Monday Roundup

Many favorites and very few duds from Monday's commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:

Eddie Murray Sparkles had it going today. This comment, in the Wake Up Deadspin post, is about as clever as they come. In the Mets post, this awesome dig at Al Davis earned a round of applause. And finally, this Daryl Strawberry joke in the Boxing Circus post was his funniest of the day. Heckuva job.

Steve_U also killed it today. His one-liner in the Wake Up Deadspin post was the first comment of the day and possibly the best, starting the week off on a very high note. Later, this sharp contribution to the Ray Lewis post earned a pair of +1s. These were just a pair of the many excellent offerings from Steve_U today.

Phintastic's stabbing joke in the Ray Lewis post made me chuckle and earned a round of applause. Nice work.

The Marathon Dog post brought out any number of terrific comments this afternoon. This comment is just another spot-on one-liner from David Hume, master architect of this kind of elegant joke.

Also from the Marathon Dog post, I enjoyed this goofy conversation joke from Bevraj of Choice. The crowd went wild over this.

My favorite comment from Monday (and the most celebrated, by far) came from infrequent commenter Lt. Mark Rumsfield, also in the Marathon Dog post. That's wonderful. As I've said many times, I'm crazy about these super-simple wordplay jokes. Such elegant presentation, so much humor packed into such a tight package. That's a great, great job.

Hate McLife dropped our final winner from the Marathon Dog post with this gruesome food joke. That's so damn funny. I laughed aloud at this.

In the Ryan Giggs post, I really enjoyed this recontextualization from DJ Jazzy Jeff Weaver. I'm becoming less and less a fan of the recontextualization format in general, especially when it relies on the immediately recognizable line-of-italics-followed-by-explanation template. Nevertheless, this was a truly funny joke and more-or-less required the use of the template. Nice job.

OnTheTwelfthNightOfLloydChristmas earned a round of applause for this fantastic pull, also in the Ryan Giggs post. Boy, that's terrific. Not only is it an excellent reference, but he really packaged it well in his delivery. Take note, kids.

And finally, newly featured commenter Raysism cracked me up with this very simple offering in the Oddibe McDowell post. There's nothing sophisticated about this joke, but how could there be? It's a simple, funny, absurd little idea, and he stayed out of the way. Great job.

Total Fucking Duds

Unstarred commenter Preopsician will probably get the hang of Deadspin commenting, but obviously this offering, in the Blackjack Superhero post, is way off base. It's just not what's done in Deadspin commenting. Be funny, guy. There's absolutely no reason you can't start that conversation in a DUAN thread and actually have a full conversation. Dropping that in a Deadspin post is asking for it to be ignored.

The difference between this comment, from unstarred commenter NettiByNature, and the aforementioned winner from David Hume, is all in the details. But with Deadspin commenting, the details are everything. Hume's comment works not because it says Lance Armstrong used PEDs; it works because the wordplay itself is so clever, the reader laughs at the specific use of language to build the joke. NettiByNature's joke falls flat for being blunt to the point of idiocy. There's a fine line between finessing a joke and overcooking it, but by and large, it's always way better to overcook a joke than just dump it out there unfinished. There's a decent joke to be made from the raw materials behind NettiByNature's comment. You've just got to spend the extra minute or two working it into something that maximizes the impact of the punchline.

Here's another example of that same lesson, from unstarred commenter MorelOrelHirshiser, although I'm not sure an arrow-straight comparison of the subject of a story to a character in a movie is ever going to be funny. That said, boy, this is the laziest, cheapest possible version of that concept, and the fact that an edit was apparently done to this comment is mind-boggling. I can't imagine this being funny to anyone.

And finally, I don't know, I just hated this, from unstarred commenter Lonny Baxter's Delivery Service, in the Charles Barkley post. Maybe I'm just bored to death with Delonte West/Gloria James jokes. Or maybe the "crude for the sake of being crude" thing is irritating me. Or all of the above. Whatever. I hate this joke. It's not funny. It's lewd, crude, rude . . . not especially shrewd . . . . perhaps I just have a bad attitude . . . or am in a bad mood . . . that explanation seems to have greater verisimilitude.

Hey, welcome back, everyone. Have a great week. Let's keep DUAN going strong.