Alright, so right now I'm interning at the Onion News Network, which basically means it's my job to watch their funny videos and update various databases of information about their funny videos. So I have watched a lot of their funny videos. Here are their best funny videos.
13. Historic 'Blockbuster' Store Offers Glimpse of How Movies Were Rented in the Past
Including The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle’s recipe for ginger fruit punch. (Although, unfortunately, after some research, it seems that JD disavowed this cookbook after they failed to send him a copy and edited the shit—sorta—out of his recipe.)
This really isn't that amusing unless you're a huge Mountain Goats fan and spend a lot of time trying to track down rare recordings of songs they have performed maybe once. ("Going to Buffalo"!? Does anyone have this? Hello? Internets, are you listening? On the internet, no one can hear you scream. Well. On second thought, they might hear it, but they probably won't comment.)
As co-owner/operator of a listblog, I have to spend some time researching my colleagues/competition. And, as an ashamed-to-admit-it Pitchfork regular, this was a fun little trip down dorky-memory lane. (“Oh man… I doremember that Lifter Puller review. That was weird! This internet man agrees with me! I’m okay, he’s okay!”)
Highlights include the Burman king who laughed to death, the baseball player who swung his bat too hard, and the compulsive hoarder who was crushed under his collection of stuff.
You guys, I really like Joe Biden. Like, I like like him. I don’t believe in that whole “guy you can have a beer with” thing, but if Joey B wants to have a beer with me, I’m totally cool with it.
Aaaaaaah, this is so bad… this is so so bad. You know how much I like like Joe Biden? That’s how much I hate hate Harvey Mansfield. Wait, what are you saying, Harv? Sarah Palin is the VP candidate and Hillary Clinton is out of the race because Miss Alaska has the capacity to love and be loved and Hill doesn’t? I’m sorry, I just had a stroke. (Also, this quote: “You may be sure that I am not the first one to notice that feminist women are unerotic.” I just had another stroke. Two strokes is unhealthy for one day?)
Surprisingly, this is the only Youtube entry on the list. Not the funniest video per se, until you realize that the first guy they interview is actually my friend Pitr and he’s telling the Russian media bald-faced lies. (PS: I had to google whether the correct usage is bald-faced or bold-faced. Either way, kudos to Pitr for pulling one over on the Ruskies!)
In answer to the question posed by the headline: DUDES, NO! It’s going to be tee-riff! Just ‘cause Toby Keith is going to be part of the festivities, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it, y’all. I mean… I mean… Elvis Costello, guys! Declan MacManus! The little hands of concrete! The King of America! (Those are all the same people, to clarify.) Well done to the commenters on this post... no need for Toby-bashing. It only takes away from the time you can spend celebrating the promised Stewart-Colbert duet!
I don’t know if I’m out of line in saying this, but has The Onion been better than average lately? Obviously it had it’s hey-dey, but the past few years certainly fall under the heading of “lull” in my estimation. Perhaps it’s election-year intensity that’s got everyone firing on all cylinders. (Also, the Onion News Network material is fan-friggin’-tastic. Honestly, it’s secretly some of the best comedy online right now.)
This film looks ballin’ as all get-out. Kaufman’s directorial debut is reportedly quite dark—and am I the only one who’s catching a 8 ½ vibe here? (Fun story: I was playing trivia tonight and the team I was grading scored 8.5 points in one of the rounds, so I wrote “Fellini’s” next to their score and put 8.5 in quotes. I am a HUGE douche—and now I’m telling you about it! Gosh! What is wrong!)
Someone needs to make Julian O. Schmidt the American poet laureate. Honestly, these descriptions of painful experiences elicited by insect stings are as beautiful as they are unhelpful! Can pain have an “aftertaste” or be “irreverent”? Will you ever find yourself in a doctor’s office saying, “Gee, doc… the pain is rich, hearty, and… slightly crunchy? Gosh, it’s almost like someone has mashed my hand in a revolving door!”—to which he will surely reply, “Well, buddy… looks like we’re dealing with a bald-faced hornet sting. (To which I will reply, “Are you sure it isn’t ‘bold-faced hornet’?”)
ALSO: How shitty has Dr. Schmidt’s life been that he can use fire-walking with a rusty nail in one’s heel or bubble-bath electrocution as frames of metaphorical reference?
Download this song immediately. Listen to it time after time after time. It is a breath-taking work of art. The final chorus is what I expect to hear playing as the world sinks into a lake of fire. (Yes, I just made a reference to Ragnarok—the Norse “Twilight of the Gods”. Yes, I expect to be around for Ragnarok. Yes, I am going to dwell on this for a while…)
Okay, so it makes me livid when people call things that aren't satire satire, especially when there are a fairly decent amount of modern things that deserve the name satire. Basically, the point I'm trying to make here is that saying, "GEORGE BUSH LOOKS LIKE A MONKEY DURRRRRR" isn't satire, because you could just as easily make fun of the appearance of anyone. Satire doesn't have to be political, but it has to cut to the core of the hypocricy/idiocy of its real-life target in a way such that the most frequent targets are stupid political or social viewpoints. AND NOW, the Top 8 BEST examples of modern satire. OH, one more thing: I'm defining "modern" as "in the last twenty years or so" or obviously things like Catch-22 and Tom Lehrer and Randy Newman and Strangelove (which Peter probably wouldn't put on such a list because he is terrible at realizing when Strangelove and Strangelove-related things clearly belong on lists) would be on here.
Alright, so Mr. Show is a sketch show, which obvoiusly means that not every single sketch can be satirical. But Mr. Show picks targets and tears things down more aggressively and more frequently than any other sketch show I've ever seen, and I'd be surprised if any sketch show I haven't did it better. (Chappelle's Show might be close, but it degenerated into catchphrases a little too often.) Sure, there's a decent amount of absurdism, but when the absurdism drops out, sketches like this one hit you right in the fucking face:
That's one of the tightest, most merciless satires of capitalism I've ever seen. Awesome. And I don't even hate capitalism.
It's awfully funny that Aaron Sorkin clearly intended his show, Studio 60, to be the intelligent commentary on the state of the television and entertainment industry, and 30 Rock, which didn't nearly stretch as far trying to be that, ended up doing it about a thousand times better. On Studio 60, the writers on the titular sketch show railed against reality TV. They also did on 30 Rock, right before all admitting that they watched it. Much smarter, much funnier.
Alec Baldwin's Jack and Tracy Morgan's Tracy should be taught in classes as almost perfectly-realized satirical characters. Baldwin's role is more obvious--the conservative, ratings-driven suit--and he is probably the most reliably hilarious part of the show, but I don't think that the brilliance of the writing for Tracy--a satirical version of self-exploiting black actors--gets as much credit as it should. Sure, there's a fair amount of wackiness in this too (most of it funny), but 30 Rock is at its core a pervasive satire of television. And the line in the most recent "Cooter," at a government building with a leaky ceiling: "No, it's not. We looked into it and it's not...I'll show you the study." That is fucking satirical gold right there. (Contrast it to South Park, which would have centered an entire episode on that joke, getting comedy out of the many similarities between the leak and other leaks and instances of government-in-denial. Which, again, makes the joke about the references, not about representing a government with the endemic problem of doing that.) 30 Rock, however, owes a ton to...
Larry Sanders is maybe the greatest satire of the entertainment world ever created. Every celebrity who appears on the show, as themselves, is self-mocking in subtle but ruthless ways, to the point where I'm kinda surprised that people kept lining up to guest on the show. It either proves that Hollywood is pretty okay with making fun of itself, or that Hollywood doesn't realize when a team of brilliant writers (including Judd Apatow, Richard Day later of Arrested Development, Paul Simms of NewsRadio creation and now Flight of the Conchords, John Riggi now of 30 Rock...the list goes on) is savaging them. Here is the greatest news of all: every episode of Larry Sanders is currently available on YouTube. FOR FUCKING FREE. This is the greatest day of your life. Here, I'll start you off:
(Another good idea for a list: "Ways 30 Rock is indebted to Larry Sanders." Or maybe "Ways every single good comedy since Larry Sanders is indebted to Larry Sanders.")
Bill Hicks probably wins the award for all-time greatest satirical stand-up comedian. He was never content to make easy political jabs at an issue; he goes straight into it and talks very directly about everything that is wrong with the viewpoint of those who oppose him. "It's funny because it's true" is something often associated with observational comedy, but the best satire hits right there, too. And man was this guy funny. This is maybe the greatest takedown of fundamentalist Christianity ever done:
I know this is awfully high-up for something not that well-known and very recent, but I recently finished reading this entire thing through, and wow, does it have some of the best satirical writing I have ever seen. On nearly every country, the jokes cut straight to the most horrible and problematic stuff, and there is absolutely no apology made. A few examples:
on the map of South Africa, an "X" labeled: "Woman having consensual sex fantasy." in the facts section on Iraq: "Leading Cause of Death: victory" the subtitle of Germany: "Genocide-free since April 11, 1946"
I highly, highly recommend you buy this book right now. It's more relentless and probably better than America: the Book, which I loved.
This is almost certainly the most savage serial comedy I have ever seen. It deals with the innerworkings of British government, only the main character, the Minister of Social Affairs, spends about 99% of his time making it look like his department is doing something worthwhile and 1% of the time doing something, which is usually not worthwhile. If The West Wing is essentially a show about how we all wish government were actually run, The Thick of It is a show about how we all fear it probably is run. Spot on, and hilarious. And like Larry Sanders, YouTube currently has every single episode available online, You're welcome.
This. This ought to be the first thing anyone thinks of when they think of modern satire. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report consistently take angles on stories covered by every other comedian that cut to the basic problems and idiocy behind them. They don't sit on the sidelines and snipe easy targets, they make jokes that hurt because their targets are so deserving. There's a lot of crap made about people getting their news from The Daily Show, and I think that's basically a non-issue for several reasons:
1) The only studies I have seen are about people preferring The Daily Show to other TV news. Most people who are smart enough to enjoy The Daily Show probably do not watch TV news because TV news is awful. They read newspapers in print or online. The Daily Show isn't really that funny if you're not up on political events, so I don't really get how they assume that people get their news from it. 2) In a way, The Daily Show is not basically "worse" than most news. The difference is that most news makes the assumptions that politicians and news outlets act in a basically sensible manner, and The Daily Show assumes that they act in a nonsensical manner. If you're really cynical, you might say that means The Daily Show is at least as valid. I'm not that cynical, but I also don't think that normal news assumptions and Daily Show assumptions receive a 100/0 split. 3) The Daily Show, more than a show critical of politicians (which it also is), is very much a show generally critical of most news media. And usually what they do there is simply show montages of idiotic news media and have Jon Stewart react. That's not confusing, it's simply presenting.
Anyway, I love The Daily Show. When I said in that other list that South Park isn't that sane eye watching over the rest of the world for hypocrisy--the way it thinks of itself--well, The Daily Show is that. Almost every joke is pointed and the targets are deserving.
All of this goes again for The Colbert Report, which is perhaps framed more aggressively as a satire of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc., but acutally veers off into absurdism a little more frequently.
If there is a perfect example of The Daily Show both being funny and sane when it seems like everyone else has lost it, here it is:
16. Beijing Games Lift US Spirits, Shatter Office Productivity
15. Romanian Gymnast Regrets Decision to 'Just Wing It' on Floor Exercise
14. Phelps Vows To Drink Every Pool He Medals In
13. Batman Takes Gold in Pommel Horse
Coach: "He was both the hero we need and the hero we deserve."
12. German 100M Gold Medalist Admits to Being a Car "Though I make no apologies for my top-of-the-line power steering or my standard four-wheel drive, I cannot in good conscience accept this medal," said the Audi A8 in a press conference yesterday.
11. Steeplechase Winner: "What the Fuck was That?"
10. Rifle Shooting Targets Look Suspiciously Like Dissidents
9. Judges Too Embarrassed to Resolve China/Japan Relay Tie
8. Chinese Gymnast Demands Do-over, Pony
7. Italian Judge Just Thinks Everyone Is About a 6.5
6. Heavy Smog Results in 8-Sprinter Pileup
5. Nastia Luikin: "Please Stop Calling Me Nasty Lookin'"
4. Russian Genocide Team Wins Gold, Georgia Finishes 4th
3. British Archer Arrested for Robbing Rich, Giving to Poor
The Onion RAN THIS ONE the next day. They are wiretapping us and stealing our jokes!!!
2. Wrestling Champion Thanks "Coach, Drugs, and Wait No Not Drugs"
1. Previously Unknown Country Comes Out of Nowhere to Win Entire Olympics
