Comedy is weird because I really can’t think of anything that is funnier than talking to people you love to be funny with.
Still thinking about how, so for background information, my dad has a vanity licence plate on the car of his that I drive that is literally just our surname. Now that is just funny, I can’t get over that that is a thing my dad has done, but as well, I was with my best bud not that long ago, and we were driving somewhere in that car, and he just says “I like how it’s just an unadorned statement of fact.” Obviously you had to be there but it was so funny to me that he had just, like, plucked that thought out of my subconsciousness and said it out loud. My partner and I go for the low hanging fruit jokes about the vanity plate (calling the car the Surnamemobile) but my best bud was the one to practically read my mind.
Anyway yeah a lot of what I find most beautiful about Funny is also so fleeting. Little things someone said years ago still make me laugh. So it seems that Comedy was in fact the friends we made along the way…
Though I also similarly enjoy the perhaps even more special form of comedy, posting some unhinged shit on the internet to an indeterminate amount of relative strangers. Facebook is bad for so many reasons but certain groups are good for that. I can post shit like
More like difficultiestrough
or
Calling someone a dumb shit is such a risky prospect, I mean, is your shit any smarter?
or
Summoningsalt voice: that’s when Getting Home From Sleeping Over On Saturday Night At The Christian Family’s House speedrunners made a monumental discovery that changed everything. This … is Church Skip.
…and not even need to introduce myself or be known in any way to anyone who would be reading. forums.insertcredit.com gets some of that kind of material from me, such as:
…but not all of it, cause sometimes I can’t be fucked to find the Tell me anything thread before I get distracted.
i like that stuff too, tradegood, but you are correct in that it’s a totally different flavor. i feel like those new-er youtube shows game changer or make some noise are a continuation of that vein?
it is much less grating than the o’malley or over the top robinson style of comedy, but i guess in my own way i can only do it in short bursts before getting the itch to move on to something else.
also, mike hanford of the aforementioned birthday boys was on comedy bang bang pretty regularly, and the birthday boys are definitely from that UBC style of comedy.
it’s interesting hearing your thoughts about comedy. as much as i feel like “comedy” is part of my life i never really physically involved myself the way you seem to have, which makes me a bit jealous.
I think I know what you’re talking about, I think Youtube served me up their shorts. From what I’ve seen it does seem more like the sort of witty style improv that isn’t really as popular now.
it’s a fun night out! At least, if you know who you’re seeing or the venue haha. Usually if there’s 1 or 2 cool people on the billing it will be a good show. The best are festivals! Portland has Bridgetown which is pretty great. LA of course is a major hub and has a lot of fringe festivals. It would be fun to go to Edinburgh or Melbourne for a comedy festival someday.
When I was in LA the scene was huge, the improv and largo and lyric hyperion and UCB were good venues, but there were a lot of random places places above chinese restaurants or in comic book store basements or in persian gay bars where people would just book experimental shows which were also fun to go to. You would always get a different vibe and there was definitely a “comedy nerd” or “hipster” subculture to it to.
I have no idea if those rooms are still around or if the scene is any good or if it’s just like, D&D live podcasts these days. The modern comedy scene is a little baffling to me.
I’m not the biggest fan of comedy/comedians in like the traditional sense of the SNL/New York stand up circuit and such, but I have some big exceptions like the above mentioned Chris Fleming and Julio Torres.
Anyway I think this bit from a comedian that’s on a podcast I used to listen is brilliant.
Oh and also if you want some “up and coming” comedians there’s a queer late night style show that’s pretty decent. Some of the jokes fall flat but I like the energy and I appreciate what they are doing.
(posted about this on the tv thread but it’s more appropriate here (this show just rebranded and the previews season was removed from youtube but they are gonna upload it to an archives channel later supposedly)
I also have a strained relationship with modern comedy. I don’t find most of the things my peers find funny to be very funny at all. I don’t like Nathan for You, I’ve never really ‘gotten’ Tim Heidecker and his crew, Joe Pera was okay for a few episodes.
Right now, contrary to what was said above, I am thinking about movies that I thought were very funny. I like Jacques Tati, or at least Play Time and Trafic.
There was this movie I saw a couple months ago that I thought was hilarious, but I can’t remember the name now. It was about a night club that decided to stay open while it underwent dramatic renovations. The whole club falls apart and it’s a great farce. Might have also been French.
I even went to ChatGPT to help me remember the title but it doesn’t know what I’m talking about either. Really funny movie, though. If anyone knows what I’m describing give me a shout.
I also saw Eyes Wide Shut recently and thought it was hilarious, but I don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny lol.
Oh! Another good one is Million Dollar Legs. That W.C. Fields rapid-fire joke stuff works really well on me. Marx Brothers as well.
literally watched this six or seven times in a row last week before bed, it makes me weepy laugh
i’m a late will ferrell appreciator, i always thought that he was just doing dumb man baby stuff for dumb man babies but im actually very hard pressed to think of a time when he wasn’t punching up at big spoiled man babies. i guess stranger than fiction he was kind of just a guy?
I need to actually sit down and watch Eastbound and Down. When it was on I tried it but it didn’t really click. I’m a huge Righteous Gemstones fan now though so I’m sure I would like it now that I get McBride’s sensibilities more
That and the first couple of seasons of righteous gemstones is good. Same with Eastbound. There’s a decline after a while like a lot of shows hit and it’s best to just stop before you get sick of it. East bound has a great don Quixote and Sancho Panza thing going on with Kenny the lead and Stevie the squire.
What I love about ITYSL–above and beyond that it’s like, the funniest thing ever (I think the Egg sketch is maybe the funniest single sketch i have ever seen)–is that you can trace a line through all of the influences and that creates a Taste Roadmap, and I love that
Ben Stiller Show → The State → Mr. Show → WKUK → Tim & Eric → ITYSL
That is interesting! And it’s interesting to think of a taste roadmap in a linear way like that. Like I can definitely see a through line for myself like:
Mr. Show → Stella → Broad City → Difficult People → Los Espookys
But then again everything is happening at once and there’s a lot of other stuff too that influences it. Like, I wouldn’t know how to put british comedies like Black Books, Peep Show, etc into a list like this even though I think those shows also impacted by taste.
A couple things I’ve watched recently that have made me laugh. They usually have a drama component because I like to have an overarching story unless its sketch comedy which I mostly keep to SNL. Not really a Tim Robinson guy. I shouldn’t be trusted because the Comedy Button was probably the first comedy thing I chose to consume
Hacks. HBO show. Out of touch vegas comedian hires a zoomer writer to punch up her material. Generational divide is the main joke material, but the real punchy stuff comes through their personal similarities.
The Apartment. Incredible movie with incredible drama, but also Jack Lemmon is one of the funniest people ever. He can make a really subtle face and I’ll bust. He’s an office worker who has a really nicely located apartment that his bosses convince him to use for their mistresses.
I like funny books too. Read Catch 22 recently and jesus christ it packs in the joke at a sketch comedy level speed for hundreds of pages.
