Tag: entertainment

Deport White Males, Says Not Me

This is a satire piece that I found recently. Usually I’m not one for satire. Hey, I’m sarcastic all the time: “wow all my friends are sooooo cool!” (it’s sarcastic because no friends…that’s how satire works, right?) If it’s a type of joke that everyone makes all the time, it doesn’t strike me as a fantastically good joke.

But sure, satire can be good if it’s done well. I’m not saying this is done well, but it is a funny idea to me. I like the funniness of it more than I like what it’s actually trying to say.

My main problem with satire is not that it’s an “easy” joke, but that it often comes with a political position or “cause.” For me humor is simpler than that. If you’re trying to do something or evoke something besides laughter, you’re over-thinking it. You’re just using humor as a tool. I think humor is good for humor’s sake. And to me, the best humor is humor alone and nothing more.

This piece does seem to be “trying to do more.” It quite sarcastically claims that, amidst all the terrorist hubbub, that white males are the really scary thing in this country: they’re the ones who have been shooting down all the schools. Funny, but I don’t like to read into it too much. Form your own opinion, I guess!

Mark Sundeen is an author and writer for Salon.

In A World On Netflix Is Great

Hey, have I plugged a movie yet? I don’t think so…fertile territory. Fertile ground? Fertile territory? Does anyone say that? I don’t care.

I’ve known this movie was around for a while, but did not get around to seeing it until recently. I loved it. I could see how someone might not love it, but I thought it was written well, wasn’t too slow, wasn’t too weird, and wasn’t too clever. It also had some real substance to it.

It also didn’t hurt that some of my favorite funny people are in the movie: Demetri Martin, Tig Notaro, and Nick Offerman. Lake Bell wrote, directed, and starred in the film and it won some award or something or other. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s about voice over work, which I thought would be a silly concept for a movie before seeing it. And it is. But, it’s done well. And I thought parts were laugh-out-loud funny. That’s saying a lot coming from me.

I’d love to compare it to Amy Schumer’s movie soon and see what I think. Because this movie also has some cameos from celebrities and stuff like that, but never got quite the same hype. We shall see!

Check out In a World.

A Joke About OkCupid

I usually don’t post stuff like this, viral things that people already kind of know about. This is something I found on one of the front pages of Reddit. I know, I know. Anyone who wanted to see this saw it. It’s got like 500,000 views. However, sometimes viral stuff can also be good. I found the video entertaining, mostly, because Mike Bobrinskoy does something that I’ve done a lot of times, and that is to mess with people. He just takes it to the absolute extreme and has a great story from it.

Bobrinskoy reads out, for 10 minutes, a dialogue between him and a “girl” he met on OkCupid. What’s unique about this interaction is that it all reads like a joke. All of the writing in it, although I presume it happened real-time, is actually really funny.

I wanted to share it because it’s a crazy unique story and it inspires me to weird stuff on stage too. Bobrinskoy is a Chicago comic who has only been performing for about 5 years. He isn’t super experienced, but he has the ability to deliver this joke, and that’s pretty good. You can check out his website here. I like the small touch that his ex-girlfriend wrote his about page.

W/ Bob & David Out On Netflix

A year or so back, a friend told me about Mr. Show with Bob and David – that I should check out some grainy Youtube recording of it. I had never heard of the thing, but I knew of David Cross from Arrested Development and Bob Odenkirk from Breaking Bad. I just thought they were actors and never knew they did sketch. I thought they were both fantastic and so the existence of a Mr. Show blew my mind!

I did start watching that grainy Youtube video and I couldn’t stop. I watched Mr. Show for hours and it was unlike any other sketch show I’d seen. I had fun. But I was also extremely amazed and excited that anyone else actually enjoyed what Bob and David were doing.

I’m glad they’re back with five Neflix original episodes, W/ Bob & David. Watch the trailer. Also, Mr.Show on Youtube is below. Have fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyZ9l8anS9I

 

 

The Meltdown With Jonah And Kumail Is Great

Do you want to know what it’s like to hang out in the back of a comic book store with all the best comedians in the world? That’s exactly what Meltdown is: a weird, almost fantastical place where comedians just come to hang out and shoot the shit. Oh, and tell hilarious jokes.

When I first heard of Meltdown, I was like, “Whoa, this is just like The Creek and the Cave, but, like, with really famous comedians.” The Creek and the Cave is a comedy club in Long Island City where I and a bunch of other fledgling comics hang out and talk in between sets and shows, but the somewhat huge difference is that none of us are quite famous yet. The comedians at Meltdown are doing the same thing, except it’s comedians who are on TV all the time, touring the country, and doing their own bigger and better things. But they like to come to Meltdown every week to hang out in the back room because, well, it’s fun.

It’s a hilarious concept for a comedy show: to have two hosts who take way too long on stage at the top, just messing around with the audience and riffing with one another. Like, way too long. And then they bring up all of their friends to do stand up after. Typically, an absolutely awful format for a show. But Jonah and Kumail do it so well and go on for so long that the actual length of their banter becomes funny.

The show is also especially cool for me, because my first show in New York was in a tiny, cramped comic book store. This one is much bigger and cooler. But, it’s totally the same in my mind.

You can watch the show on Comedy Central.

Thievery, Heckling, and Rape Jokes (Oh My?)

I hate that I titled this post how I did, but hey. People connect to dumb things in pop culture like that. Right? It’s a reference to lions, tigers, and bears IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET THAT!

Patton Oswalt is a comic known especially well for his twitter rants. He’s really good in long form. He’s also good at long-form talking about comedy.

Read this. Oswalt published the piece on his personal website, where you can find a bunch of other great similar content. It’s a famous comic’s inside views on some of the biggest topics in comedy. That’s interesting, right? It is. This is the type of material that really gets me excited to do comedy: being able to see somebody break down the art in such detail. Someone who is on the inside. Joke stealing on its own is such a weird idea that non-comedians just don’t see it the same way. Example…

When I started doing comedy – back in 1988 – I did a joke one night, at an unpaid open mike, that killed.  It killed.  I wasn’t used to having anything in my set, in those first few months of shows, get any response from an audience other than a hard blink and an impatient sigh.

There’s a dopamine rush, for a comedian, when you cobble a thought out of thin air, when you arrange words not as a sentence but suddenly, as a joke.  A for-real, plucked-from-your-skull joke.  Something you created which, when you reach the part you want the audience to laugh at?  And then…holy shit!  They actually laugh?  That’s the spike in the vein that sets the compass for your life.

Well, I’d gotten a taste.  I wanted more.

The only problem was, it wasn’t my joke.

I’ve been there. I know what he’s talking about. I’ve tried a joke and thought, “That joke was too good. I didn’t think of that on my own.” It’s subconscious. But that’s not how people who villainize joke-stealing comics think of joke stealing. Not every joke-stealing comic is a Carlos Mencia or Fat Jew. Most of the time it’s an accident.

See what I mean? See more things from Oswalt’s view. Read the piece.

 

Nathan Fielder Interviews With an Interviewer’s Mom

I posted a little while ago about Nathan Fielder’s new season of Nathan for You. A writer for the AV Club, John Teti, asked Fielder to do a traditional interview to promote the show, but Fielder had a different idea.

Teti had previously reviewed Fielder’s show on his podcast Mom on Pop, where he discusses pop culture with his mother.  Teti’s mother gave scathing reviews of Fielder’s work on the podcast, saying that Fielder wasn’t funny and she didn’t think he was a very nice guy.

So, what did Fielder suggest for the interview? He wanted to meet up with Teti’s mother to try to convince her that he was a good guy.

The interview with Teti’s mother is hilarious, at least to me. It’s definitely not your average type of funny. But it reminded me of conversations I have with people who aren’t really connected to the comedy world and are pretty ignorant about what can and can’t be funny (even though they’re generally nice people). The idea that some guy’s mother is trying to tell Fielder, who runs a successful comedy show, what is and isn’t funny is a pretty funny idea.

Spoiler: Fielder is successful in the end.

Jim Gaffigan’s Show on TV Land is Great

If there’s anyone who deserves his own show it’s Jim Gaffigan. He’s been around forever and he’s such a big and well-liked name. Finally, he’s got one. And although it isn’t 100% about Hot Pockets, it’s pretty much what you would expect: a funny take on family life with a lot of food sprinkled in. Sprinkled in pretty much everywhere.

The show is actually super easy to find online since it’s on TV Land, a primarily online network. I didn’t know that TV Land existed until now, but it seems like a really cool space with a few different interesting-looking comedies.

As far as the Gaffigan Show episodes go, they are all pretty darn well written. They’re probably funniest to an older “I am a parent” audience, but I’m young and I still think they’re great. One thing to mention is that the show addresses comedy (Jim plays a comedian) but there’s no actual stand up in the show. I think it’s a cool balance between TV and stand up, since most comics who do a show either tend to one extreme or another in terms of incorporating stand up comedy.

It looks like they’ve taken away some of the episodes on the website, but you can still get a taste for the show! Below is a little clip.

Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, and Louis CK Talk Comedy

Here’s a fifty-minute round table conversation about comedy between some of the best stand up comics of today. I’ve listened to this video several times over. It’s always fascinating to hear different perspectives on the nuances of comedy, from how jokes are written to how comedy compares to other art forms to whether sound checks are worth it. Apparently this happened on HBO and the segment is called Talking Funny, but I don’t know much more about it than that.

Master Class in Crowd Work

Todd Barry is a touring, headlining comic who most people know as “that comic guy from Louie.” He has a very flat, deadpan delivery but he does it better than most people I’ve heard. He sounds super sarcastic and a little like me but even drier, so maybe that’s partly why I like him.

His delivery is what makes his crowd work so impressive to me. With such a flat delivery it forces the conversation to be funny because of what Barry says and discovers. The crowd work really has content. Barry isn’t just being silly on stage, he’s quick and intuitive.

Speaking of Louie, Louis CK actually released Todd Barry: The Crowd Work Tour on his website for $5. You can also find it on Netflix. Or, I found it on YouTube as well. I’ll link that below, but who knows when it will disappear! Whoever uploaded the video to YouTube also put “Best Comedian Ever” in the title of the video, so take that as you will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZP7TvH-9Yg