In Who was/is Funniest? (started Today, 08:34 AM) in this post I proposed what I have decided to put into a separate thread.
As support for the process, here are some older threads on the basic issue:
Your All-Time Favorite Comic/Comedian
06-29-2003, 10:28 AM
07-02-2003, 01:57 PM
Funniest Living Comedian?
08-07-2000, 07:34 PM
05-27-2005, 10:24 PM
Best current stand-up comedian?
09-01-2007, 05:06 AM
09-08-2007, 02:31 AM
My hope is that we can come up with a candidates list in the range of 20-30 for a poll to decide who SDMB thinks makes the grade.
Use your own count for posting favorites or those you feel should be in the voting.
If we can get at least 50 posts with names, I will use frequency of mention to select the names for the final poll. It may be that fewer posts with a wider variety of names may work as well. We’ll see.
It’s fascinating to look at that thread from 2000. Louis CK was barely known back then, and I guarantee you he’ll be on everyone’s top comics list these days.
Each post should have a list (as many as you feel apply) of the ones you want to see on a poll of 20-30 candidates. You can (of course) vote in that eventual poll for the names that make that ultimate list, whether you submitted the name in this thread or not.
The idea in this thread is to narrow down the hundreds of legitimate candidates to a manageable group, hopefully in the 20-30 range. But you can list as many as you want to here. I’ll use frequency of mention (in this thread) to build the poll.
I have supplied some sources to give ideas of those you might not think of offhand. How you use those sources (or others) is obviously up to you.
Seconding Dennis Wolfberg, no matter how obscure he’s become, due to his untimely demise. My gut has never hurt so much as it did from being unable to stop my uncontrollable spasms of laughter, no matter how many times I watched his (originally on HBO?) Comedy thing, with both the His Wife Giving Birth and the Way Too Powerful Laxative Breakfast Cereal bits.
First of all, are we just talking about stand-up comedy? In my humble opinion, we should limit ourselves to just stand-up comics here, because otherwise we’re comparing apples and grapefruits, and even just with stand-up we’ll get more than enough names. But, it’s not my thread.
Here’s my list (probably incomplete, since I may be forgetting someone) of stand-up comics who have made me, personally, laugh:
George Carlin
Bill Cosby
Jerry Seinfeld
Norm McDonald
Mitch Hedberg
Louis CK
Jake Johanssen
Richard Jeni
Steven Wright
Emo Phillips
Patton Oswalt
Steve Martin
Rodney Dangerfield
I’m not sure whether to include the following, because I love them not so much for specific routines (they’re best known for delivering ephemeral monolgues produced for them by a team of writers) as for their style, delivery, and influence on comedy:
David Letterman
Johnny Carson
Bob Hope
And the following I don’t think really qualify, because even though they performed “standing up,” they didn’t do monologues but rather the kind of comedy where they had to play off someone else:
The Smothers Brothers
Burns and Allen
Abbott and Costello
Jeff Dunham
George Carlin
Lenny Bruce
Mitch Hedberg
Richard Pryor
Chris Rock
Steven Wright
Steve Martin
Woody Allen
Jerry Seinfeld
Ricky Gervais
Bill Maher
Victor Borge
Bill Cosby