Why not? Yes, I know what he did, but people still enjoy Michael Jackson’s music and Roman Polanski’s films. It’s not like his comedy was on the subject of picking up women, which I could see could change the actual routines from funny to creepy. Certainly his best-known material was about unrelated subjects that should not really be affected by the knowledge that he drugged and raped women.
Dave Chapelle
Brian Regan
Nate Bargatze
I used to love Seinfeld/Carlin but their style just doesn’t resonate with me anymore.
Mitch Hedburg maybe? I hear him on comedy radio stations abs he was pretty funny.
He is not get mentioned enough.
No respect, no respect at all.
There is a difference between being a great comedian and the best of all time.
Seinfeld is one of the best TV shows ever but his books and stand-up, while they have their moments, range from pretty good to very good.
Mitch is a hilarious comedian. I like his stuff but I wish there was much more of it. His style is not like Wright though shares a certain eccentricity and uniqueness. I also have an extreme longing for cake sometimes.
I like Gaffigan and Regan too. Gaffigan is very focused on food, which is fine, but it lacks the keen social insight of Carlin. Regan is also very good. Bargatze, Sneed, Norm… can be very funny. Mason too.
I used to find Mitch Hedburg funny. I still do, but I used to, too.
I’d rec/like this if we had such a thing on this board. Well done.
His high school class voted him most likely to masturbate.
I haven’t heard, seen or watched many of the ones listed in this thread, but I’ve always had Chris Rock as #1 on my list.
It’s odd that there are so few (any?) women comics mentioned. Perhaps that warrants another thread.
I wonder if Robert Smigel (Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) qualifies. Rather than stand on stage in front of a seated audience, he goes into the crowd with a puppet of sorts.
Probably some NSFW…
Of all time? That’s a tough question. I couldn’t pick out a favorite, but of the ones I’ve seen, in person or on TV:
Rodney Dangerfield always made me laugh. Tears from my eyes laughter. He was a genius.
Steven Wright’s deadpan approach tweaks my funny bone every time.
Robert Klein was very very funny in his prime. I saw him “live” in the 1970s and he was great.
Garry Shandling always made me laugh when he was doing standup. I first saw him in a cable special called “Alone in Vegas” in 1984, and thought he was brilliantly funny. (It’s available on YouTube, if you’re interested.)
Jay Leno I saw “live” during his early days and he was hilarious. Not so much on the Tonight Show.
I always like George Carlin, going back to his early days in the 1960s, but I saw him “live” one time and was disappointed.
One that surprised me was Johnny Carson. I was in Vegas in the 1970s and he was in town. He did 90 minutes straight and he was terrific. I gained a whole new respect for him as a comedian.
Was he working on his newest routine at the time? I know that when we saw his specials every other year or so, those were the final version of a 70 minutes act that took a tremendous amount of work. I wonder if when you saw him, he was still working and fixing his act to be more and more perfect…and more funny.
I imagine seeing him a few weeks before he recorded his special would have been the best time.
What year did you see him?
He’s great, but he seems to suffer from a lack of developing new material. He has only released two albums because, I think, he realizes once his albums are out, everyone will have heard his jokes. I mean, he basically tells very odd jokes and his presentation is part of the gag.
He did a show a few years ago and a doper(@Chronos maybe?) PM’d me the text of his routine.
I’d say he is about ready for a third album in approximately 35 years.
Yeah, Jay was great in the 80’s or so. Then, he just decided to do lazy late-night comedy. Whatevs.
Richard Lewis.
When did I see George Carlin? I don’t recall exactly but it would have been in the early 90s, I think. It’s tough to be a comedian, especially if you’re doing records and TV specials, like he was. Everyone has already heard your old jokes, so you can’t exactly go on stage and do your “greatest hits,” like a musical group would, though you can do fresh variations. You have to go on the road, in small towns and large, and work out new material. When we saw him, he seemed to be very intent on working out a new routine and was throwing a lot of things out there to see what would stick. A lot of it didn’t. Oh, he was good, but I felt I was seeing a rehearsal, not a performance.
Joan Rivers could be pants-wetting funny in the early part of her career. Eventually she didn’t do “material” as much as come out and be sarcastic, but many great comedians couldn’t stay at their peak for an entire career.
My question about Carson (and also Bob Hope, George Burns and many others) was how much of their routines were theirs, and how much of it was produced by their teams of writers. It’s entirely fair to say, however, that Carson, Hope, Burns, et al were legendary when it came to delivering stand up comedy.
For me, it’s a toss-up between Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr.
Frankie has one of my favorite insults.
“I"m not saying he isn’t athletic, but he looks like he could be outmaneuvered by a statue of Stephen Hawking.”
Worked better when Hawking was still alive, of course.
Jimmy Carr is very funny, and I usually forget to mention him. The book of his I read was also excellent. I thought of several funny quotes, none of which is politically correct enough to post. (If you’re waiting for my comeback…)