These days it feels like we all have plenty to frown about.
    A good laugh can be tonic — especially when it’s laughing for good.
    Enter “Laugh ‘Til It Helps” and Donkey Basketball.

April 3 is your night if you are looking for guffaws with a cause, and entertainment suitable for the whole family,

n “Laugh ‘Til It Hurts,” the second-annual comedy fundraiser for The Next Door, this year featuring nationally known comic Dave Anderson, takes place at 6 and 8 p.m. at Columbia Center for the Arts. Proceeds help The Next Door, the largest social service nonprofit in the Columbia Gorge. Tickets are at Waucoma Bookstore.

n The domestic abuse prevention organization We kNOw DV hosts a donkey basketball tournament between law enforcement officials and college students, 6-8 p.m. at Wy’east Middle School. See page A9 for details.

The one drawback with these two events is that they happen on the same night. Scheduling acts, especially when they come from elsewhere, is never easy, but given the parallel missions of The Next Door and We kNOw DV, it’s just too bad they happen to conflict.

Skate dance

Cornell’s NCAA double duty

How’s your bracket?
    What do you have for Cornell facing off v. New Hampshire Thursday in the East Regional in Albany, NY?
    What, you’re thinking hoops and Cornell against Kentucky at Syracuse?

Wrong sport.

We’re talkin’ hockey.

Has anyone else west of Lake Erie noticed? Cornell is the only team playing in both the NCAA basketball and hockey tournaments.

The big dance on skates gets little attention outside the nation’s northern rim.

Sure, it’s Cornell v. top-seeded Kentucky on the hardcourt, but the Big Red is more than a basketball school.

Cornell athletes are lacing it up in two sports and doing double duty in upstate New York this week.

Cornell man Andy Bernard of NBC’s “The Office” would be so proud.

But The Big Red seems to be for real.

Besides being the first Ivy League school since before video games were invented to make the Sweet 16, Cornell in the thick of it with such perennial ice teams as Vermont, Boston College, Northern Michigan and Alabama-Huntsville.

Wait — Alabama-Huntsville? Sure enough, joining the North Dakotas and Wisconsins in the hockey tournament is this school from far south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Of course, down ‘Bama way, offsides normally means some beefy lineman rushing the quarterback too soon.

Icing is what goes on a birthday cake.

A hat trick is tossing your Panama onto the rack in one try.

But there it is, a hockey powerhouse far from the northern climes. Right up there with Cornell.

So, if thanks to Northern Iowa, Murray State and Cornell, your NCAA hoops bracket is on ice, you could give some attention to The Big Red crossing the Blue Line in the Frozen Final Four.

Our championship prediction: Cornell 4, St. Cloud State 2.