# Hour BACK - get it? Dice Clay
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 28, 2012, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415 "2012-12-28T19:09:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@TGWATY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TGWATY)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/1 "2012-12-28T19:09:38Z")
Can someone explain this to me? It makes no sense to me.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0cI7cub1FU)
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### Author:  [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/2 "2012-12-28T19:23:45Z")
It’s performed in a “the joke is that there is no joke” fashion, but it _is_ Andrew Dice Clay and sufficient time has passed for History to have judge him a genius- and History has not seen fit to do so- so I’m going to go with “the joke is that people actually paid money to see Andrew Dice Clay”.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/3 "2012-12-28T19:32:22Z")
The “explanation” is that people will waste their time and money to see a moron who they think is supposed to be funny . . . even if he’s not.
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### Author:  [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2012, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/4 "2012-12-28T19:40:28Z")
Seriously. What can we do? Ask for our money BACK? Get it? OUR BACK? Get it?
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### Author:  [@TGWATY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TGWATY)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/5 "2012-12-29T02:32:08Z")
> [@bienville](#):
>
> It’s performed in a “the joke is that there is no joke” fashion, but it _is_ Andrew Dice Clay and sufficient time has passed for History to have judge him a genius- and History has not seen fit to do so- so I’m going to go with “the joke is that people actually paid money to see Andrew Dice Clay”.
I had a hunch …
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### Author:  [@Greekfreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greekfreak)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/6 "2012-12-29T03:23:07Z")
He brought down the house with his delivery, not the material, of which he had none that night. Comedy 101.
Interesting trivia about that album. He had just sold out Madison Square Garden and Rick Rubin told him to do an unannounced show at Dangerfields with no prepared material. As Dice put it, he wanted the feel of a real late night show on the album, which is exactly what it captures.
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### Author:  [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/7 "2012-12-29T03:36:01Z")
[Dennis Miller]He’s Fonzie with Tourette Syndrome.[Dennis Miller]
Never funny at all, ever. EVER!
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### Author:  [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/8 "2012-12-29T07:18:17Z")
I thought he was funny in Ford Fairlane.
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### Author:  [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/9 "2012-12-29T07:33:58Z")
Oh leave Dice alone! He deserves respect simply for being a bastion of political incorrectness! And there is some method to his madness. The whole ‘Hour back, Get it?!’ thing is just as someone said, it isn’t funny in itself. It isn’t even trying to be funny and failing at it, it’s just a confusing nonsense phrase. The joke is that he tells it over and over and over and over, and that _he_ continually pretends to think it’s funny. Similar to his classic ‘42 long’ routine!
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/10 "2012-12-29T21:51:08Z")
I thought the “joke” was about the Autumnal Equinox.
Set your clocks an “HOUR BACK.”
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### Author:  [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/11 "2012-12-29T23:03:20Z")
> [@PlainJain](#):
>
> I thought he was funny in Ford Fairlane.
I thought he was good in that movie, and that’s possibly the only thing he’s ever been good in.
/HE NEEDED THE MON-EY!
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### Author:  [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/12 "2012-12-29T23:11:36Z")
Maybe it’s some sort of metahumor about _Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature_, a well known book of literary criticism by Erich Auerbach (Get it? Auer-bach?)
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### Author:  [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2012, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/13 "2012-12-29T23:48:48Z")
I just don’t understand why Eddie Murphy was called a genius for _Raw_ and _Delirious_ when his act was basically the same as Andrew Dice Clay’s act (profanely teasing women, gays and ethnics) without the cutesy nonsense and rhymes.
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### Author:  [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2012, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/14 "2012-12-30T00:43:07Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#):
>
> I just don’t understand why Eddie Murphy was called a genius for _Raw_ and _Delirious_ when his act was basically the same as Andrew Dice Clay’s act (profanely teasing women, gays and ethnics) without the cutesy nonsense and rhymes.
I’m actually not a huge fan of Eddie Murphy’s early stand-up, but Eddie Murphy in those years was _electric_ as a performer, he was energizing and he was good-looking, and he more than anyone before or since (probably really the _only_ person ever) owned the “Stand-Up Comic as Rock Star” persona. Dice had none of that.
Also not of insignificant note:[ul]
[li]Delirious 1983[/li][li]Raw 1987[/li][li]Dice Rules . . . NINETEEN NINETY-ONE _yawn_[/li][/ul]
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### Author:  [@Greekfreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greekfreak)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/15 "2012-12-30T15:43:49Z")
They were equally brilliant at impressions. Dice was acting before he released comedy albums. His work on Michael Mann’s “Crime Story” was excellent. Dice’s first album was released in '88. Most fans of both comics will tell you that Eddie had shot his load with “Delerious” and he knew he couldn’t top it. “Raw” is pretty inferior. Plus by the time Dice got more serious about comedy, Eddie was going full on movie mode.
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### Author:  [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/16 "2013-01-01T13:58:05Z")
> [@Greekfreak](#):
>
> They were equally brilliant at impressions. Dice was acting before he released comedy albums. His work on Michael Mann’s “Crime Story” was excellent. Dice’s first album was released in '88. Most fans of both comics will tell you that Eddie had shot his load with “Delerious” and he knew he couldn’t top it. “Raw” is pretty inferior. Plus by the time Dice got more serious about comedy, Eddie was going full on movie mode.
Yeah, he (Dice) was even in an episode of [_Diff’rent Strokes_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDTov6cIpAY) playing a high school hoodlum! (fast-forward to about 4:40 to get to him). I’ve also always thought that Eddie Murphy peaked with _Delirious!_ his very first HBO special. Nothing he’s done since then, not just stand up but all his movies, have never really come close to being as funny (and the vast majority is decidedly inferior). Dice was kinda the same with his first HBO special too, _The Diceman Come’th_, though I kind of respect Dice for not selling out instantly the way Murphy did. Murphy realized how Hollywood worked and just began cranking out film after film after film, no matter the quality. And Dice was also good in that rom-com with Lea Thompson & Victoria Jackson, and he was hilarious in _One Night at McCools_!
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### Author:  [@DKW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DKW)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/17 "2013-01-02T01:02:22Z")
Man, someone actually remembers this bum. I lost interest in him by about the second dirty nursery rhyme.
Eh, didn’t see anything unusual. He was just out of his element. His thing is being astoundingly offensive and making horrendous poetry. If he can’t do that for any reason, he founders.
And man, did that crowd have low standards or what? Most wrestling fans aren’t as generous.
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### Author:  [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/18 "2013-01-02T03:15:18Z")
> [@DKW](#):
>
> Man, someone actually remembers this bum. I lost interest in him by about the second dirty nursery rhyme.
>
> Eh, didn’t see anything unusual. He was just out of his element. His thing is being astoundingly offensive and making horrendous poetry. If he can’t do that for any reason, he founders.
>
> And man, did that crowd have low standards or what? Most wrestling fans aren’t as generous.
Well, for what it’s worth Dice himself hated how popular his dirty nursery rhymes were. He quickly stopped doing them and refused when someone in the crowd would yell out for them.
The whole ‘offensive’ thing is what I find baffling. He wasn’t offensive _ **at all** _. As someone already mentioned Dennis Miller called him, “Fonzie with Turret’s Syndrome”. His stuff was so ridiculously over the top that you’d have to have been an idiot to take it seriously. A portion, perhaps a large portion, of his more good ole’ boy fans may have, but some of us ‘got it’. It was like if hunters said they were seriously offended by Elmer Fudd! And the fact that political correctness took off right when he did, it just defined the differences between those of us who got it and those who didn’t…
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2013, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/19 "2013-01-02T03:24:54Z")
I always thought Dice was making fun of people that “thought like THAT” and not so much being funny for “thinking like THAT” if you know what I mean. Kinda like why Archy Bunker was funny and Beavis and Butthead are funny. Not because being stupid/sexist/whatever is funny so much as its funny because we all know idiots like that.
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### Author:  [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hour-back-get-it-dice-clay/645415/20 "2013-01-02T13:58:28Z")
He had some good stuff and some terrible stuff, but his routine of DeNiro, Travolta & Pacino on a camping trip will never fail to make me laugh. His impressions are spot-on.
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