Comedy

I’ve said many times before to people that I don’t like most comedy. Most of what other people find funny, I don’t, for various reasons. Most comedy I feel is either in poor taste, or is making fun of things that shouldn’t be made fun of, and is closer to being tragic than funny. The next obvious question is, well then what do you like? And I feel that I’ve never had a good answer to that, until now.
Here then, is my definitive answer. Conceptually, I like comedy that is ridiculous. I find the connection of things that are not really connected at all, or connecting outlandish things in an absurd way, funny. I like humor that’s intellectual, and gentle to a degree. Some satire is funny, but really the heart of comedy to me is absurdity.
As examples of my favorites, I would hold up the following: Monty Python, Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, and the Onion. Monty Python is pure brilliance, and I’ve loved the wasteful boys from Oxford (& Cambridge) for awhile. MP occasionally lapses into the crude, particularly with sexual humor (I didn’t like Meaning of Life at all), but overall everything with them has a very silly, lighthearted touch, which I like.
Seinfeld … well, he’s Seinfeld. I trust I need say no more. I will say though that I heard that he once said that comedy that needed to go for the crude or vulgar was stooping and demeaned the art form. I respect and admire him BOTH because he proved that clean comedy can work brilliantly, and also because he’s funny.
Jon Stewart, I also probably don’t need to say much. What I like about him most is his style of presentation. He holds up certain things in our current political climate, then makes these faces with long pauses as if to say, “Does anyone else find this as absurd as I do?” It’s a great shtick.
The Onion is something I’ve known about for awhile, but only really discovered recently. I can pick it up near my campus, and I’ve taken to reading it during my short lunch breaks. I am impressed with how consistently it can make me actually laugh out loud. I don’t know where they get their writing staff, but I think they deserve a Pulitzer or something. I also like the fact their tone feels very neutral; they’re into equal opportunity skewering.
( Like I mentioned in my earlier post, this pic is from the Onion, copyright by the Onion, all rights reserved & stuff like that, which means please don’t sue me, I’m a broke-ass college student who enjoys reading your paper and I’m not doing this for money )
One person who gets special mention is Bill Cosby. I remember watching Cosby Show as a kid and thinking he was funny, but he hasn’t done stand up in a long time, which I would really like to see, I hear it’s great. Also in this category would probably go Richard Pryor, I should go and hunt down some of his early material, though I know he was a bit more edgy and I’ve found that comedians in the tradition of Lenny Bruce (like Sarah Silverman) I don’t care for as much.