While Patrice was tremendously well-respected among other comics, and had earned a decent amount of TV exposure, he wasn’t especially famous yet with the public at large. Before his untimely death, Patrice O’Neal was basically Zach Galifianakis right before The Hangover.

I almost never queue up specific comedy specials more than once, but O’Neal’s “Elephant in the Room” was masterful and funny enough that I watched it three separate times, before his death occasioned another viewing. There are a number of great bits that had me gasping with laughter; my favorite is probably the amazing, heartfelt proposal for a national Workplace Harassment Day:

“Oh my God — Human Resources!! The grizzly bear just did…
grizzly bear stuff…”

You can order the DVD of Elephant in the Room or watch it right now via Netflix Streaming or Amazon Instant Video. Can, and probably should.

“Which bank?” I asked.

“It’s…” he started to reply, then paused and looked at me. “Does it really matter? It’s a fucking bank.”

I conceded the point.

A series of new debit card fees has stirred up new outrage at banks — and also, oddly, at Congress, despite the fact that these fees used to simply be hidden charges, and the new rules actually benefit consumers.

But nevermind the politics, which are boring; here’s an older but still very funny routine about bank fees by the incomparable Louis CK:

Incidentally, financial services behemoth Goldman Sachs was once memorably characterized as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” Still one of my favorite sentences in the history of journalism.