REGGIE WATTS

Reggie Watts looks like a homeless guy they would lock up if he strolled through your neighborhood. He's a very funny cat--in a post-modern, apocalyptic sort of way--and how else would you like your humor? Jokes? Take my wife, please? If you want something new and different, free from all the tropes and cliches of typical television humor, listen to Reggie Watts. He's a riot.



We caught up with Reggie doing stand-up at Bumbershoot, the Seattle music and arts festival held over labor day weekend. He spoofed soul music and hip hop, pop culture and machismo and class--and performed a terribly funny riff on stuffy academics. Oh, and blacks and whites. Reggie switches voices and accents, sings and scats and makes strange noises, and challenges your expectations. Most of the time the best humor comes from the worst places, the ghettos and shtetls and slums of the world where humor is a well-honed survival skill. "Funny" is a coping mechanism, and we could all use more of it in this stressful, crazy, frightening, dangerous and divided world--don't you think? Loosen up before it's too late.

NOBODY CAN TOUCH THE QUEEN

Comedy isn't always pretty. But it should be funny, and Eddie Izzard is hilarious. He's an Emmy Award-winning actor, a stand-up comic, and a tough transvestite who can take care of himself. In the spirit of the G20 summit, meet the Queen.

(Warning: this contains language as it is spoken everywhere by actual people. If you are easily offended by the common vernacular skip this clip and get back to "Everybody Loves Raymond." For the rest of you, have a great weekend.)

WHAT'S SO FUNNY?

David Sedaris is a funny man. He writes hilarious books. Read his books and send him gifts. (read one of his stories here)

Humor, of course, is relative. You might not like Sedaris. Some people prefer jokes, puns, pratfalls, put-downs, and the same old familiar shtick. Some people like humor of the "take my wife, please," variety. I like that, too. But I applaud comics who surprise me. Ricky Gervais is just such a comic. The excruciating everyman of the now defunct television series, "The Office," (British version, of course) is absolutely painful to watch. Gervais makes you cringe. What's so funny about cringing, you ask. Oh, it's funny. I've seen you cringe. Ha.



Part 2 of Ricky Gervais is here.

SARCASM. YEAH, RIGHT.

Milton Berle was said to possess a huge parahippocampal gyrus

Sarcasm. I'm sure you know all about it. Dr. Katherine Rankin, a neuropsychologist and assistant professor in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, has just completed a scientific study of sarcasm. She used an MRI to locate the seat of sarcasm in the brain, which turned out to be the right parahippocampal gyrus -- a big surprise. For years, neurologists thought it resided in the left side of the brain, which handles language and social interactions. But you knew that.

Don Rickles, master of sarcasm...as if you'd know, hockey puck

Rankin also discovered that people with certain head injuries or frontotemporal dementias were unable to perceive sarcasm through paralinguistic clues. Videotapes that showed people expressing straightforward thoughts were juxtaposed with the same script read sarcastically (for example saying "What nice weather" in the middle of a thunder storm). Alzheimer's patients did fine on the tests, and understood sarcasm as well as anyone, but those with semantic dementia just "didn't get it."

By the way, humor resides in the right frontal lobe. Funny people are extraordinarily well-endowed in this area. If you're not, don't fall for the frontal lobe enhancement ads in the back of magazines; you're stuck with what God gave you, and you're just not funny. Try compensating by driving a big truck with huge tires, and stick a urinating Calvin decal in the window. That should fool people.

For more about the Rankin study, see the article in the New York Times HERE.

LOT OF THINGS LIKE THIS

Dave Eggers, author and founder of the exeedlingly clever lit magazine McSweeney's, has curated an art show at apexart. Described in the Village Voice as "Text, image, and humor from the likes of R. Crumb, Leonard Cohen, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger." The show opened April 2nd, and has drawn the hipster cognoscenti in droves.

In the press release, Eggers asks "Is humor allowed in art, and in what forms? Are captions allowed in art, and why?" The show consists of crude drawings accompanied by hand-drawn text.

Crude art and hand-written captions are nothing new -- bathroom stalls have been full of it for years -- but this faux-naive art appears to be the rage. Art directors must love it, too, because it's everywhere from indie album covers to alternative weekly newsprint. The musical equivalent might be the soundtrack of Juno. All those simple, sickly drawn animals -- an awkward, gangly deer, for example, a few stick trees, and some too-cute, off-center children, maybe in snowsuits, maybe holding bows and arrows. It's supposed to look sweet and earnest, I suppose, and on another level ironic. Of course.

Eggers on the left (photos by Sam Horine)

Yes, it could be horrible, but much of Egger's charm resides in his Rolodex, and the list of participants is impressive. I mean, you wouldn't want childish drawings actually drawn by children, for godsakes. Like, duh. That's not ironic. We want people who know better.

According to apexart, the show includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Cohen, David Berman, Georges Braque, Jeffrey Brown, R. Crumb, Henry Darger, Marcel Duchamp, CM Evans, David Godbold, Philip Guston, Paul Hornschemeier, Jay Howell, Chris Johanson, Maira Kalman, Kenneth Koch, Jason Logan, David Mamet, Quenton Miller, Tucker Nichols, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Raymond Pettibon, Dan Perjovschi, Amy Jean Porter, Steve Powers, Royal Art Lodge, Peter Saul, George Schneeman, Olga Scholten, Leanne Shapton, David Shrigley, Shel Silverstein, Nedko Solakov, Art Spiegelman, Ralph Steadman, William Steig, Saul Steinberg, and Kurt Vonnegut.

A GUY WALKS INTO A BAR

An amnesiac walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Do I come here often?"

Here's a string of jokes that begin with, "A man walks into a bar..." or some variation thereof. Some are funny, some make you groan.
http://notorc.blogspot.com/2007/09/anatomy-of-humor-5-guy-walks-into-bar.html