"take a joke" and "get a joke" are absolutely different qualities
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:02 (eleven years ago) link
the lex walks into a bar
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:03 (eleven years ago) link
i think goole was talking about when assholes say, "can't you take a joke?" after they've said something cruel/gross/horrible?
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:03 (eleven years ago) link
"what's this music that's playing?" he asks the bartender
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:04 (eleven years ago) link
"bob dylan," the bartender replies
"IS THIS SOME SORT OF JOKE," shouts the lex
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:05 (eleven years ago) link
precisely!
lol xp to hs
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:05 (eleven years ago) link
would lol @ a book of "a lex walks into a bar" joeks
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:06 (eleven years ago) link
i was thinking about this thread during the whole tosh rape-joke thing
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:07 (eleven years ago) link
yeah my friend basically started her troupe because of the tosh "joke"
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:07 (eleven years ago) link
i thought a lot of the response that was kind of stupid. i dunno, all the liberal writers trying to like set up rules about "here's how to make a funny rape joke" and analyzing why tosh's joke was "bad" and this other rape joke is "good"... it was so
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:09 (eleven years ago) link
ime ostensibly "progressive" or lefty comedy is maybe even more repulsively conservative than the dad jokes and stereotype-reinforcing unhumour that's the obvious subject of this thread
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:09 (eleven years ago) link
the defenses of tosh were even stupider, obviously
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:10 (eleven years ago) link
i had to drop out of the internet temporarily when the tosh joke happened...i can't really talk about it rationally tbh
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:10 (eleven years ago) link
no, progressive comedy was the subject of this thread! or comedy that's created with an anti-racist/anti-sexist intention but somehow seems to reify racist/sexist stereotypes unintentionally. or whatever.
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:12 (eleven years ago) link
"ostensibly 'progressive' or lefty comedy" isn't really what i'm talking about
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:13 (eleven years ago) link
what i really wanted to read was a kind of *historical* account of comedy & its relationship to transgression, like a "genealogy of comedy." a lot of the discussion was weirdly ahistorical, like this sense that stand-up is the purest form of comedy and not form that has its own culture and rules and history (culture and rules and history that lean really heavily on the bill hicks-doug stanhope-sam kinison damaged-man resentful misogynist archetype)
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:13 (eleven years ago) link
haha i mean i guess what i wanted was someone to write the "Standup Comedy Sucks" article but no one did. i shouldve
u should write a genealogy of comedy nietzsche style
xp
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:13 (eleven years ago) link
bob hope invented standup. it's not that old.
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:14 (eleven years ago) link
i was thinking about how most of the latest wave of successful women comedians have come out of the improv world. & the structural differences between improv and standup that might lead to cultural/political differences
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:15 (eleven years ago) link
write it max!!!!
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:15 (eleven years ago) link
― goole, Friday, August 17, 2012 1:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
well, yeah, this is what i mean? the whole tosh discussion seemed to be identifying "standup" as this pure form of Comedy, like the Form of Comedy whose rules had been handed down by the ancients. instead of as a 50 yr old "art form" that has its own insular and generally p shitty culture
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:16 (eleven years ago) link
A lot of conventional humor is based upon staid, conservative social stereotypes, such as the cartoons about women posted near the top of the thread by Abbott, but it is important to note that such 'establishment' humor rarely, if ever, provokes open laughter. Such jokes are similar to the plastic models of food that are sometimes displayed in the front windows of restaurants to give prospective patrons a more visceral idea of what is on the menu. They provoke recognition, as in "I can see this is a joke, because it is formed like one", but nothing more.
Real laugh-until-you're-crying-and-weak humor is never conservative.
― Aimless, Friday, August 17, 2012 9:55 AM (18 minutes ago)
wish this were true, but it just isn't. lots of people laugh their asses off at the most conservative comedy imaginable.
― contenderizer, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:16 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/08/22/
"The Road to Vietnam" ranks with Bob's funniest work, if only for its sheer Brechtian blast of unreality in the midst of nightmare. You can almost hear Brando's Col. Kurtz whispering under the laughs, "The humor ... the humor ..."
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:16 (eleven years ago) link
lollll
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:19 (eleven years ago) link
i can't stop laughing at that
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:20 (eleven years ago) link
i keep thinking about writing about Why Comedy Sucks but then i think about the amount of comedy i'd have to endure as "research" and i die inside
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:21 (eleven years ago) link
why trouble yourself with shitty comedy
i still don't get why the whole human category of "things that are funny" reduces to, idk, simon amstell or some shit, for you
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:24 (eleven years ago) link
lex, you yourself are very funny so i find your railing against comedy hard to take seriously, though it is also very in character and funny so i welcome it.
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:25 (eleven years ago) link
i apologize if calling you funny is like accusing you of murder or something :/
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:26 (eleven years ago) link
i'm not funny at all!
my most ill-tempered communications with editors have been when they have asked me to make a piece funnier. i literally cannot do funny writing.
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:26 (eleven years ago) link
megalol at lex joek upthread
― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:26 (eleven years ago) link
^^^this is precisely why you are funny bro
every time i try to make a joke in writing i can feel the semi-colons just...bubbling under the surface of the sentence
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:27 (eleven years ago) link
bubbling colons? now that's funny!
― DX Dx DX (dan m), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:27 (eleven years ago) link
>:(
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:28 (eleven years ago) link
ftr i didn't laugh at that either
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:28 (eleven years ago) link
what i really wanted to read was a kind of *historical* account of comedy & its relationship to transgression, like a "genealogy of comedy."
yeah but max people spend their entire careers trying to say something definitive about this and failing. it's one of the biggest subjects and one where you're never going to get resolution. you can take an ancient comic tradition course and get a little more clarity (it's these classes that tend to lead toward the "comedy is inherently* conservative" idea) but for the most part you disappear into prehistory before you're satisfied. plus "western" vs. other models which are even less rigorously documented.
*"inherently" is a poor word here - what it means is "originally," I think, and that some of those origins are present in all comedy
― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:28 (eleven years ago) link
the semi-colons...the semi-colons
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:29 (eleven years ago) link
aero otm
― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:29 (eleven years ago) link
lex yer great btw, your opinions on comedy are ridiculous but I p much agree in my heart of hearts I think
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:30 (eleven years ago) link
saying comedy is inherently anything seems like a really bizarre, unfounded contention imho
― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:30 (eleven years ago) link
it's one of the biggest subjects and one where you're never going to get resolution.
both "not admitting of resolution" and "trying and failing" are comic qualities, so, i say go for it.
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:30 (eleven years ago) link
there probably are ways to document certain aspects of things, though. like i'd be interested in hear from, like, guys from the Don Rickles generation about whether they think standup has actually gotten meaner or dirtier over the last few decades, or whether they can get away with blue material in bigger rooms or on TV whereas that stuff might've been limited to small clubs back in the day. (xpost to aero)
― some dude, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:31 (eleven years ago) link
maybe "originally" is what i meant, but i don't even know anything about the origins of comedy tbrr. this was a thread started in ignorance, for sure.
― horseshoe, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:32 (eleven years ago) link
im not looking for a "theory of comedy" or a "definition of comedy"! i think the search for universal answers to those things ends up sidetrack the more interesting question of "what role does [this kind of] comedy play in this specific time/place"
― max, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:33 (eleven years ago) link
some dude otm. interested in both micro and macro histories of comedy
i don't think i 'get' don rickles
i always assumed that irl he was totally gross and vicious but if it was just like his 'you hockey puck!' business you see on TV then i'm really mystified.
― goole, Friday, 17 August 2012 17:33 (eleven years ago) link
rickles talked about some of this in the joan rivers doc I think I don't really remember tho, but I think so
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:34 (eleven years ago) link