Friday, September 10, 2004

Welcome back, CNN

It's been a long time since I linked to a CNN story, but today I had to interrupt the long silence because one of the headlines linked to a picture of the new stamps that are being issued early in October (and if everyone is as sick of the little antique cars as I am, you will rejoice along with me at this fresh page of self-stickies).

Here, admire them along with me. [Does anyone else have the habit of reserving the less pleasing ones for bills to companies that you despise -- as if anyone, ANYONE at Mobil/Exxon, let alone the CEO, noticed that they routinely get the loser postage!? I'm already segregating them in my mind: dark clouds, lovely sun-tinted clouds -- so many allocation decisions...]


They are described as you-had-to-be-there comedians

Next time you’re feeling humorless, you should check out what’s playing at the Barrymore. Like, last night they had these dudes performing live comedy and singing and generally making crazy jokes sound, like CRAZY!
I was there.

You were not! I scanned the whole beatnik-humor loving audience and believe me, I did not see you. You would have stood out. You know, you’re rather conventional-looking.
I was there for the 10:30 show.

You are ****ing crazy! Like, how did you deal with all the, you know, naughty words and jokes about Ben Franklin smoking weed and letting lightning strike his kite, and German shepherds sniffing suitcases and the 1% of hardy germs that stay after 99% are killed off by Listerine and the songs about altar boys and *special* Ed and the birth of his first ugly baby and having bad profs hitting on their students --- does that type of humor appeal to you ??
I like most humor that is well done. 50% of theirs (it was Hedberg and Lynch, with a Rob Cantrell preshow) was terrific, mostly because of the delivery. I mean, you had to see these guys to know how you can make a five-minute joke out of Swiss Cheese.

Dude, I don’t remember that one! Like ****, give me a ****ing example of Swiss cheese humor!
If I say it now, I guarantee you wont laugh.

So, is there anything that you didn’t like, besides the other ****ing 50% of the jokes that didn’t work?
They may have worked, but Hedberg’s style is to play around with the mike and let his hair get in his way and the beer splash all over his face and so you lose some of the words.
What I didn’t like was that a few people in the audience were…out of control.

I heard that a guy jumped on the stage and did pushups with his own beer cup in hand.
Oh, he was funny enough. I was thinking about the one in the back who kept shouting every two minutes that someone was gay. If I had been on the Barrymore staff, I would have carried him out. Most of the audience, though, was cool.

So how is it that you knew about these dudes coming to Madison?
They were given a big plug in the Cap Times. I learned the other day that I should, from time to time, open the paper that comes to my house each evening.

You ****ing freak me out!
We are now into the next day. You should clean up your language already.