South Park is my definition of “trying too hard.” On paper, it sounds like exactly my type of show, but they don’t hold anything back, they try to be 100% topical and 100% taking things to the extreme.
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Dumb slapstick.
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Comedians who act like morons. I will change the channel if I ever see Adam Sandler show up.
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Agree about the “Oprah-Uma” thing. Repetition is not funny. Especially when it wasn’t funny in the first place. Hearing it fifty more times isn’t going to make it any funnier. I can’t watch David Letterman anymore, and I used to enjoy him. He’s become a parody of himself.
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Stupid musical riffs played to indicate “this is funny, dammit!” I have stopped watching Jay Leno’s monologue (which I used to enjoy in an ‘okay, that’s funny sometimes’ sort of way) because of the stupid old-fogey style quick jokes he sticks in now, each one punctuated by the band playing three or four notes of “Hooray for Hollywood.” Hate it, hate it, hate it.
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Comedy at the expense of other (real) people. When I used to listen to morning radio, I always used to hate the bits where they would call someone pretending to be a car repairman or their wife’s secret boyfriend or whatever, for the purpose of getting a rise out of the victim.
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“Napoleon Dynamite” style comedy. I watched that movie, and when it was over I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to make of it.
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Fart humor.
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Baby-related humor, especially of the messy or scatological variety.
On the other hand, I (inexplicably) love Larry the Cable Guy. My taste in humor tends to lean more toward sarcastic clever wordplay stuff (particularly if it’s British) but 'Git R Done!" jokes always make me laugh.
Mugging is a genre. The current SNL is plagued by compulsive muggers doing freakish expressions apparently intended for the back row of a large theater.
I don’t find ventriloquists funny and I used to be a ventriloquist. You see, it’s not a form of entertainment. It’s a mental illness being presented as entertainment (I got well and quit.)
My neice was watching Jeff Dunham the other day when I came through the room. I told her “Please, don’t laugh at that poor man. He can’t help being the way he is.”
Ventriloquists are so pathetic that they don’t even have their own convention - they hang around magician’s conventions instead. Seriously. If you want to shop for vent “figures” (they get touchy at the term “dummy”) you have to visit the Dealer’s Room of a magic convention.
Two of the three things I came in to mention.
The 3rd being racism “comedy” ,so boring and overused.
:eek: I loved his show and saw him live and I would say the exact opposite! His standup was a lot of rambling, hucking it up with the front row, “doo doo” jokes, and laughing at himself.
Yes, I am another person who doesn’t like puns. It just seems really tiresome to me, like the person is showing off how clever they are.
Yes, I am very crabby today.
With corn.
The only comedy I don’t like is humilation comdey ala Borat.
Chimp humor.
Talking babies and animals. Especially if their lips are animated.
I was just telling Mr. S last night how annoyed I am by people who have to inject (usually) dumb jokes into every conversation. Every other sentence they expect you to go hahahahahaha!!! Or they ask you a seemingly serious question and it turns out it has a punch line. Hardy har har. I guess I like my humor a bit drier, thanks.
Sarcasm.
Enjoy,
Steven
Would this be “uncle humor”? Doesn’t everyone have an uncle like that?
Maybe, I guess I could see that. But none of the people I’m thinking of are my uncle.
Oh gawd that was an absolutely brilliant routine by Carvey! And it was funny even though he pounded it into the dirt. I still can’t even buy broccoli without grinning like a moron.
And yeah, Sandler sucks hog.
No scat humor. Slapstick in context (like 1910-1940) is ok, but not in modern comedy. Nut-smacks are just not funny. not because they’re painful, but because they’re not funny.
Some kinds of humor only work for one specific actor/troupe. Nobody else can do Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy guy. Nobody else can do Beavis & Butthead “stupid kids.” Music is that way sometimes. Anyone can cover ONE Rod Stewart or Barry Mannilowe tune, but NOBODY could make a living if they did more than 2 or 3.
Puns fucking RULE though.
I can’t believe I’m the first one to say this: Garrison Keillor and that whole Prarie Home Companion/ Greater Tuna thing and the type of stuff Spaulding Gray used to do. It’s a sort of high brow/New Yorker Magazine kind of observational humor that is lost on me.
There is even a Simpsons episode where the family is watching one of their programs and the audience is laughing, and Homer is convinced his TV is broken because he can’t figure out what’s funny about it. Neither can I.
Parody comedy as an ongoing series is lost on me. A few jokes based on a well known premise like Star Wars? Yes, that works. That’s basically what Family Guy does. But something like Reno 911, or Scary Movie II - ?/Epic Movie/Disaster Movie/Date Movie is too much and too juvenile even for me on a good day.
Well played.
I dunno. My town’s local festival, just a couple weeks ago, brought in a Neil Diamond tribute act.
Maybe George Costanza?
The idea behind these is the caricature of the idiot abroad, whose stupidity gives a child-like licence to speak truths that none dare say. It’s a version of the court jester thing. Sometimes it is done well, in that the “idiot” puts as much shit on himself as he does on the target.
An Australian comic character called Norman Gunston was a precursor at using the Borat schtick. He used to turn up at press conferences as a real interviewer. He once interviewed Paul and Linda McCartney, and professed to Linda some confusion, because “You don’t look Japanese”.
This dig at Yoko worked; it played on his own ignorance, and did not grossly offend the targets present.
The sub-text behind Borat, however, is too self-consciously smug for mine. We are to think that we, the audience, are howlingly clever because we recognise the middle class pretension being mocked by Borat appearing with a plastic bag o’ crap, and the victims are too stupid to see it. Plays into the whole “Americans are so dumb” thing.
In truth, all Borat was doing was exploiting the courtesy of his hosts, who were too polite to make an embarrassing fuss, and whose courtesy is mocked as stupidity. This is just ugly.
I never got glurgey kid-based humor (e.g. Family Circus, but the web is saturated with others). Several people I know love these; I just can’t find the joke. Why is a child mispronouncing something funny?
Also, in-jokes that are funny to maybe five people on the planet, yet are shared with a wide audience. College newpaper comics pages are full of these, and about half don’t even come close to making sense to the non-initiated. Gee, thanks for sharing that.
I went through this whole thread smug in my opinion that I can find all kinds of humor funny…until this.
Chimp humor…arg.