Norm

Talking in Vulture about being backstage at Fallon with Trump:

Did you meet him?
Well, what happened was, after the show, he came out and was just standing there. So I said, “Mr. Trump, a picture?” And he said, “You betcha. Just give me a minute.” Then he turns and walks down the hall, all the way to the other end, and gets on the elevator. “Just give me a minute,” and then he leaves the building. It was hilarious, like a Buster Keaton movie or something.

Thinking very strongly about driving to the desert or the redwoods alone while listening to Norm’s audiobook.

Also: is the essence of comedy noises or physical?

I saw Louis C.K.’s stand-up show a few days ago, and he had this section where he was talking about how doing stereotypically “black” or “Chinese” voices was racist, but the voices were still funny. And I was wondering how many people in the audience were making that distinction, too. 
I don’t know what other people think about this stuff, but Louis and I talk a lot and he really thinks that the essence of comedy is noises. I would say the essence of comedy is physical, but he thinks it’s sounds. So there I think he’s right, that the sound he’s making is funnier than the observation.

Little Orphan Annie

Really enjoyed this comedy bit from last year on Seth Meyers starring writer/comedian Michelle Wolf:

Helytimes reader Mat W. informs us that in the original Little Orphan Annie comic, Daddy Warbucks is married:

his wife (a plumber’s daughter) is a snobbish, gossiping nouveau riche who derides her husband’s affection for Annie. When Warbucks is suddenly called to Siberia on business, his wife spitefully sends Annie back to the orphanage.

Harold Gray

In November 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President and proposed his New Deal. Many, including Gray, saw this and other programs as government interference in private enterprise. Gray railed against Roosevelt and his programs. (Gray even killed Daddy Warbucks off in 1945, believing that Warbucks could not coexist in the world with FDR. But following FDR’s death, Gary resurrected Warbucks, who said to Annie, “Somehow I feel that the climate here has changed since I went away.”

More:

Gray was especially critical of the justice system, which he saw as not doing enough to deal with criminals. Thus, some of his storylines featured people taking the law into their own hands. This happened as early as 1927 in an adventure named “The Haunted House”. Annie is kidnapped by a gangster called Mister Mack. Warbucks rescues her and takes Mack and his gang into custody. He then contacts a local senator who owes him a favor. Warbucks persuades the politician to use his influence with the judge and make sure that the trial goes their way and that Mack and his men get their just desserts. Annie questions the use of such methods but concludes, “With all th’ crooks usin’ pull an’ money to get off, I guess ’bout th’ only way to get ’em punished is for honest police like Daddy to use pull an’ money an’ gun-men, too, an’ beat them at their own game.”

Warbucks became much more ruthless in later years. After catching yet another gang of Annie kidnappers he announced that he “wouldn’t think of troubling the police with you boys”, implying that while he and Annie celebrated their reunion, the Asp and his men took the kidnappers away to be lynched.

Gray reported in 1952 that Annie’s origin lay in a chance meeting he had with a ragamuffin while wandering the streets of Chicago looking for cartooning ideas. “I talked to this little kid and liked her right away,” Gray said, “She had common sense, knew how to take care of herself. She had to. Her name was Annie. At the time some 40 strips were using boys as the main characters; only three were using girls. I chose Annie for mine, and made her an orphan, so she’d have no family, no tangling alliances, but freedom to go where she pleased.”

Complex Magazine Presents: Desus vs. Mero

Q: What is the oldest joke in America?

A: it’s a person of one race imitating a person of another race.

Probably (after initial terror) Columbus guys back on the Pinta cracked each other up by “doing” Arawaks.

No doubt the top Arawak comedians could do killer imitations of Columbus-guys, which helped them forget the pain of smallpox etc.

I think through @chelseaperetti I started reading @thekidmero’s tweets.  For a long time I did not follow him (he has tweeted upwards of 59,000 times) but I would look through his feed sometimes.

The Kid Mero lives in the Bronx. I think the only times I ever went to the Bronx were 1) to eat an Irish toastie at Mary’s Celtic Kitchen with Boyland or 2) to go to Yankee Stadium.

But apparently there are non-white areas of the Bronx.

The Kid Mero has a podcast with another guy from the Bronx called Desus.  The podcast, “Complex Magazine Presents: Desus vs. Mero,” can be found for free on iTunes and “Skitcher” (??).  It is hilarious.  Both dudes are super funny.

One topic that comes up in episode 3 is the enthusiasm of white people for apples, also for cheese.

Here is another topic that comes up:

Anyway: recommended.

(photo of multi-cultural Irish step dancing troupe from the Bronx)

from Seinfeld’s Reddit AMA

You MUST, MUST

listen to Alec Baldwin interview Jerry Seinfeld on his podcast Here’s The Thing.  FREE on iTunes!

Alec Baldwin:  You don’t have any problems.

Jerry Seinfeld: No. I don’t. But I do relate very deeply to all of those people –

Alec Baldwin: Why? Why?

Jerry Seinfeld: – you describe. In fact, I was watching the Emmys – this is the only part of the Emmys that I like – when they do the comedy writing award and each comedy writing staff puts up funny pictures. And then when the actual staff comes up on the stage and you see these gnome-like cretins just kind of all misshapen, and I go, ‘This is me. This is who I am. That’s my group.’

(one of my absolute favorite least cretinous humans I know there third from left.  If you told him to his face he was gnome-like he would laugh heartily and recommend three fantastic indie text games featuring gnome characters, plus a 700 page self-published graphic novel from Taiwan about gnomes)

Or how about this?

Jerry Seinfeld: Jackie Mason. Alec, I was doing comedy about three weeks, three weeks, and I mean stumbling. Nobody three weeks, I’m 19 years old, 20 years old, of going up on stage. It wasn’t even a stage. There was a restaurant where they take a table out and they would take one of the lights, a lamp, and they would take the shade off, and that was the show. He was in the audience – 15 people, right? It was one of these cabaret things on west 44th street. It was called the Golden Lion Pub. He crooks his finger at me and he says, ‘Come over here.’

Alec Baldwin:  

Jerry Seinfeld: He takes me over to the bar. He says, ‘You have it.’ He says, ‘You are going to be so big.’ He says, ‘It makes me sick to even think of it, how successful you’re gonna be.‘ And I was just starting.

Jerry Seinfeld: Because of the precision wordplay. They were – see that’s where they went beyond – there was Laurel and Hardy, and then Martin and Lewis, but Abbott and Costello has this precision. ‘Who’s on First?’ –

Alec Baldwin: Sure.

Jerry Seinfeld: – is a piece of – it’s like that museum in Spain, the –

Alec Baldwin: The Prado?

Jerry Seinfeld: No. The other one, that what’s his name did?

Alec Baldwin: That Gehry did?

Jerry Seinfeld: Yeah.

Alec Baldwin: Right.

Jerry Seinfeld: Whose real name is Goldberg, by the way.

Alec Baldwin: Is it really?

Jerry Seinfeld: Yes, it is.

Alec Baldwin: Is it really?

Jerry Seinfeld: He changed it in college.

Alec Baldwin: Frank Gehry’s real name is –

Jerry Seinfeld: Yeah. What’s the name of that museum in northern Spain?

Big hat tip to cuz.  Transcript available here.

(cant find a credit on that top photo, I found it here)

Good Story About Louis CK