the same way. It is usually too warm, so that I want to nap all day, but every once in a while it gets frigid for a few days. It's a running joke in the department to go check the weather in my office.

I can picture msbelle skipping. With pigtails.

So Jesse, you practicing your guess-the-price-without-looking-at-the-pricetag skills?

Can you share the link? When I was in Montreal, as many women would workshop as men, but a teeny percentage of them ever made it past an audition. They were so tense and self-conscious, in comparison to most of the guys. The class clown tradition just didn't seem have been one they prepared with.

[link] I buy some of the premise: so many more men are comically talented or employed in the comedy business because there's more incentive for them to be funny adolescents. But much about it irritates me. Starting first with the fact that it is painfully unfunny.

And my experience is the same as yours with improv. For every brilliant female improvisor-- Amy Poehler is one of the best, Kristen Schaal will be huge (she's in the CNN commercial with Wolf Blitzer and Paula Zahn), Tina Fey, Amy Sedaris-- there are ten filling out improv group quotas and sucking the air out of every scene they're in.

So Jesse, you practicing your guess-the-price-without-looking-at-the-pricetag skills?

Har. Nah, I turned it off and am reading my textbook.

I wonder how much it is that there's a narrower range of expression that is considered 'funny' in women - in other words, it's the audience side of the equation that's out of joint.

I know an assload of women funnier than that guy, that's for sure.

I do think it's about incentive, mainly. Funny was so not an issue at my all girls school. There was absolutely nothing to be won by it, either from teachers or other students.

The male freshmen that showed up to try out in their first year were either nerds trying to overcome life's stage frights or class clowns who wanted a bigger stage. The women? Some fell into the nerd category, and most of the rest were looking for attention, but not willing to take risks (or look ugly) to get them. Which hamstrung them right there.

That having been said, if a woman got into On The Spot during my tenure, she was basically assured every gig in the world because a) rarity and b) she was typically at least the second best in the entire troupe. It's the middle level that was missing -- women seemed to be incandescent, or not that good. No journeymen, no "pretty goods."

We were lucky to rarely have to come up against quota requirements.

Young girls who want attention have other weapons — they can scream, they can cry, they can grow breasts. They can be heartbreakingly beautiful and call me a nerd for imitating the Coneheads all the time. Learning to be funny would seem, for girls, to be more of a last resort.

That up there? Is the problem. That's how we can get attention. Scream, cry or be attractive. Perhaps it's not that being funny is a last resort, but not a generally (meaning societally) valued characteristic in women. Which is, er... funny because most guys I know, once they get past their crushes on the heartbreakingly beautiful women who make fun of them, would rather have the girl who chuckles whenever someone says "I didn't expect..." and makes fun with them.

Kristen Schaal will be huge

That whole crop of Mee-ow-ers is doing fantastically. (SNL a few weeks ago was practically a reunion show -- Seth in the cast, Liz in the monologue, and Ryan as Prince Harry during Weekend Update.) Schaal wasn't even close to being the funniest in her cast, but she's got a quirky look and voice that'll take her really far.

t /Mee-ow likes carrots

It makes so much sense to me that the IRS would want people filing online -- it's got to be so much easier for them.

I think the savings was so much last year that they're extending it to everyone instead of just select taxpayers.

Nora, DON'T MELT YOUR BRAIN! You may need it later.