Favorites and duds from Wednesday's commenting.
Favorites, in no particular order:
I laughed at this Jared Allen joke from RMJ=H in the Christian Ponder post. The reference is a misdirection set-up. Jared Allen is a good target for caricaturization, but the Vikings connection to Ponder really isn't enough, alone, to justify going there. So? Work in a funny reference point that gets us there. Nice work.
Here's a funny one-liner from Kid Canada in the 7-Year-Old Tap Out post. Yes, it's evil, but it's damn funny, too. I'm a little surprised this one didn't get a bit more attention.
This scene from Same Sad Echo in the Kenneth Faried post just killed me. The whole thing is fantastic, but it's a testament to the stupidity of my sense of humor that I was already laughing by the time I read the words "Towel Heaven". That's really fucking funny. Here's a late +1.
Here's a solid thread in the Gregg Zaun post featuring The Sock of Ages, TheCarlosRuizSpanishEnglishDictionary, Pink Slime, Rare Endangered Vuvuzela, ScottMitchellReport, J. Henry Waugh, and others. There are a handful of surprisingly funny entries in there.
This comment from Mantis Toboggan, M.D. in the FJM Oral History post is a riot. It's a very funny, fairly accurate take on Fire Joe Morgan's style with a surprise ending. Really great.
I don't know, guys. I think this might be the Comment of the Day, from a burner called gogojuice in the Original Basketball Rules post. That's really goddamn funny. Yes. Yes. It is the Comment of the Day. A burner.
Total Fucking Duds
TOO SOON!1!
This is possibly the worst comment found on Deadspin all week, from LOUD-NOISES in the Kenneth Faried post. That is just fucking brutal. There's nothing right about this. LOUD-NOISES is an atrocious commenter, one of the very worst.
I hate this stuff so much. SO MUCH. You can't possibly expect that anyone gives a shit how you feel about baseball. It's not your fucking diary, dip-shit. God almighty.
DEADSPIN POLL: Is "douche bag" the best insult EVER or [gunshot]
Shoot me.
No really. Just do it.
Fine. I'll do it myself.
That's it! I can't stand any more! Just kidding, you guys are great.
Let's have a wonderful DUAN.
Good stuff, pal. Glad to see you started this again.
ReplyDeleteW. Foreskins, D.O.
The blunt takedowns of that LOUD-NOISES comment, both in the thread itself and in the Duds section above, are just so, so funny to me for some reason. I don't quite understand why, but the whole thing is just killing me. Maybe I'm just longing for #youwatchedtelevisiononce, but I'm irrationally entertained by this.
ReplyDelete+1 to Gamboa. I wrote this whole thing earlier this morning about how I picture LOUD-NOISES as every neighbor, co-worker and in-law in my life before accidentally deleting it. People like that just blow my mind.
DeleteYeah, it just cracks me up to imagine the authors of comments like that in real life, and how painfully unfunny they are.
Delete"Hey, boss is letting us out early on Friday! DUH...WINNING!!!"
@Gamboa - Yup. The replies to that post made me incredibly happy as well.
Delete@Raysism - That is a spot-on comparison.
I still hear at least one Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison quote every 2-3 days from my friends. I don't even consider giving out courtesy chuckles anymore, but that doesn't seem to deter anybody.
I will acknowledge that commenting at Deadspin has absolutely turned me into a bit of a comedy snob though. Once upon a time, I would have at least chuckled at a well-placed movie quote. Now, my only reaction is condescending silence.
I don't know if it's snobbery as much as basic human awareness. I mean, at least half of the jokes I (and maybe the rest of you) make are pretty low-brow and stupid, but it's knowing that makes all the difference. The Guy Who made the comment that sparked this discussion unquestionably makes "jokes" like that all the time in his real life, without a trace of irony. When those of us with a clue make the same "joke," we are actually making a joke about that guy.
DeleteHow can you tell the difference? I guess you just have to possess that awareness I'm referring to. Or just listen for the "one, one, exclamation point, one, exclamation point, one."
@Sgt. H, what I wrote this morning included something like the following:
DeleteAnd if you ever find yourself in the same conversation with two LOUD-NOISES, remove yourself immediately. They will engage in a game of oneupsmanship until the loser is left lying in a pool of Billy Madison quotes.
If possible, set aside for a moment the fact that JudBuechler +1'd that second Tebow Dud. I can't stand it when burner troglodytes and other pests feel compelled to add "marginally relevant noun X" to their +1. I don't know why this burns me up like it does, but holy hell does it burn me up. On second thought, I do know why. When JudBuechler tosses in "McElroy," he's the guy in the theater who deliberately laughs louder and longer than everyone else to prove that he really understood the joke. Screw that guy. If you laughed (+1'd), we know you got the joke, unless you're just some cackling psycho, bellowing "HAW" any time sex is mentioned.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in this particular instance, the "joke" couldn't be easier to access! The guy openly acknowledged it was obvious and crappy! Damn!
That was cathartic. Thanks for listening.
+one tirade
DeleteThis isn't over.
DeleteNot that anyone asked for my opinion on two separate topics in one day, but I agree that the "+1 (joke explanation)" is some of the more irritating shit floating around these days.
DeleteThis is one of you, isn't it? Gamboa? This is just you fucking with me, right?
DeleteNot me, but I'm dying.
DeleteHey guys, can we talk about the gogojuice comment? I say this with a certain amount of trepidation, given the response it got here and there, but...isn't it kind of really stupid?
ReplyDeleteI want to compare it to another comment from a while back. I don't have it in front of me, but I remember it for being one of the rare times that a formerly starred commenter or guy who gets "it" was featured in the duds -- the time Cobra, brah! rephrased Bryce Harper's infamous reply into something like "That is a question which is to be posed to clowns," to not-great effect. Not to bash on him, but I think he would agree that it was not his strongest effort.
Obviously, that joke suffers from a lot of things, chiefly being that it's just kind of unimaginitve to reword a well-known quote, even if it is relevant.
I'm willing to be proven wrong on this, but isn't the only difference between his joke and gogojuice's comment the notion that we find Rasheed Wallace, as a person and an interesting quote, funnier than the insipidly immature and over-exposed Bryce Harper? I mean, I get that Sheed's quote being rewritten makes a little more sense because it's supposedly in a historical context, but surely that's not the difference between a dud and a COTD?
What am I missing here?
I almost pissed in my pants when I read it. It was just pitch perfect, and the fact that it came from a burner made it a little more surprising, and thereby increasing the punch.
DeleteBut to answer your question: Sheed's statement is a command, and these rules are commands, so there's a natural relationship. Even if he had just said "Ball don't lie", it would have fit as a rule, but the words he used were great.
Again, glad to be wrong, but my understanding of "Ball don't lie!" is that it's meant to imply, after undeservedly-awarded and missed free throws, that the ball avoided the hoop to correct the injustice of the free throws having been awarded in the first place.
DeleteNow THAT'S a great example of an unfunny rewrite.
I think part of the joke too is the incongruity between Naismith and Rasheed Wallace. I laughed a lot just thinking of Rasheed Wallace being part of the group that made up the rules. Or if not that, then James Naismith being a forerunner of Rasheed Wallace.
Delete@Bronze - That's exactly it. The idea that the reason the ball does that is that it's obeying a fundamental rule of basketball, and that Sheed is merely enunciating this. I dunno, maybe (maybe, he says) we're all overthinking it, but that's how I read it.
DeleteI thought it was hilarious.
Mechanically, I think there's also something funny about obfuscating somewhat the reference by writing it in the language of the other rules. Not only do we get the cognitive delay, but the joke also draws a rough lineage from Sheed's taunt back to ye olde origins of the sport. I don't know, I think the whole thing is really fucking funny.
DeleteWhereas cobra, brah!'s joke was just another example of the already desperately worn-out "clown question" quote, put into different language for no reason other than it would have been even more boring and lazy to write "that's a clown question, bro."
I don't mean to shit on cobra. He's had a thousand good jokes and it's a shame we all remember that one. But it's a fair point of comparison.
I see both sides here. The content of the joke wasn't gush-worthy, but the formatting/execution was, as Raysism said, "pitch perfect." One man's opinion, as always.
DeleteMan, talking about jokes sure beats making them. Amirite???
@all
ReplyDeleteFirst, all due respect to Cobra. If I thought there were a better example, I'd have used it. I certainly hope someone doesn't have success with a joke reminiscent of one of my stinkers in the future, lest some enterprising blowhard bring it up on a blog months later.
Secondly, it's always nice to be reminded how thoughtful and intelligent all you folks are. I think I've been persuaded that there's a little more to the gag than maybe I gave it credit for. I still think it's evocative of kind of a cruddy formula, though, and that maybe all you guys, being excellent and subtle commenters yourselves, are reading some funny aspects into the joke that were unintended. (What that says about me, the guy who thinks it's a simpleton joke, I won't bother to explore).
But it is, at least, a joke, and so anything after that is just me saying, "I don't think this is all that funny," which is neither interesting or constructive, so I'll just chalk it up to different strokes.
Good chattin, fellers.