On Saturdays at 8:30pm on SBS runs a great cartoon called DR KATZ. Dr Katz is a profession psychiatrist, and much humour abounds as patients come in. The value of a psychiatrist is brought into question, and some of those sitting on the couch are great stand up comedians in real life. The material is always funny, but it's not an obvious in your face humour. Often the humour lies in the images or just in one word. I'm sure I miss a lot of the jokes, but it's a great show. Set your VCRs

Monday night has become a huge night for tele. On SBS lies South Park, on Channel Two is Four Corners, Media Watch and Race Around the World (which is often lacking). However, Channel Seven now has a great line up. After Picket Fences I had to go to the Practice to get my dose of David E Kelley's conservative yet quirky (work it out!) narratives. Now comes Ally McBeal. The show is shot from Ally's point of view, and Mr Kelly puts in heaps of comic situations and unique (for television) narrative devices (like showing internal thought processes and fantasy), and best of all COURTROOM scenes (I really like anything involving courtrooms). And those courtroom scenes are much more like those in Picket Fences than the Practice. Following this show is the best comedy sketch show on TV at the moment, Something Stupid. I was surprised at the high quality of writing in this episode. If the standard is kept up, this will become compulsary viewing for me. THere were so many funny skits on the show: especially Glen Robbins as a fitness instructer, the send up of two fat ladies, the send up of Celine Dion and the Titanic song, as well as the soap opera called the "Poonce Institute". There was a great skit showing movies with "old leading ladies" having affairs with young men (reversing the hollywood trend). THe Joan Collins and Katherine Hepburn send ups were great. I think SOMETHING STUPID will continue to offer high quality comedy because the people in it have such a vast range of impersonations and wit.

John Howard has just visited Sir William Deane to call an election for October 3. By some miracle, Kim Beazley might win this one. However, I suspect that the Labor party has completely failed to counter the GST properly. If there's one thing Keating was good at, it was attack. Beazley keeps saying "I don't only want to focus on tax reform". This freaks me out. We need those "10%" ching ching (cash register sound) ads out there to freak out the nation; not some 3 billion dollar Labor tax plan. As far as I'm concerned that Labor party should say: "we have a scare campaign going because this is a scary proposition for the Australian people." It has been forgotten that a 10% GST taxes the huge areas of SERVICES and Fresh foods, which were previously untouched. Services such as plumbing, tourism, electricity, etc. The poor will be particularly hit by this tax on spending, because, they have no way to save or even buy goods which might decrease in price (cars). The worst thing about Howard winning the election is if the "battlers" that voted him in last time (low to middle income earners), vote him in again on the back of his "this is good for Australia" tax package. If they do, well, all I can say is that they deserve every hardship that comes their way. They voted in a government that for three years cut University funding by 25%; that systematically cut health and social services to the needy; presided over the rise in Hansonism because Howard is just as racist as Pauline Hanson (his political hero is Menzies - paternalism plus) and would refuse to silence her; furthered the already increasing gap between rich and poor; and intends to make that worse with a regressive tax. I've said a hundred times that it's not fair that Howard has proposed to direct the bulk of tax cuts to the wealthy, but maybe the poorer voters will believe the con job that giving the rich a break will be "better for Australia" (with all that extra money from tax cuts and lower company taxes, they can afford to employ more people - as long as Reith fixes up the unions - lower pay for all workers!). Hopefullyy Labor can launch a great scare campaign, and hopefully, Beazley can do a job as mammoth as his size. The Tasmanian election proves that large swings can happen. But, there's no way to read what people are thinking this time. I definitely underestimated the huge swing against Keating; however, I'm not sure people are willing to forgive Labor yet.

I have not seen an audience laugh so much in a film since... Dumb and Dumber maybe? Interestingly enough, the team behind the cult comedy of the nineties (the Farrely brothers), have come up with a movie that might even top that off. If you thought the toilet humour was overdone in Dumb and Dumber, well, I can tell you, it's the entre to this film. Toilet humour on film is brought to a brand new low in TSAM, and as a result, audience members are not only laughing out loud as never seen before, but at the same time, are squirmishing in their seats. Some squirmishy parts (I'm talking about the main laughs at the end of Act 1 of the film) affect us men more than women.