The brilliant Comedy by the Numbers joke scientists Gary Rudoren and Eric Hoffman have made a short little PSA about joke stealing.
My favorite part: the casually referenced imaginary (or at least, underpublicized) feud between Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Breuer. And because they transposed the accused and the accuser in the previous two examples, you have no idea who’s supposedly stealing from who. Well, you have some idea.
And you should check out the Comedy by the Numbers book. It’s everything I fear this blog will become one day - pedantic, formulaic, pretentious - except it’s funny.
Last week’s episode of South Park featured a costume party for Satan featuring the attendance by the recently deceased Steve Irwin. Naturally this caused a small amount of press, but what’s not mentioned in the story is the joke is all about whether a Steve Irwin costume is “too soon.” Satan actually goes to tell the guy that a Steve Irwin costume is not cool since it’s a little soon, but it turns out to be, in fact, Steve Irwin. I can see where it offends people, but I think this is a very clever commentary on the inevitable “bad taste” Halloween costumes that we see every year.
Here’s the actual clip from the episode:
Comedians naturally have a smaller “time” on the “tragedy+time=comedy” equation, another example being Bill Maher, who actually wore a Steve Irwin costume to a party recently. The two sides of the argument probably go like this: “It’s only been a month!” and “It’s been a month!” I’m not really sure either is wrong. What do you think?
Last night’s Daily Show was brilliant, again showing the flexibility the show’s unique form allows for making humor about events that have taken darker turns. First the acknowledgement that the story itself has been downgraded from “Incredibly Hilarious” to “Still Funny, But, MMM, Now a Little Sad”, using the much-abused comedic fodder of the Terror Alert chart as an illustration. (The bottom of the scale was “Brechtian”) Then the Daily Show could continue writing jokes which, instead of focusing on the uncomfortable aspects of the actual shotting, slamed the evasive behavior of Scott McClellan in the White House briefing room - a far more worthy target for satire anyway. Pretty consistently, the Daily Show makes great comedy that goes beyond simple punchlines the audience could practically write themselves (and now regularly does, thanks to the Internet). They’re the only comedy show that’s made material about how horribly unforthcoming the White House was about the event or to find humor in the logistics of the hunt - driving up to shoot “flightless wingless quail tards.”
Staying away from the obvious - even on days when the jokes are so easy - is the reason The Daily Show resonates far more than anything else in Late Night today. And even better, when a topic gets hard to find humor in, that’s when their approach really delivers.
Pranking is risky. Improperly done, you look like a douchebag rather than your target. And if you have no satirical intentions to your target, you better make sure the joke isn’t so disruptive that you look like a stupid douchebag. With those rules, it’s amazing to think anyone would think spraying Tom Cruise in the face with water from a squirting microphone would actually have any result other than being arrested. (These same pranksters, who entitled their upcoming(?) show the ultra-urbane Balls of Steel, hit Sharon Osbourne with a squirting camera, what’s next - eyeing Lindsay Lohan with X-Ray specs?) How old are these comics - four?
The Sunday NY Times had an obituary for the joke that was more akin to the discovery of a tombstone than a corpse - far too late. I don’t think any comic since Lenny Bruce has told the party jokes that the author describes (’cept maybe Jackie Martling). In fact, I’d argue that comics have been performing more personal observational humor since the very beginning… there’s no ownership in a joke that anyone can tell. Who’s act does it belong to and why can’t I hire this guy who will tell it for cheaper. Not telling “a guy walks into a bar...” isn’t a trend, it’s a tradition.
Of course, with more than a few references to the forthcoming Aristocrats movie, it’s obvious that the author was hunting for a trend to talk about the film. But if there is a trend in humor that the Aristocrats joke does reflect it’s the “anti-joke.”
Anti-jokes use the tension of a setup that telegraphs “here’s something funny” coming with the followup of delivering something intentionally not, either in a mundane or, in the Aristocrats’ case, filthy way. A good example of these is here and here. It’s for and from sophisticated audiences who know comedians and their tells well enough that it becomes funnier to watch humor eat its own tail than hear a tride-and-true punchline. When I was working on Jokes.com in 2000, we were so jaded from screening 20,000 jokes we built an anti-joke category as a relief. The recent book “A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man” does what feels like a anti-joke crucification of the “Yo Mama” joke. On television, I’d argue that the original “Office” and much of the Adult Swim line-up are good reflections of the anti-joke aesthetic in action.
This desire to subvert typical setups and being “funny” even infiltrates homes for anti-jokes. I’ve noticed a few submissions to the Aristocrats Joke database have been about writing a straight version of the family’s act rather than going for the filth typically associated with the joke. It may just be that those writers are unfamiliar with the tradition or exactly the opposite, familiar enough that it’s funnier to subvert it.
The NY Times piece is right about one thing, we are much more self-conscious about being funny… it’s just taking a different form and may well eat the observational humor it says is ascendent now.
Thanks to Jesse Thorn for the heads-up on this. Go listen to his radio show!
The blogging been rather light… ok, ok, nonexistent… lately because I’ve been working on a little project. It’s inspired by the new film The Aristocrats, which features tons of comics like Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, George Carlin telling their version of an infamous dirty joke that has been around since vaudeville. And now, you get to tell it.
Submit your version of the Aristocrats joke to Dead-Frog’s Aristocrats Joke database. It’s very light so far. They ain’t just lying around the Internet on regular joke sites. I’ve started us off with one… and will be adding more this weekend, hopefully some from a few funny friends.
Mike Judge tells MTV he's kinda warmed up to the idea of doing a live action Beavis and Butt-Head movie. He just animated a short segment with the duo for the upcoming "The Animation Show."
Andrew Dice Clay: "I think girl comics are doing better than guy comics today. They're more exciting than guy comics." Later, tells interviewer about a girl coming over who a "10-and-a-half." (AV Club)
The good: CBS adds two sitcoms to schedule. The bad: Mike Birbiglia's show appears to have not been picked up. You can watch previews of what they did order.
comedy.com | 
Digg |
del.icio.us |
Stumble It!
Yesterday the media wrote many 
does what feels like a anti-joke crucification of the “Yo Mama” joke. On television, I’d argue that the original “Office” and much of the Adult Swim line-up are good reflections of the anti-joke aesthetic in action.
