The greatest baseball player in the history of baseball players has, sniff, retired. (Okay, apparently he retired in December, but I have no reason to google baseball players in winter.)
--- The funniest bit in the history of funny.
It is, of course, this. More in the same genre here, if they're not all quite so deadpan hilarious. (The Rainn ones vacillate between being too out there and too plausible.) The second-funniest one, hooray, will be on NBC tomorrow.
--- The funniest comic in the history of funny.
When I get bored with the music stations on my XM, I'll occasionally listen to the "clean" comedy station, which covers mostly comedy oldies (The Smothers Brothers, Bob Newhart); comedy uber-oldies (Bob and Ray); and currentish people everyone has heard of (Cosby, Seinfeld, et al.). It's served to mostly reinforce my views on particular comics -- Seinfeld is vastly overrated; The Smothers Brothers, despite some respect in the business, still underappreciated -- but there's been two major revelations: (Mike) Nichols & (Elaine) May, and Steven Wright. Mike Nichols has moved on (and when I say "has," I mean they broke up in 1961) to become the dude who directed The Graduate and The Birdcage and other movies everyone likes but I dislike, but his and May's brand of comic realism -- often changing just one element of what would otherwise be a dead-serious dramatic situation -- implicitly delves into what makes comedy comedy. That sort of bipolar drama/comedy tension is what's made everyone one of their routines I've heard fascinating.
But it's actually Steven Wright who's the subject of my subject line. I'd never heard him before XM, although apparently he's well-enough known in comedy circles. His routine is just...um...uh...it's just a little hard to explain. So just watch.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
