Wednesday Roundup

Some favorites and a few duds from Wednesday's commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:

Unstarred commenter StuartScottsEye earned a promotion and a +1 for the clever use of a solid catch in the Female Athletics post. He had a few good contributions today.

Also in the Female Athletics post, Fendi Hotdogbun cracked me up with a daring, misogynistic photo caption. I laughed out loud at this.

Vodkanaut earned a round of applause for a wonderful Martin Scorsese quote in the Diamondbacks post. That's a rather astute reference turned into a hilariously silly package. Great job.

Our guy dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac had a great day, first dropping a fantastic dig at the Mets in the Diamondbacks post, to the delight of his fellow commenters. Later, he left one of the day's very best comments in the Tommy Tuberville post and brought the house down. He's been tearing it up lately.

And finally, today's other classic comment came from All Over But The Sharting, for yet another brilliant, brilliant Olive Garden recipe joke. I'll be honest; I wasn't sure how I felt about these the first few times, but this one, for whatever reason, knocked me over. At this point, the reader is obviously in on the gag right from the moment they read the words Olive Garden, but ultimately, I think it's the careful way they're written and their specific rhythm that makes them successful. This one was a delight, and the crowd loved it.

Total Fucking Duds

Unstarred commenter Schmoe_Working_in_a_Box_Factory had his comment in the Wake Up Deadspin post shipped off to #thanksforsharing by the comment_ninja, for obvious reasons. This is way too conversational and edgeless for Deadspin's comment section. Be funny, guy. Save stories or nuts-and-bolts sports talk for open threads, DUAN, or ESPN.com.

Also in the Wake Up Deadspin post, this comment from unstarred commenter Richard Starkey. You know, there's probably a full joke to be made from those raw materials. I'm including this in the Duds because it highlights something I mentioned . . . a while back, about porn references or gross jokes in general, and how they can be firecrackers if they're done right. This is just a totally random excuse for a sex joke. When I read it, I glanced back at the italicized line and thought, "okay, dogs of different sizes and stuff, I guess that would be a strange way to describe an interracial gang-bang". You know what else would be a strange way to describe it? "Boy, look at all that traffic out there on the highway!" or "There sure is a lot of trash in that trashcan over there." The point is, that's a flimsy excuse for a sex reference, and it's not even delivered in an interesting way. I'm sure Richard Starkey can find more interesting, cleverly constructed ways of delivering sex/porn references.

In the Quadriplegic Soccer Fan post, unstarred commenter QueenofTarts had his/her weak shit bounced over to #lame by the comment_ninja. Obviously that's just a terribly lazy offering.

Recent shuttledik stand-in Paolo.Lex earned a one-week ban for a not-necessarily-more-lame-than-usual-but-still-remarkably-lame contribution to the Quadriplegic Soccer Fan post. That's just fantastic. It was yet another totally fucking limp The Simpsons reference that did him in. And extra credit goes to the comment_ninja for his uproariously funny angle of attack. That's great work. For bringing the house down and making me guffaw obscenely while simultaneously (if only temporarily) ridding us of Paolo.Lex, the comment_ninja gets a big, fat +1 from Mad Bastards All.

In the Diamondbacks post, Desi_Relaford left this pointless, utterly lifeless bit of sarcasm, for reasons that surpass understanding. The irony here is, Desi_Relaford is mocking the cleverness of the song choice with a comment that lacks even the slightest modicum of cleverness or wit. For crying out loud. This is cheap, adolescent sarcasm, the kind of sullen humor that makes adults want to strangle teenagers.

Disco Choo caused my teeth to explode out of my mouth and rain down on my coworkers with this astonishingly lazy, worthless, pile of shit comment in the Rick Pitino post. The comment_ninja was all over this, moving it off to #lame and thereby leaving the befouled raw material of Disco Choo's train-wreck available for other, genuinely-creative commenters to use for actual jokes. In what way is that joke-making? In what way is that actual commentary? I'm certain, certain Disco Choo can put together a good joke; the star next to his name would seem to support that intuition. Be funny. This wasn't even relaying funny, this was interrupting funny. This was jumping in ahead of someone's honest-to-God joke and saying, "is this the one where the chicken crosses the road and you say, 'to get to the other side?'" Make a joke, man. And not to hump the guy's leg, but that's a clutch save by the ninja, jumping in and yanking that thing out of sight so other commenters can still try to make the joke. Great catch.

Unstarred commenter JohnCandysAppendages was very delicately served by SponsoredbyV8 for a similar atrocity in the Robbie Russell post. This time, JCsA went through the trouble of re-working a section of text from the post, then had absolutely nothing to offer by way of a joke. Next time, bozo, just his Cancel. SponsoredbyV8 gets a pass for the promotion, even though he both failed to be funny and turned the thread into a totally-inappropriate-for-non-DUAN-commenting conversation about commenting mechanics. I have a feeling a reappearance of the Private Message function would do away with some of this stuff. Anyway, I hope so.

And finally, a two-part failure, from H is for Hakeem and unstarred guy Phd-thc, for the completely unoriginal recycling of someone else's juvenile crap, in the same thread. This has got to be doubly embarrassing for H is for Hakeem; not only was he beaten to a bad joke by a lousy unstarred commenter, but the earlier comment (which falls immediately before his in the post) reveals the shameful lack of originality of his own comment. I probably would not have even guessed that the whole brown/yellow thing was just a lazy rip-job if not for the fact that the same comment was submitted by two different guys.

Do better. Try harder. Be original. Be funny.

Alrighty, folks. May DUAN bring you endless joy.