Category: humor

@Seinfeld2000

“Imagen Seinfeld was never canceled and still NBC comedy program today lol”

I just can’t get enough of this and it’s difficult to explain why. You’ve likely heard about the Modern Seinfeld Twitter feed, which posits what storylines the Seinfeld show might pursue in the internet age. It’s amusing for half a second, but is actually devoid of humor. Kramer becomes obsessed with Wikipedia. George becomes distraught by reading WebMD. They’re entirely reasonable premises to create comedic stories, but there’s no comedy.

Entire @Seinfeld2000. I first learned of them by reading this article on The Awl about weird, spambot Twitter users that post meaningless messages. The writer mentions Weird Twitter, a term that has come to refer to a certain brand of humor that is intentionally idiotic or non sequitur or bizarre, and often is a parody of the more pretentious stodgy ways that many professionals use the medium. The most mainstream example might be comedian Rob Delaney, who brilliantly writes stupid things like:

And in the context of Weird Twitter, The Awl writer also mentioned @Seinfeld2000.

@Seinfeld2000 takes the premise of a modern television show parody Twitter account and infuses it with the unique voice of a low-IQ knucklescraper who is unable to understand the concept of imagining modern plots for the show, and is also unable to spell, or remember the characters’ names. It’s brilliant. On one level it is a direct satire on how unfunny the original Modern Seinfeld account is by being completely unaware of its failings, but it’s completely hilarious on its own merits. That being said, it may be an acquired taste:

Continue reading “@Seinfeld2000” →

The End of 30 Rock

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Read Tom Ceraulo’s interesting and touching article about the final days on the set of 30 Rock as the show filmed its final installments.

30 Rock is one of those shows that has a special place in my heart (which evidently has many nooks and crannies to hold special things). It was so good when it premiered in 2006 that I wanted to be somehow involved. Involved with the show? Involved with a show? I didn’t know. It was so dense with jokes and appealing characters that play off old tropes and play of their own self- awareness. At the time I was beginning my senior year of college, studying English with a focus in creative writing. I didn’t know what I’d do with a creative writing degree, but I had just taken a class about screenwriting and loved the medium. Writing remained a cursory hobby until 2008, when I decided to take a step in a vaguely solid direction by enrolling in a film MFA program.

Later, in an attempt to get into an apprenticeship program with NBC, I started to work on a 30 Rock spec script. I knew my unfinished draft wasn’t good enough when the deadline rolled around, so I didn’t bother completing my work until the deadline rolled around again the following year. It’s still mediocre, but I had fun with it.

My episode deals with Jack Donaghy finding out that he might not be an American citizen, Tracy becoming an animal rights activist and releasing a cobra from the Bronx Zoo (timely!), and Liz becoming a video game addict. You can read it here. I think it could all work pretty well if I kept revising it, but I’d junk Liz’s nonstory and come up with a thread that jives better with the others.

Now I’m no closer to my goal of writing for television and film, really, but I still have 30 Rock to thank/blame.

National Treasure III

Nicholas Cage hands Barack Obama the trillion dollar coin. The president holds it up to the light, and with bated breath, peels back the platinum foil, revealing DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE. He hands Nick a piece and then takes a big bite. “It looks like the debt ceiling,” Barack muses, “was a sweet political deal after all.” THE END

Lookwell

In 1991, Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel wrote a pilot for a show about a washed-up actor who feels that his pedigree as a television cop has given him the innate ability, and the public duty, to solve crimes. It’s a deadpan comedy with Adam West as Ty Lookwell. Of course, the show didn’t get picked up, but the pilot lives on Youtube.

It’s wonderful and doesn’t quite work; it’s as if Adam West was so perfect in the role that he might not have known it’s a comedy. I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding.

via The AV Club

Ha Cha Cha Cha

When I was a kid, sometimes I would pantomime that I had a giant nose and was smoking an imaginary cigar and I’d say “ha cha cha cha!” What a hilarious five year old vaudeville performer I was. I picked that up from some old Chuck Jones cartoons, though I couldn’t tell you which — until a few nights ago when I was watching Tom and Jerry by myself around midnight (… and I’m single, ladies!).

In the 1967 episode Surf-Bored Cat, Tom gets an octopus stuck on his head, and when one of the octopus’s tentacles looks like a big nose, he breaks the fourth wall and hams it up: ha cha cha cha! You can watch it on Dailymotion (the chacha moment occurring at 3:30):

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There are similar impressions in other cartoons of the 50s and 60s. I even knew as a kid that they were referring to some known personality, maybe Groucho, and that adults probably got the joke. I just thought it was funny. But who the hell were the cartoons referring to?

Naturally I googled “ha cha cha cha” and found Jimmy Durante, the Schnozzola himself. Durante was a performer and comedian with a long career in show business and had a number of catch phrases. There’s even a section on his Wikipedia page detailing his presence in animation.

So that’s who I was imitating. Many of those cartoons were rich with jokes and allusions to performers, comedians, and musicians past, and I suppose there were numerous fans of Durante among the animators, including Chuck Jones. If I have kids I’ll definitely make them watch some of the classics. It’s good to start with the fundamentals. Ha cha cha cha!