Humor that doesn’t age well

Cafe Society
61

TWTYTW was the most topical of his three albums, and has stood up the worst. Who cares about Hubert or MLF Lullaby anymore. (Though Smut and Vatican Rag are still funny.) The first two albums were less topical and work better today. Poisoning Pigeons in the Park is timeless.

The best of the albums was the Carnegie Hall midnight concert, I think. And as far as jokes go, the last half hour or so was him getting ready to tell a joke, which he said he hardly ever does.
I agree that much of the later stuff was awful, even versions of good bits. I listened to a 10 CD set of rare stuff from our library. “Christ and Moses” was one of my favorite bits from the Carnegie Hall concert, but the compilation had some versions of it which were awful and not at all funny.

62

Lehrer stopped recording after 1965 because he said that the world had gone beyond satire. Little did he know…

I have the 10" original of his first album, snagged from a used record store ages ago. Used vinyl was a different world too.

63

Am I alone in thinking that Jim Carrey’s humor has diminished with age?

64

Generally, political humor doesn’t age well because the politics and politicians of one generation are mostly irrelevant and unknown to future generations.

Worse still is humor that tries too hard to be hip (and I suppose people who use the term, “hip” like I still do, aren’t exactly “cool”…but I digress). Case in point: Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. I was luke warm to Laugh-In’s humor during its original run, but watching it now is cringe-worthy.

To me, the humor that connects most timelessly, generation after generation is that of the Big-3 Silent era comics: Chaplin, Keaton, and my personal favorite, Harold Lloyd. These comics (and their writers and directors) crafted humor to a very high degree and I laugh at their films today as intensely as I’m sure their contemporary audiences did.

Likewise, the screwball humor of Hollywood’s Golden Era still make me bust a gut. I’ve recently we-watched depression-era classics like, His Girl Friday, My Man Godfry, It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth and Bringing Up Baby. These dialogue-driven films are funny, no matter what generation you’re from. And, the actors of these flicks delivered their lines with spot-on elocution, so you’re not likely to miss any gags. Case-in-point, His Girl Friday dialogue clocks in at 240 words per minute (compared to average movie dialogue of 90 words/minute) and each word is clear, concise and side-splitting funny. I love Cary Grant’s and Kate Hepburn’s mid-Atlantic accents!

I still chuckle at the 3-Stooges and more-so, the Marx Brothers; Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello, not-so much.

Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows (with Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris): still damned funny.

Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder: also still damned funny!

65

I still laugh at ‘Pork and beans!’. Also, ‘Let me show you something.’

66

The first part of that sentence was leading down a really different path.

Anyway, I was a big fan of Steve Martin and I still like his stand-up. His solo Wild & Crazy guy work wasn’t as good as the stuff on SNL because Dan Ackroyd was better at the part – better accent, better movement, just better. Martin does terrible, terrible accents.

67

Heh! Yep, I pull this one out (with an animated video) pretty regularly when people complain about Common Core math. The complaints sound very similar, especially the chorus; showing people that it’s their grandparents complaining about how they were taught math is a pretty effective antidote to the complaints.

68

One more comment on Steve Martin:

Possibly my favorite thing he ever said was in his Playboy interview (so I haven’t actually heard it).

The interviewer asked him how his life had changed since becoming rich and famous. He gave an interesting, non-comedic answer. The only important differences were that he could buy all the art that he wanted, and he didn’t have to worry about the phone bill any more.

He then said that he believed all celebrities should have a cause, and that he had chosen as his cause, gay rights.

Martin: “But I quit that cause”.
Interviewer: “Why?”
Martin: “I’ll tell you why. Because that cause is infiltrated with H O M O S E X U A L S!”

In 1978, that was just throwaway line about a clown not knowing what ‘gay’ meant. Over the years, it became more pointed that people who would quit that cause were on the wrong side of history. Today, it still makes me laugh.

PS: I’d like to note here that title of Born Standing Up is a line in Muddy Waters’ song “Hootchie Kootchie Man”. Martin is as accomplished at music as comedy.

69

I always hate when people say “You can’t satirize modern culture now it’s too insane!” because people have been saying it forever. There’s 2004 era SDMB forum posts of people saying “The Onion and the Real News are indistinguishable at this point!”.

I remember the Grand Theft Auto developers made the claim that in 2018 “It was impossible to satirize American politics” which was giving them trouble in writing their scripts, but the problem is just looking at previous GTA games, the satires we’re never that deep in the first place. Did you know all Republicans are religious gun nuts and all Democrats are limp wristed politically correct cowards? Well it took until 2012 for that message to finally reach the air waves!

70

Andrew Dice Clay. That dude was huge but I think most people knew, even in his prime, that it wouldn’t hold up over time. And it didn’t.

71

I was aware he was well-regarded as a banjo player but I didn’t know this. (From 2010)

Today, in boggle-your-brain trivia, we learned that Waco, Texas, native Steve Martin is a GRAMMY-winning artist for the Best Bluegrass Album for his debut album, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo. The album featured guest appearances from musical greats like Vince Gill, Dolly Parton, Tim O’Brien, Earl Scruggs, and others.

72

Is there anything much funny about the “Rat Pack” any more? I think the audience at their performances were mostly just giddy at their proximity to their idols and how they gave each other shit (from what I remember).

73

Humor generally doesn’t age well. I rewatched “Stalag 17” a while back. The dramatic parts still hold up damn well but the humor is wretched.

74

Norman Gunstan was a great Australian comic act, played by Garry McDonald, gentle and gormless (like Gomer Pile), not the more common asshole comedian. I was listening (sound-only) after he returned from a UK tour, and he remarked that the UK didn’t even have proper flag of their own.

His whole audience went silent.

At the time, half the population wanted to replace the Australian flag for culture/ history reasons, and half the population wanted to keep the Australian flag for culture/history reasons. Everybody was touchy about it. Nobody thought it was funny.

… all the UK has is a copy of the upper left corner of our flag …

There was a wave of relief and love…

75

Weed comedy really doesn’t age well either considering how it’s basically legalized in most of America by population now. Having a comic come on stage and most of his act is him telling stories of him getting high in various places won’t be seen as edgy/controversial anymore.

There were so many crappy Premium Blend comics in the late 90s/early 2000s who came on stage and announced “I just smoked a joint!” to massive audience applause.

76

An old friend was once talking about how Charlie Chaplin was a genius, and that he had known this even back in Lebanon (where my friend hailed from). “Laurel and Hardy, too”, he added. I asked about the Marx Brothers. “Them too”. Abbott and Costello. “Them too.” The Three Stooges. “They were stupid. I hated them.”

Speaking of Laugh-In, back in 1993, NBC ran a prime-time 25th anniversary special. In a promo, two of the women (Tomlin and Hawn?) were talking. “They said this show would never last. And they were right!” Perhaps more trenchant, though, because unscripted, was an exchange between Marv Albert and Magic Johnson, while they were doing an NBA game together. Albert had just mentioned that the Laugh-In special would air that night, and Johnson said “I got a lot of laughs out of that show and I must say that right now, the Bulls are doing an excellent job of executing their game plan.”

I was going to say, some people get off on insincerity. It’s hard to explain if you’re not into it.

I believe it. I believe it!

77

The fine leather of The Cruel Shoes hold up very well, however.

78

I love Steve Martin (and, like others, highly recommend his memoir), but I only lasted 2 minutes into this clip, and that was rough going.

Talk about a cringe-fest. I bet Martin would shudder even looking at a still image from that performance.

mmm

79

Most of the 80’s and 90’s humor is just soooooo bad now. Stuff that was only funny because it was novel for the times. I found Robin Williams endlessly hilarious then, less so now. I actually like his straight acting (or semi-straight) acting roles better.

80

Not all of it, but yeah, so much of it was just crossing his eyes, sticking out his front teeth, and acting like a moron. I watched Ace Ventura with my kids, along with The Mask, and regretted both of them.