Saturday Night Live

i guess the guy figured doing some Eddie Murphy 1982-style stuff was the way in

while talking about the Battle of Gettysburg, Gillis refers to soldiers yelling as “so gay.”

this really is 2019 America in a nutshell

I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks actually good material.

Knew it

what surprises me is that SG ever even thought to audition, maybe they reached out to him, maybe his agent suggested it. because SNL/Lorne's logic makes sense, even if they fucked up big time (that article mentions that the last minute hire didn't allow them to do a "thorough examination" of SG's past work, even though this could've been deduced by a single google search).

but I don't get SG believing he would fit in or last at SNL without this exact thing happening. it's like adam carolla or nick mullen auditioning for SNL, or hannah gadsby going on cum town. it doesn't make any sense

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Downey_(comedian)

he was probably just supposed to do monologues on Weekend Update and stand around in the background of sketches

yeah its kind of funny to see his defenders whine about SJWs desperately digging through a comedian's past to uncover something shitty when in reality this was uncovered like 30 seconds after it was announced

Based on that clip posted up thread, it sounds like this dude is good old fashioned ignorant, which defaults/scans conservative, no matter his political stance. South Central PA, AKA Pennsyltucky. Like a roommate I had one summer, super nice, literally a rocket scientist, from a small town in West Virginia, who came up to me one day and asked me if I was Jewish. I said yes, and he answered, "oh, that's cool." Uh, thanks?

Are there any good conservative US comics? I would assume labeling them conservative meant their comedy was stuck in the 1980s.

Norm Macdonald

Yeah, he has never done it for me. I was thinking of watching the Bill Burr netflix but maybe he doesn't count.

Tim Dillon maybe?

a lot of stand up is based around fear of difference/weirdness that scans as conservative to me, even if the comics don't vote GOP

pointing out differences in others is a way to get the audience on your side, if the audience looks and (you assume) thinks like you do. lazy shit.

it just seems strange that snl may have been courting the modern definition of "conservative" when we know what trash that entails.

is comedy inherently conservative?

It's not that strange. See my evocation of Jim Downey upthread, getting Trump to host. Michaels is nothing if not an opportunist.

I have no idea about Bill Burr's politics but I did read a really good interview with him I will post in a while. He seems very equal opportunity. In the piece he talks about making fun of Hillary Clinton in LA, but then making fun of gun owners in Oklahoma. His philosophy is that confrontation, getting out of your comfort zone, is key to good comedy, and that a good comedian should be able to pull off a successful set in front of any type of audience. Like, you can find a clip of Burr absolutely killing in front of a black Harlem audience.

Burr seems to be a Bernie fan

I will read that old ilx thread. But I guess I specify modern conservatism because to me that is so right wing extremist regressive at this moment in time.

Kevin Hart

j/k Kevin Hart isn't funny

I think that's why Gillam's "oh this was a joke that didn't land" rings pretty hollow, it comes off like that sort of backroom racism where a white person feels out another white person in order to find out how racist they can be in front of them. Like I could never picture him doing that sort of act in front of an audience that included Asian people. The idea you can't be transgressive or offensive anymore is absurd. How many millions did Dave Chappelle get? How's Anthony Jeselnik been doing lately?

https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/bill-burr-in-conversation.html

Like, it takes a great comedian to pull this off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8b81UM74Ow

Bill Burr’s extremely high quality take on the SG stuff is that it’s a disgrace how SG is being treated, that if you go back 15 years (?!) into anyone’s past you’ll find the same shit, that nobody is actually offended, and that millennials enjoy ruining people’s lives

otm

Yeah that was the big criticism on SG. It was just two guys who seemed to have recently hatched in the world talking old bullshit. One can get away with a lot if you are actually funny (or attractive or rich etc etc).

I think Burr's been harping on this stuff for years.

Like, it takes a great comedian to pull this off:

not a huge fan of Burr but that is a masterful bit

Bill Burr’s extremely high quality take on the SG stuff is that it’s a disgrace how SG is being treated, that if you go back 15 years (?!) into anyone’s past you’ll find the same shit, that nobody is actually offended, and that millennials enjoy ruining people’s lives

yeah the characterization of this as "he made a bad joke long ago and now he's cancelled" is so stupid, because A) he has LOT of "material" like this B) it's all within the last year or two and C) the dude isn't "cancelled" he just doesn't get a coveted spot on a popular comedy show that tries to appeal to the widest possible audience. he's more famous now than he ever was and could now easily make tons of cash as a conservative martyr if he wants to

that if you go back 15 years (?!) into anyone’s past you’ll find the same shit, that nobody is actually offended, and that millennials enjoy ruining people’s lives

It seems obvious to me that people have always been offended but until recently haven't had a platform to readily register their displeasure.

i've been called chink a lot in my life, but I was honestly more offended by the puerile/ill-informed takes on chinatown

I did see Burr do a bit about how we're all supposed to call people in the military "heroes" and he was like "Really? even the guy with those flashlights who waves the plane in? He's a hero?" which I thought was kind of bold

I was thinking of watching the Bill Burr netflix but maybe he doesn't count.

Having not seen any of Burr's comedy but knowing he was well-regarded, I walked out ten minutes into his show a few years ago when he had done nothing but yell about how people who fly coach are slow at getting onto aeroplanes, and things his maid does which annoy him.

I don't have Netflix, but this review of Burr's new special makes it sound interesting.

It doesn’t look that different on the surface. Burr rags on his wife, calls sexual assault funny, and puts on a stupid voice and mocks male feminists. He makes fun of the idea that culture can be appropriated. He talks, wistfully, about a time where there will be high-quality sex robots so that women are no longer necessary. You could imagine versions of all of these jokes that are absolutely in keeping with the opening several minutes of his set, versions where they’re jokes about victimhood or oversensitivity. In every one of them, though, Burr at some point flips the switch, and unspools the initial premise of the joke.

“Sexual assault is funny,” Burr begins, before telling a story about a woman touching him inappropriately before a show. In his telling it is funny, because he’s quite capable of pointing out the absurdities of the situation. He plays up his futile inability to respond after the act, and how thoroughly he’d be mocked if he tried to explain his discomfort to other men. “Eyyyyy flick my balls!” Burr yells, in consummate character as a clueless asshole who Burr imagines laughing at this story about a man being assaulted by a woman. It becomes a joke about Burr wrestling with the intractable gender politics of vulnerability. It is a joke about how sexual assault has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power. It’s so far from his opening lines about how #MeToo has robbed men of due process that it feels like the message could’ve come straight off an anti-Trump protest poster.

Aside from the opening several minutes, Burr’s whole set is like that: thoughtful, surprising, introspective. He keeps yelling, of course, as if by bellowing his ideas while striding angrily around the stage he can distract from the fact that he’s delivering jokes so sensitive that some border on sweetness. In one of my favorite sequences of the special, Burr dramatizes the experience of watching a documentary on Elvis together with his wife. While he watches along in interest, he notices that his wife, who’s black, is making frustrated sounds at various moments of racism in the Elvis story. Burr turns his exchange with his wife into a canny stand-in for a clueless white troll arguing with a black interrogator, where Burr takes on the role of MAGA provocateur and his wife is the exasperated voice of the “liberal elite.”

Burr, telling the story of this fight with his wife, describes himself trying to defend Elvis against accusations of racist cultural appropriation. Sure, Elvis may have stolen his dance move from a black person, but where did that guy get it? Why is it “carrying on the tradition” if the move was adopted by a black person, but “stealing” if Elvis does it? A lesser joke could easily end there, passing off that anemic observation as a comedic insight. But Burr goes on, first voicing his wife’s explanation that Elvis reaped endless profit and cultural acclaim while the original innovators did nothing, and then his admission that yes, she is right. He then goes on to spin the joke again, digging deeper into his own humiliation and then landing on a punchline that, almost miraculously, reinstates his ability to control a joke while also mocking his original cluelessness.

huh I might check it out, I made a Netflix profile called Chad in case I want to check out any shit like this or Sandler etc

wow thay sounds hilarious does the audience give itself an ovation at the end

wow thay sounds hilarious does the audience give itself an ovation at the end

― provisional ilx (darraghmac), Wednesday, September 18, 2019 3:24 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

don't forget to self-post this on the excelsior thread

ill give it a day or two to give an up and comer a shot

TBF most jokes are best experienced via second-order exegesis.

Billburr's Journey: Discovering the Hidden Meaning of The Jokes

they and back again

I did see Burr do a bit about how we're all supposed to call people in the military "heroes" and he was like "Really? even the guy with those flashlights who waves the plane in? He's a hero?" which I thought was kind of bold

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, September 18, 2019 3:16 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

SIMPSONS DID IT

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S07E09/282932.jpg?b64lines=IFdheSB0byBndWFyZCB0aGUgcGFya2luZwogbG90LCBUb3AgR3VuLiA=

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S07E09/283933.jpg?b64lines=SSBoYXZlCiB0aHJlZSBtZWRhbHMgZm9yIHRoaXMu

wow thay sounds hilarious does the audience give itself an ovation at the end

― provisional ilx (darraghmac), Wednesday, September 18, 2019 3:24 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

don't forget to self-post this on the excelsior thread

― na (NA), Wednesday, September 18, 2019 3:32 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol owned

His philosophy is that confrontation, getting out of your comfort zone, is key to good comedy, and that a good comedian should be able to pull off a successful set in front of any type of audience

As far as my own tastes in comedy go, I pretty much bolt in the opposite direction of any comedians who think like this. Its always surprising to me how often people on both sides of these arguments say things like "its a comedian's job to test boundaries" as if its a truism, and I guess tons of people agree with that and want that from their comedy, but i just do not relate to that at all and never have. There are good comedians who do that, but to me it sounds the same as saying "its a films job to reflect reality" or w/e... like yeah it can be, but there are so many other approaches available. Of the many ways comedy and its place in culture has changed over the last bunch of years, one of the weirdest to me has been the hard swing towards difficult/introspective comedy that "addresses" things being considered the highest form of the art.

you know what is good comedy? those Bob Newhart one sided phone conversations

I don't think the idea is that you must do that, I think the idea is that you should be *able* to do that.

At any rate, the SNL thread is clearly the most appropriate venue for discussing the pros and cons of confrontational, boundary-pushing comedy.

Maybe they're trying to be anti-comedy.