Daniel Radcliffe...Comic Genius?

So HP6 is out. Yes, indeed. It is no "Prisoner of Azkaban"...but it is enjoyable. Particularly at a free pre-release screening after consuming Zeeks Pizza and surreptitious tiny bottles of wine in the line on the sidewalk.

Where does the comedy lie in this film? Jim Broadbent is a genius as Prof. Slughorn, of course, all high-pitched and frog-eyed--but he plays up the desperate self-involvement and denial that are central to that character, rather than the excessive tweed-pillow-ness of his physique. There aren't nearly enough of the auxiliary characters like Luna Lovegood or Neville Longbottom, who in the book provide a good balance of pathos and comic relief (and acknowledgment that hey, Harry isn't the only one who has lost parents). Rupert Grint as Ron continues to be the slapstickiest of the three kids, despite his recent acquisition of arm muscles. He doesn't get to indulge in googly faces much this time around, because as those of you familiar with the sixth year at Hogwarts know, it is less about giant spiders and more about professoracide.*

However! Comedy occasionally crops up, usually attending some kind of substance abuse:

Hermione + too much butter beer = stumble-y and overly affectionate (funny)

Ron + love potion = stumble-y and moony (funnier)

Harry + Felix Felicis luck potion = the most watchable that Daniel Radcliffe is the whole time (funniest)

The mood doesn't stay high, though--each of these episodes is followed by something terrible and death-y (curse, poison, and funeral, respectively).

Radcliffe and Grint have both admitted that they started taking acting more seriously in the last several HP films. (Not a surprise, considering they are spending their time with Britain's best and brightest of stage and screen.) Emma Watson is planning on attending college once the films are wrapped, but I imagine we will continue to see her in films for a long time (kind of a British Natalie Portman, perhaps?).

In any case, it is nice to see these three actors pushing into both comedic and dramatic acting. Comedy is generally acknowledged to be more difficult than drama--nailing the timing, pushing just far enough, taking only so much focus. Good on you if you can be a naked, horse-blinding stable boy on both sides of the Atlantic...but even better on you if you can nail a punchline, too.

*With the exception of Cormac McLaggen's broom photographed in such a way during Quidditch tryouts as to make us older viewers snicker, that is.

I [heart] New Yeah

An Op-Ed in today's New York Times discusses the glories of the pun. It's an interesting article, if a bit unfounded (why is a student at Fordham Law writing an op-ed for the NYT about puns?).

Spit Takes is actually in New York City this week, and found this article to be particularly apt, as we are getting ready to depart for lunch in Chinatown at [the?] New Yeah Shanghai Deluxe...a restaurant name that lives in that gray, swampy area somewhere between intentional puns and language barriers. Thai Me Up, a place we passed yesterday, is of course squarely in the pun district. Maybe they offer sub(missive) sandwiches?

The Problem with the Write-In Option

Remember when that guy decided to take Stephen Colbert's digitized DNA with him to the International Space Station?

In more ISS/Stephen Colbert news, the AP reports today that the written-in name "Colbert" beat out NASA's other suggested names for the planned new module of the space station. NASA-generated names included "Serenity" and "Venture," either of which would be acceptable in my eyes because of the Joss and Venture Bros. references, respectively (perhaps I'm projecting?). The arm of the Colbert Nation is mighty and far-reaching, though, and write-ins for "Colbert" constituted nearly twenty percent of the final vote.

NASA, of course, is reserving the right to make the final choice themselves. NASA spokesperson John Yembrick said the decision will be made in April, but that NASA will give top vote-getters "the most consideration." Fingers crossed!

Here is Stephen's plea to the nation from March 8, 2009:

Count Your Democratic Republic Blessings

This is very old news--like, November 21, 2008-old--but Spit Takes has been very busy over the last couple months and let this one sit and fester in her inbox. Apologies, particularly because this is a very sobering, important story.

Zargana, the Burmese comic I've mentioned before, was officially sentenced to 45 years in jail for his work helping the victims of Cyclone Nargis (!!). Here's the BBC:

Zarganar led a group of entertainers who organised private aid deliveries to victims of Cyclone Nargis, which hit in May.

An outspoken satirist of the military government, Zarganar had already been arrested and jailed four times before he was taken from his home again by the authorities in June.

At the time, he seemed to think the government would have no problem with his activities.

"No, we never encounter any problems, because we negotiated with them, and we just want to pass our donation parcels. We just want to encourage our people - this is our duty," he told the BBC in an interview just before his arrest.

He evidently violated the "Electronics Act," which regulates all electronic communications, by videotaping the destruction the cyclone left behind, and by criticizing the government in interviews with foreign media. The BBC's correspondent points out that such overreactions by the government in Myanmar--and of course this is just one of many--are "such breathtakingly disproportionate punishments" in order to "send two clear messages from the generals who rule Burma: that they will brook no opposition in the lead-up to their carefully managed transition to what they are calling a 'discipline-flourishing democracy;' and that they are unconcerned what the rest of the world thinks."

Of course, you can't be a county in this world now and not care what other countries think (hello? see where eight years of that got us?). Let's hope everything crashes and burns around them, and soon.

Ugh.

Comedy Crisis

Since the primaries really got dirty last spring and summer, the comedy world has been all in a dither about whether they will be able to make good jokes out of the Obama administration. As I mentioned on this blog previously, many digs about Obama are built on public perception of him, rather than him as a person. On the New York Times "Laugh Lines" blog today, the editor of About.com's political humor page (I know...About.com has a wha?) interviews various comedy writers about their next four to eight years.

MAD Magazine's guy's response is predictably threadbare and worn: "Why am I optimistic? Look who Obama has included in his inner circle — the Clintons! Talk about a humor stimulus package!" Ugh. Really? I'm not saying there aren't still details to be mined for comedy between Bill and Hillary, but come on. That's like making a joke about Hugh Grant and transvestite hookers or Milli Vanilli. STALE.

Baratunde Thurston, besides having the best name I've seen in months, is the web and politics editor for The Onion. I liked his take:

For the first few weeks, I plan to scream for joy and hug strangers on the street as I’ve done continuously since the night of Nov. 4. Then I plan to keep writing material that uniquely illuminates this country’s socio-political reality while causing laughter and self-urination among my audience. That’s what political comics do. Too many people had one Bush-is-dumb joke and thought that made them the next Mark Twain. The arrival of a president fluent in English should raise the bar.

Raising the bar is good, though I suppose hugging strangers on the street is not always the best course of action. Here is Peter Gwinn, a writer for The Colbert Report:

We do face a serious problem, because now that George Bush is no longer president, nothing is funny in the entire world. I expect that in 2009, most of my own comedy will consist of reading Laffy Taffy wrappers out loud: “Why are rhinos so wrinkly?” “Because they’re hard to iron.” That joke right there will always be comedy gold, at least until America elects a rhino president.

Another example of a good bad joke, thank you, Peter.

Catastrophe!

Friend-of-the-blog Patty sent Spit Takes a link to an article in today's Telegraph about people who laugh at bad jokes. According to scientists* at WSU, four in ten people laugh when told a bad joke. Of course, their sample size is small, but for the purposes of their argument, we'll assume that extrapolating from it is kosher. Their experiment consisted of telling almost 200 people this joke:

"What did the big chimney say to the little chimney?"
"Nothing! Chimneys can't talk!"

Of course, they probably could have done better if they had used a funnier "bad joke." I didn't even laugh at the chimney joke, and if I don't laugh at a bad joke, it is a baaaad joke. There are no puns, no subverted expectations, no offensive jabs--it's as if a three-year-old who has just begun to understand the concept of "joke" had tried to come up with something on her own. Off the top of my head, here are set-ups to three examples (answers at the end of the post, to heighten the suspense!) that come to mind as better bad jokes than the chimney one:

1) "What's brown and sticky?"

2) "Two muffins were sitting in a oven. The first one turned to the second and said, 'Man, it is hot in here!'"

3) "Did you hear about the fire at the circus?"

All of those are stupid, yes, but at least they require at least a little brainpower. 1 and 3 are built on wordplay, and 2 is built on the idea of setting up presumptions and then immediately tearing them down. It can be hard to pull those off, but arguably, the king of that is Steve Martin. Here's an excerpt from an SNL monologue he did in 1977. Unfortunately, I can't find it on YouTube so you'll have to project your own version of his enunciation onto the transcript (it was his smarmy, stylized-eagerness phase); my bolds are there for your convenience:

Okay! Hey, does anybody know where I can get some cat handcuffs? I've gotta get a pair of cat handcuffs. Either two little ones like this, to go around the little paws...or a big one that hooks onto my arm and then hooks onto the cat. I found out my cat was embezzling from me, so I've gotta get a little pair...of cat handcuffs, so...Well, I found out that when I'm away, he goes to the mailbox, picks up the checks, take them down to the bank and cashes them. The way I caught him, I went out to his little house, where he sleeps at night, and there was like $3,000 worth of cat toys out there. And you can't return them, because they have spit all over them. I don't know where he is now, I guess he went out to Catalina, or something like that, I don't know... [ audience groans slightly ] No. He bought a catamaran, and went out... [ audience groans again ] No, he got it out of a catalog... [ groans ] This is a catastrophe!

Ah, jeez! Terrible, but funny. This was back when Steve Martin could do both of those adjectives together, of course, instead of just one or the other...for the love of Pete(r Sellers), please let the Pink Panther franchise rest in peace.

The Telegraph article concludes with a quick explanation of why people laugh at bad jokes ("because they [are] surprised at receiving such a bad punchline"), but then, they put a little English spin on it by discussing Christmas crackers, and listing some terrible jokes compiled by a psychologist at Hertfordshire University. My favorite was

"Why were the rabbits eating the motorway?"
"It was a dual cabbageway!"

because I had to stare at it for a bit before I remembered that the British use weird words like "carriageway" in everyday speech. Har!

Got a good bad joke? Share it in the comments!

1) A stick.
2) Holy shit, a talking muffin!
3) It was in tents.

* "Scientists," really. It was a bunch of assistant English professors. No wonder this story didn't make the papers over here.