And then there was Ed Ames’ appearance on The Tonight Show:
I was thinking about that too.
I was mobile earlier but here’s the clip:
True, and I don’t find people falling down funny by itself either.
Turner Classic Movies shows old comedies all the time, starring people like Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle, and the latter in particular’s shtick consisted of repeatedly falling down in a certain way. To me, that got old really fast.
MTV had a short-lived series in the 1990s where this or that performer would choose their favorite videos, usually with a theme, often “Funniest Videos”, and there was one episode that I shut off pretty quickly because this person obviously had a thing for people falling off their skateboards.
Okay, here’s a crotch shot that works well. Eddie Valiant kills most of the weasels with laughter, but one weasel he finishes off this way . . . Relevant action at 2:55 through about 3:15 –
It’s funny when it’s unexpected and the victim kind of deserves it (if you don’t know anything about Jackass, they all pretty much deserve it):
More than 25 years ago I was tossing the football around with some friends of mine in the front yard. One of my friends threw the ball in my direction, but for whatever reason I was looking in another direction and failed to notice it until it hit me square in the balls. We’re talking grand slam here as he got both the boys in one shot. There I was, doubled over in the front yard thinking I was going to puke while simultaneously laughing at my own misfortune. Crotch shots are funny as hell.
This is what I find: it’s funny when it’s unexpected, and you cannot imagine it will happen. For example, the golfer who sets up to hit the ball, then mishits the ball, the ball bounces off a tree, and hits the golfer (or another golfer) in the crotch. You couldn’t see or anticipate what was going to happen, which (IMHO) makes it funny.
But if it’s a possibility, or even obvious, it’s not as funny. For example, the five-year-old trying to hit a baseball off a tee (think tee-ball), with his father standing ten feet in front of him. You can easily see what’s going to happen, and it’s not very funny.
Interesting that the mother seems completely unfazed by the same strength groin strike that made Hank lose consciousness from the pain!
There are a lot of variations on the tape measure trick like this:
Nut shots transcend species. Here’s a bear getting one:
And a tortoise biting a dog (potentially NSFW, dog sack is exposed …and bitten):
- YouTube
That turtle sure did know how to defend itself!
No they explain it, they clearly show Bobby losing his shoe and then kicking her in the groin with his sock. Plus it looked like a bad kick, so he was hitting her without anywhere near the force he had previously.
surprised nobody mentioned the Carson skit where a guy threw a hatchet at a target and landed on the crotch. Carson said I did not know you were Jewish!
Post #20.
Is there a name for the fact that, in any longish thread, whenever someone says “I’m surprised nobody mentioned…” it’ll be something that somebody has, in fact, mentioned?
I propose we call it “Boink’s Law”.
Either that or the “Drains effect” if you’d like to be just a little bit mean.
I searched for Carson which I figured would be in the post but it was not.
I find films of the Borat or DumbDumber genre to be embarrassingly unfunny. When I hear somebody mention one, I ask myself how I ever even got involved in a conversation with this person.
I don’t find Jim Carrey’s rubber-face shtick funny either.
However, so far he’s done a good job lampooning Joe Biden on SNL.