I Don't Need a Jacket

Okay, when I watched this video featuring the Haitian weatherman I didn't really think it was funny. It may have elicited a mild grin. But I kept watching it and it truly does get funnier with age. Here's one mefite's impression:

Before the day's filming, the news crew is approached by one of the producers.

"Okay everyone, we got a new sponsor. It's the tailor downtown. So from now on I want you guys to wear these jackets on the air."

All of them respond, "All right, boss."

Satisfied, the producer leaves.

They then spend the next fifteen minutes ridiculing the heck out of these jackets. They don't match what they're wearing, they're too hot, they're itchy, etc.

Flash forward to the moment in the video--

When the newscaster makes the joke about not needing a jacket, it at first seems like pretty normal banter to Arthur. But after a moment, it clicks. She just gave the finger to bureaucratic pudding heads like their producer. On the air no less. Hence the crack-up.



And another:

Surrealness by bullet:

• The weather report seemed blindingly obvious and ended with the weatherman about to bust up.
• Everyone was wearing the same uncomfortable looking gold jackets
• The laugh came after a beat that was held too long and in the end came off more maniacal than not.
• The cuts suggested the entire thing was scripted and then edited badly.
  

Another idea:

I'm assuming the following: The weather guy is probably still a little stoned. Those bad jackets are likely a running joke in the studio. No one EVER needs a jacket where they live. The weather report is always the same, day after day, Arthur intoning those same words, "Pretty much ever-where, is gonna be hot."

Now, one day the stoned weather guy has just about had it up to here with the ugly jackets, so he hatches a plan to make them look even more ridiculous. He gets all the on air people to agree to try to work in a reference to the jacket in each newscast. The way it works is you get points based on how much news has gone by at the time that you make your jacket joke. But if you wait too long, someone else gets to it first. There can only be one score per newscast. The theory being that as the program progresses, the tension mounts, and the jacket-reference brinksmanship starts to build up to unbearable levels.

The lady newscaster thinks this is stupid. So she makes a point to say every day after the early weather, "Then I don't need a jacket." In this way, she ends the game early in each program, so that they can all get down to the serious business of reading the news.

It backfires, though, because since the weather guy is a stoner, he thinks this is hilarious.


My favorite video is still the 'boom goes the dynamite' guy. Yeah, I know it's like years old. But I dare you to watch it and not wonder what happened to his career as a sports broadcaster.