22 March 2009

Not funny

Ya know, for a liberal feminist Christian, I'm pretty hard to offend. I like off-colour jokes. I have no problem with racist, sexist humour *if* it is done without being actually hateful. Fine line. And not always a clear line at the same place for everyone, so if a joke happens to offend me, I usually don't make a big fuss about it. I might say, "Wow. Offensive" or something like that.

But last night, I watched the Comedy Central Roast of Larry the Cable Guy. Now, I know roasts are supposed to be one insult after another. I'm not stupid. I like insulting comedy. I love a good roast. What I don't like is jokes about pedophilia, spousal abuse, slavery. I mean, c'mon. Suggesting that Warren Sapp's contract included trade for a mule? Cracks about Chris Brown? Suggesting that Foxworthy fucks children? Seriously. WTF? How does anyone find this funny?

Now there were some completely awesome jokes, and I was howling with laughter at most of Maureen McCormick's bit. So I'll probably watch the next roast that comes out too. And I'll probably be offended by about a quarter of it again.

Oh, and a note to all comedians: If the joke bombs, it's because you are not funny. Not because the audience is too "PC". Nick DiPaolo is Not Funny. His jokes were so over the top that people who'd been laughing at jokes about Lisa Lampanelli's vagina (really? that's funny? okay...) just stared at him. And his reaction was to tell them that it was really funny, but they were too stupid or PC to know it.

I think I must be spoiled. The first roast I ever saw was the Friars roast of Johnny Carson. It was hilarious, rude, insulting, and not over my personal line. Of course, the people they had roasting him weren't two bit comedians for whom these roasts are the highlight of their career. Instead, they had his friends and colleagues who could tell funny stories and insult him with class.

Or maybe I'm just getting old. :)

3 comments:

deBeauxOs said...

It seems as though they scraped the bottom of a barrel deeper than the one they rolled out for William Shatner's roast or Dennis Leary's.

I like the Roast format but I detest the hackneyed disgusting depths some of the over-the-hill pseudo-comics plumb. Since they're not funny they go for the shock and revulsion response from the audience.

Luna said...

That's just it. They're not funny. And if you think the Shatner and Leary roasts were bad, did you see Pamela Anderson's or Bob Saget's? Bleah. Every other joke in the Anderson roast was about the size of her vagina, and in Saget's they were forever saying he was fucking the Olson twins. Sickening.

Chimera said...

*sigh* Humor is one of those things that is extremely individual. I hate slapstick and scatology, but cultural humor (Jewish mother jokes) suits me just fine as long as it's not nasty. And I'm the one that gets to judge what is nasty. I got used to puns only because I couldn't escape them, so I learned to ignore them.

Mostly, though, I manage to escape what other people call humor simply by not having a television hooked up to anything but my DVD player.