What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jerry Seinfeld Explains How to Write a Joke

in Comedy, Writing | December 21st, 2012

This week The New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry titled “Jer­ry Sein­feld Intends to Die Stand­ing Up,” fill­ing us in on what the come­di­an has been up to in the 14 years since Sein­feld, the sit­com that seemed to define the ’90s, went off the air. As Jon­ah Wein­er explains, Sein­feld has been “liv­ing the life of a road com­ic, albeit one who sells out 20,000-seat Lon­don are­nas and schleps to gigs via char­tered planes rather than rent­ed sub­com­pacts.”

Despite his great wealth, Sein­feld has cho­sen to devote part of almost every week since 2000 (two years after the end of the TV show) to doing stand-up com­e­dy. At 58, Sein­feld remains ful­ly com­mit­ted to the craft of telling jokes to a room­ful of strangers. As he tells Wein­er, he sees him­self more as an exact­ing ath­lete than a tor­tured artist. “I’m not fill­ing a deep emo­tion­al hole here,” Sein­feld says. “I’m play­ing a very dif­fi­cult game, and if you’d like to see some­one who’s very good at a dif­fi­cult game, that’s what I do.”

And if you’d like to learn a lit­tle about how the game of stand-up com­e­dy is played, the Times has post­ed this inter­est­ing five-minute video in which Sein­feld explains the evo­lu­tion of a joke, from sim­ple child­hood obser­va­tion to care­ful­ly thought-out gag. “Where­as most come­di­ans are lazy bas­tards,” Sarah Sil­ver­man says of Sein­feld, “he’s the ulti­mate crafts­man.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee: Jer­ry Sein­feld’s New Series Debuts on the Web

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Woody Allen Boxes a Kangaroo, 1966

in Comedy | December 18th, 2012

Last month, we fea­tured Woody Allen answer­ing thir­teen unusu­al ques­tions from Robert B. Wei­de’s film Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary. Well, it turns out that it was­n’t the only unusu­al footage the doc­u­men­tary had to offer. Dur­ing the 1960s, the young com­ic did what­ev­er his man­agers (Charles H. Joffe and Jack Rollins) thought would enhance his pub­lic pro­file. Some of his ear­ly per­for­mances and stunts were genius. Oth­ers flopped. You decide where this one falls. In 1966, Allen appeared on Hip­po­drome, a British vari­ety TV show that show­cased jump­ing dogs, trapeze acts, musi­cal acts and … kan­ga­roo box­ing match­es. This match went one round, with the Aus­tralian light heavy­weight cham­pi­on land­ing the only punch­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

Muham­mad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Inter­view

Woody Allen and the Rev­erend Bil­ly Gra­ham In Con­ver­sa­tion

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John Hodgman Presents a Survival Guide for the Coming Apocalypse

in Comedy, Current Affairs | December 10th, 2012

How can we all sur­vive the apoc­a­lypse pre­dict­ed by the Mayan cal­en­dar and make it to the oth­er side of Decem­ber 21?  John Hodg­man (you know him from The Dai­ly Show and Apple TV ads) has it all fig­ured out. Hope­ful­ly it’s not too much of a spoil­er to say load up on mayo and urine while you still have time.… h/t Devour

Catch us on Face­book and Twit­ter and spread qual­i­ty cul­ture through your social world!

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Gary Larson’s The Far Side Comes Alive in Series of Animated Cartoons

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons | December 9th, 2012

It used to be that you could­n’t go into a book­store this time of year with­out being lit­er­al­ly sur­round­ed by Gary Lar­son­’s The Far Side. His cal­en­dars and books were mas­sive best sell­ers and his sin­gle-pan­el comics seemed to be every­where, taped to cubi­cle walls and pinned to bul­letin boards. Lar­son­’s hilar­i­ous­ly sub­ver­sive sense of empathy–his way of ren­der­ing peo­ple with the detach­ment of an ento­mol­o­gist while invest­ing his ani­mal char­ac­ters with the most sym­pa­thet­ic of human traits–endeared him to mil­lions.

But in 1995, after 15 years of strug­gle against grind­ing dead­lines, Lar­son called it quits. Since then he’s been about as reclu­sive as Gre­ta Gar­bo or J.D. Salinger. And while Lar­son­’s cal­en­dars and books con­tin­ued to appear for some years after his retire­ment, The Far Side is not much in evi­dence these days. Which is sad. You can’t buy your friends a 2013 Far Side desk cal­en­dar this hol­i­day sea­son, but per­haps you can share this: a few twist­ed scenes from Lar­son­’s 1994 ani­mat­ed film, Tales From the Far Side. The film was orig­i­nal­ly aired as a Hal­loween spe­cial on CBS. The clip above begins on a fit­ting­ly nos­tal­gic note.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jazz Toons: Allen Mezquida’s Jour­ney from Bebop to Smigly

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Hilarious Video Proof: Your Ability to Make Realistic Sound Effects Is Gender-Based

in Comedy | December 7th, 2012

Like the num­ber of fem­i­nists need­ed to screw in a light bulb, gen­der-based assump­tions are NOT FUNNY!

Gen­der-based sound effects prove to be the excep­tion in Bleep Blap Bloop, a very fun­ny short film fea­tur­ing real peo­ple attempt­ing to imper­son­ate var­i­ous machines, pri­mar­i­ly vehi­cles and weapons of the sort one rarely encoun­ters in every day use. They’re not the most diverse bunch with regard to age or eth­nic­i­ty, but as far as white peo­ple in their 20’s go, Bleep Blap Bloop’s find­ings are pret­ty air­tight. The Y chro­mo­somes are the clear win­ners.

“Could­n’t you have done, like, a duck?” one of the female con­tes­tants asks as the cred­its roll.

What about you? Is this a case where you fit the mold? Please share your most tri­umphal (or least humi­lat­ing) sound effect below. Trans­peo­ple hearti­ly encour­aged to expand the con­ver­sa­tion!

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a proud fem­i­nist who changes light­bulbs solo and could­n’t make a machine gun noise even if she had an actu­al machine gun.

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Quentin Tarantino’s 75 Minute Interview with Howard Stern

in Comedy, Film | December 7th, 2012

Quentin Taran­ti­no sat down this week for an inter­view that cov­ered a lot of ter­rain — his strained his rela­tion­ship with his father, his ninth-grade edu­ca­tion and how it shapes his film­mak­ing, his path from work­ing in a video rental store to writ­ing scripts and even­tu­al­ly direct­ing films, his approach to film­ing vio­lence, his new West­ern film Djan­go Unchained, his plans to retire before he gets old and lots more. The inter­view­er? Yup, it’s Howard Stern on Sir­ius and the hearty chuck­les you hear in the back­ground belong to the Star Trek icon George Takei. Need­less to say the inter­view enters some Not-Safe-for-Work ter­ri­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

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Rainn Wilson Talks About Life’s Big Questions in His Web Series Metaphysical Milkshake

in Comedy, Philosophy | December 5th, 2012

Off­screen, Rainn Wilson—Dwight from The Office—has become a kind of pop-guru for the Web 2.0 set. In 2009, Wil­son and friends Joshua Hom­nick and Devon Gundry cre­at­ed Soul­Pan­cake, a media com­pa­ny designed to pro­vide an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence for peo­ple to “Chew on Life’s Big Ques­tions” (says the tagline): reli­gion, phi­los­o­phy, art, cul­ture, sci­ence, humor, life, death, you name it. And the refresh­ing thing about it is, while Wil­son is of the Bahai faith him­self, his orga­ni­za­tion is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion. So it’s a safe­ly ecu­meni­cal space for athe­ists, agnos­tics, and the grow­ing num­ber of “Nones” to inter­act with­out any dan­ger of pros­e­ly­tiz­ing or reli­gious inside base­ball.

Soul­Pan­cake has pro­duced a best-sell­ing book and scored a con­tent deal with Oprah’s OWN net­work, but it all grew out of a rather sim­ple idea—a video series called Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake. Billed as a “trav­el­ling talk show,” Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake is as low-con­cept, high-appeal as Jer­ry Seinfeld’s web series “Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee”: Basi­cal­ly, Wil­son dri­ves around in a beat-up sev­en­ties ston­er van and picks up celebri­ties like Joseph Gor­don-Levitt or less­er-known inter­net stars like blog­ger and “twit­ter fun­ny girl” Kel­ly Oxford, (who calls his ride “a sweaty rape van”). Then he dish­es with them about some deep and some not-so-deep stuff. And thanks to some cheap spe­cial effects, the van mag­i­cal­ly trans­ports them wher­ev­er the guest wants to go.

A cou­ple days ago, Wil­son picked up con­cep­tu­al prop-com­ic Demetri Mar­tin (or the oth­er way around). They gabbed about com­e­dy archae­ol­o­gy, get­ting mugged for beliefs, and draw­ing the state of their souls. Watch the short episode above and sub­scribe to the Soul­Pan­cake YouTube chan­nel to see them all and more.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Woody Allen Answers 12 Unconventional Questions He Has Never Been Asked Before

in Comedy, Film | November 28th, 2012

Woody Allen hates per­son­al pub­lic­i­ty. He does­n’t appear on talk shows or attend the Oscars. He rarely gives inter­views, even when he has a new film to pro­mote. But a few years back Allen opened up to film­mak­er Robert B. Wei­de for the mak­ing of Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary, which aired last year in the Amer­i­can Mas­ters series on PBS. “He nev­er refused a request,” Wei­de told PBS, “and he nev­er declined to answer a ques­tion.” At one point Wei­de asked Allen a series of twelve ques­tions that he was rea­son­ably sure Allen had nev­er been asked before. The result­ing inter­view, shown above, is includ­ed as an extra in the DVD ver­sion of the film and offers a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle por­tal into the reclu­sive film­mak­er’s per­son­al­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in 26 Minute Film

How Woody Allen Dis­cov­ered Ing­mar Bergman, and How You Can Too

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