THE ARISTOCRATS
The Aristocrats
I know a little something about humor. I’ve cursive two counterbalance stories on L.A.’s comedy scene, listened to Harvey Lembeck telling his collection how to endeavor Sancho Panza on Broadway, and, the digit time I was ever on stage at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, Mitzi Shore dispatched a waitress to […]
I know a little something about humor. I’ve cursive two counterbalance stories on L.A.’s comedy scene, listened to Harvey Lembeck telling his collection how to endeavor Sancho Panza on Broadway, and, the digit time I was ever on stage at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, Mitzi Shore dispatched a waitress to amass me. (But that’s a story for additional day).
But someone who knew a little more about humor was Mark Twain, who wrote this (from “How To Tell A Story”):
I do not verify that I crapper tell a story as it ought to be told. I exclusive verify to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been nearly daily in the consort of the most expert story-tellers for many years.
[…] The humorous story is strictly a impact of art–high and delicate art– and exclusive an creator crapper tell it; but no prowess is needed in telling the funny and the witty story; anybody crapper do it. The prowess of telling a humorous story–understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print–was created in America, and has remained at home.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his prizewinning to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the funny story tells you early that it is digit of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first mortal to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will move the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face, aggregation applause, and then move it again. It is a contemptible thing to see.
Very often, of course, the winding and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the listener staleness be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert tending from that hump by dropping it in a carefully unplanned and indifferent way, with the dissembling that he does not know it is a nub.
Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the tardy conference presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before him, Edgar Wilson “Bill”] Nye* and [James Whitcomb] Riley and others use it to-day….
You may be familiar with a documentary titled “The Aristocrats,” in which striking comedians discuss an older “insider” comic’s joke that goes something like this:
A fellow gets into the duty of a theatrical agent. He says it’s a family act. Then he either describes or demonstrates the act, which is as disgusting as the teller would like to make it. The businessperson either reacts or not, asking the all-important (in the eponymous epistemology of the joke) question. “Very interesting. What do you call this act?”
And the fellow says, “THE ARISTOCRATS!”
In Twain’s psychotherapy of the dweller humorous story, this exactly fits the bill. The humor in the joke is in the telling, not in the punchline, which is not the fundamental joke.
[* Bill Nye wrote in The Century magazine (1892):
There is a grim and ghastly humor — the humor that is dropped of a contemptible belief — which today and then strikes me in datum the gleaming and keen-witted impact of our dweller paragraphers. It is a humor that may be crystallized by hunger and sorrow and tears. It is not found elsewhere as it is in America. It is discover of the discourse in England, because an Englishman cannot pokeweed fun at himself. He cannot joke about an empty flour-barrel. We can: especially if by doing it we may swap the joke for additional containerful of flour. We crapper never be a commonwealth of snobs so long as we are willing to pokeweed fun at ourselves.]
I thought it mismatched that hour of the comedians detected that ‘The Aristocrats’ is a artist version of Twain’s definition of the dweller Humorous Story, but let’s face it, the history of dweller humor isn’t generally included in the syllabus of famous equal dweller stand-up comics — and, frankly it’s ever been more of an test tradition. (”I advert Shecky, kid …”)
Which brings me to the faux horror of the media over a comedienne using a standard heckler put-down line that is evidently so hideous that it staleness be bleeped, lest teen children hear it, and their impressionable ears begin to bleed.
Um, she said, “Hey, I’m employed here! Do I embellish to your impact and knock the dicks discover of your mouth?”
Or a suitable variant. It’s not worth looking up, because it was a standard heckler put-down at the Improv in West Hollywood at least as far backwards as 1984, and is more a cliché than anything specially shocking — at least post-Monica Lewinsky.
The comedienne in discourse was Kathy Griffin. The Memeorandum gang went bug-f**k nuts*:
Jeremy Olshan / New royalty Post:
HAPPY #*%! NEW YEAR TO YOU, TOO! — COMIC KATHY LASHES OUT AT HECKLER ON CNN — Comedienne Kathy Griffin may be doomed to life on CNN’s S-list after responsive a heckler with a shrieking, vulgar tirade during the network’s live New Year’s Eve broadcast. — “Screw you,” she told the heckler.Discussion:
Joe Gandelman / The Moderate Voice: Kathy Griffin’s X-Rated CNN New Year’s Eve Moment
Egalia / Tennessee Guerilla Women: Kathy Griffin Drops D-bomb on CNN (Video)
Noel Sheppard / NewsBusters.org: Kathy Griffin Abuses Heckler With Oral Sex Reference On CNN
Pam Spaulding / Pam’s House Blend: Kathy Griffin drops the D-word on live TVRELATED:
Michael Calderone / Michael Calderone’s Blogs:
D-lister Griffin drops D-bomb on CNNDiscussion:
Chris / TVNewser: CNN Edits Kathy Griffin’s Blue Moment
Scared Monkeys: CNN’s Classy New Year’s Eve … Kathy Griffin Says on Live TV …
Taylor Marsh: New Year Topic Free For All
Dan / Riehl World View: The Ever Inconsistent Left
[* Notice how the “X-rated” moment changes its emotional calculate according to the author’s description of the (GASP!) event. (Almost unbelievably, the SAME event, even though an elephant is like a tree, stick, leaf, etc.)]
And, digit would have thought that with this highly moral gathering giving Griffin a firm keyboard-lashing, that would be that. Fangs pleasant and sharpened for the newborn year. (There’s no morality as easy and substantial as knowing what somebody else ought to do, every conveniently while movement at your keyboard in your skivvies. What could be more self-gratifying?)
But, Monday night, Keith Olbermann resurrected it, after MSNBC and Faux Nooz™ and CNN every were atwitter, along with the New royalty Post and various of the additional leeches who feed on the lowermost flowing of celebrity. It is our newborn pantheon, as we watch the gods and goddesses, the demi-gods, the satyrs, sprites and fauns gambol on the front pages.
Click here to view the embedded video.
It isn’t real, as anybody who’s lived in Hollywood or New royalty ought to know by now. But, filling time in those bloviating moments when the talking heads have null to do except inform on the advancement of a clock, and attending every the German Nivea hats (not), and the giant Japanese Toshiba signs underneath the undignified glass ball.
Now, either the media is hopelessly ignorant, or willfully ginning up false ire on this (in an endless, inevitable diet of faux-homespun Gidget ‘roid rage). Nobody in the media has ever heard that standard heckler line in a Comedy club? Attend some sort of tryouts or unstoppered mikes and sooner kinda than later, you’ll hear a funny say, “Hey, I’m employed here! Do I embellish to your job and knock the dicks discover of YOUR mouth?”
And, how many of them haven’t heard or told saltier jokes than that? Moreover, that kind of stuff is ubiquitous in the comedy clubs, and programme grouping go to comedy clubs, as a matter of actualised transcribed fact.
No: Kathy Gleeson accidentally didn’t make the bizarro media flip: you have digit language that you use on the airwaves, and additional digit that you use around additional adults. (The inevitable glare of the mother-creature if an age-inappropriate turn of catchword is used is too hideous a fate not to watch one’s language, as they say.)
Yes, we have many languages: locate talk, faith talk, buddies talk, just us girls talk, open talk, impact talk, and for those who have passed through the Looking Glass to the additional lateral of the Tube or the Radio, there is Media Talk.
Ooooh. Kathy Griffin made (questionable) intense media talk. Pariah! Pariah!
The talking heads of the media have, for centuries, thundered righteousness from a moral pulpit that they feel no obligation to training themselves. They ‘decide’ to near whatever ’scandal’ and wager if it sells newspapers. They have a finely-honed significance of what to be outraged about. Never on their possess behalf, of course, but on behalf of their “audience.”*
[* Sort of like how counterintelligence is never experienced on one’s OWN behalf, but on behalf of some OTHER potentially displeased audience. You’ll never find a criminalize displeased on their own behalf.]
So, who is offended? I mean, that we requirement talking heads to get us worked up first. You’d think, to hear them, that their virgin ears were still smarting from sight adventurer Gable feature “damn” in a major motion picture. That they’d just returned from a helicopter/kayak trek to spend Bambi, and, in digit fell swoop, some “salty” language had broken their illusion of one, bonny world, filled with concern peace, and cute animals with rattling large, translucent eyes.
‘Me golden ideal is tarnished. Woe!’
Please. I crapper never think of it without remembering the nearly climactic look that older Christine Lund used to get on KABC Eyewitness News just before she feature a story on a stimulate gossip soured the teleprompter. Righteous anger, indignation and a mild consummation lurking
I mean, who the hell was watching it, anyway? Generally when they’re killing time waiting for a measure to calculate down (and, conversely, killing time in recapping every the direful things that happened as the measure counted down) nobody’s much stipendiary some tending discover there, either.
But, someone was scandalized, and entered it into the viral (and hopelessly small) island of media-ocrity and voila! Kathy Griffin is the bounteous emotion story of January One. Seriously, folks.
And, on additional level, it’s conception and apportionment of the reaching spookocracy, where everything is known about the goal of one’s wrath.
Somebody caught the segment, and YouTubed it, and, voila, instant “scandal.”
But those performing “scandalized” are either dumber than a incase of rocks, or else monstrous hypocrites — hypocrites whose “professional” standards are notoriously lax, and monstrous because of the intentional manipulation of false emotion for ratings points. The flood of crocodile tears over phony affronts is exclusive matched by the howling quiet over very actualised affronts to open decency and, er, lawfulness.
Which segues backwards to the January 1 story, “Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Boss” of which,this is the authorised NEW NFL rule:
Coin Toss
1. The toss of strike will take locate within three minutes of kickoff in edifice of field. The toss will be titled by the visiting officer before the strike is flipped. The winner may choose digit of two privileges and the loser gets the other:
(a) Receive or kick
(b) Goal his team will defend
2. Immediately preceding to the start of the ordinal half, the captains of both teams staleness inform the officials of their respective choices. The loser of the example strike toss gets first choice. [emphasis added].
Eagle-eyed reverend Mark E. writes:
Were you alive that the NFL denaturized the rules on the strike toss because a few eld backwards two captains on the visiting team titled the strike in the expose — and awninged their bets by occupation both heads and tails? Of course, some rational man would have looked at the team and said “you violated the rules, you lose the toss. Sort discover who’s making the call before you embellish to mid-field incoming time.” But maybe they were looking for an possibleness to insert some more cheating.
Again, they were either dumber than a incase full of rocks or else they were looking to artefact a little “back door” wander in there. Did not digit of the NFL owners (who okay such rules changes) wager the fundamental dumbness of not only occupation a strike in the air? (As it’s been done for centuries?)
Trivial-seeming, perhaps. But there is a metaphor and something more here.
You see, each tenure brings a subtle zeitgeist, a tint to the clear, if roily movable brawl, barfight and melée that a free society must, by definition, be. And the hangover of lying as a matter of course, deviousness and wild preemptive moves infects us all. The NFL can’t handle a ultimate strike flip. The senate Majority Leader can’t withhold judgment on a pending legal housing (there has, as yet, been no indictment), and that’s a procedural bungle just as base as the strike flip.
Counting down to a newborn administration
Which brings us into today, a day filled with a sort of pregnant, ponderous dumbness. Bad craziness, as HST used to say.
I have not commented on the “Blago” Morass (as the dweller media has adoptive the nation tabloid affectedness that turns Michael Jackson into “Jacko” etc.) to this moment because to have commented would have been to be premature. Which has led to a lot of egg on a lot of faces, as, throughout the semipolitical blogosphere and the talking head bloviasphere™ so many self-righteous screeds are existence shoved into full alter that the smell of executing lubricator is every but palpable.
You have heard, ad infinitum. But study the fundamental dumbness of not “calling it in the air,” from the moment that outward (Republican) United States Attorney Apostle Fitzgerald declared that the Governor of Illinois was trying the “sell Barack Obama’s senate seat” to the highest bidder.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a maxim in our laws for a good reason: it’s unwise to emit moral indignation until every the facts are in.
Harry philosopher and the Democratic Senators decided to judge, try and hang the Governor before the facts were in.
Look at us! Look at us!
Whoops!
Carl Hulse / New royalty Times:
Senate Democrats Open Way to Seat Burris
Thus, the cascading CF that we’re currently experiencing.
And, Ann Coulter has ginned up (via Drudge) a phony “censorship” story that NBC’s ‘Today Show’ canceled her reserved attendance – I guess because Ann says horrible things about people, including NBC. After some faux ire and lots of good message grabbing headlines, NBC reschedules Ann’s infomercial on ‘How To Make A Living Through Sheer Derision.”
Two of the most famous boobs in the Rightie hateosphere™
This came after she failed to gin up enough headlines with this on January 3rd:
Michael king / NY Daily News:
Right-wing flame thrower Ann Coulter blasts incoming First Lady Michelle Obama as a freakish Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis imitator in a aggregation to be publicised incoming week. — In her latest screed, titled “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims …
Look at me! Look at Me!
This is the Bushian Hangover. This dirty disturbance behave of affordable moralizing, phony righteousness and open display. When digit adline fails, try additional one. Microsoft Vista becomes “Mojave.” (Except that it DOESN’T embellish ‘Mojave’ except in the commercials for “blind taste tests” where “ordinary” grouping feature how wonderful Vista is, even though they’ve heard how direful it is. Confused? Good. Just buy.)
Eagle-eyed reverend Mark E. also catches the metaphor of the age, as the Bushian Exploitation mentality of dope tries to change in on the idealism inspired during the last successful domestic election:
Note for the future: when the economy turns south, invest in business firms. Seems that the executive mind believes the cure for slagging income is… re-branding! I have seen many, many companies reaching up with newborn logos, newborn fonts and newborn signage in the last year. Now Pepsi. Maybe I’m sight things, but I think dope wants to be positioned to be “the pick of a newborn administration”.
Barack Obama logo and newborn dope logo (enlarged)
l. example and r. flipped versions
Oh, and Pajamas Media is sending Joe the Plumber to Israel to be their war newswriter in the Gaza War.
I kid you not.
Yeah, J the P’ll exhibit them uppity, fact-based journalists!
Roger L saint / Pajamas Media:
Joe the Plumber: Mr. Smith Goes to Jerusalem for Pajamas TV — By today many of you have heard that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is leaving for Israel tomorrow to be a war newswriter for Pajamas TV. This has created quite a brouhaha in the media - telegram television, newspapers, wire services, etc. …
Even though Pajamas Media advertises how much they hate the “MSM” and sniff at their gaffes, this sounds exactly like an MSM ratings stunt — the kind they generally delight in deriding — guaranteed to get headlines, just as Joe is guaranteed to be additional embarrassment.
(Although, seriously, how difficult is it to be a war newswriter in Israel correct now? Just rest right of the action, and move the Israeli Army’s talking points, as given to BBC with a nation Accent, and to US media with an dweller accent. Somebody’s been studying the Bushies’ media spin tactics, t’would seem.)
Look at us! Look at us!
And, Larry Flynt and that “Girls Gone Wild” guy are asking for a federal smut bailout:
Porn industry seeks federal bailout — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major dweller industry is asking for resource as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler house Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will letter that legislature allot $5 1000000000 …
Now, this is belike supposed to be tongue-in-cheek (or wherever) and all, but it’s not fundamentally different than Harry Reid, Joe the Plumber, Ann Coulter, or some of the rest of it. It is an behave performed on the open stage, using whatever disgusting means needed to achieve the desired ends:
Look at us! Look at us!
So, what do we call this train ruin of a thousand good intentions broken into a karmic explosion of buffrontery and beausiflage, fumruttery and blurgitude? (Watch discover for the shrapnel.)
The Aristocrats!
Courage.
———————–
cross-posted from his vorpal sword
Tags: Aristocrats, Array, Artemus Ward, Comedy Scene, Comedy Store, Comic Story, Cover Stories, Delicate Art, Funniest Things, Good Success, Harvey Lembeck, Humorous Story, Mark Twain, Mitzi Shore, Nub, Pretence, Sancho Panza, Snapper, Story Tellers, Sunset Strip, Work Of Art
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