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OgreChubbs wrote:
So I was watching one of those channels"not sure which" with the comedians. Now he was saying kinda dumb jokes but between my trying to sleep and being lazy as hell I didn't turn the channel.

Now here is the joke I don't get.

How do you get 100 Canadians out of a pool?
Say the pool is closing.

Then the audience erupted with laughter I set there thinking well what dick wouldn't get out of the pool if it was closing....... But hell maybe someone else can tell me how it is funny.

I don't find it funny either. Don't worry you do get it the audience was probably forced to laugh at gunpoint. Was there plenty of laughing that when dying down seemed to get much louder 5 seconds in? Yeah that's the fake laughter. I tell you I lost most of any respect I had left for conan o brian when I saw one of his shows live. Perhaps he's been bled dry of comedy at this point. That said there was so much fake laughter and stale jokes and it's made even worse when you're forced to laugh at it. Also it's almost like whenever he made a decent joke he got super happy about himself. I dunno I think he has a lot of nightly shows which is hard to keep up material for. Maybe I don't watch every conan o brian show and he has some good ones but I have no desire to watch it after that stale performance. It's never been a show I absolutely needed to see.

feeder wrote:
Yes, the joke is playing on how we are so fething polite.

The funniest people in the UK for quite a while now is Mitchell and Webb. Especially Mitchell, when he is on one of the myriad of panel shows over there it is usually gold.

Mitchell is brilliant in panel shows and in actual comedy, Webb is great when working off Mitchell but not so great on his own.

 dæl wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 dæl wrote:
I see lots of references to the Pythons, but none to the Goon Show. Spike Milligan is a comedic genius.

I was in boot camp with a Brit from Hampshire that brought a book of poetry by Spike Milligan with him. Spike also worked with Sykes.

I would highly recommend Spike's books on his time serving in WW2, they are quite insightful whilst also being rather hilarious at times.

The man could definitely write. Vidrine trusted the book to me, so I got a fair chance to appreciate his poetry. Here's a link to his poems:

http://m.poemhunter.com/spike-milligan/

Another good Milligan site:

http://www.slideshare.net/abidoll/appreciation-of-modern-literature-spike-milligan

Oh, yes, I know who Tommy Cooper is. He's the one that did stuff... Just like that He also wore a fez, which gives him extra bonus points.

I'll have to look at some Benny Hill at some point.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Or its just a crap joke... It reminds me a tad of that scene from Borat where the comedian tries to teach Sasha what a "Not" joke is, or rather attempting to inform a decent comedian why your own childish jokes are supposed to be funny. Meh, American humour. Take it at face value, a lot of it doesn't have much substance (stick on a laugh track and people think its funny). =P

I think you had a point in the 1990s. But things change, and the US have actually picked up a lot of the good stuff from UK comedy and made it their own. Shows like Community and Arrested Development are brilliant, and in my opinion they leave any of the more recent UK comedy shows for dead.

Swings and roundabouts, of course, I'm sure sooner or later it will be the UK making the better comedy again. All I can guarantee is that it won't be Australia.

 Seaward wrote:
Yeah, I was using those as examples of bad British comedy. Which, as a whole, is overrated. Even Python isn't particularly funny once you're over 13.

'Allo 'Allo is pretty crap, I'll grant you that. But while Python is now quoted to death and I'll happy walk away from any gaming group that wants to keep quoting it, calling it comedy for kids under 13 means you probably missed the point.

 Paradigm wrote:
Allo Allo is not bad at all! A little odd and simple at times, but still very funny.

There seems to a kind of comedy that you get in the UK, where they take a handful of jokes and just make them over and over again. That was what annoyed me about Allo Allo, there was about a dozen jokes that you knew you were going to get in every single episode.

I mean, I know sitcoms work on repetition, because they've got to churn that stuff out. But in most sitcoms that'll mean that there'll be a dumb character and he'll say something dumb every week, and a vain character and she'll say something vain. But I'm talking about the exact same joke in every episode - the resistance officer will say 'you must listen very carefully I will say this only once' and then Rene will miss it.

But then there's this kind of UK comedy that took that and actually made a point of it - telling the exact same jokes with the exact same set up every week. Little Britain is probably the most extreme example, but lots of British comedies seemed to do this. Keeping Up Appearances had the exact same character interactions in every single episode.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
We have Mel Brooks. While I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Mel's success list is far longer. 'Merica wins this one too.

Mel Brooks is probably the most over-rated comedian in the world. Obvious jokes, told ham handed. I seriously just don't get why people think its that wonderful.

 dæl wrote:
I would highly recommend Spike's books on his time serving in WW2, they are quite insightful whilst also being rather hilarious at times.

Seconded. Hilarious books that also put a refreshing emphasis on the mundane nature of armed service, even in the midst of a war.

 sebster wrote:
Nah. I mean, Python is now quoted to death and I'll happy walk away from any gaming group that wants to keep quoting it, but calling it comedy for kids under 13 means you probably missed the point.

To each their own, I guess. I don't really think I missed the point of the Ministry of Silly Walks or nobody expecting the Spanish Inquisition or dead parrots, but maybe I'm just not that deep.

 Seaward wrote:
To each their own, I guess. I don't really think I missed the point of the Ministry of Silly Walks or nobody expecting the Spanish Inquisition or dead parrots, but maybe I'm just not that deep.

One of the issues with Python is that some of their fairly basic stuff, like the dead parrot sketch and the spanish inquisition, is the stuff that keeps getting brought up over and over again. Can't control your audience.

But it seems like you did miss the point of the other stuff. The Ministry of Silly Walks is mocking the process by which the government allocates grants funding for the arts - the attempt by the civil servant to codify various parts of the walk, the argument that more was spent on defense than silly walks, the resolution where money is handed over because it met with cultural/political aims of the current government's overtures to France.

Maybe it's a cultural barrier thing, as America doesn't really have the same kinds of institutions involved in their arts programs.

No, I get that point, I just don't find any of it particularly funny.

 Seaward wrote:
No, I get that point, I just don't find any of it particularly funny.

And there's nothing wrong with that. But saying it isn't particularly funny once you're over 13 either means you didn't realise the parody element, or were sitting there as a 13 year old saying 'oh yes, that's just such a perfect parody of bureaucratic interaction with culture and the arts', but then found that totally uninteresting at 14.

 sebster wrote:
And there's nothing wrong with that. But saying it isn't particularly funny once you're over 13 either means you didn't realise the parody element, or were sitting there as a 13 year old saying 'oh yes, that's just such a perfect parody of bureaucratic interaction with culture and the arts', but then found that totally uninteresting at 14.

I think it's possible to recognize the parody and still not find it funny.

The stuff I found funny at 13 was the more well-known stuff. I didn't find the shallow attempts at commentary funny then, don't find 'em funny now. I 've also realized the Spanish Inquisition-style bits weren't funny, either.

Man. You're intensely into defending Python tonight.

 Seaward wrote:
I think it's possible to recognize the parody and still not find it funny.

Sure. But comedy is largely drawn from experience - it's one thing to recognise the source of joke, and quite another to have actually experienced the thing that is being mocked. A lot of Monty Python is about adding ridiculousness to very proper, adult things, and then still keeping the proper, somber adult approach in spite of the ridiculous elements. Until you've actually had to stand somewhere pretending to be an adult among other people who are all pretending to be adults, then the joke probably won't work as well.

In which case you probably end up seeing just as random silliness, and enjoy it as much as say, Aqua Teen Hunger Force or any of the other shows that just throws random stuff together.

Man. You're intensely into defending Python tonight.

Am I? I said it's quoted to death and that I'd happily walk away from any gaming group that wanted to keep quoting it, and I said that a lot of the more famous bits weren't particularly good. If that counts as intensely defending, I'd hate to see what actual critical assessment required in your eyes.

The thing with Python is that they have such a huge catalogue of sketches and skits that some of it is bound not to be to your taste. They do commentaries on everything from the government spending patterns to the Bible itself, they do sheer surrealism and farce, they do parodies of anything you can think of, and sometimes they just put on silly voices and prat about.

So you're never going to like everything they do, I don't think you can dismiss their whole collected work as something adults can't appreciate.

I'd also agree that some scenes are over-quoted and over-played, to the point where other shows even do parodies of them. I was watching an episode of The Young Ones the other day that, in an interlude, had the following:

A: I'd like to buy some cheese.
B: We don't have any.
A: Well that's that sketch knackered then....

Rather amusing, but does highlight how Python can be very easily over-exposed.