258 posts tagged with comedy and humor.
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And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Over six years after my previous post about it, author D. Aviva Rothschild has finally completed the second half of The Keys Stand Alone, sequel to With Strings Attached, the epic fantasy novel starring The Beatles - the whole series can be bought at Amazon or Lulu. (Previously, including links to free portions.) [more inside]
"several theories that are questionably valid and certainly not sound"
Carson Olshansky is a stand-up comedian who also does live presentations. The three on YouTube are Paul McCartney and John Lennon Were Gay and in Love: A Review of the Evidence, Theories of Nonbinary Heterosexuality and Bring Back Sexy Pop Anthems for Straight Boys. They also have a lot of shorter clips on their Instagram page.
"Books. Comedy. Tomfoolery. Miscellaneous other forms of chaos."
Generic Entertainment is the YouTube channel of Nathaniel Beardsley. He's best known for short genre-related comedy videos, like the Two Types series (fantasy worldbuilders, sci-fi worldbuilding, alt-history worldbuilding), making fun of specific fans (Dune fans, Wheel of Time fans, hard SF fans, Lord of the Rings fans) and one offs (If Contemporary Fiction Was Written Like Science Fiction, If Toxic Authors Made Video Essays, If Subatomic Particles Could Talk). But he also does indepth book reviews, such as Small Gods, Left Hand of Darkness, Pattern Recognition and Satyricon. But there are a lot more videos.
đ§ The Savala Vadađ§
âWhat if I gave this topical thing a shot?â
On his YouTube channel stand-up comic Josh Johnson has released nearly a full dayâs worth of stand-up videos. They are generally topical routines, so it might make sense to start with the latest one, about the Harris-Trump debate. In a couple of recent interviews, with Vulture and the Los Angeles Times, Johnson explains why the Daily Show writer and correspondent decided to start releasing his material immediately.
âA New Century Dawns! McKinley Ushers in Bold New âCoal Ageâ.
The Onion has put the entirety of its classic book Our Dumb Century online as part of its website redesign. For the unfamiliar, Our Dumb Century was a collection of fake Onion front pages from the 20th Century, with headlines such as âWorldâs Largest Metaphor Hits Icebergâ, âFeds Gun Down Nixon Outside Arizona Motelâ, âDrugs Win Drug Warâ, and, of course, âWA- (headline continued on page 2)â.
Passersby were amazed at the unusually large amounts of synergy
G/O Media, the much-reviled owner of such internet landmarks as Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and The Root, has been selling off their assets recently, including ClickHole (sold to Cards Against Humanity), Lifehacker (Ziff Davis), Deadspin (gutted), Jezebel and the AV Club (Paste). Latest on the auction block is The Onion... who ended up with a surprising buyer: Global Tetrahedron, a name that might ring a few bells for longtime readers. But what does the advent of this ominous conglomerate mean for America's Finest News Source?⢠[more inside]
weâve found it folks: mcmansion heaven
It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water.McMansion Hell (previ-ously on MeFi) explores the arcane architecture of 354 County Road 211 in Bremen, Alabama -- a gaudy (or Guadían?) wonder known locally as the Castle at Smith Lake. [more inside]
Look at it. Just look.
Explaining a joke makes humor processing more complete
"Most previous studies have used two-element (setup and punch line) jokes as stimuli and have been based on an experimental design and cross-material methods, such as comparisons of funny jokes with nonfunny nonjokes, as well as comparisons of material with incongruity and resolution with material that has incongruity but no resolution (i.e., a comparison of joke types between sentences) ... Furthermore, previous studies have mainly conducted comparisons in the two elements of setup and punch line to clarify the process of humor processing. The main contribution of this study lies in its use of a specific three-element joke." [more inside]
"Who's that? The slow comedy man."
Slow & Steady is a new hour-long stand-up comedy special where the star of Joe Pera Talks to You, Joe Pera, talks to you. He ends by attempting to put the audience to sleep, with a live edition of his sleep podcast, Drifting Off with Joe Pera. [Joe Pera previously]
The 'Real' Mario Movie
Who needs Illumination? Let a completely different Mario movie play out in your brain as you listen to the completely improvised audioplay The Real Mario Movie (starring, among others, Ellie Spectacular, the woman behind, among other things, the uncommonly clean Youtube Poop account DaThings). By its creators' own admission: 'no script, no reheaseals and zero brain cells'.
Stil *ZOT*ting
Remember the Internet Oracle, the distributed source of all knowledge (read: wit)? It's still going - yes, since 1989. Read past questions and answers, ask your own, and become an incarnation of the ever-clever Oracle and answer someone else's. Writing and interface tips after the jump. [more inside]
A little baseball humor for opening day
A Few More Last-Minute Baseball Rules Major League Baseball is adding a pitch clock, and if you're a baseball fan, you probably have strong feelings about this rule change. Reading this parody of MLB rule changes was a fun escape from the conversations about how the new MLB rules are ruining / saving the game.
Whether they all would self-identify as nerds is hard to say
âI donât rail against PC culture and all that because I think when somebody is accused of being politically correct, that usually just means theyâre being sensitive to other peopleâs feelings.â -- âWeird Alâ Yankovic: The Great American Novelty
"đŻđťđ¸"
Spanish cartoonist Manuel Álvarez has been translating his gently surreal, occasionally violent short-run webcomic to English. Also the characters are animals but that's not important. The webcomic is called "THE". It is on Twitter and Instagram, and updates Monday to Thursday. CW so far: violence, simply drawn male nudity, a drug mention, death, blood, cannibalism (bloodless), guns, and recolors.
What is this, some kind of joke?
Do people tell jokes anymore? They sure used to, and we've certainly seen 'em here previously (and also previously). Jokes may or may not be funny, but they do belong the broader category of "humor" (also also previously, as well as previosly). [more inside]
The Legend of Lore
The Brunching Shuttlecocks was (and is) a humor website that ran from 1997 to 2003. It was founded by David Neilsen and Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg There's a TON more links inside, but here's a taste:
Porn Star or My Little Pony? *
Ratings: Cat Toys ("Catnip Anything: Very entertaining.") *
Ratings: Star Wars Lego Figures *
The Björk Song (In RealAudio or MP3, with David Neilsen. Causes insanity.) *
Pikachewy ("'Twas Beedrill, and the Starmie Gloom/Did Grimer and Gengar in the Mew") *
Twelve AP Headlines Which Can Be Sung to 'Camptown Races' ("Man in Wheelchair Killed by Train, doo-dah, doo-dah") *
The Geek Hierarchy: Abridged But Managable - Unabridged but Large - For Printing (PDF) (Doubles Jubilee, original from 2015) [more inside]
"Garbage gets picked up"
Ashton Applewhite (previously) is a blogger and anti-ageism activist. She was also, in the 1980s, the first person to have four books on the NYT bestseller list at the same time. But it wasn't under her own name; instead, the books were by Blanche Knott, author of the Truly Tasteless Jokes book series.
On the Decoder Ring podcast of December 7 (link with transcript available), Willa Paskin examines the politics of "filthy speech" from the '60s to the '80s and speaks to Applewhite, who undergoes a slow epiphany about the cost of her work.
(cw: racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic language) [more inside]
On the Decoder Ring podcast of December 7 (link with transcript available), Willa Paskin examines the politics of "filthy speech" from the '60s to the '80s and speaks to Applewhite, who undergoes a slow epiphany about the cost of her work.
(cw: racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic language) [more inside]
Okay cheers then thanks then cheers okay cheers thanks cheers...
Don't trust Bigipedia (previously)? Want something more trustworthy and less physically possible? Look no further than The Museum of Everything, the eighteen-episode comedy audio sketch series with a dash of magical realism - so don't sweat the impossibility of a provincial museum just off the M3 that's curated by Tom Waits and contains literally everything (except maybe Badgerland (animated episode 3)). Well, not until you get to the... GIFT SHOP. (aaahhh...)
Don't let your memes be schemes
Drama On The Internets this weekend as Reddit's admins ousted the mods and top users of a popular satirical subreddit, /r/PresidentialRaceMemes. The wrinkle this time? Most of those banned are the same person.
As outlined in this exhaustive report from /r/Digital_Manipulation [mirror], redditor /u/AlarmedScholar (best known for his "It Is Time" memes saluting the end of each Democratic campaign) was at the center of a web of literally dozens of alternate accounts, aggressively spamming his own subreddit networks into popularity and using questionable moderation tactics to steer PRM from cheeky fun to unceasing vitriol against presumptive nominee Joe Biden (alongside fervent support for Bernie Sanders Howie Hawkins Jesse Ventura Howie Hawkins again).
Shades of Unidan, shades of Digg Patriots, shades of various the_donald purges... with 92 of the top 500 subreddits controlled by just four users, is Reddit the next battleground in the social media manipulation wars? [more inside]
"Well, no, Iâm sad, and I want to make you sad, too.â
The Bleak Humor of Tehranâs One and Only Standup Comic (New York Review of Books): "His monologue grew only more morbid from there, delving into what he described as his loveless, meaningless existence and his hatred for the macho behavior he saw in the world all around him. Yet there was something wonderfully endearing about his exaggerated melancholy, which often veered into unrepeatably obscene riffs. It was all so clearly at his own expense, and delivered so brazenly, that it had the crowd laughing along with him. âYouâre thinking Iâm a typical comedian who is sad on the inside and wants to make you happy,â he said. âWell, no, Iâm sad, and I want to make you sad, too.â And everyone laughed. ¶ I realized that I had been expecting certain clichés to be fulfilled: that this would be another example of the Middle Eastern comic using satire to fight back against political repressionâan evergreen topic for a Western correspondent. Instead, this was an awkward, abrasive, deliberately transgressive set, at times closer to performance art than comedyâŚ"
"ask yourself if what youâre doing is original or edgy in any way"
So many comics get away with this that when I initially released the video, I got dozens of messages from people who knew âexactly who it was about,â and they all said someone different.24 Comedians on the Comedy Clichés Theyâd Like to Kill Forever
"Grace was like, school is so cool, I want to go to more college."
Artist Kristina Wong just released Season 2 of Radical Cram School, a kid-centered web series mixing humor and political critique. In Season 2, the Young Rebels retell the herstory of Grace Lee Boggs, and find how what happens when kids cross the border into Puppetland, where no humans are allowed. In Season 1, Wong brought her comedic verve to episodes like "Media Studies" in which Resistance Auntie finds out why Hello Kitty doesn't have a mouth and "Statistics," in which the Young Rebels learn the bitter taste of wage inequality through sweet sweet cookies.
âThe first website debuted only a couple years prior to my retirementâ
The Far Side has a new website, Gary Larson explains why now in a letter. While the website is in its beginning stages, there is a daily selection of comic strips, plus sections for themed collections and scans from Larsonâs sketchbooks.
What ARE birds? We just don't know
A sausage-fest. (no, really, actual sausage)
Studio 188 makes trailers. Low-budget trailers. They often involve creative uses of food. Terminator 2. The Fifth Element. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Pirates of the Caribbean. The Matrix. Avengers: Endgame. And there's more! [more inside]
You Were the Man Then, Dog
From humble beginnings as a one-off parody of a goofy Sean Connery line, You're The Man Now Dog (YTMND) grew to become a landmark of mid-00s web culture, with its simple premise of user-generated GIF/image collages paired with text and a looping sound file spawning countless enduring memes and viral fads from the sublime and the mesmerizing to the inane and the ridiculous. While the community declined in the wake of YouTube, Vine, /r/GifSound, and other social media, and creator Max Goldberg grew increasingly ambivalent about its future in the face of medical and moderation problems, the site itself survived as a time capsule of high weirdness from the glory days of web 2.0. But now, one year after shutting down new sign-ups, YTMND has at long last gone offline for good. Punch the "." key, for god's sake, then look inside for an archive of some of the best YTMNDs of all time. [more inside]
Funny or Not Funny
How "Liberal" Late-Night Talk Shows Became A Comedy Sinkhole This derangement presumably stems from a refusal to face the America that propelled Trump to the White House. For all they hate him, they yearn, as he does, for a âlostâ country that younger generations view with skepticism. âNo one wants to confront the fact that they grew up in a time that was pretty sexist and racist because then theyâd have to stop being nostalgic for everything,â this writer says. âSee: Aaron Sorkin.â
"How Hannah Stands Up to Schizophrenia"
Hannah Bryndís Proppé-Bailey talks about how stand-up comedy and football help her deal with schizophrenia (autoplaying video, may blow dust into eyes) for UEFAâs Equal Game project. Earlier this year Hannah Jane Cohen interviewed her about her comedy.
"A comedy podcast about things that are actually sad."
The Alice Fraser Trilogy is a series of three stand-up specials where Australian comedian Alice Fraser tells the story of when her mother died, with digressions into her past and other subjects. It's available as a podcast [iTunes link]. For regular listeners of The Bugle, Alice Fraser will be familiar, but for those who aren't her comedy is a mix of absurdism, earnestness, wordplay and pessimism.
"Humor is just another defense against the universe." -- Mel Brooks
Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man: Mel Brooks in His 90s (David Denby, The Atlantic) âIâm just a Jew comic!â Brooks said to me at the beginning of our talk in Los Angeles, as if to ask, Why are you interested? But this comic has stormed through 75 years of show business, working in almost every medium imaginable (Borscht Belt, television, comedy albums, movies, musical comedy, one-man shows), and he may have contributed as much as anyone, in his manic style, to the formerly shaky but now sturdy arc of Jewish survival and success.
"A tree can't make or break Christmas, only people can do that"
Joe Pera Helps You Find the Perfect Christmas Tree is a good-natured twenty minute comedy about a middle school choir teacher in Michigan who's looking for a perfect Christmas tree. This special led to an Adult Swim series called Joe Pera Talks With You which is unfortunately geolocked outside North America. The eponymous Joe Pera's website has a lot more of his material available online.
"My apartment looks like the bad guyâs apartment in Se7en"
THINGS TO SAY WHEN SOMEONE FARTS:
- EXCUSE YOU
- SHUT YOUR BUTT
- SOMEONE RANG THE TACO BELL
- GOD BLESS YOU
- EVEN THAT SMELLED LIKE ASPARAGUS
Not Quite Fanfic, or, The Fab(led) Four
It is a premise that could not possibly belong to anything good: years after their breakup, the members of a beloved band find themselves suddenly reunited, restored to youth and sent to undertake a quest in another world. Except that this is a completely serious epic fantasy novel (albeit with many moments of humor). Indeed, there's a lot of self-awareness - one of the advanced aliens responsible seems to have a bit of a thing for the Beatles. This is With Strings Attached, or, The Big Pink Job. The first half is available for free, as is the first chapter of the first volume of the sequel, The Keys Stand Alone, Book One: The Soft World. Backstory on the book's creation can be found at its TVTropes page. (Content warnings that I'm aware of: mentions (at minimum) of violence, mentions of sex, mentions of rape, drug use) [more inside]
You *can* do that on television.
25 Comedy Writers Pick Their Most Influential TV Episodes - Part 1, Part 2 (Josh Sorokach & Joe Reid, Decider.com) We had no idea what to expect when we reached out to 25 successful comedy professionals â the minds behind some of the best shows on TV, from The Good Place to Youâre the Worst to Playing House â and asked them to write about the TV episode that inspired them to pursue a career in comedy. Their responses were passionate, insightful, nostalgic, and emblematic of the fact that inspiration comes in all forms. Were they motivated by a character? A concept? A clever turn of phrase? Weâre presenting their answers to you in full, in their own words.
Posh and repressed, or repressed and posh.
Nearly three hours of David Mitchell (previously 1, 2). being hilarious on the BBC show, Would I Lie To You: Posh and repressed?; Barbigerous Harbinger of Exuberance; Mitchellian rants and outbursts.
Funny Girl
"There was an expectation that girls would be quieter. And wouldn't ruin their dresses and wouldn't be roughhousing and cracking jokes in church," she says. "And I was very often doing a lot of those things," thanks in part to her father's encouragement to let her be what she was: funny. Today we encourage our daughters to be ambitious and athletic, opinionated and outspoken. We want them focused on STEM and outfitted in T-shirts that read, "Who runs the world? Girls." But what if raising truly empowered girls also means raising funny ones? What if we teach our daughters that humor is their turf â just as much as any boy's? -- Want to raise an empowered girl? Then let her be funny. (By Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post)
"I'm thinking.... I'm so far... from... the line...."
Poor Kristen Wiig. Every time she's booked on The Tonight Show she's bumped for other celebrities, like Peyton Manning, Khaleesi from Game of Thrones (previously), JoJo from The Bachelorette, and Michael Jordon, who are all definitely not Kristen Wiig in disguise.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger
âIâm the new Lenny Bruce,â Brad Stine, a conservative Christian comic whoâs been likened to Sam Kinison and George Carlin, told me. âThatâs how ridiculous this is. Theyâre not arresting me like they did Lenny; theyâre just not allowing me on their TV shows.â Why can't rightwing comics break into US late-night TV?
This is my Once-A-Year Day!
So you guys aren't terrorists?
Basement Reels, a Canadian-based group making ~5min short films, both serious and silly, tailored to the Tamil diaspora community. (via tamilculture.com) [more inside]
Tonight's Episode: More Pricks Than Kicks
Samuel Beckett: avant-garde dramatist, brooding Nobel Prize winner, poet, andâŚgritty television detective? Sadly, no, but he had the makings of a great one, at least as cut together by playwright Danny Thompson, cofounder of Chicagoâs Theater Oobleck. Some twenty five years after Beckettâs death, Thompson repurposed Rosa Veim and Daniel Schmidâs footage of the moody genius wandering around 1969 Berlin into the opening credits of a nonexistent, 70s era Quinn Martin police procedural. [via Ayun Halliday, openculture.com] [SLYT]
The return of Dr. Katz, now in SquiggleSound!
After over 15 years, the beloved series Dr. Katz has gotten revived thanks to Audible. Jonathan Katz and Laura Silverman reprise their roles and are joined by a cavalcade of your favorite comedy folks including Sarah Silverman, Dana Gould, Eddie Pepitone, Weird Al Yankovic, Maria Bamford, Emo Philips, Ron Funches, and much more in a possibly more addicting format as an audio series, Dr. Katz: The Audio Files. [h/t] (Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist previously 1, 2.) "For a limited time," the first three episodes of Dr. Katz: The Audio Files, featuring Andy Kindler, Ray Romano, and Sarah Silverman are free on audible.com. Prime members can also listen via a free 30-day Audible trial via Amazon. Bonus: SquiggleVision: An Animation Technique That Rocked the World [NSFW]
Dave gets abducted for a routine examination.
Abduction is the latest comedy sketch from Chris & Jack. Other gems include In English Please and The Art Of The Heist.
I'm afraid I just Pepsi blue myself.
If it wasn't on the last funny list it's probably on this one.
Vulture: 100 More Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy: A second look at bits, sketches, one-liners, and even modern art that have influenced American humor for the past 170 years.
On this list youâll still find traditional setupâpunch-line zingers and acts of physical comedy, but we no longer demanded that a joke be performed. This time we considered passages from novels, cartoon images, and even pieces of art. (previously)
On this list youâll still find traditional setupâpunch-line zingers and acts of physical comedy, but we no longer demanded that a joke be performed. This time we considered passages from novels, cartoon images, and even pieces of art. (previously)
"I have a crazy laugh."
2016 sucked for most of us, for many reasons, but there was one thing that consistently made me laugh or smile, no matter how bad things were:
Amy Poehler's Laugh Is The Best Laugh
Amy Poehler Laugh Tribute
Both contain scenes from Parks and Recreation blooper reel laughs
Amy Poehler's Laugh Is The Best Laugh
Amy Poehler Laugh Tribute
Both contain scenes from Parks and Recreation blooper reel laughs
Hello, Wayne Knight.
Hey, Aren't You... is a short (15 min) DVD extra featuring interviews with many of the actors who played supporting characters on Seinfeld and the impact the show had on their life.
All of them.
The writing staff of the comedy Workaholics has been compiling all of the worst lines you can possibly use in a show: How Many of These Joke Clichés Are You Guilty of Using?