Funny stuff... I promise

Max Werner
January 28, 2009
Humor

The Boy Raised By Pythons and Black Adders
(or My Sense of Humor)

I grew up, for the earliest years of my life, in Berlin, which is perhaps the reason that my earliest exposure to English Language humor was to comedy of the British persuasion. At age five I cut my comedic teeth on Monty Pythons: The Holy Grail, to this day I still laugh with the same uproarious glee at that film (perhaps more so now because I definitely get more of the humor, being as I am now, marginally better informed than I was then.) When I discovered The Flying Circus I devoured that to with equal voracity. Blackadder, a British comedy series featuring Rowan Atkinson as the cynical, sarcastic and deeply self-interested titular character (Edmond Blackadder), also made a big impact me. The ridiculous metaphors and similes that Blackadder’s every day language was peppered with enthralled me. When he would describe something as “About as useful as a barbershop at the foot of a guillotine,” or laments that the course of his life is “Strewn with cowpats from the devil’s own satanic herd.” I would think, ‘Wow, that’s clever!” This is, perhaps, the origin of my peculiar taste in humor, which tends to favor witty observations about mundane things or clever turns of phase over topical humor and political satire.
That said, I am as much of a Daily Show enthusiast as the next man, I can appreciate the odd bit of topical humor, or cliched’s standup routine about how inept the Bush administration is. But it doesn’t really draw me in as much as the one-liners, quips, impeccable and yet totally unpredictable and novel delivery/timing, and generally bizarre world view of comedians such as Mitch Hedberg and Dimitri Martin. Hedberg is a particular favorite of mine. Famous for his funny, if somewhat odd, one-liners and observations Mitch Hedberg had a totally unusual voice and mode of delivery. The cadence of his speech was irregular, he would pause oddly in sentences and his voice would increase in speed and intensity and then slow rapidly in a way which was both unpredictable, and utterly rhythmic. His routine’s influence, to a greater or lesser extent, can be felt in the acts of a great many ‘dead pan’ comedians today. People from Will Farrell, Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock, to Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame, all employ a presence and delivery which bears traces of Hedberg’s distinct style. Hedberg’s stage presence was also quite unique his famous for his long hair which he polled down around his face, presumably to hide himself, his slouched, closed off stance, his nervous fidgeting and the self-concious nervous he spoke in, rather than impeding him, became iconic parts of his persona.. Hedberg is, himself, a paradox, a living example of the incongruity theory of comedy. He is a clearly stage-shy, uncomfortable man (as demonstrated, among other things, by his frequent practice of periodically facing away from the audience while still delivering his jokes.) doing standup comedy in a way his fear is clearly visible and yet he is somehow, still, hysterical. Dimitri Martin, to a lesser extent, exemplify this comic uniqueness and daring willingness to admit ones flaws and to be one’s self on stage, while still being utterly hysterical and clever.
I suppose ultimately, the reason my comedic palate evolved to favor the styling of People like Dimitri Martin and Mitch Heberg, over more topical humorists like Jon Stewart, goes back to my days watching British Television Comedies, where it was, more than anything else, the wit and absurdity, not the ‘pop-cultural’ relevance, of a joke that was prized. Had I grown up on Seinfeld (famous for his ‘real world’ observations) rather than Monty Python (whose comedy has always been more otherworldly) I might have, as the vast majority of my friends do, grown up favoring topical humor. Just as I am frequently told that the humorists I admire most (who tend, admittedly, to adhere to the incongruity theory of humor pretty strictly, it would seem) are “weird” I feel that the jokes made on the daily show are, though funny, ultimately not as timeless or enduring as the more abstract jokes which I prefer. Sure, its funny when a clever comedian makes a snarky remark about the president, but in twenty years that topic will be tired and that joke utterly unappreciated, but the flying circuses absolute lunatic absurdity, will almost never fail to rouse at the very least, a giggle, from even the most taciturn of viewers.