Topic: comedy
When I started this blog, I had the idea that I would add at least one comedy, one politics, and one soccer entry every week. Turns out, that's a bit like deciding to start exercising by planning to work out 2 hours a day, six days a week: it's so hard to stick to the schedule that it becomes very easy to just ditch the whole thing. So I'm starting again with more realistic goals: I'll try to write about once a week, and I'll see if I can avoid those 8 month breaks to which I've become accustomed.
anyway...
This is where comedy is right now: Onion AV Club post about Jeff Dunham's huge ratings (and another one from December).
I haven't seen Jeff Dunham's new special (I saw the old one - how many Jeff Dunham specials am I expected to watch?), so I can't give my opinion about whether or not any of his puppets are offensive (although using the word "towelhead" is offensive in all but about 2% of contexts), but I can say that I don't find Jeff Dunham (or his puppets) funny. Which brings the list of huge comics that I don't find funny to four: Dunham, Carlo Mencia, Dane Cook, and Larry the Cable Guy.
Thankfully, that list doesn't have five names because Andrew Dice Clay is no longer huge (at least in terms of fame - he is quite girthful, physically speaking). In fact, he was recently elimated on the first episode of the Celebrity Apprentice (Hulu it - it's worth seeing). As usual, the misfortune of others has brought me joy.
The thing is, Dice wasn't just fired because he lacks the business acumen of Khloe Kardashian and one of those ladies what holds up them suitcases on the TV; he was fired because everyone (accurately) perceived him to be an unfunny douchebag. His attempts to crack jokes are downright David Brent-ian. And the fact that the world no longer finds Andrew Dice Clay funny gives me hope that Comedy Central won't be producing Carlos Mencia specials into my 40s.
Dice was essentially a character comic. He had an act: the tough, New York guy. His fans were generally people who identified with his persona, which is why he was so big in New York. The thing is, his jokes were never that great, and I'll bet that's the biggest reason why his popularity didn't last very long; once you've seen one Dice show, you've seen them all. Comics like Cosby, Steve Martin, and Seinfeld constantly generate new material, which keeps them fresh. Each special (or movie, or whatever) is different than the last one. Frankly, I'd pay money to watch new Jerry Seinfeld jokes performed by a local open-micer; the material stands on its own and doesn't need Jerry Seinfeld's personality to prop it up. Dice didn't have much to offer beyond his persona, and his persona gets old pretty quickly.
Of the four comics I listed above, two - Mencia and Larry the Cable Guy - are essentially character comics. And I'll bet that of the four, those two have the least saying power (especially because I suspect that Dane Cook and Jeff Dunham are secretly better joke writers than their acts suggest). I just don't see how basically the same joke (i.e. "Mexicans do this!"/"I'm a redneck!") can stay funny forever. Of course, I hope that neither Mencia nor Larry are forced to endure the Kenny Powers-esque downward spiral that Dice seems to have undergone; I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But maybe one or both of them could undergo a decline in fame public enough to convince the NEXT Dane Cook - that is, the next comic with some talent but also an unquenchable thirst for fame - to spend more time writing jokes and less time cultivating his or her image.
