jeff barnosky
It’s Oscar time again, which means that Hollywood, and we their obedient servants, will pretend that the five movies we collectively disliked the least are the "best." It also means that the most somber, humorless movie will be crowned a masterpiece.
In the minds of Oscar voters, pleasure while viewing a movie–especially pleasure that manifests itself as laughter–automatically means that the movie is not serious enough to be any good. Even with these deeply cynical and annoying-at-Oscar-party beliefs, I was still dumbfounded at how few actual comedies won best picture, even ones masquerading as serious dramas.
Annie Hall (1977)
Hi! I’m a funny, short guy, and I’m a big fan of Annie Hall. Mom always told me I was a complete original, and I think this pretty much proves it. I have about two books worth of material to write about this particular movie, easily in my top five of all time, but I’ll just say that I’m shocked at how fresh and funny it's stayed in the 32 years since its release. This is impressive because it’s always been Woody’s most culturally relevant movie, as if he, for once, was actually paying attention to what was happening in the world around him instead of gently parodying his own fantasy Manhattan.
Before he locked himself in his Upper West Side tower and started creating a fabulist world where 12-year-olds are quoting Camus and 50 year old Manhattanites are more worried about Mahler than real estate, he listened to the street and what people were saying. Sometimes, it was hilarious, like sneezing in the cocaine. Sometimes, it was sour, like mocking Shelley Duvall’s reporter character as representative of everyone who likes rock music.
Comedies tend to lose their punch as the world they’re responding to fades into history, but Annie Hall always seems to be reacting to right now.
jeff barnosky
The Sopranos might just be the ultimate example of the
premise of this column. Observed clinically, the brutal violence and family turmoil
should be pitch black drama, with nothing more than a snicker emitting from the
withered decay of North Jersey. Yet, I think I laugh as much at The Sopranos as
I do at any sitcom or supposed comedy movie. Plus, there's just so much
whacking.
Boca
One of the things that The Sopranos lost over the years as
it became more brooding and literary is the original conceit: the juxtaposition
of the gangster world with suburban life. In “Boca”, Tony and Silvio are among
a group of parents who are supportive to the point of obsession with their
daughters’ high school soccer team. The Soccer Godfather joke is funny enough,
but becomes darker with the revelation that the coach is sleeping with one of
the players. It's one of those moments when you might actually be happy that
Tony Soprano lives on your block, if just to scare the shit out of the scumbag
diddling your daughter.
The other plot line in the episode is about Uncle Junior's
ability to go down to the well of souls. To score in Happy Valley. To ace her
deuce. To perform cunnilingus, if you get my meaning. Apparently, and you
should know this if you are hanging out with the "boys" anytime soon,
it means that you are gay. I took a logic class in college and I'm pretty sure that
argument is what they call a slippery slope. Junior likes a slippery slope. But
you can't tell anyone, or there will be a whacking off.
jeff barnosky
I'm not going to try to convince you that The Replacements were the greatest American rock band of all time because A.) it's not even close, and B.) your favorite band is the greatest band ever, at least until you find a new favorite.
If you listened to Pleased To Meet Me driving around Indianapolis in the 11th grade, wearing it out until it started to skip just as your hand slid up the exposed thigh of Megan O'Reilly, then that's your favorite album, or at least the most important.
jeff barnosky
Humorless politicians are often the funniest (we miss you Danny Q!), but I’m writing about intentional comedy in unexpected places. Nowhere is comedy less expected than in the po-faced world of politicians running for election.
This year’s candidates knew how to laugh at a good joke, but none are purposely funny often enough to qualify, though Joe Biden’s “Noun, Verb, 9-11” joke puts him as a close runner-up.
Ben Franklin:
Being a native Philadelphian, I’ve had many run-ins with Ben Franklin, starting as a kid going to the eponymous Franklin Institute to walk through the heart that smelled like pee through awkward moments as an adult in my work mail room, avoiding eye contact with the guy who plays Franklin all over the city and seems completely determined to stay in character no matter the century.
It‚Äôs hard to separate all of that from the historical figure who did so much that the word politician‚Äîin our modern sense‚Äîseems like an insult. Yet, I‚Äôm sure that Ben Franklin‚Äîthe man who invented libraries and the toaster (indirectly)–would be most proud of the fact that he was a genuinely funny guy, or at least I would be if I were electrocuted while inventing kites.
"Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."
"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."
jeff barnosky
Politics is serious
business, or at least that’s what the humorless and ponderous
pseudo-intellectuals who occupy editorial pages and cable news show
want us to believe. Actually, they need us to believe it or no one
would listen or read the drone of their drippy voices. But be brave
America! There are funny people in politics whose names aren’t
Jon, Stephen or Martin Van Buren! Funny writing in the most unexpected
of places—Political Blogs.
Jason Linkins
(Huffington Post)
Jason Linkins might be the funniest writer alive,
at least he makes me laugh out loud most often. He writes about media
and politics for The Huffington Post, posting almost daily, but his
masterwork is his weekly LiveTivo blog of the Sunday morning
political shows called TV Soundoff: Sunday Talking Heads.
While Linkins style is casual, and sometimes a little too reminiscent
of fanboy lackey sites, it allows him to
shift easily from astute political analysis to calling Senator
Lindsey Graham “Jowly Dave Foley.” He also called
pre-brain tumor (excuses, excuses) Bob Novak “Gozar the
Gozerian” of modern political columnists. Many Republican Slars
died that day, I can tell you. Pop-cultural references aren’t
necessarily funny or necessary, but Linkins is so specific and
accurate that it shocks you into laughter. Even if he was the least
funny writer on earth, he performs a great service to citizens of
this great country by watching and recapping all the Sunday morning talk shows so no one else has to suffer. Seriously people, he’s
the only person in this campaign who’s ever really fought for
you.
jeff barnosky
We live in a
golden age of comedy. Every aspect of
the culture—print, internet, film and television, seems saturated with the
funny, or at least attempted comedy. Sounds good, of course, but it doesn’t always work out. If everything's
funny (or supposed to be) the shock's gone and the jokes are no longer jokes. In the immortal words of Ben Katz, the secret
of comedy is "location, location, location." I laugh harder and longer when the comedy is in an unexpected context,
or surrounded by something entirely unfunny. I'm talking real comedy, not the
nervous laughter produced when someone gets a fork in the eye or an idiot gets
humiliated. It's what happens when a nervous 7th-grader thinks he
has to spell "numbnuts" on national television. Location, location, location.
To me, the ability
to make comedy of scenarios and situations that others would treat with
po-faced seriousness is the ultimate achievement. By the way, according to
Merriam-Webster’s, the word po-faced is derived "perhaps from po chamber pot, toilet,
from French pot
pot." And that's what I'm trying to do in
this column: defeat the toilet-faces of the world. So, without further adieu, the first installment…
The Five Funniest Buffy, The Vampire Slayer Episodes
I came late to Buffy, and I'll admit that I never saw an episode of its original run on the WB and UPN. I had no resistance, but no real attraction either. My wife's collection of DVD's and her own fanaticism convinced me to give the show a serious try. It's hard to imagine a better example of the seamless intermingling of comic conceits, absurdist story lines and witty one-liners with compelling drama and character development. Plus, demons! Joss Whedon and his writers don't so much write jokes as invent language and motifs that are highly recognizable (even when totally phantasmagoric) yet completely fresh and original. If you've never seen Buffy, ignore the existence of the awful movie and put aside your prejudice about funny, horny and occasionally undead teenagers (and why exactly are you so damned prejudiced anyway?) and start with these five episodes, the funniest and probably also the greatest, according to me.
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