Friday, June 10, 2011

Friday Roundup

(For Polk Panther's recent Guest Lecture in Commenting, click here. To enter talks about contributing your own original material to Mad Bastards All, email madbastardsall@gmail.com)

A lot of favorites and a selection of duds from Friday's commenting
, the day useless schmuck billikenmetz was unceremoniously Shoryuken-ed into the void.

Favorites, in no particular order:

SavetoFavorites cracked me up a few more times again on Friday. This madness in the Wake Up Deadspin post slayed me, and apparently only me. And later, in the Indecent Mascot post, this dialogue joke earned a bit more attention. I laugh all day long at this guy's jokes - this is just a sampling.

Also in the Wake Up Deadspin post, Same Sad Echo brought the house down with this letter-perfect dialogue joke. Outstanding.

I laughed aloud at this contribution from norbizness in the Wake Up Deadspin post. There's no part of this joke that isn't terrific. This guy's been great lately.

Here's a smart-ass little dig at LeBron James from All Over But The Sharting in the Mocking Nowitzki post. ME-OW! Awesome job.

Steve_U had another impressive day on Friday. This was a clever, silly little one-liner in the Mocking Nowitzki post. At the extreme end of that same vein, this astounding offering in the Nexus of Depravity post was my Comment of the Day. Finally, this contribution in the . . . umm . . . The National post was a significant departure from Steve_U's usual style, but I really enjoyed it. Versatile!

Also in the Nexus of Depravity post, there were, like, a million great comments. I chuckled at this clever contribution from David Hume; it took me a second reading, but I finally got there. So good.

DJ Jazzy Jeff Weaver cracked me up with this dialogue joke, also in the Nexus of Depravity post. Dialogue jokes are really taking off on Deadspin, and it's easy to see why; you can pack a lot of humor and personality and a more sophisticated set-up into a well-made dialogue joke. This is a good example of that. Nice work.

This is a terrific wordplay/reference joke from Sonar Jose, also in the Nexus of Depravity post, and it earned a nice round of applause.

Okay, one more from the Nexus of Depravity post: this self-aware spin on his own meme from MarkKelsosMigraine. I laughed at this.

This is the first successful Lance Armstrong/one ball joke on Deadspin in ages, and it came from Raysism in the Streaking Cow post. It takes stones [multiple] to go back to this particular comedy trough - nice work.

Also in the Streaking Cow post, Sheed's Bald Spot earned a chuckle with this very clever lyric joke. That's a marvelous catch. There's wordplay and the use of lyrics and a specific reference within the video all at work here. Great comment.

This comment, from dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac, in the Jeter Milestones post, is brilliant. That's just really creative thinking. Excellent job.

I got a kick out of this thread, featuring Stev D, IronMikeGallego, dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac, Steve_U, Tulos_Mullet, MarkKelsosMigraine, EddieSuttons SouthernComfort, and especially unstarred commenter VicViper, in the Jeter Milestones post. Everyone was funny, but have a look at that daring offering from the unstarred guy. Man, that's terrific. +1s all around.

Fendi Hotdogbun cracked me up twice on Friday. I guffawed at this horrifying joke in the Off-Road Parasailing post; guffawed and cringed. Yikes. And later, this simple little pun-caption in the Miami Heat Email post earned a nice round of applause. Nice work.

And finally, I also cringed and laughed at this equally grim contribution from Bevraj of Choice, also in the Off-Road Parasailing post. Jesus, that's awful. I'm still laughing about it.

Total Fucking Duds

Unstarred commenter Loose Cannon went ahead and got our be funny selection out of the way in the Wake Up Deadspin post. This comment has coherence and personality, but it is most definitely not funny. Be funny.

This forehead-slappingly wayward offering from unstarred commenter BeefPocaroba in the Nexus of Depravity post is most definitely an attempt at a joke, but it gave me vertigo. It's an enthusiastic goofball line that magically lacks any amount of punch whatsoever, like jumping up and down in a clown costume, screaming "THIS IS FUNNY!" at the top of your lungs. Seek thee out a compass, homes.

Unstarred commenter BgDkMgee struggled today. This mess in the Jeter Milestones post is an example of the dreaded deflect-a-joke, in which the commenter attempts to reference the potential for humor in an idea without actually expressing that humor. It's only maybe slightly better than the old "there's a joke in there somewhere" idea . . . maybe. Later, in the Indecent Mascot post, he did this, which fucking sucks. BOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Be funny, be creative, be original. This comment is just a lazy pile of shit.

Also in the Indecent Mascot post, unstarred commenter DiExMachina shamefully burgled the framework of his comment from this offering, earlier in the same post, from Eddie Murray Sparkles. Hack. Hack job! And then he bungled the finish with a curiously spelled "damm" at the end. What the hell.

This is just boring adolescent sarcasm from unstarred commenter The4thMolinaBrother in the Miami Heat Email post. This kind of humor drives me crazy. I picture some smug, snotty 15 year old girl snarking her parents from the back seat of the family sedan, and I have the urge to throw a shrapnel-filled pipe bomb into the rear window of this imaginary vehicle. God, I need a drink.

And finally, a quick eulogy for unrepentant troll billikenmetz, who never once contributed anything worthwhile anywhere on Deadspin: the irony that the same commenter who did this, this, this, and this was finally banned for just not being at all good at making jokes is miraculously delicious. We've had our eye on this brain-dead, stubby-fingered, perfectly-good-mood-destroyingly snotty philistine for a while now; for being an ass, for displaying open hostility towards the rules and standards of Deadspin commenting, for being a grouchy critic of the perfectly fine Antonin Scalia/George W. Bush jokes of actual commenters, and for being flat-out awful at making jokes. There have been many legendarily bad commenters in recent times (the mind scurries to shuttledik and Sir Truthington and Paolo.Lex and Confirmed Moron sacoplenty), but billikenmetz might be my least favorite of all time. Good fucking riddance.

You guys are terrific. Deadspin is, on the whole, the funniest place on the internet. It takes talent and instincts and practice and perseverance to play a role in that distinction, and, as a loyal reader and lover of Deadspin comments, I just want to say, your efforts are greatly admired and appreciated. Have a safe, wonderful weekend, and let's have a blowout Friday DUAN to close out the week.

9 comments:

  1. +1, Shitehawk. A lot of great comments today, I agree.

    Thanks for reading through my little short fiction interlude. Honestly, I had much more fun writing that than the Lexis/Nexis joke. Clearly, I'm the only one who felt that way.

    Enjoy the weekend, and keep doing what you're doing.

    -Steve U

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  2. DJ Jazzy Jeff WeaverJune 10, 2011 at 8:39 PM

    Awesome work. I'm normally MIA for the last few posts of the day, so it's great to be able to check in here and see the highlights.

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  3. You're doing a service to us all.

    Also, as much as I hate when people get into politics, Achiever told a hilarious Palin joke in the replies to Hume's comment in the parasailing post.

    Have a great weekend, and keep up the go work.

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  4. I disagree on the dialogue jokes that are taking over. Most of them suck and are getting annoying. There's two or three people who can do them, and the rest suck and are desperate attempts at humor because the ones who can do it well are getting praise. It's bred a ton of wannabes.

    - Unapproved commenter Roughing The Pastor

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  5. Missed the past few days and just caught up. Excellent work all week. This place is greatly appreciated.

    -StuartScottsEye

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  6. @Anonymous

    Have there been any unworthy dialogue jokes in the Favorites? I'm asking because 75% of them can be bad and that still wouldn't change the fact that there are a) more of them, and by default b) more good ones.

    I should clarify: when I said "taking off" I meant in terms of popularity, not that the form has (yet) been elevated. But I do strongly feel that certain commenters (Same Sad Echo, Vodkanaut, All Over But The Sharting, etc.) have a genuine talent for this kind of humor and that, on the whole, the increase in instances of dialogue jokes is leading to more and more ambitious structure. Deadspin is inherently competitive; throw more producers into the mix and the form will inevitably evolve upward.

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  7. I think the dialogue joke is an interesting evolution in the deadspin commenting game. I know the reason I was drawn to it because it allowed jokes to have an almost three-dimensional quality. You get bored, or at least I do, with the same sort of constructs after a while and realize their limitations. The dialogue joke instant doubles (at least) your joke pool because there is now a second voice introduced. There's a whole world of possibilities now.

    I also like it because once you've introduced that it as a dialogue, you can just go balls to the wall screenplay style and give the characters direction, emotions etc. all for added comedic effect.

    Like anything else, in the wrong hands it can be a disaster, but what are you gonna do, start banning shit because some people don't know what they're doing, or act irresponsibly?

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  8. Agree completely with cheese mac. I have greatly enjoyed the recent subtle changes in commenting. "You get bored, or at least I do, with the same sort of constructs after a while and realize their limitations." Exactly. I think adding new blood to the commentariat every now and then changes things up, which is a good thing.

    -PrickTop

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  9. 1) +many to MSH for doing this blog. Very entertaining and well written.

    2) Sincere thanks to whoever referenced and liked my Palin joke, but I want to make it clear it wasn't me. I don't pimp my own shit.

    3) Big props to Hume for his comment in the parasailing thread, which was otherwise unreferenced in this article. He and I split the applause but I basically piggybacked his original excellent, excellent joke. +1 to DH.

    -Achiever

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