The Just For Laughs fest is primarily associated with stand-up, so sketch comedy is a bit of a outlier for the event. But Bob Odenkirk and Bill Hader weren’t giving any quarter at the Kola Note, coming out and asserting that the ranking for comedy goes from prop to stand-up and then sketch. Their proof?
After enumerating all of the brilliant sketch groups (including Mr. Show and Mr. Ed), Odenkirk asked the crowd to name one famous stand-up. George Carlin? “Actor. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Jerry Seinfeld? “TV Actor”
After Odenkirk and Hader then did a quick sketch to illustrate Odenkirk’s troubles at customs (Prime Minister of Europe? “Simon Cowell.” Correct!), they got the show rolling. After all, “who has time for silliness when you’re in a nightclub trying to get shit done.”
First up Dance Party of Newfoundland. Among bits was a man ordering a small vegan… person who had to be captured with a harpoon and net ("See if you can close enough to crush all his bones at once. He has no muscle” and a singing group called “Sons of Our Fathers” who performs pro-condom songs during recess and exposes the teacher’s own VD.
Odenkirk asserts the evening’s comedy should be clean. No “I F-ed her with my big C.” Why? “Because there’s some couple here who haven’t even F-ed yet” who might not sure if “I want his D in my sloppy C.”
The Apple Sisters generated some audience goodwill for staying in character during a technical mishap where Candy’s microphone wasn’t working. Cora: “We don’t understand all this technology, we’re women.” The fact the tech had to reach up Candy’s dress to fix the problem (twice) gave them plenty to play with as well.
Once corrected, the Apple Sisters charmed the audience with their songs “Pink Wine” and a song which tells the first Thanksgiving with the Indians getting the boost. The line “And that’s America” was met witha lot of approval by the Canadian audience.
Finally, the Apple Sisters paid tribute to their sponsor Corndy by singing their jingle and spitting corn fresh from the cob in each other’s faces, much to the delight of the audience. But perhaps not so much after Hader announced intermission and told the first row that it was their job to pick it up.
When they returned, Bob Odenkirk announced he’d decided they’d try some improv, but confederates Bill Hader and Paul Rust as goombahs in the audience insisted on making some literal, but horrible, suggestions. Odenkirk invites Andrew Friedman on stage for the scene. We’ll just ignore that he’s in costume with a Hitler mustache and a feather boa. Sugestion? Hader: “Hitler in a feather boa!”
Our third group, Backpack Picnic shared a set of sketches that easily flowed into the next, beginning with a man attempting to dislodge another from his “favorite chair” but the force field prevents him from hitting him. We see from slow motion that the force field is a man who comes from off stage and quickly diverts any punch. One favorite exchange was in a scene between a tourist and a tour guide. “Do anyone of you speak English?” “Is This English?”
Michael Naughton and Andrew Friedman then get to show off a little, playing suspects in an interrogation room to Hader and Odenkirk’s cops. The puffed up Friedman’s gang member repeatly tried to get the pair to flinch (no luck, although Hader broke a smile a little). And Naughton playing a gang member who’s afraid of the cops, insisting he’s being roughed up when they’re not even touching them. They bounce back and forth - including the bits. Puffed up gang member insisted he killed someone with a Netty Pot, victimized gang member “You’re going to Netty Pot me, is that what you gonna do? Netty Pot me?” The scene felt very improvised in a great way…
Sax and Dixon were our last group and they seemed to delight in sketches that fall apart… an “impromptu” freestyle rap reveals far too much about their own sex lives and a cute song they wrote when they were six injures Sax’s leg, disrupting the next ironically-placed doctor’s sketch.
Then we lucky enough to get a visit from Dusty Velvet (Casey Wilson), the quadriplegic stripper who refused to let her spirit be paralyzed. One member of the front row, which presumably had corn clean up duty, got awarded with a lap dance from the indomitable Ms. Velvet. As she was dragged into falling onto the man, Velvet repeated “sensual and sexual” over and over. With such belief in herself, how could anyone else not believe it too?
When I first saw the Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav, Katt Williams impressed me in how he handled a barb targeted at him, often responding with what I read as the response of a comedy nerd – an appreciative nod.
After seeing the video below, I wonder if I misread him. He might have just been stewing and containing himself. Katt Williams, though very funny here, describes his disappointment that the Flavor Flav Roast was the “crispity crackity coon hour.”
His specific problem seems to be that much of the jokes were about Flav being black (whereas there with no jokes about William Shatner or Pamela Anderson being white). He specifically takes issue with a line Comedy Central wrote for him (which despite his dislike for, he still ended up delivering.)
It’s amazing, because I actually forgot the “flying monkey” line and thought it must have been cut from the Roast. It sounds so incendiary here. But I found the Roast open and the flying monkeys comment is at 7:10.
I’m more than a little surprised that I haven’t heard about this earlier, considering Katt’s been doing this routine since at least March. And without much notice (at least none that I can find), which is odd for a society that loves racial controversy. The Friar’s had there own bump with charges of racism during their roast of Whoopi Goldberg when her then boyfriend Ted Danson came out and roasted her in blackface. That was a huge media storm. Why isn’t the host disavowing his own involvement not one?
And stranger still, Katt Williams is reportedly close to a deal with Comedy Central, which would include a new special and perhaps a sketch comedy series, a show mentioned as a true replacement for “Chappelle’s Show.” It’s not something you’d think Williams would consider after a negative experience - an experience he’s still mining for material this past weekend.
But Williams’ final insight into Flavor Flav’s reaction to the Roast makes this deal a little more clear. If they’re going to believe these things anyway, you might as well take them for “everything”, a word that implies not just money but all the trappings around it, including power. A marked difference from Dave Chappelle.
Something that probably made Chappelle unable to see it that way was the fact that his audience, while big before, definitely broadened among white people while on the network. At that point, from how Chappelle described it, he had the ear the country for a time, and he felt some responsibility for what he was going to put into it. No amount of money was going to be worth it if it wasn’t right. If a deal is made and Katt’s show is an equal success, who’s to say he wouldn’t feel the same?
What do you think? Is Katt on target here or is he being oversensitive about the Roast? Do you see echos of Chappelle’s own discomforts with Comedy Central here?
What I love about this Olde English video satirizing Pixar films is that it makes fun of the animators for both who they are (super-enthusiastic nerdy guys who dress “fun") and who they aren’t (people who cut corners).
That last line is killer. Impressive how they worked with their own animating limitations too. Videos like this make the loss SuperDeluxe much more felt. (Found via Ben Joseph)
My first thought when I saw the cold open from this weekend’s SNL: “Steve Carell’s the host. So they’re downplaying the high expectations. Everything else will look better by default.”
The opening sketch consists of Carell reciting silly dirty names in a serious Dean’s voice. That’s it. There’s really no twist to it - it leans more to the Mike Myers idea of repeating something times until it becomes unfunny and keep going until it become funny again. (You can sort of hear that ebb and flow in the laughs here.)
I don’t want to be too hard on it, but it was a sketch that made me feel like the writers already had their foot out the door for the summer. It felt like a sketch that you didn’t need comedy writers to create.
But here’s something interesting. A comment from this TV Squad review pointed to this similar Rowan Atkinson sketch compete with a snarky “I liked it better when it was...”
It is a better sketch, simply by including a twist or two, one of which is combining names to make new jokes. Also helpful, at least to me, is that a few of the names are just straight forward dirty word, without any pretentions about making them sound like names.
I think the austerity of the production helps too. If there were a bunch of actual students he was admonishing, it would get a little distracting. I remember looking to see if they used Asian or Black people for some of names recited in the SNL bit - something I probably shouldn’t be focusing on.
(Even weirder, the two sketches are almost exactly the same length. There’s only a second’s difference.)
But what do you think? Which is the better sketch? And why?
This Saturday, SNL did a pretty good little sketch where they parodied the 70s Game Show “The Match Game.” Except they changed the name of the show to “It’s a Match.” And they changed the names of all the celebrities who appeared on it. So you know Amy Poehler was supposed to be Brett Somers and Fred Armisen was playing Paul Lynde. Except they weren’t. Here’s the sketch:
The sketch works pretty well, but of course my nitpicky mind is wondering - why did they change all the names? I can’t really think of any other cases where SNL has changed the names of real life people to do a parody. I don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of the show, but every impersonation, even obscure ones, are usually done by name. Impersonations are one of the things they look for from new cast members. Changing names is more Mad Magazine territory.
The Match Game is a very old show that you’re parodying for a fairly young audience who are there to see Shia LaBeouf. You might need the slight name recognition to make some of the jokes land, just in case they saw a rerun on the Game Show Network.
My first thought was that maybe it was something legal. But that doesn’t really make much sense. There’s nothing defamatory here. Most of the jokes about characters are ones that the celebs did themselves - that’s part of the point of the Match Game.
So I’m leaning to it being an artistic choice. But I don’t think it really enhances the sketch. Do you? What does changing the names add to the sketch?
I put this is the news feed before, but I’m a little disappointed with Nerve’s list of 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies. Nerve’s a sex site, they’re not claiming to be experts on comedy. But still, it’s glaring that nothing from Mr. Show or Tim & Eric didn’t make it on there. Saturday Night Live has done some brilliant commercial parodies, but they don’t own the form as much as the list suggests.
Any future list writers should pick up the first season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, which just came to DVD last month. Here’s a brilliant ad from their first episode called B’Owl, a Cinco toy. It’s #40 on that list at least.
Onion local print editions in trouble? Rex Sorgatz shares a rumor that some of the humor paper's city editions are underperforming and may be shut down.
Tom Smothers on his landmark satirical comedy hour: "...the funny thing was that I didn’t know that we were saying…that the show was saying anything important…until they said, 'You can’t say it.' And I said, 'Well, that must be important!'" (Bullz-Eye)
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, which just came to DVD last month. Here’s a brilliant ad from their first episode called B’Owl, a Cinco toy. It’s #40 on that list at least.
and on DVD, the third season of 
and 
, Don Rickles 
and Martin Mull's 
