Tuesday Roundup

Some favorites and still quite a few duds from Tuesday's commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:

We start in the Wake Up Deadspin post, where dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac delivered a clever respelling, earning a +1.

Also in the Wake Up Deadspin post, Delonte, Interrupted cracked me up with a silly reuse of a section of text. Nicely done.

IronMikeGallego's awesome John McCain joke drew a round of applause in the Tony Allen post. That's a job well done.

Always Winning brought the house all the way down with this terrific John Salmons joke, also in the Tony Allen post. That's your Comment of the Day, folks.

In the Dan Snyder post, unstarred commenter Rare Endangered Vuvuzela contributed a silly, well-constructed height joke, earning a promotion and some praise for his efforts.

Also in the Dan Snyder post, David Hume went with a similar theme, adding a hysterical pun for added effect. Like yesterday, we've got two comments with very similar jokes - REV's comment suggests that Dan Snyder does fuck goats and that he needs a ladder to do so, and uses structure to surprise you with both of those punchlines. Additionally, the false tone of the set-up leads the reader away from the punchline for maximum oomph. David Hume's comment also draws its laugh from the payoff and imagery at the end, but by putting the pun (spoon banging) right at the beginning, the reader is primed for the punchline at the end, which is delivered with characteristic boldness and skill. The laughs come from every angle in Hume's joke; the pun, the image, the clever set-up, the language itself. It's a great joke.

In the NFL Labor post, Body by Bacardi earned a big round of applause for a deliciously specific follow-through on the title of the post. The silliness of this comment is overwhelmingly charming.

Gamboa Constrictor struck again, this time with a breathtakingly audacious Ron Santo joke, in the Manny post. What more can be said? Gamboa delivers devastating one-liners at a pretty amazing rate. I laughed and laughed at this one.

In the Typical Raider Fan post, Tulos_Mullet slayed me (and quite a few others, by the looks of it) with this perversion of the Gift of the Magi story. Seriously, I embarrassed myself laughing at this. Some jokes don't need a premise/set-up/punchline delivery, and this is a shining example of that truth. What a fantastic, fantastic comment.

And finally, also from the Typical Raider Fan post, our guy Steve_U dropped a wonderfully elegant quote from an unlikely source, earning the appreciation of his fellow commenters. As has been well-documented already, I am all about this kind of joke. The economy of words really does it for me.

Total Fucking Duds

In the Tony Allen post, unstarred guy all-time holder left a so-bad-it's-hilarious, appallingly brainless joke. That's just so, so bad. I have a hard time believing all-time holder isn't a 7 year old. I'll be keeping a close eye on this kid - maybe this is his thing, in which case, he's a fucking genius.

Unstarred commenter gs6456 pushed my appreciation of an economy of words to the absolute limit with this indescribably worthless fart of a comment in the Dan Snyder post. Where is the joke here? What is the reference? Where is the fresh, original humor? My desk has a stronger pulse than this comment.

Apparently the last name "Snyder" is so acutely specific it can be used as the centerpiece of just about any otherwise random reference you can imagine. Landycakeboss sure thought so. This kind of joke does not work for me. There's no payoff, just a limp reference. That it would "assuredly be as inane" ought to be implied by the reference, but it's not, not in any discernible way. Landycakeboss understood that, which is why he spelled out the "humor" of his "joke" at the end. Obviously, he can do a whole lot better.

I don't want to rip the guy, but this comment, in the NC State post, from Ron Artesticular Fortitude, needed a hell of a lot more finessing before being submitted. Subtlety is great, but again; have a punchline, and deliver it somehow. This seems to me to be a shamefully lazy comment, the second in two days from an otherwise decent commenter.

Unstarred commenter HatersBall was kicked to the curb by the comment_ninja for what amounts to an embarrassingly clueless slap-down of a fellow commenter in the NFL Labor post. Look, I'm not much of a fan of the slashies, even as a storytelling device. If nothing else, they're ugly to look at and they inevitably have a life within the joke, usually as a distraction from what is funny. But I'm giving the comment_ninja a condescending 'attaboy for this one; the slashies were not used as a tone-deaf, chicken-shit way of explaining and/or backing out on the joke . . . or, at least, weren't too overtly used to explain the joke - they were mostly used as a way of enhancing or expanding the joke. I see where FavreFail is coming from here, though; I don't see the slashies themselves as an enhancement to the joke here or ever. The rhythm of this comment is somewhat successful, in a lukewarm kinda way, but isn't that possible without pounding the punctuation? At any rate, for calling out a fellow commenter in a non-funny way, HatersBall was shown the door. I'm all the way with that.

From unstarred commenter GorgeousJorge . . . what the fuck is that? No part of that comment (in the Manny post) is even remotely successful. I can't even begin to imagine what happened between the time GorgeousJorge considered this thing and the time his Edit timer ran out. Was he arrested and sent off to Guantanamo Bay? Did his fingers fall off? Did an anvil fall through the ceiling? My mind is boggled by this.

And now, to wrap things up, a few bad comments from the Funbag post, the first two from unstarred commenter Sir_Loin. I can't discourage strongly enough following the impulse to post the multiple-one-liners-check-out-my-repertoire style of comment, even in the commenting wilderness that is a Drew post comment section. First of all, these are crappy jokes. It's embarrassing. Second of all, nobody likes heavy shtick. Even if the jokes were solid, the rapid-fire, look-at-me! delivery turns them obnoxious immediately. Stay away from this kind of junk. Sir_Loin's second bad comment was whisked away to #lame by the comment_ninja. Zero explanation is required.

And finally, juvious_one was approved by Sid_Luckman for the worst possible reason; so that his totally unqualified comment could be mocked. It's one thing to use someone's bad coment as a springboard for your own totally bitchin' joke, something else entirely to approve someone for something that specifically does not belong - all you're doing is flooding the site with bad commenters and creating more work for the Comment Ninja Squadron. For his short-sightedness and bad judgment, Sid_Luckman was de-starred. That's a stiff penalty, but it's appropriate. For his singularly worthless piece of shit, juvious_one was chopped immediately, and thank God. Hopefully, this sends a strong message to all featured commenters about the importance of being selective with promotions and approvals. As I've said before, lately there have been a lot of what I would consider inappropriate conversations and bad approvals going on.

Alright, folks. Enjoy your DUANing.