Processing Humor

C.P. Snow was right in 1959 when he talked about the "two cultures"--it's a shame that as fields get more specialized, well-ranging knowledge falls by the wayside. Let it never be said that Spit Takes widened that divide (in fact, we've talked science here before).

So--with that in mind, let's visit an awesome article from earlier this month on the New Scientist site. The Comedy Circuit: When Your Brain Gets the Joke is a brief but in-depth exploration of what researchers learn when applying fMRI scans to people on the receiving end of humor (watching sitcoms, reading cartoons, etc.). 


I won't go in to all their discoveries, because they already have (and it truly is worth your time), but here are some highlights that I appreciated: 

No two brains are the same, however, and how these differences are reflected in our sense of humour is the subject of much research. Men and women, for example, seem to process jokes slightly differently. Although both sexes laugh at roughly the same number of jokes, women show greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex than men (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 102, p 16496). "This suggests a greater degree of executive processing and language-based decoding," says Mobbs. As a result, women take significantly longer than men to decide whether they find something funny, though that doesn't seem to spoil their enjoyment of the joke. Indeed, women show a greater response in the limbic system than men, suggesting they feel a greater sense of reward.

How gratifying to see these results talked about in an elevated and fair way, as opposed to some other ridiculous treatments I've seen.

The researchers hope that pinning down the brain processes involved in understanding jokes could shed light on a number of medical conditions. Mobbs, for example, hopes that studying humour will provide insights into depression. "It is believed that the reward system is disrupted in depression and it would be interesting to see if this deficit extends to more complex social processes such as humour," he says.

Samson, meanwhile, hopes it could contribute to our understanding of autism. Previous research has suggested that people with autism have difficulty understanding comedy, but her work shows that they can understand and appreciate certain types of jokes as well as anyone...This could change the way we interact with autistic children, she says.

They make a point of showing that while volunteers with Asperger's had difficulty with processing so-called "theory-of-mind" jokes (those that require empathizing with characters--i.e., when one character doesn't get what the other is talking about), they enjoy visual puns as much as other control groups.  I'm glad there is support for my belief that puns are the most accessible form of comedy, and not the lowest, unless lowest happens to be used as a the fruit-hanging descriptor, for example, puns are low-hanging fruit that everyone can reach, in which case...never mind, I guess I am fine with that verbage.

Not Cool, Zeus. Not Cool. (Part Two)

As introduced previously, this is the letter of an artist who respects the administrative side of things, but also gets that it isn't--it can't be--his job to do it. Conan has respect and devotion to the Tonight Show as an artistic institution, and is pissed that the administration isn't willing to see it the same way (or don't trust him to keep it safe). Below is Nikki Finke's take on his statement, and I'm right there with her:

I'm proud of O'Brien for standing his ground and protecting his own and The Tonight Show's future from NBC's nitwits. There's a rich legacy of that among his predecessors, from Steve Allen through Jack Paar and during Johnny Carson: they all refused to knuckle under to the network. Only Jay Leno didn't. Instead, he begged like a dog for The Tonight Show, and then rolled over and played dead even after Zucker canned him. Then Leno stayed with the network and agreed to a 10 PM show doomed from the outset. What a doormat. Obviously, NBCU thought Conan would be just as compliant. I'm thrilled that he's not. Hollywood should be, too, and publicly support him.

But it isn't just about fighting back against the big man. The littler regional men with the tinny voices need to be considered, too:

The move to redirect Mr. Leno from prime time, where his new show has struggled since September, back to late night was fueled by complaints from NBC’s affiliated stations that they were seeing diminished ratings for their 11 o’clock local newscasts as a result of low lead-in audiences each night in the 10 o’clock hour.

Poor, dear local affiliates. Declining lead-ins are the problem for your news shows? Sure. Sure they are.

So--is there a solution? Not one that I can puzzle out. All sides have valid points and concerns, but I like and trust (and know) Conan more than anyone else involved, so in his camp I will stay. And if you need any more prodding to join Team Conan, let Finke remind you (and Jeff Gaspin, to whom this comment is directed) of Conan's true colors:

Go back and watch O'Brien's charm and wit when he was hosting Late Night during the writers strike. That was a glimpse of the real Conan, not the uncomfortable twitching wreck doing Tonight Show duty. Play to his strengths.

The proof is in the strike beard.

Go Team Conan, whatever field we end up on.

POSTSCRIPT: Got this from @ebertchicago on Twitter. Barely made it through Leno and Kimmel's bit...yeesh, that was uncomfortable ("Conan and I have children! You have cars! Leave our shows alone!"). Nice mention of Jimmy's random fear of Mt. Rainier, though.

Not Cool, Zeus. Not Cool. (Part One)

I don't pretend to know my way around the very confusing Hedge Maze of Factors Contributing to NBC's Unhappy Situation. But here I go, hacking into anyway! Let's start with a quote from the Media Decoder blog at nytimes.com:

The problem is not disclosure, or jokes, but the facts themselves. There are some things even the best communications strategy can’t fix, and this is one of them: angry talent standing in front of a pile of smoking rubble that used to be a programming schedule.

By nature, the best of the talent, as generally creative (read: inventive) folks, can adapt to changing landscape more efficiently than the administration. Shows, whether broadcast as a radio production or streamed directly into our contact lenses, need to be written, directed, performed, edited, designed, and any other number of artistic-past-tense-verbed. The job of the networks is on shakier ground. How will advertising fit in, and to what extent? What are the administrative needs and costs of producing and distributing the product? How do you measure and track the audience when they consume their media in multiple, shifting, flighty ways?

I don't envy the Jeff Zuckers or Jeff Gaspins of the world their jobs. But they get paid a lot of money for that responsibility, so they need to nut up (or ovary up, in some cases) and do their jobs. The industry has static (ref: the plot of "Singing in the Rain," James Cameron for the last fifteen years). The whole impetus of movie-making and broadcasting is to continue the narrative. That goes for the stories as well as the technology involved, the union rules, the censorship requirements, the audience preferences, etc.

When Charlie Chaplin finances, writes, produces, directs, acts in, and composes original music for his own work, you have a perfect storm. A gifted multimedia artist who is also an effective administrator produces a quality product that can perform as intended. But that isn't a sustainable model--the business is too big and (non-Chaplin) talents are too narrow. Networks and their executives need to be more nimble--more investments like Hulu.com and more nuanced understanding (and communication) of the new map being drawn by the combination of streaming/DVR numbers and traditional ratings, plus any other matrices by which they judge "success."

The talent (in this case, the comedians) have another leg up besides their adaptability. You can't be a good comic without being a good communicator. And as Media Decoder said, the problem is definitely not the jokes (weeeeeell, except for in Leno's case), however; in a meta-but-predictable twist, the problem has become the joke. If you've been watching, all the late-night monologues have been directing some level of vitriol to the network or executives over the last couple days (especially Conan). Comedy done right can be a verbal panic room--powerful self-defense. That goes for stand-up and the written word, and if you haven't read Conan's letter yet, you must--it's a great and honest in to what he is going through, and a sterling example of how to make your point, capture hearts and minds, and not be a dick.


More to come...

Book Review: E.B. White

I've been itching to take advantage of last summer's new MLA style revisions (NERD!), so I'm pleased to introduce a new facet of Spit Takes: book reviews, complete with MLA-compliant citation!

White, E.B. Writings from the New Yorker, 1925-1976. Ed. Rebecca M. Dale. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Print.

I've given up my New Yorker subscription since my trek to work has changed and I'm no longer spending forty-five minutes on the bus every day. While it was sad to give up my commuter reading (it can be nearly impossible to finish a New Yorker every week when not a denizen of public transit), I seized the opportunity to indulge in more diverse reading material. I've had excellent forays, thanks both to a brilliant book club and well-chosen gifts, but sometimes, you have to get a fix of what you miss. After having read George Packer's collections of George Orwell essays (Facing Unpleasant Facts and All Art is Propaganda, both excellent), I was in the mood for more New Yorker-connected prose. I picked up this collection of White writings at Powell's when I was in Portland last August. I'm so glad I did.

The book collects pieces that had only previously been published in the magazine: particularly the anonymous bits (like "Notes & Comments" and "Talk of the Town"). About White's prose, Dale says in her introduction, "[w]hile he was often playful in his writing , sometimes delighting in the spirit of fun for its own sake, he also dealt with important subjects...[h]is humor, which permeated nearly all of his writing, is the type that 'plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth.'" (This quote of White's comes from another essay, "Some Remarks on Humor," which is included Essays of E.B. White). My favorite writers and performers all operate in this vein--fun for fun's sake, but not at the expense of the important subjects. Jon Stewart's first show back after September 11, 2001, comes to mind.

Dale has organized the collection by topic, rather than date, which a gentle and supportive way of curating writing like White's. Issues at hand include Maine, the academic life, business, Christmas spirit, and whims, among others. Many pieces are written in the first-person singular, which is a mark of the magazine's editorial column; we learn in Dale's intro that White apparently disliked having to speak in that voice, noting that it gave "the impression that the stuff was written by a set of identical twins or the members of a tumbling act." Very Wodehousian!

In one section Dale has termed "The Word," there is a piece called "Satire on Demand," published sixty-one years ago this week:

One of our contemporaries, the Russian humor magazine called Crocodile, has been under fire lately. Crocodile got word from Higher Up that it would have to improve, would have to bear down harder on "the vestiges of capitalism in the consciousness of the people." This directive, according to the Associated Press, came straight from the Central Committee and was unusual only for its admission that there were any such vestiges. Crocodile was instructed to gird on its satiric pen and by "the weapons of satire to expose the thieves of public property, grafters, bureaucrats..." It has never been our good fortune to observe a controlled-press satirist who is under instructions from his government to get funnier, but it is a sight we'd gladly crawl under a curtain to see. A person really flowers as a satirist when he first slips out of control, and a working satirist (of whom there are woefully few in any country) careens as wildly as a car with no brakes. To turn out an acceptable pasquinade is probably unthinkable under controlled conditions, for the spirit of satire is the spirit of independence. Apparently the Russian committee anticipates difficulties in stepping up humor and satire by degree. Crocodile used to be a weekly. From now on it will appear only every ten days. Three extra days for each issue, for straining. [1/8/49]*

Most of the pieces in White's book are about this short, though some stretch to two or three pages. They aren't always funny, but they are almost always humorous. The dated references are generally helpful when you know what he is referring to, but when you don't, it casts a fog over the whole piece (not White's fault, of course--he lived and wrote through many decades and references). Dale usually provides footnotes for context, but if you didn't know about the controversy of Bertrand Russell's appointment to the City College of New York and Bishop William T. Manning's open letter denouncing it before you read "Our Contentious Readers," learning it about it halfway through won't help much. In general, though, it is an excellent book for picking up when you have a couple spare minutes--short, often fluffy pieces that are well-wrought and (surprisingly) educational. If you only know E.B. White as the guy who wrote Charlotte's Web, then Writings from the New Yorker is a great intro to his "grown-up" writing.

*Incidentally: if you haven't seen Jon's monologue recently, I highly suggest you watch it again. Not only is it generally worth 8:49 of your life--but he also speaks a bit in the first-person plural and addresses the idea of satire in a free country. Humor writing is humor writing, no matter the medium or subject.

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.

Today in Python

On November 13, the ArtsBeat blog on the New York Times posted this piece about how the dead parrot skit actually has its origins (whether the Pythons intended it or not) in a Greek book of jokes from the 4th century A.D. Titled "Philogelos," which you root-word fiends know means "lover of laughter," the book contains "age-old jokes about drunks, gluttons, halitosis, and misogyny." "Philogelos" has recently been translated into English, and in a neat twist on collaborative media, the translator (William Berg) and a British comic (Jim Bowen) have published an online multimedia book, which you can find here. The piece of interest for us in Python context, though, is the joke in which a man attempts to return a dead slave to the man who sold it to him. Definitely crueler, I think, but then that's ancient Greece, right?

Keeping in mind that there really is no new way to be funny, let's consider an article published yesterday in the New York Times, with the first line, "Is there life left in the dead parrot sketch?" Eric Idle has been the banner-carrier for the troupe since 1983, when "The Meaning of Life" was released. He's released books, DVDs, even a Broadway show (starring Clay Aiken and closing January 18th in NY! See it now! Or don't, it really wasn't that great...just go watch "Holy Grail" again). Now, Idle's assuring us that Monty Python can still be an active generator of content and discussion, even if Graham Chapman died in the eighties, and Michael Palin is off getting enough foreign policy experience to share with another Palin who might need it one day, and John Cleese is working on a stage musical adaptation of "A Fish Called Wanda," and Terry Gilliam is struggling to finish "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" without Heath Ledger, and Terry Jones is...god, what is Terry Jones doing? Well, Wikipedia says he's been directing plays in Portugal. Good for him.

Idle has launched a Web site, pythonline.com, that features Python YouTube videos, discussions, and other internetty things. It has been in beta-testing since the spring and officially goes live at the end of the month. I've perused it, and I think I agree with Robert J. Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse (and, evidently, a "huge Python fan" in high school): "When you can get a Monty Python screensaver, it ceases to be what Monty Python was." Python humor is all about them specifically NOT ingratiating themselves with the public--they were trying to be funny for each other and working their absurd Oxford/Cambridge comedy roots (which, yes, do exist; Cambridge Footlights Players alumni also include Douglas Adams, Sasha Baron Cohen, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson...the list goes on). 

I disliked "Spamalot" for the same reason--it might make me a snob, but I want my comedy to challenge or surprise, rather than pander to the lowest common punchline. I want my strange Terry Gilliam illustrations to make NO SENSE and yet still form a cohesive narrative, not be icons that say "CLICK HERE TO GET A LIFE." And I want my Eric Idle to be not a web mogul but someone who dresses like this to meet the Prince:

That's more like it.

Follow-up: The Lockbox Strategery

Jokes and Positive Perceptions

I ran across some more news today that ties in directly with what I talked about in my last post. The Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has tracked late-night jokes made about presidential candidates since 1988, reported that from September 1, 2008 through last Friday, October 24, the Republican ticket has been the butt of 475 jokes, while the Democratic ticket was mocked only 69 times. That is nearly a 7:1 ratio (6.88:1, to be more precise), and is a thorough trouncing that no previous elections have come anywhere near.

This is, of course, reflective of the larger trend in benevolent comments about Barack Obama. Since the party conventions, evening news shows have been 65% positive. This is based on data from ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and Fox Special Report. To McCain, the shows have only been 36% positive, and he (impressively?) falls behind even Sarah Palin's positive-comment percentage of 42%. (Evidently, Joe Biden gets talked about so little there isn't enough data for "meaningful analysis.")

As always, an addendum:

On Fox News Channel, by contrast, Obama's press has been only 28% positive during the general election, even worse than the 38% positive evaluations of McCain. Palin's coverage has been 49% positive on Fox, slightly higher than on the three networks.

Stay classy, Fox News. 

Punchlines Punching Back

Back in August, the CMPA released a list of the top joked-about public figures, and Obama was number four (behind W., Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, respectively). Jon Stewart told the most Obama jokes and Stephen Colbert told the most McCain ones, while Jay Leno joshed Hillary more than any other comics.  

Unfortunately, what this measurement doesn't weigh is what exactly about the candidate the comics make fun of. For example, Obama jokes in August were things like "The big story is Obama's world tour. Today, he made history by being the first man to travel around the world in a plane propelled by the media's flash photography." (Colbert) and "The tour may strike some a presumptuous. In fact, I joked that Obama would be stopping in Bethlehem to visit the manger where he was born." (Stewart). Those punchlines are built on public perception and veneration of Obama, not who he is as a person. This is a more accessible kind of humor for people of diverse political leanings, and funny in a both hey-that's-true and self-deprecation-of-the-media way. Nuanced! Of course, the ever-classy Leno writing room turned out one-note, candidate-specific gems like "Obama said he'll visit Iraq and Afghanistan because he wants to see an area overrun by violent extremists. So it sounds like he already misses his old church." Let's hope Conan takes all of his writers with him when he moves into that slot and doesn't have to inherit that kind of crap.

The Lockbox Strategery

My, Spit Takes has been a busy girl! A month and no blogging action...I suppose I've just been caught up in election fever. Haven't we all? 

Well, the only thing the New York Times is more obsessed with than the election is coverage of and reaction TO the election. Hence today's article about how late-night comedy has seen a huge uptick in ratings and viewings recently. A run-down of some of their facts:

• Ratings for SNL are up 50%
• The Daily Show averaged 2 million viewers in September (that's huge for cable), and more viewers per episode than Conan
• Number of internet viewings of the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler Palin-Couric sketch have surpassed the nearly 10 million people who watched it when it originally aired on 9/27

A big part of the success for SNL, of course, is the guest-starring of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. A soon as Palin was announced, people started clamoring for Tina to take her on. We (and Seth Meyer's writers' room) are lucky she did. Another part of the success--for all programs, comedy and actual news--is that people really are paying attention. Seth points out, 

It's best for a writer when 70 million people see a debate...we did 11.5 minutes on that debate sketch last week [Sarah Palin/Joe Biden, with Tina Fey and Jason Sudeikis]. We couldn't do that if everybody hadn't watched it.

As far as the Daily Show and the Colbert Report go, they've been beating Leno, Conan, Dave, Craig, and Jimmy Kimmel in the coveted "men from 18-34" bracket pretty regularly...by several hundreds of thousands viewers per episode. Oof! In the big picture that is ratings, however, that isn't huge: the Daily Show averages 1.45 to 1.6 million viewers nightly, which is high for cable but nothing compared to, say, CSI's 18.6 million. However, in the big picture that is "the youth vote," however that might be defined, is spending more time listening to what Jon and Stephen have to say and less to the network boys. Conan puts it pretty well:

For some of the shows politics is their bread and butter. Shows like mine and Jay's and Dave's also do different things. Sometimes I have to move on to something silly, like me jumping in a vat of cheddar cheese.

I think Conan sells himself short. His impressions of Bush ("Uh-huuuuh?!") and Schwarzenegger ("Baargh!!") are some of the best out there. Though of course Conan + vat of anything = awesome.

So how much sway does Conan (or Jon, or Jay) have over public opinion? Since the Clinton years, presidential politics have started cropping up more and more in "nontraditional" media outlets, and people have been trying to parse the effects. An article published in the March 2004 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media studied the influence of late-night comedy on the 2000 election, and it had some interesting points that still apply today. In regards to jokes made during the 2000 election, 

Among those subjects who did not watch late-night, Democrats rated Bush less knowledgeable over time and Republicans rated him more knowledgeable over time. But partisans who were high consumers of late-night appeared identical in the extent to which their ratings of Bush's knowledgeability changed from July to October.

Of course, comedy (at least, broadcast and mainstream sketch comedy) only really works if your viewer has knowledge of what you're joking about, as Seth mentioned earlier. Jon is quoted in this journal piece as pointing out that audiences need to "know something before [comedians can] even make a joke about it." This is what works so well with the Fey/Palin skits on SNL: many viewers have already glutted themselves on the ACTUAL ridiculousness of Palin's interviews and appearances, therefore they are familiar with the material. So when Fey repeats some lines verbatim, that is one kind of funny (sad funny, I suppose), and when she makes others up that are in the style of the actual quotes, that is a comedy of recognition.

With all that in mind, I'm not sure I'm convinced that our late-night friends actually have that much influence over public opinion. Let's conclude with what Lorne pointed out in the Times:

"I think we offer some perspective," Mr. Michaels said. "But when people start getting into how we're changing things, I think we're not. I think we affect the media and maybe influence some people. I think we're a safety valve. Some pressure gets let off by what we do."

Thoughts? Have you ever had your mind changed by a monologue, joke, or skit?

Stephen Colbert's Digitized DNA To Be Sent Into Space

Richard Garriott, a video game designer who will be going to the International Space Station in October, will take Colbert's digitized DNA with him. In a statement, he said:

In the unlikely event that Earth and humanity are destroyed, mankind can be resurrected from Stephen Colbert's DNA...Is there a better person for us to turn to for this high-level responsibility?

Awesome.

[via the New York Times]

Rhett, You Got It Goin' On (Got it Goin' On)

I find there are two general kinds of funny songs. Prose-funny includes troubadours like Jonathan Coulton or Flight of the Conchords. Their songs are like the opposite of sad folk songs, in that they generally tell a story, unveiling more and more information as you go, and leading up to punchlines rather than sad reveals. Think about hilarious versions of Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate," where he waits until the final verse to let on that he's really talking about himself (gasp!). 

Jonathan Coulton, or JoCo, as he is (semi-ironically) known, has a song called "Skullcrusher Mountain," a love song written from a mad scientist/evil genius to the girl he has kidnapped. My favorite verse: 

I made this half-monkey-half-pony monster to please you

But I get the feeling that you don't like it, what's with all the screaming? 

You like monkeys, you like ponies 

Maybe you don't like monsters so much

Maybe I used too many monkeys 

Isn't it enough to know I ruined a pony making a gift for you? 

He really commits to the character, referring to doomsday plans and henchmen...it really is the kind of song you can imagine Syndrome writing, if he were the creative type. 

What makes Coulton's and FotC's stuff even better is that they are all really good musicians. Just like with "real" musicians, which leads me to my second category: poetry-funny. Tons of songwriters fall into this category, mostly with puns and asides that they slip into their songs to deepen the meaning or give the songs just the right kind of little Velcro-hooks to stick in your imagination. For instance, Paul McCartney wanted to show how dim his protagonist is in the Beatles' "Paperback Writer," and the third line of the first verse leaves no doubt: 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look 

It's based on a novel by a man named Lear

And I need a job so I want to be a paperback writer

Rhett Miller is a master of the sly reference, as well. I think one of the reasons I love him and the Old 97's so much (beyond his sexy, sexy stage dancing) is his clever songwriting. Consider this verse from "Hover" on his 2006 solo album "The Instigator:"

The city is dark

But we're not scared

Wrapped up in each other

Making loving out of nothing

Like the Air Suppliers said

By referring to the common ground of pop music, Rhett lets us in on the joke, while at the same time co-opting it for his own imagery. Also, I love the idea of Rhett Miller, who looks like this: 

...listening to Air Supply, who, when the cheesetastic "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" came out, looked like this:

Of course, the trick of putting jokes into lyrics reaches way beyond pop music. Country music is great at it (witness even just the title of Toby Keith and Willie Nelson's "Whiskey for My Men, Beer for My Horses").* And with its roots in poetry, rap is the perfect medium. The first time I heard Cancer Rising's "Play It Again" on the radio, I drove straight to Sonic Boom and bought the album because of the following verse: 

Stop tryin'

And I'm bound to rhythm and flow

With it

So hit it

Fans tell me 'go spit it, bro'

So spiritual

Dog, it's Roxanne to my Cyrano

Wrote a song about it, baby

Here it go

The Cancer Rising boys illustrated how much they love music with an original, non-cliched example (plus, anyone who can rhyme "go spit it, bro" with "Roxanne to my Cyrano" is more than alright in my book). It's the classic "show versus tell," the mainstay of all post-Raymond Carver creative writing and something I beat into the minds of my 826 students as often as I can. 

So I've just touched the tip of the iceberg; there are many more examples of comedy in music. And I didn't even get into musical comedies or Tin Pan Alley lyrics! But you get the idea. Any songs with jokes that come to mind for you?

*Thank you, Brandi, for knowing that song off the top of your head.

The Ol' Switcheroo

Somehow (probably through John Hodgman) I found the Love Poem Project, a subsidiary of You Will Not Believe.

The Love Poem Project takes classic love poems and replaces the word "love" with something else. This is shtick, pure and simple, which means it unfortunately only works in small doses...too much and your sense of humor dulls to it. But comedy would be nowhere without shtick, so I celebrate it! In little nibbles, anyway.

With that in mind, here are some brief excerpts:

"On Batman" by Thomas Kempis

Batman is a mighty power,

a great and complete good.

Batman alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.

He bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders

all bitterness sweet and acceptable.

Nothing is sweeter than Batman, 

Nothing stronger,

Nothing higher,

Nothing wider,

Nothing more pleasant,

Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for Batman is born of God.

...

and 

I Watched Caddyshack With Thee by Elizabeth Acton

...

I watched Caddyshack with thee, as the glad bird watched Caddyshack with

The freedom of its wing,

On which delightedly it moves

In wildest wandering.

I watched Caddyshack with thee as I watched Caddyshack with the swell,

And hush, of some low strain,

Which bringeth, by its gentle spell, 

The past to life again.

...

Dorothy Parker it isn't, but it is good work for a shticky blog. Other substitutes for "love" in other poems include "Google," "wearing your pants backward," and "Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk." Inspired!

The Democratic Party: the Party of Comedy

Humor in politics is really interesting. For most politicians, it is generally a tool in a bag of tricks, an easy fix for something. John McCain can occasionally be funny in a chortle-y kind of way at times, and it serves to make him more...relatable? Or something. 

Of course, like with any piece of comedy, humor in politics can backfire on you. Let's look at a fictional example. The pilot episode of THE WEST WING follows (among other stories) the mini-saga of Josh Lyman almost getting sacked because he got into an argument with the Evangelical activist Mary Marsh during a TV debate. They are fighting about the presence of God in politics, and Mary says, "Well, I can tell you don't believe in any God I pray to, Mr. Lyman. Not any God I pray to." Josh pounces: "Lady, the God you pray to is too busy getting indicted for tax fraud!" Hi-larious! However, it's mean-funny, and that is a dangerous place to be.

The below scene is the final confrontation (and the first introduction of President Bartlet), wherein the agitated Mary Marsh and her cronies unleash their own bigoted brand of mean-funny, to similarly disastrous results. Josh keeps his head, but Toby, as per usual, has the most interesting reaction. He never crosses over into attack humor--he keeps on the defensive, but in such a biting way that it is really effective (i.e. the lug wrench line).

He's wrong about the Third Commandment, of course. The Third Commandment is "you shall not make yourself an idol," and frankly I'm baffled as to why Sorkin let that mistake slip by. Unless it was on purpose...in which case I don't have the energy to unpack everything that could be behind those intentions. Either, this is one of the many examples of why early WW is just so choice: this is the first episode, and we already know a ton about how all the characters process and react to humor in their line of work. 

But on to real life! The DNC this week has given us a couple good examples of well-oiled funny working its way into the speeches. What notable to me is not the presence of humor (that's not new) but the effortlessness with which our dear Dems have been approaching it. Gone is the scrambling of 2000, the nervous collar-tugging of 2004...the party has all the swoosh and confidence of someone who just lost fifteen pounds and bought a nice new pair of pants.  As a Democrat, I gotta say, it's a really wonderful feeling. I hope we use it well.

In another year, with darker clouds hanging over the future, perhaps the following jokes that I pulled out of keynote speeches wouldn't be so funny. But I'm just so optimistic about everything now, I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt!

• After her (college-basketball-coach) brother Craig introduced her, Michelle Obama opened her speech on Monday the 25th with, "As you might imagine, for Barack, running for president is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother Craig." Bad. Ass. Whachyou got, Cindy McCain?! Half-siblings that are voting for Obama,* that's what.
• My girl Hillary had a nice, femme-friendly crack about her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuit" in her speech on Tuesday the 26th. Not my bag, personally (I don't own a pantsuit** and I've never read that book), but it makes me happy to see a woman bonding with other women in a venue like that. 
• Bill, that silver fox, also got a jab or two in during his keynote. Right off the bat, he dispelled any bad blood left over from the primary in one fell, punny swoop: "The campaign generated so much heat, it increased global warming!" He got a big laugh for that one.
• In that vein, Mr. Al Gore had one of my favorite jokes of the week in his speech yesterday at Mile High Stadium. It's worth your fifteen minutes to watch his impassioned tirade (Daniel Dae Kim shows up at about 7:05!), even if just to be wistful about what could have happened...sigh. His joke: "John McCain, a man who has earned our respect on many levels, is now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush/Cheney White House and promising to actually continue them. The same policies? Those policies? All over again? Hey, I believe in recycling, but that's ridiculous." A rare case where "it's funny because it's true" applies. Of everyone in the whole world, you KNOW that Al effing Gore believes in recycling.

Obama and Biden mostly shied away from the direct humor to focus on portraying themselves as credulous and sincere as possible, which I quite understand. I really look forward to the debates, though; Barack is pretty damn fast on his feet with witty comebacks. And Sarah Palin, you'd better be able to bring it! Or at least pay Tina Fey to sit in for you.

Any other keynote jokes I missed? Thoughts on humor in politics? Bring it up in the comments!

* Ugh. Sorry. I promise that is the first and last time I ever link to Us Magazine.

** On the day I was elected as a county delegate for Hillary at my caucus, I was wearing my totally awesome Batman t-shirt.

World's Oldest Jokes

Welcome to an international edition of Spit Takes! We're coming to you live from England, where today the BBC news site has a special report about the world's oldest jokes. Below are the examples from the article:

"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." (Sumerian, 1900 BCE)

"What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? A key." (British, 10th century)

"How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? Sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile -- and urge the pharaoh to go fishing." (Egyptian, 1600 BCE)

And the last, the Roman one from the 1st century BCE. Emperor Augustus is touring his realm and comes across a man who bears a striking resemblance to himself.

Intrigued, he asks the man: "Was your mother at one time in service at the palace?"

The man replies: "No, your highness, but my father was."

The Roman one has a more complex structure with a specific dialogue-based punchline, which is of course a stronger way to build a joke than, say, the Egyptian one, which mostly just sounds like a true statement. Though it is good to know that the blonde jokes I've been hearing all my life have a long pedigree. "How do you get a ______ to _______?" is a pretty strong standby for any generalization joke, I suppose.

The Sumerian is pretty great too; how heartening to know that the idea of women having any kind of non-sexy bodily function is a source of humor that has been mined for so long. And the British one? I'm reminded of one of my first posts about what Mark Twain had to say about how to tell a story. His theory was that a British joketeller structures a comic story without "slur[ring] the nub; he shouts it at you—every time. And when he prints it...he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life." We definitely get a bit of that in the key joke though the BBC copyeditors kept it formatted normally; clearly you'd have to punctuate the end with emphasis or the joke wouldn't work at all.

Bill Cosby is a Thief

My friend and co-worker Mr. Benjamin Rapson is wonderful to have around. He is blond, his birthday is two days before mine, and he has the kind of beard I'd want to have if I were a man. Ben is also really funny, and told me the other day about the first-ever pun joke he made when he was seven. I'd like to share it with you all now.

Ben: "So, I was reading the newspaper."
Ben's dad: "Really?"
Ben: "Yup. I saw that Bill Cosby was hard up for money, so he robbed a hospital. While he was there, he also took an iron lung."
Ben's dad: "..."
Ben (triumphantly): "The headline was, 'Cosby Steals Cash and Lung.'"

Brilliant. It folds in pop culture references, it's play on TWO sets of names, and if you tell it fast enough, you don't see where it is going until you're hit with the punchline. Nice work, lil' Rapson!

SP 20: A Weekend of Comedy

Happy 20th (kind of) birthday, Sub Pop! Thank you for all the music and the Northwest identity and stuff. But especially thank you for including comedy albums and their makers on your roster. And bringing them to Seattle for the festivities.

July 11
Friday night was the Sub Pop comedy show at the Moore, hosted by Kristen Schaal (the Fan Base from FotC) and featuring Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, Patton Oswalt and David Cross. My favorites were of course Eugene and Patton, because I'm not the biggest Todd Barry fan (though I wouldn't consider myself an anti-fan) and I tend to like David Cross better when he's performing other people's material ("Excuse me...do these effectively hide my thunder?"). Plus, Cross had a little bit of an off night, involving leaving notes backstage and swallowing some parts of his punchlines.

One of my favorite jokes of the evening was Eugene Mirman's bit about stereotyping based on assumptions that no one has ever made. For example, he told the story that once he was in a small, crowded elevator, and to break the silence, another passenger made the comment, "I bet they don't make elevators this small in Russia!" Which, Eugene pointed out to us, is NOT one of society's previously agreed-upon stereotypes. It didn't make sense, just like it wouldn't make any sense if someone said, "I went out with this Jewish girl, and man, she was rude as a wolfcat! Which is an animal I just made up. And decided was rude."

Patton was priceless and original as always, but one of his many gems was his monologue about how most presidents have off moments because they work a lot and are struggling with stress and problems of their own, but that doesn't quite account for our current Dear Leader's communication problems. Though he is reputed to take care of himself very well, W. still gets away with amazing missteps. So Patton wants to know "why, when the man gets ten hours of sleep, works out for three hours, and has a big cup of coffee, he can still get up in front of people and say idiotic things like [pointing to his legs and then his head] 'PANTS ARE HATS!'"

I know quoting stand-up from memory in a blog is a poor substitute for the actual experience, and the above jokes are pretty dependent on the delivery...but if you've ever seen Eugene or Patton do stand-up, then you can imagine they really slayed.

What's that? You haven't? Well, please enjoy this slightly weird explanation of Canada from Eugene Mirman. Who is not Canadian. Nor a wolfcat.



July 12
Saturday was Day 1 of the music festival for Sub Pop, which I celebrated by sitting on the Marymoor lawn eating Luna bars, doing crossword puzzles, napping, and generally enjoying summer with Sara, Patty, and Jacqui. Highlights for me included the Helio Sequence, Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, and (especially) several of my husbands, Bret and Jemaine--you may know them as Flight of the Conchords. I got up out of my chair and clawed my way into the sweaty crowd for them, of course. Lots of fun: their banter was witty, they seemed genuinely surprised when someone threw a pair of boxers at them (Jemaine: "They're...warm. And they appear to have a snowboarding motif. But I'm not going to investigate that very closely."), and--perhaps most importantly--they don't do note-for-note performances of their songs. Live, FotC keep some of the funny bits, they drop some, they add some: all marks of good comedians (and musicians, actually) that can handle the long haul without going stir-crazy.

FotC played some new material, including one song in which Jemaine laments all the girlfriends that have left him and the different ways they did it (smoothly folding in a reference to '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover'), and Bret sings the part of the choir of Jemaine's pissed-off ex-girlfriends. During "The Boom King," the gentlemen got up and did a choreographed booty-shaking dance, which made all of the ladies scream, myself included. Imagine, if you will, that the Capitol Hill Block Party had a baby with Beatlemania. That is what being at a Flight of the Conchords show is like.

As we were leaving the comedy show on Friday, Sub Pop folks were handing out free compilation CDs. There are some excellent tracks on it from the likes of Sera Cahoone, Blitzen Trapper, Grand Archives and other Sub Pop darlings...but my favorite is perhaps FotC's "Bret, You Got It Going On." I'll leave you with the clip from that episode.

Indeed you do, Bret. Indeed you do.