The List Is Humor At Its Purest

the classic woody allen- style triple: the first two items are fairly straightforward, and the third is something really left-field and unexpected. you might not even know it's a joke until you hear the third.

"If I could just see a miracle. Just one miracle. If I could see a burning bush -- or the seas part -- or my Uncle Sasha pick up a check."

http://www.hakank.org/humor/helizer.html

Hetzron, R. (1991). On the Structure of Punchlines.

Norrick, N. R. (1993). Repetition in Canned Jokes and Spontaneous Conversational Joking.

Deckers, L. & Avery, P. (1994). Altered Joke Endings and a Joke Structure Schema.

"Words with a 'k' in it are funny. Alkaseltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. All with a 'k'. 'L's are not funny. 'M's are not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomatoes is not funny. Lettuce is not funny. Cucumber's funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny -- not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em."

S1ocki - that was just a great example of one of my favourite humour devices; I think it's so funny that I use it despite its being inappropriate or ineffective in many cases. I think it's so close to my thinking process that it's probably indistinguishable from attempted humour.

1. nonconformity/unusualness: in as few steps as possible, establishes a pattern and then deviates from it
2. brevity (related to 1)
3. punchline as close as can be to the end of the humor statement
4. ooh I forgot what I was going to say here.

bonus 5 if the 3rd part has a K sound!

When I used to see more standup comedy on television, one thing that would bother me is watching a comedian attempt to extend a thought beyond the punchline when it was clear that their thought had really ended / culminated with the punch line and they weren't on their way to saying something else. That device is really hard for me to watch.

Faith: What affliction be-plagues you, my friend?
Krusty: [whispers hoarsely]
Faith: Come again?
Mel: He paralyzed his vocal cords cramming too many "k" sounds
into a punchline.
Faith: Oh, mercy, well I'm not sure there's anything I can do
for-- [suddenly grabs Krusty by the throat] Feel the
power! [strangles him a bit] Release this clown!
Krusty: Have you gone completely ferkakta? Hey! I got my comedy
"k's" back. King Kong, cold-cock, Kato Kaelin. Hey, you
Gentiles are all right! [kisses Faith in gratitude]

TRIPLES

"The holy trilogy"

William Lang: A triple is one of the most perfect formats for the joke, because
there are only three parts to most comedic bits.
Humor's PAP-test:
P = Preparation (the situation setup)
A = Anticipation (TRIPLE!)
P = Punch line (story payoff)

Do's and don'ts:
1) Never tell more than 3 jokes about one subject at any one time.
2) Don't spend more than 3 minutes on any one theme.
3) 3 themes of about 3 minutes each are optimum for a ten minute stand-up monolog
4) 3 minutes is the best length for a skit
5) Don't use more than 3 voices in a radio skit or commercial

hahahahahahaah that's AWESOME!

another device is making the audience uncomfortable! Then they laugh as a tension reliever. obv this can be a cheap ploy.

-Mel Brooks, on the crucial difference between comedy & tragedy.

Yes, because poo is funny. Another rule.

"I'm in pain, and I'm wet, and I'm still hysterical!"

Ah, it works on so many levels.

IS THIS PHOTO FUNNY IN ANY WAY?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/19/national/19library.xlarge1.jpg

Steve Martin does this really well. Or should I say did it pretty well; these days I think most audiences are innoculated against his brand of audience-alienation-through-extremes.

Its a different sort of structure -- the alternation gag, which is sorta like the repetition gag except evolving. I always liked how Eddie Izzard would do that thing too with "[old celeb] just died." "Just Kidding." "Actually, yeah, it's really sad." "Ha! Gotcha!" "No, no, that was in bad taste, he's really dead." "Ha!" "It was this horrible car crash." etc. Eventually he's just nodding his head then shaking it, increasingly subtly. It's like the more familiar the gag gets, somehow the deeper the unease element of the humor runs.

But more about lists! I like the longer list gags, where the placement of the "ringer" is always really important and deliberate. Putting it at the end like Woody Allen does makes it sort of trail away, but sometimes putting it more in the middle works, but never in the exact middle, or having the list just run away in increasing absurdity, and then throwing in an *earnest* item as a "ringer" to almost close it out, and etc. There's this pure psychology of audience expectations involved, a sort of out-thinking, but not *too* out-thinking going on.

Like the old "hiding in plain sight" sorta thing where the detective thinks "ah! but that's what the criminal would want us to think!" except these days when someone says that, they're usually wrong. Somehow I think this all relates to Lacan's seminar on Poe's purloined letter, but I'm not sure how.

Also, the list where the list is just of numbers! Like the monty python gag -- "One, Two, Five.."

Also it occurs to me that the setup of the futurama gag is in throwing out the full fishbowl in the first place, coz its the usual sight gag of "whoa! there's a fishbowl with a fish in it!" and then the toaster is like the normal thing, and then sets the initial one in a pattern of household clutter. The next fishbowl is just sorta weird, but the last one completes the rule of threes and works like a meta-gag like "oh they think the fishbowl is so funny the just keep using it."

What do people think of calvino's lists?

Eddie Izzard did that for a bit in his Dressed to Kill special, some celebrity's dead, not really, okay yes he is, no not really. His facial expressions were teh funny.

Toby : You want the benefits of free trade? Food is cheaper.
Sachs : Yes.
Toby : Food is cheaper, clothes are cheaper, steel is cheaper, cars are cheaper, phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? That's 'cause I'm a speechwriter and I know how to make a point... It lowers prices, it raises income. You see what I did with 'lowers' and 'raises' there?
Sachs : Yes.
Toby : It's called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites and now you end with the one that's not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars. And that's it. Free trade stops wars! And we figure out a way to fix the rest! One world, one peace. I'm sure I've seen that on a sign somewhere.

1) Create schema
2) Create another schema similar to first, establishes the normality.
3) Create schema that deviates from the normality.

Um, thereby inherently relying, in a post-comedic sense, on deviating from the three-based schema, I guess.

*Checks number of paragraphs* / *Adds another*

and also, in austin powers(??) when this guy was falling off a cliff or something? (i can't remember), he kept injuring himself more and more and telling us the precise injuries of what was happening to him, that's creat.

xpost

I think this is a major difference between US and UK funny. If you imagine a graph describing the telling of a joke with x = time and y = funniness, the American line rises gently then dips gently, whereas the UK line rises more steeply (and, dare I say, a bit higher) then falls off sharply at the punchline.

And now, here's Freud's classification of funniness from his hilarious side-splitter, Jokes and their Relation to the Subconscious. You can tell it's hilarious because he employs the Rule of Three himself:

I. Condensation: a) with formation of composite word; b) with modification;

II. Multiple use of the same material: c) as a whole and in parts; d) in a different order; e) with slight modification; f) of the same words full and empty.

III. Double meaning: g) meaning as a name and as a thing; h) metaphorical and literal meanings; I) double meaning proper (play upon words), j) double entendre; k) double meaning with an allusion.

I was impressed at how they had ways of falling off cliffs that RoadRunner/Wile E Coyote hadn't even explored.

xpost

Are you referring, Sterling, to lists as devices in Calvino's writing? I'm only familiar with "Mr. Palomar", though I did buy a couple of other books that I've got packed away.

xpost

I don't find the "oh, nobody would do THAT" / cut to scene of someone doing exactly THAT gag very funny, but maybe because I've seen it so often that it dies for me while it's still being set up. Does Family Guy use it a lot?

xpost

I love Gilbert Gottfried's repetition, but it helps that he affects a deliberately irritating voice. I think he pauses to let the audience leave the joke before letting on that he hasn't left his subject at all yet, and isn't likely to anytime soon - that's a lot of why I laugh. In that way, it may be similar to what I'm imagining that Eddie Izzard joke might be like (I've never seen it done, but it sounds amazing, especially the idea of the gag decaying away to some really loaded but somehow abstract binary fluctuation). I have, though, tired of David Letterman's wringing-every-last-drop-of-it repetition, and don't find the Sideshow Bob / rakes gag that funny.

xpost

Sorry - I meant dense as in 'compact' rather than 'obscure'.

Englebert Humperdink!

one things i loved about "doonesbury" in its golden years, and then "bloom county," which i assumed was borrowing the concept from "doonesbury," was the concept of having a four-panel comic strip with the punchline in the third panel. they both used to do it all the time. the fourth panel would be some kind of dry aside or left-field comment on the punchline that made the joke funnier, even though you thought the joke was already over.

the gag is usually a surreal bad pun.

FOX TROT is a good example of this.

A
A'
A'' OR A-' OR -A

I think making the audience uncomfortable as an end rather than context is something other than comedy, eg most of Andy Kaufman's stuff.

the first gag is just the "hah! bender is greedy!" one. then with the fishbowl it's the punchline of "so greedy he steals random stuff!" the toaster stays the shaggy dog. the 2nd fishbowl is the absurdity, and the third is what puts it over the top.

so the question becomes -- since everything *but* the toaster is another layer/inversion of humor, why do you need the toaster at all? but you obviously do, maybe becuz, oddly enuf, it lends a moment of "normalcy" that everything can hinge around?

perhaps it's the repetition which follows after the head-fake disruption of the toaster. we expect something else after the second fishbowl but get another fishbowl.

During the commentary, Groening and Cohen suddenly exclaim in horror "OH MY GOD. Why did we not say "chair gas"?? WHAT WERE WE THINKING!?".

"Chair gas" is totally funnier than "chair fuel".