The History Of The Joke
March 6, 2008 · Print This Article
Yet another media outlet has been trolling the BTB boards looking for ideas to steal. This time it’s the History Channel and their “History of The Joke” special. Brian breaks the special down category by category and gives the definitive answer on all things comedy. Take that Robin Williams!
Other topics include the rapid decline of SNL, New York comics who are above it all, the lost art of the comedy cd, more praise rolls in for Steve Martin and two great tastes that taste great together…Then send you to hell.
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
Are jokes about fisting babies ever appropriate?
if the babies kind of a prick, then yes.
And all babies ae pricks, excluding those really nice and smiley fetal alcohol ones. They’re so quiet, momma Sando says we were no trouble at all.
Actually, I don’t think my bit needed that second sentence.
Also, I’m dropping my first name I thinks. Why bother with a double header.
One category the special forgot to mention was “Repeating the Punchline with Various Synonyms.”
For example:
1 - Someone has shit on the coats.
2 - Someone has shit on or around the coats.
3 - Someone has shit in the general vicinity of the coats.
If you can master that skill, who knows, you might even sell out the Boston Garden.
no, but it didnt hurt it.
unlike fisting a baby
Also, that’s Jimmy Carr’s style, its dickery was hilarious. Any one else read ‘The Naked Jape’? His book about jokes?
I just realize I wrote “are jokes about fisting babies” ever inappropriate. As in, if a baby fisted someone, would it be funny. Which now that I mention it, could make for a very interesting joke.
Brian: I am definitely my own worst critic, but if you re-read the post, you’ll notice how seamlessly I integrate self-loathing with name-dropping. That’s pro, people.
you know i think i remember the jimmy carr book, i was going to get it but then i relized i was broke. but i dont think it was called the naked jape here. i think it was called…Only Joking.
also uh, my previous two posts might be taken out of conext but it was in refrence to nick sandos post. and now that i think about im going to stop talking about fisting babys considering Brian has a new born.
Robert Schimmel declined to do the show? That’s a little surprising.
WARNING: HERE COMES MORE NAME DROPPING.
I emceed a week with him in Indy last summer, and part of the emcee duties was to be the guy who ferries the comics between the hotel and the club. When I called his room to arrange the time, he kept me on the phone for the better part of an hour just shooting the shit about comedy, working in Vegas, and just random shit. It was one of those weird situations where I almost drummed up an excuse to get off the phone and had to remind myself that I’m getting inside scoops from ROBERT FUCKING SCHIMMEL.
So, two things: 1) He has no problem talking comedy on the phone at length, so why he wouldn’t do BTB is a mystery to me, and 2) even when you’re a comedy legend, there will be days when you have nothing better to do than sit around a Hilton in the Midwest talking to a wanna-be comic who’s not very sexy.
I think I’m going to have to relisten to the show again. I fell asleep while listening (it was two in the morning hawaii time when I started), but not before posting. And now I am confused… I’m curious, what time zone are the post times at? If you read this tony, are they on australian time?
oh and vote for btb for this month’s podcast alley.
http://podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=42726
Hey the token scott, don’t forget jump around and kick the air like an asshole!
Speaking of Dane Cook I’ll repost my post from last episode…it was the last one so not many people may have caught it.
‘was reading a good article by Dylan Gadino on Punchline where I think he does a readlly good job defending him. I still hate the asshole but nice one Dylan…..you should get him back on the show B-mo I enjoyed your interviews.
http://punchlinemagazine.com/blog/?p=727#comments
Nick
Speaking of talking to comics just got two messages from Rick Shapiro about his trip to the UK….what a cool dude!
way off topic, but I just (as in maybe 3 hours ago) got rolled from my comedy troupe/group/collective what ever you want to call it when a bunch of comedy people work together. I’m still amicable with a bunch of them, so I don’t want to be a total cunt, but at the same time, I don’t want to be the chump. Or worse, that guy that rolls around drunk sobbing about how he was with the group before they made it big. What is the classy way to behave about this? I still definitely have my solo stand up stuff, so I’m not high and dry performance wise, but I actually was really good at what I was doing for them, and now I don’t really have that opportunity to create stuff. Should I give myself a breathing period before deciding to form my own newer, sparkleyer and bestest evar tree house sketchcom group? how long would that be? Should I just let it die for a while? What would happen if we were in competition?
I dunno, I feel like I’ve been drinking, but at the same time, just like a tool.
fuck… that’s an emo post.
You have to tell us the story. Call me crazy, but when a comic in New Zealand gets booted out of his comedy troupe, I want the details.
wow, sando thats fucked up, they just booted you out? without a reason? that sucks, if they just booted you out for no reason, then fuck them.
wow, that was filthy, yet oddly poetic
To be fair Don, I don’t have Schimmel’s direct contact info. I had to go through his “people”, so chances are he never even received the invite. I have never had the pleasure of meeting/working with him, but everyone I know who has says the same thing about how cool he is to talk to and has no ego.
my favorite joke is probably when the queen of england gives her daughters advice about sex she says “just close your eyes and think of england”
and i laughed my ass off
i think it was robin Williams but i could be wrong
I loved Patton’s joke about the 40 year old guy and the young kid walking into the woods and the kid says to the old man “Mister, I’m scared.”
“You’re scared? I gotta leave this place alone.”
I meant to give him props on the show, but Steve Byrne’s bit about sex sounding like someone trying to cross a thin sheet of ice just made my top 10 bits ever list. Seriously funny.
Hi.
I’m new to the conversation. I discovered the show a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve listened to every available episode in both incarnations. For some reason the first three episodes of the first show, and episode #10 of the second are missing; but I’m feeling mostly up to speed.
First item – I do standup as a hobby. I first started because I have a terrible fear of public speaking, and standing alone on an elevated platform under bright lights trying to make drunk people laugh is my form of therapy. Sick, huh?
Second item – Not only have I read Judy Carter’s book and taken her class, I’ve actually played poker with her (I didn’t win). I think her book has taken an unfair hit on Brian’s show but he has said over and over again he’s not the learn-comedy-from-a-book kind of guy and that gives him a certain mind-set about this kind of material. I’ve read pretty much every book I can find on the topic of Standup Comedy, and I’ve found Judy’s and Greg Dean’s book to be the most approachable for the complete newby.
Third item – I don’t know if anybody has mentioned this, but I found both “Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy” by Jay Sankey and “How Not to Suck as an Emcee” by Dan Rosenberg to be excellent volumes to cover slightly more advanced topics.
That’s what I can think of for now, but I’ll add more after I’ve read through some of the board.
Thanks…
Dennis Laganiere
http://www.laganiere.com
By the way, this went unsaid - but should be stated explicitly… Brian, I love the show (or I wouldn’t have listed to every available minute of it), and I really appreciate all the information you impart, the enthusiasm you project, and the support you’ve show to everyone. I hope I’m invited to play here with the rest of your fans.
Thank you for providing such a great podcast.
— Dennis Laganiere
History of the Joke…
I watched it last night so I’d be ready to listen to Brian’s observations with the material fresh in my mind. The best part was seeing fairly extended conversations with Robin Williams and George Carlin that seemed to give something of the man behind the characters they’ve created. Carlin seemed to be a real human being, and Williams almost seemed sedated compared to every other time he’s ever been on my TV. I loved being reminded of a bunch of old jokes, and Lewis Black, Dave Attel and Patton Oswald are always brilliant. The hokey professor and the lame setups designed to give an excuse to do interviews were probably the weakest parts for me.
Anyway… 15 minutes more before I can go home…
— Dennis at work
http://www.laganiere.com
“my favorite joke is probably when the queen of england gives her daughters advice about sex she says “just close your eyes and think of england””
You can laugh, but “Close your eyes and think of England” was actually the sole piece of sex education a lot of young girls pre-honeymoon night got from their mums in the UK in more sexually repressed days.
I always felt sorry for any girl being given this advice - exactly what bit of England does she think of as she’s having her cherry popped by her husband?
You’d hope it would be Big Ben. Bet I bet more often they thought of the Charles Dicken’s character Tiny Tim…
.
Additional thoughts (because I can’t leave work for 12 more minutes)…
1) My wife and I actually saw Richard Jeni on Valentine’s Day at the Laugh Factory just a month before he died. I don’t remember it being a specific Jeni show, I think he just came in to do a few minute set. There was a group in the back of the club who had obviously come to see a different comic and they were incredibly disrespectful. Jeni told them to quiet down, but it noticeably threw him off his feed and the rest of the set was awkward, as he seemed out of sorts. When I heard the news that we saw one of his last performances and it was ruined by some *ssholes it really made me want to smack the next heckler I come accross.
2) I had a bunch of buddies sleep over at the Last Comic Standing auditions in Hollywood a few months ago. They actually had T-shirts made up with a “Camp MiniHaHa” logo and put up a banner. While one of my buddies got interviewed for 45 minutes by one of the film crews, he’s the only one who even got a chance to do a few jokes. Unfortunately he was not invited back to the evening performance. The others got dismissed immediately when they didn’t seem to fit in as whatever “characters” they were looking for. Some weirdo with a dollhouse on his head went right to the head of the line… Does that tell you anything? Makes me glad I had other plans that evening.
3) Until you said something I didn’t realize anyone else had notice the Dennis Leary/Bill Hicks similarities. I was watching a Hicks DVD a few months ago and saw him do a bit on smoking that sounded word-for-word like something I’d seen Leary do before. Huh.
4) Thanks for introducing me to Ron Shock. I’d heard his bits in the past and never realized who it was. Now I’m going to make a concerted effort to seek out his material.
Sorry about the random thoughts way of catching up, but hey – I can go home now.
— Dennis Laganiere
http://www.laganiere.com
OK… I just left a bar joke and an original joke on the voicemail. I guess that means I’m caught up.
Thanks all…
— Dennis Laganiere
http://www.laganiere.com
man dennis you really have gotten cuaght up. impressive.
That’s some impressive posting Dennis. I’m pretty sure that’s 67 shows worth. Welcome brother!
After seeing Jimmy Carr on the History of the Joke I decided to give him a chance… I’ve seen him on the quiz show “Distraction”, but I wanted to see his standup. As you’d expect from his “Joke” interviews it was very clever, but only occasionally funny. Very formal, and a lot of heavily structured bits. Even cut aways to the audience showed people quietly paying attention, but I never saw then laugh (although to be fair, I was watching it on my tiny little ipod screen, so I might have missed some details).
— Dennis Laganiere
http://www.myspace.com/dlaga
will do when i sober up Brian. I’m not much of a drinker, but when your little brother turns 21 there is a party…
Hearing about Larry David staring at the audience whle discussing folklore reminded me of something I saw Carlin do once about 25 years ago on Carson. He was introduced, the crowd was amped up, he walked out and for about 5 minutes did nothing but look at the audience. He made some faces like he was curious, and the crowd was cracking up at it. I figured he was wasted, didn’t laugh at all, and the bit was well-received.
BTW, I’ve been out for a bit, so belated congrats to B-mo on your recent arrival. The best years of your life are beginning.
Have just heard the podcast, and Brian - you are not the only comedian who wants to give Jimmy Carr a kick in the nads. The guy can come over as unbearably smug and arrogant at times.
What I personally don’t like about the guy is how he never jokes about himself. All of his gags have someone else as the target rather than mocking himself, but if he’s ever on a tv show and another comedian makes a joke about him, he becomes unbelievably defensive and tetchy.
You can kind of respect him for becoming very successful in a relatively short amount of time, but he’s a difficult bloke to warm to.
I saw a Comedy Central half hour with Jimmy Carr years ago, it may have been his first one, and I thought he was all right then, but I didn’t become a fan . He had this bit with a rack of shirts that was pretty clever, but none of them were as pretty as Eddie Izzard’s.
I haven’t seen the show, but I doubt it’s as good as this history of the joke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSgRkBWNlBo
Since Steve Martin is still a semi-fresh topic on the site lately (less than a month is still fresh, right?), I should really share this story with you guys.
So my cousin David, who used to work for Warner Bros. in the 70’s and 80’s, was telling this story at dinner tonight about how he used to escort talent from the green room to the stage, introduce them, etc… and one night in Norfolk, he was going to bring out Steve Martin and the feature comedian, but he hung out for maybe 10 minutes with them backstage before and after the show.
David was expecting Steve to be this hilarious guy to hang out with, since all he knew of him was the “wild and crazy guy” stuff and the arrow through the head gag, etc… but he was basically just sitting there. Not nervously quiet or anything, just not being funny, almost serious. David said “It’s just an act with Steve. Sure, he’s got amazing material and all, but he’s not really that funny of a guy in person.” When Steve’s people would come in the room, he would immediately just ask stuff like “How are my albums selling? Are they selling? Who’s buying them? Young or old people?”
After he finished the show to obviously huge applause and came backstage, the feature act was joking around with stagehands, everybody was laughing their asses off at his jokes, but Steve came up to him like “Jesus, are you always on?”
I’m not sure what to make of all that, since I’ve never been close to the kind of pressure Steve Martin was under at his peak (and also since I haven’t read his new book yet), but maybe some of the experienced (or not so experienced) comics wanna chime in on this one? Was it that he was getting fatigued from life on stage? Harboring insecurities? Both?
token scott:
there are certainly people who are more “on” than others before and after a show (i tend to lean more towards the “on” than the “off”), but, to me, steve sounds pretty normal.
i think very few stand-up comics were the class clown type — indeed, i think most of us were the ones who sat next to the class clowns thinking “really, _this_ is what people think is funny? fart noises?”
being quiet and being funny aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. a lot of very funny people are observers and it’s really hard to observe if you’re the center of attention all the time.
further, i wouldn’t call it “road fatigue” because the road qualification implies that steve didn’t like what he was doing. i would call it simply “fatigue”.
for instance, my wife likes to think i only work an hour a night, but anyone who has ever worked the road know it’s a lot more than that. on top of that, there are phone calls to the various people who make their living off your work (lawyers, agents, managers, wives, etc.), writing material, working to _advance_ the career, and all the other minor things that come with living out of a suitcase. the pressure of doing an _hour plus_ versus featuring or opening is something that i didn’t understand until i started doing it either: kicking ass for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes versus doing it for an hour (and having the whole show rise or fall based on what you do) is monumentally different.
add all that up, and you’re just tired.
(there’s also this to consider… a lot of newer comics — as i’d imagine steve’s opener was in this anecdote — are still worried about whether or not they’re “funnier.” most comics fight insecurity by constantly joking. steve, at that point, probably didn’t need any more reassurance that he was funny — after all, he just got a standing O from 15,000 people. why go out of his way to be a goofball for a stagehand at that point? i know a lot of comics who interpret being “on” with being young or insecure. how many times have you heard from an older comic at an open mic to “save it for the stage.” the image of a comic as dancing monkey always working for the amusement of others is one that people seem to have of us; i know a lot of guys who look down on comics who validate that idea.)
to comment on that last point, i’d like to pose a question to the board: did you find that your obnoxious need to constantly “be funny” diminish when you started doing stand-up? i know it was for me. when i was in college, i was a constant joke machine, marring, i’m sure, any party or social gathering with an unending string of “zingers.” after i started doing stand-up and especially now that i’m full time, i find myself content to just sit and enjoy the party. i don’t need to flex that muscle socially anymore because it’s being flexed in such a superior way on the stage.
(and one last thing: the t-shirt that Charles and the rest of the club came up with for the high school comedy club i advised was “class clowns are hack” which i thought was just awesome. thought i’d share that…)
I am a constant disappointment to people who hang out with me after shows because I’m definitely not on all the time. It’s an act that I get paid to do, and even though I love it, I don’t feel like working constantly. Like Jay said, comedy can be very draining. I find that when you do run into comics who are “on” all the time it’s incredibly irritating (but never you Jay. Teehee.) I know it’s hard to believe, but shy, introverted people can have very successful comedy careers.
Answering your question Jay, I absolutely slowed down my class clowning when I started doing stand up. I think for me it came down to expectation. When I was in school I wanted to be the funny guy to draw attention away from my man boobs, but once I started doing stand up and I felt every joke was being analyzed I tended to clam up.
Finally, I absolutely love that shirt. If there are any extras I would love to buy one.
as far as always being on that is definitly the case for me. im currently in college right now and been seriously doing stand up for about a year, although actually performing has diminished to crawl. i tried to keep my stand up comedy spirations on the Down low but it got around campus somehow and now whenever i meet someone new i have to be funny constantly, luckily my close freinds know where im coming from to an extent so lucky me. but now whenever im in class they expect ill be a class clown. i was never the class clown and im still not and people have come up to me after wards and bitched about how i wasnt funny. are you fucking kidding me? im trying to graduate not make it unto live at gotham(I would like to be on there but lets get through this first). its very frustrating at times.
I call bullshit on the SNL talk. People have been bitching about SNL for years and years. Brian talks about how sweet the Mike Myers/Chris Farley years were, but in that time, everyone was complaining about how bad it was then, and how Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were the only real cast. And when those guys were on, they sucked because Chevy Chase and Belushi were the only funny people that ever lived. SNL never changes, you just connect with it at a certain point in your life (usually as a 13-year-old boy), and once you let go, it gets dumber and dumber.
I couldn’t agree more.
Great call FD
Wow…flyingdicks is absolutly right.
slightly off topic, but does anyone else think that it’s completely hilarious that the internet has allowed the phrase “flyingdicks is absolutely right” to exist completely free from irony?
that said, i slightly disagree — not with fd’s point; he makes a very good one — but the idea that SNL has been declining. i think the current cast — with the notable exception of keenan who has never been funny once ever in his entire life — is actually really good. kristen wiig is not only super cute, but is super funny. jason sudakis, bill hader, and (gulp) even andy samberg all have great potential. i think we’re one year or so away from entering into a new golden age (which the show seems to enter every decade or so).
and brian, i’ll check with charles to see if we have any extra t-shirts left. if we do, i’ll send it to you (the club isn’t around anymore, so we don’t need the money).
Hello Brian and The BTB gang,
I was talking with some friends of mine on the way home from a comedy club and everyone was talking about there favorite comedian and because i am a huge fan of this show I was able to really step up my game and just turned into the comedy guru. I was throwing all sorts of comedy shit out there and everyone was like ,”damn gilley, you really know your comedy shit.” So I would just like to say thanks Brian and the rest of the message boards for making me look cooler. I did however say that im an avid listener of the show and they were all going to start listening.
Well done Gilley. Thanks for spreading the love. I’m still waiting for you to open that comedy club. I got dibs on first week!
um heres something that i think you guys might enjoy. I was in FYE today at my mall looking for some comedy albums and they gave a whopping 3 horizontal slots to comedy albums on the rack. and the majority of the slots were dane cook, blue collar or mind of mencia DVD’s. What…the…FUCK! why is it that comedy gets no respect and shit like Maroon 5 gets its own aisle. also in the comedy aisle the majority of that aisle was devoted to wedding music. whats to know about wedding music, shitty slow song, shitty fast song, shitty R&B song, and Shout from animal house thats it. But if I try to find some Carlin albums, oh well im shit out a luck. Fuck You FYE. shit…now where am i going to get my CD’s…
Did my audition for the school variety show today. The process involved me going into this huge orchestra room, and me and the four judges (all adults) were in one quarter of the room. I was given a mike stand, and pretty much didn’t laugh or respond to anything I said. I had to come up with all clean material for the show, and I think even still I crossed the line with one of my jokes. Stupid christian schools.
(I mean the judges didn’t respond)
Hey Patrick aka Smiley…I saw you started a thread on AST about the podcast which is great thing. However its gotten some negatives posts already. I need to go in there and defend it a bit. I haven’t posted there before, although I’ve been a lurker for years , b/c i find it can be nest of vipers in some cases. for messageboard about comedy, there are some people who frequent it who don’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.
Hey thanks MattH, yeah i noticed that to. im so used to the cool, fun kind of posting we have here on BTB that i forget about how other message boards are filled with whinyy narcisstict bitches. I think the only positive post, other than mine, was Punchlinemagazine. well hopefully it will still help the show.