John Mulaney on His Favorite TV Show Of All Time from the Just For Laughs Festival
Tag: comedy
👓 Power-walking with Kathy Griffin | 1843
When the comedian got on the wrong side of Trump, she laced up her trainers and marched away from the scandal. Sheila Marikar tries to keep up
Why the HBO host is wrong that public shaming encourages public accountability
👓 CAA and UTA Settle ‘Lawless, Midnight Raid’ Lawsuit | The Wrap
United Talent Agency and Creative Artists Agency have reached a settlement in their nearly four-year lawsuit over five agents CAA had accused UTA of poaching. Details of the settlement have not been made public, but in a statement provided to TheWrap, UTA’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, said: “The m...
👓 Do You Still Have A Job At BuzzFeed? | BuzzFeed
Jason Sweeten (BuzzFeed Community)"As you know, the company is going thru a reorganization..."
This is a bit hilarious given the recent layoffs many journalistic outlets are doing recently.
The odd part was that in terms of presentation I didn’t realize until almost the end that this wasn’t a primary part of BuzzFeed, but rather their “Community” section. While it’s nice that they give readers a place like this to contribute free content which only goes towards their own clicks for advertising, it would be far more interesting and useful if they were letting their community use their platform to host their own content on their own domains instead, and then allowing them to either pay for it directly or using advertising against it to cover the tab. This would be the sort of hybrid social media and journalism idea I’ve touched on in the past. Instead, this effort and those of others like the Huffington Post seem to be wholly benefiting the outlet more than they do the individual. The pendulum needs to swing back the other way soon.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: Letting Louis C.K. Back Onstage | New York Times
Nine months after admitting to sexual misconduct with multiple women, Louis C.K. dropped into a New York City comedy club unannounced and tried to make a comeback. And then he returned, again and again. We talk to the club owner who gave him that stage.
An interesting story that brings up an important philosophical question. It’s one thing for phenomenally rich people who could otherwise have retired and disappeared, but how this plays out will also inform how it will affect other lesser famous people going forward as well.
👓 2018 Finalists | Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
👓 Don’t Call 911 If You See a Coyote, Unless It’s Carrying ACME-Branded Products: The Office of Sheriff, Monroe County, New York | Open Culture
Someone in the Office of Sheriff, in Monroe County, New York, has a good sense of humor. And if you're from the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies generation, you will get a good laugh. In other news, Warner Bros. just announced that it's developing an animated Wile E.
I see so many urban coyotes this is even funnier to me.
👓 I Am the Anonymous NYT Op-Ed Writer from the White House | Matt Gross
At last, the senior administration official comes clean.
Hilarious Matt!
❤️ jp4gs tweet
Justin Pagano (Twitter)My wife and I recently got married and decided that neither of us would change our last names. Some people disagree with this approach, commonly critiquing with "what will you do with your children's last names?? How will they know they're a family?!" My solution: the blockchain
— Justin Pagano (@jp4gs) August 13, 2018
📑 Cantinflas | Wikipedia
Among the things that endeared him to his public was his comic use of language in his films; his characters (all of which were really variations of the main "Cantinflas" persona but cast in different social roles and circumstances) would strike up a normal conversation and then complicate it to the point where no one understood what they were talking about. The Cantinflas character was particularly adept at obfuscating the conversation when he owed somebody money, was courting an attractive young woman, or was trying to talk his way out of trouble with authorities, whom he managed to humiliate without their even being able to tell. This manner of talking became known as Cantinflear, and it became common parlance for Spanish speakers to say "¡estás cantinfleando!" (loosely translated as you're pulling a "Cantinflas!" or you're "Cantinflassing!") whenever someone became hard to understand in conversation.
Similar to doubletalk, technobabble, and other varieties of speech.
🔖 Taft Test – Web Dev Placeholder Image Generator
Does your site pass the Taft Test? Generate or swap images of Taft for web development.
I wish I had lots of bookmarklets that did quirky things like this. Interestingly this one has a relatively useful use-case in addition to its unintended comedic service.
📺 James Veitch – Opening Night Comedy Allstars Supershow 2018 | YouTube
Melbourne International Comedy Festival's Opening Night Comedy Allstars Supershow.
Palais Theatre, Wednesday 28 March 2018.
🎧 Episode 10 The Satire Paradox | Revisionist History
Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist HistoryIn the political turmoil of mid-1990s Britain, a brilliant young comic named Harry Enfield set out to satirize the ideology and politics of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His parodies became famous. He wrote and performed a vicious sendup of the typical Thatcherite nouveau riche buffoon. People loved it. And what happened? Exactly the opposite of what Enfield hoped would happen. In an age dominated by political comedy, “The Satire Paradox” asks whether laughter and social protest are friends or foes.
An interesting dissection of satire and the effects it does (or doesn’t) have on society. Sadly, a lot of the best biting satire doesn’t have the effect that many of us would like it to have. How can we subtly change this to create more desirous effects? I’d like to delve more deeply into the paper he references.1 [pdf]
Some of this reminds me of the ideas relating to doublespeak that I’ve written about in the past, but here, it’s actually comprehensible and understandable.
References
1.
LaMarre HL, Landreville KD, Beam MA. The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report. T. 2009;14(2):212-231. doi:10.1177/1940161208330904
📺 Ricky Gervais: Humanity | Netflix
Live performance of British comedian Ricky Gervais filmed in London's Eventim Apollo.
I watched this in pieces over the last two evenings and finished of the tail end at lunch today.
I’ve often thought of Gervais simply as a crass entertainer, but there are so many interesting new dimensions which come out in “Humanity”, they give me newfound respect for who he is and what he’s doing now. This is far more complex than just simple comedy, he’s doing something much more significant with this particular performance.
I also haven’t laughed this hard in quite a while. Tears, literally tears. Perhaps most interesting is that he’s got a much wider range of emotions which he’s playing off of here than just the humorous.
Gervais has some really interesting philosophy hiding in here among the dark humor. He has an interesting take on comedy and what it does and doesn’t target. The bit at the end on social media was particularly interesting. His take on “The Commons” is quite solid and is something I don’t suspect many could expound upon so eloquently.
During the portion in which he talks about his favorite Twitter response ever, he looked down at his phone to quote the tweet. I was reminded of some of the comedy greats I’ve seen at clubs late at night reading out of their beat up notebooks to try out new material. For a moment I thought, “perhaps Gervais is trying out some new material live here.” If it’s the case, then he was genius, though I suspect now that it was just a useful prop to add to the narrative of the joke. Either way, just brilliant. I wonder when we’ll see comics at clubs reading off of phones instead of the old spiral bounds? I wonder if it’ll play an better than the index card or notebook?
His closer with the story about his mum’s death and the wonderful prank on the poor vicar put a wonderfully fine point on the entire piece. It is humanity indeed. If there were a god, I’m sure he’d bless Ricky Gervais.