Jeff Maurer's Blog About Comedy

Olivia Munn on the Daily Show

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:08:23 -0500

Olivia Munn is being auditioned as the new Daily Show correspondent. This comes at an interesting time, since Jezebel recently wrote this poorly-sourced article about sexism at the Daily Show and the Daily Show women responded. I have a lot of opinions about what Olivia Munn’s audition says about women, comedy, and TV, but those opinions are all over the map. Here they are.

Olivia Munn’s audition has caused a lot of discussion for one reason: she's hot. The first time I saw her on TV – before she even opened her mouth – I thought: “Oh, I get it. They hired a hot chick.” So, there’s an anti-hot-person bias there (by me, at least, though I know I’m not alone). People hear that she was in Playboy and Maxim and assume that she can’t be funny. We should acknowledge that some people will prejudge her because she’s good-looking.

But didn’t she also get hired because she’s good-looking? At least partly? Of course she did. If you think that her looks had absolutely nothing to do with her getting hired, you’re naïve.

On the other hand, isn’t any performer judged by his or her personality? Can you really ask people to ignore what they observe about your race, age, gender, appearance, body language, and personality? No, you can’t, especially on a visual medium. So, yes, she was hired partly because of her looks…so what?

Here’s what: isn’t the job to be funny? Shouldn’t they just hire the funniest person, regardless of physical appearance? But that question already assumes that Munn isn’t the funniest person, which gets back to my anti-good-looking person bias. Maybe she is the funniest person…the jury’s still out on her.

And what does her hiring say about women on TV? Should women be happy that the Daily Show is auditioning another female correspondent, or should they be depressed that the woman they chose to audition may end up having more in the way of looks than talent?

Here’s where my opinions stop being so fuzzy: if Munn isn’t funny, then her audition is bad for women. The Jezebel article was obnoxious: arguing that you should hire women just for the sake of hiring women does absolutely nothing to advance women’s rights. In fact, it’s insulting; the subtext is that women can’t make it in a system based on merit – instead, the system has to be based on raw numbers. That argument is a loser.

If Olivia Munn isn’t funny and gets hired, then one of two things is happening: 1) She’s being hired mostly because she’s a woman, or 2) She’s being hired mostly because she’s good-looking. Either way in that scenario, she’s not being hired for her ability, and that certainly can’t be considered progress for women.

So my friends and family know I'm not a liar...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:12:05 -0500

See, I was a semi-finalist on Last Comic Standing. How else would I have gotten the ticket?

Kinkos, you say? Go fuck yourself.

LA, New York, or DC?

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:21:11 -0500

How can you tell what town a comic is from? It’s easy, at least as long as they’re from New York, LA, or DC/Baltimore. I know each of these scenes pretty well. LA comics are outgoing and polished; New York comics are moody and dark. DC/Baltimore comics have our own brand of homemade charm. I’ve developed a quiz to clarify things – which type of comic are you?

The first thing I do when I get on stage is…

a) Read an exhaustive list of my stage credits and commercial appearances

b) Light a cigarette

c) Take the mic out of the stand and place the stand to the side (that’s what the guy at Comedy College said to always do first)

On stage I stand…

a) At the very front; better to work the room and engage the audience

b) Slouched against the brick wall; I’m just relaxing and talkin’, man

c) Wherever I took the mic out of the stand; I am too petrified to move

The hoodie I wear on stage is…

a) A $400 Donna Karan pre-stressed hoodie

b) Delightfully disheveled

c) Drenched in flop sweat in under a minute

My first joke is…

a) A story that highlights my unique ethnic background (take note, casting agents!)

b) A joke about rednecks

c) Taken word-for-word from Brian Regan’s 1997 Comedy Central Presents

On stage I read…

a) My stage credits again…in case anyone missed them

b) An e-mail exchange between myself and my cable company

c) My set list, which I taped to the bottom of my beer glass

You may have seen me as…

a) A dead body on CSI

b) A dead body on Law & Order

c) A dead body on the Wire

I take a notebook on stage in order to…

d) Read the jokes my agent wrote for me

e) Project my affected, pseudo-artist persona

f) Remember my set…how to people remember five whole minutes?!?!?

My teeth are…

a) An unnatural, blinding white

b) Still clenched an anger at the Bush administration

c) Chattering nervously

My dream is to…

a) Be an actor

b) Be Bill Hicks, including the dying young part (which would be badass)

c) Feature at Del Rio Restaurant in Leesburg

New Paul F. Tompkins Special Tonight @ 11 on Comedy Central

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:24:07 -0500

Set your TIVO - sure to be hilarious. Followed by Ralphie May, so don't worry too much about the karmic balance of the universe.

The funniest thing I've ever fucking seen

Fri, 28 May 2010 08:12:00 -0500

I was just made aware of the drunk outtakes of Orson Welles' champagne commercials, and they're maybe the funniest thing I've seen in my life. The "mwwmwwmaaa-haaaaaaa, the French" at :56 would be the finest piece of comic acting in history had it been intentional.

18 years after the fact, a joke from The Critic makes sense.

It's Not Offensive if it's Funny

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:11:43 -0500

There's a lot of debating among comedians about how offensive a person can/should be in an attempt to be funny. Comedy - or good comedy, anyway - has an inherently subversive nature, and you can usually get a laugh saying something that people think but are afraid to say, so there's a natural inclination for comedians to test the limits of good taste. Sometimes - and you'll see this at pretty much any open mic you go to - the comic crosses the line. But where is the line?

Obviously, the answer to that question is different for everyone, though there's some general agreement on standards; I don't know anyone who argued that Michael Richard's flipout was not over the line. I think the thing that makes offense in comedy so difficult to pinpoint is this: the quality of the joke is one of the things that determines whether it's offensive or not.

Take, for example, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. It's exactly what it sounds like: a Web site (and now a book) chronicling all of the things that white people like. The first time I heard of this site, I was offended. I mean, the reason is pretty plain: it's nothing more than a list of racial stereotypes. Think of all the offensive things that would be included if stuffblackpeoplelike.com or stuffmexicanpeoplelike.com existed. If you're against stereotypes - and everyone claims to be - then you should probably be offended by this site.

But I'm not. Because when I started reading it, well...it's really funny. I mean, really sharp, really funny. Not hacky - golf, for example, isn't listed as one of the things that white people like. Religions their parents don't belong to, however, is. The observations on this site are so unbelievably right on. Take, for example, this description of Sarah Silverman* (which is, itself, about saying offensive things in comedy...what a mindfuck):

Her whole shtick is about saying really offensive things! But it’s ok because she’s pretty and has a small voice so it all sounds so cute! Get it? It’s not offensive, because when she says racist or sexist things she knows they are offensive. So it’s ok.

Actually, that whole entry about comedians completely busts me, as do about 80 percent of the entries.

This site doesn't offend me because the jokes are so good. At the risk of overanalyzing things, I think this logic makes sense: the statements don't strike me as offensive because they are so clearly meant to be funny, not to be taken seriously. Take, for example, this paragraph, from thing #101- being offended:

If you ever need to make a white person feel indebted to you, wait for them to mention a book, film, or television show that features a character who is the same race as you, then say “the representation of <insert race> was offensive and if you can’t see that, well, you need to do some soul searching.” After they return from their hastily booked trip to land of your ancestors, they will be desperate to make it up to you. At this point, it is acceptable to ask them to help you paint your house.

With that tone, the only people who could possibly take this site seriously are the same people who, when in a comedy audience, will boo at the mere mention of, say, the Vietnam War (regardless of what you actually end up saying about Vietnam War).

It's okay because it's funny. Or, at least, it's okay mostly because it's funny; it also helps that stereotypes about white people have not traditionally been a source of pain or subjegation in this country. And - and I'll keep this in mind next time the "when is it okay for comedians to use the n-word?" argument comes up - I found it interesting that I immediately wanted to know whether or not the author is white. It seems a lot more okay to me if the author is white - it would just affirm that this list is meant to be good-natured, not accusatory. But I'm not ready to say that obervations this sharp, comedy this good, should be ignored because of an over-developed sense of political correctness. What's offensive in regular life is not necessarily offensive in comedy.

*For the record - because I'm begging for an argument with my friends if I don't clarify this - I think Sarah Silverman is pretty funny, but also overrated.

Comedy Lies, Part 1: Stage Credits

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:40:11 -0500

There is a lot of lying in comedy. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Really, instead of saying "I just flew in from Cleveland..." would you really prefer that a comedian set up a joke "I just flew in from Springfield - Oregon, not Illinois - which, of course meant that I actually flew out of the Portland airport, and I had to switch planes in Cincinnati, so I guess you could say that I just flew in from Cincinnati, though the Cincinnati airport is actually across the river in Covington, Kentucky..."?

Some of these lies are innocuous (see above). Some lies are a bit more devious. In the interest of pulling back the curtain and giving non-comedians a better idea of what to believe and what not to believe, I've decided to write a series of blogs covering some common comedy lies. First up: stage credits.

Stage credits are frequently wall-to-wall bullshit. Not always, but frequently. Even more frequently, they're not complete bullshit, but are willful exaggerations of the truth. For example, immediately after my second college show, I began having myself introduced (and this is an extremely common, completely overworked intro) as having played "clubs and colleges up and down the East Coast." I had played University of Maryland Baltimore Campus and Georgetown University. Two points make a line. Anything more than one is plural. Both universities are within 50 miles of an ocean, which is to the East of a prominent land mass. Bam. Intro.

Here are some other common intros and what they actually mean:

"This comic is a really funny guy" = "This comic showed up late and didn't write an intro, so I'm giving him an intro that cannot technically be disproved."

"This comic is a good friend of mine" = "I am aware of this person's existence, or at the very least I have a notecard with their name on it."

"This comic can be seen at venues throughout the area" = "This comic has access to e-mail and a basic knowledge of the English language, and is therefore capable of signing up for open mics."

"You may have seen this next comic on Youtube" = "This comic has a joke that's received 12 hits on Youtube, which means that the monkey with his finger up his ass is more than 14,000 times more entertaining than this next comic."

"This next comic comes to us all the way from New York City" = "Ooooooooohhhhh, pay attention, hillbillies! A real live New Yorker done took his auto five hours down the turnpike to show us small-town Washington folk how proper joke-i-fyin' is done! And y'all know he's good, cus he's down here doin' 7 minutes for free on a Tuesday night...just like that Seinfeld jew!"

"You may recognize this next comic from his online TV show..." = "There is no possible way you will recognize this next comic."

"You may have seen this next comic on Law and Order (New York)/CSI (LA)/The Wire (DC/Baltimore)" = "This next comic has played a dead body on Law and Order/CSI/The Wire."

"This comic has performed at venues all over the world" = "This comic drove up to Toronto this one time."

"You may have seen this next comic on Last Comic Standing" = "This comic tried out for Last Comic Standing. His elbow was in the shot when that blonde lady who sounds like the female David Brent was interviewing the guy in the diaper."

"This comic has opened for (fill in impressive yet semi-believable name)" = "A club did some open mic thing and (impressive yet semi-believable name) showed up at the end and did a guest set. Bryson told me that he also ended up banging that waitress with the red hair."

Other phrases/things to watch out for:

"Shared the stage with..." - If you're bullshit detector doesn't go off when you hear language this ambiguous, you need to get it replaced.

"BET's Comic View..." - Comic View will apparently let any black comic in New York do a 20 second set if they hang around long enough.

"Performed at (some notable club)" - "Performed at" does not mean "was paid to perform at." Most clubs do some sort of open mic.

"Graduated from ______ comedy class" - Contrary to popular belief, the matriculation rate from comedy and improv classes is surprisingly high. It's not West Point.

More than 3 stage credits - If a comic needs to try to convince you that badly, then they know that they won't be able to do it with their jokes.

Elaborate intros that require even good MCs to read from a notecard - if you can't write a short intro, then you can't write a good joke, either.

TV credits that are not comedy - Actors are not comedians...they're actors. The only good thing to come out of the whole Michael Richards thing was that this was proven definitively and very publicly.

Anything that sounds way too good to be true - Wow, he just had a one hour special on HBO and now he's doing 5 minutes at 11:00 at Cafe Japone? Looks like we showed up on the right night!

Of course, everything I listed above are sometimes legitimate - everything except for the online TV show one. And then, of course, there's the fact that some MCs and sound guys just make up stage credits without even asking you - I've been introduced as having been on HBO and having had a half hour special on Comedy Central. So, given that you usually can't trust stage credits, why not just do this: decide for yourself whether the comic is funny or not.

Comedy Contests

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:29:04 -0500

Tonight is the DC Comedy Showcase finals at the DC Improv. I'm not going, but I wish everyone luck (a stupid and disingenuous thing to do, because they can't all win, right?). I'm in the Drafthouse Comedy Challenge tomorrow. Also tomorrow, I'll post my most recent podcast, which is about comedy contests (featuring some of the guys in tonight's Comedy Showcase). It's comedy contest season in DC.

I don't want to rehash too much stuff that I covered in the podcast, but I do want to hurry up and get some of my opinions about contests on the record before tomorrow night, at which point whatever I say could be perceived as sour grapes or gloating. So here we go:

I think that comedy contests are good for comedy but bad for comics. Contests are good for one reason and one reason only: they create shows that would not otherwise exist. For example, if the Drafthouse cancelled their comedy challenge, they wouldn't replace it with a comedy showcase; they'd replace it with a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Contests bring crowds. Contests encourage comics bring their friends – some contests are almost entirely bringer shows. People are intrigued by contests and like the competitive aspect - witness that virtually every popular reality show includes the competitive element. Practically anything that brings audiences to see comedy is good for comedy.

Okay, enough being positive: contests are terrible. They’re discouraging. They’re unfair. They’re stupid – what’s more subjective than comedy? No matter how well run – and some contests actually are well run – they’re still unbalanced and arbitrary. And here’s something that came out in the podcast that I hadn’t thought about much before: contests stoke the competitiveness between comics.

There’s already plenty of competition in comedy. It’s just the nature of the business, and I don’t think it can be gotten rid of. My generation of DC comedians tried very hard to avoid competitiveness between comics, which was a well-intended effort but, in hindsight, probably also a bit naive. The people in the most recent podcast, who are a bit younger than me, were big enough to admit to competitiveness, which I think is a positive step. As Bryson said, admitting to competitiveness is a bit like admitting to racist tendencies: it’s healthier to acknowledge it and manage it than to try to deny it.

Personally, I think I’m making progress in the way I approach contests. I’ve seen such stupid things happen in contests that it’s getting easier to actually convince myself that they don’t mean anything. In the past, when I’ve lost to shitty comics it’s eaten at me for weeks; this time, I’m just going into the contest with the knowledge that it’s extremely likely that something I view as completely unfair will happen (for the record, I don’t know whom I’m competing against tomorrow). Of course, it’s hard not to not care when money, opportunities, or prestige are on the line, so I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want to win. But, if – wait, when I lose, I honestly think that I’ll be more pissed off about the money than the competitive aspect. It’s greed, not ego. I think that counts as progress.

So, I think that we’re stuck with contests, and we’re also stuck with the competitiveness that they inspire. Probably the best thing to do is realize: 1) Contests are extremely random, so it probably doesn’t make much sense to let results affect your mentality too much one way or the other, 2) We don’t need to go through the charade of pretending that we don’t care about the outcome; we just need to try to keep our competitiveness from turning into vitriol.

Ri Ra Ri-view

Thu, 8 May 2008 17:16:25 -0500

Get it? "Ri" view! That's the best joke I've written in four months.

Dr. Dremo's, the Arcade Fire of DC Comedy Venues (in that some people loved it and some people thought it was good, but overrated), died a few months ago. I was ambivalent about Dremo's, but I'll still miss it; half of the time, you got a good enough crowd that you could work out new material. That's a pretty high success rate for an open mic.

Ri Ra is Dremo's descendant. It's on the same night (Wednesday), it's in the same part of town (Wilson Boulevard in Arlington), and it's a Shackelford show. I was at the first show last night. My impression: generally positive.

First the good:

- There were people there. Actually more people than the room could fit (by the middle of the show). The attendance pattern actually closely mirrored Dremo's - a few groups of people at tables to start, then no-necked dudes with beers filtering in near the middle of the show. Granted, first show attendance at an open mic can be misleading, but it was a good sign.

- The show has it's own room. The setup is a bit like Rendezvous - it's a room upstairs from the bar. In my opinion, this is a necessary condition for an open mic - I don't want bar wenches and frat guys talking over my set.

- The room isn't too big. I always hated the first three slots at Dremo's because the room hadn't filled up yet and was just too damn big. This room is a bit smaller than Topaz.

- The sound system was fine. No cracking, no buzzing, right volume. It's a Shackelford show - you know the drill: Johnny Bravo amp, small stage, fake brick backdrop, sandwich board out front. Curt has these shows down to a science, and they work.

- Polite wait staff. The servers who were bringing up food were unobtrusive. Amazingly, not every server realizes that this is important at a comedy show.

- The crowd laughed. They were there for comedy.

Now the bad:

- Some noise was drifting up from the bar below. If you were standing on the side of the room near the stairs, it was a bit tough to maintain focus. Once the room was completely full, they shut the door at the bottom of the stairs, which made a big difference.

- The crowd was just a bit of a bar crowd. Not stupid, but very dependant on dirty words and punchlines. Very much like Dremo's used to be. If you had a subtle joke or something with a long setup, you were probably in the wrong place.

- Given the number of people who ultimately showed up, the room may have actually been a bit too small. Curt says he's hoping to move the show downstairs eventually; I don't really know about that. I'd rather have a small, quiet room than a big, noisy one. Anyone remember that one show at Tryst? I think that may be what we're looking at if the show moves downstairs.

So, on the whole: good show. We'll see if it continues. I hope so, because with Dremo's dead and Rendezvous in a coma, Wiseacres is the only Wednesday show in DC. The Wednesday Wiseacres show has been overrun by about 25 comics the last few times that I've been there. We need another Wednesday show to releive the pressure.

Yo You Suck You Fucking Faggot LOL

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:01:00 -0500

If you've ever worked in customer service - and I did for six years through high school and college - then you probably suspect that most people are boiling cauldrons of rage, with social conventions being the loosely-placed lid keeping the vitriol from boiling over the top. People are angry; they are insecure. If you've worked as a waiter, or a clerk, or pizza delivery guy, or anything in the service industry, then you've been the victim of someone's misplaced anger. They can't yell at their boss, or their spouse, or their parents, or God, but they can sure as hell take you to task for bringing their hot wings without any goddamned ranch dressing. What is this, Afghanistan? I hope you weren't expecting a tip, dollface.

If you've ever doubted just how angry and vindictive many people are, doubt no longer; internet message boards have drawn back the curtain. The internet is the wild west of human interaction - there are no laws, and justice is rare. When people interact face to face, most people are afraid to be assholes. Society frowns on it, and you just might get your ass kicked. But when societal and survival considerations are removed - when you're safe in the anonymous darkness of your Mom's basement, wearing only underwear and a single sock - there's nothing to keep all the anger and rage from spilling out.

Every exchange on every message board on the internet is roughly the same. The topic of the initial thread barely matters - the same arguments and the same assholery always comes to the front. For example, the comments below are in response to a brownie recipe posted on foodtv.com:

aceofknaves: First!

gourmandini: too chewy

megwiggle: first!

drandi29: Fuck you you fucking faggot thes brownies suck!!!! they tatse like my shit!!!!

reese_piece: gourmandi what would you know you fucking dago cunt. I'd like to rip out your eyes and piss in the sockets LOL

aceofknaves: Hey megwiggle, do you know how to count? Sorry to sound pedantic, but...

Kosovi_is_Serbia: hey drandi29 do you eat your own shit?

ryguy: nice.

m1k3: ooooooooooooooooooohhh, aceofknaves."pedantic". you harvard assholes think there so smark

justiceispeace: This is about the level of conversation I would expect from a country that commits genocide against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Athens created art while Spara prepared for war, which is why you Americans and your paternalistic, militaristic culture will never truly appreciate the dimensions and nuances of fine food. Enjoy your hot dogs!

aceofknaves: At least I can spell.

m1k3: spell cocksucker you fucking bitch LOL

thedrumroll: I don't know why your so concerned with protecting the terrorists justicispeace. I know you got used to surrender during WWII but if we surrender now in Iraq then the terrorists will be in control. Hillary and Ombama want to tuck our tail between our legs and run home but we need to have someone with some BALLS in the White House to keep the world safe. I served in the Marine Corps for 20 years justiceispeace and I'll take your apology that you don't speak German right now.

bakken: first!

funbundle: (sigh)

hotchocolate18: do you eat your own shit drandi?!?!

aceofknaves: m1k3 I'd respond but I doubt you'd understand...

justiceispeace: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, East Timor, Falkland Islands, El Salvador, Rwanda, Kuwait, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq...when will you Americans lean that WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER!

a_TOM_explosion: yo check out my band son we be rockin Cin City and all points north south east and west come check us on myspace: www.myspace.com/atomexplosion

That was made up. But still.