Posts Tagged ‘funny’

Norm Macdonald, RIP

Tuesday, September 14th, 2021

The great comedian Norm Macdonald has died:

Norm Macdonald, who has died at 61, was a comedic genius whose irreverence and inimitable delivery made millions of people laugh harder than almost anyone else could make them do—whether he was taking shots at mainstream figures (O. J. Simpson, the Clintons), constructing elaborate setups for impossibly simple punchlines (depressed moths, massacres in Vietnam), or saving dull affairs by subverting expectations (celebrity roasts and awards events, big and small). A private man who kept his nine-year battle with cancer out of the public eye, Macdonald occasionally showed flashes of a deep seriousness, expressing frustration with an increasingly intolerant popular culture and offering genuine insights in interviews and in an uproarious pseudo-memoir. But in the final analysis, he was a pure aesthete of jokes and one of the funniest people around.

Born and raised in Canada, Macdonald began his comedy career in the late 1980s. He was a frequent guest of late-night shows throughout the 1990s, with his appearances on Conan O’Brien in particular being the stuff of legend. His apogee of fame probably came between 1994 and 1998, when he hosted Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment—typically a stepping stone to a late-night show of one’s own—only to be fired by NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer for joking too much about O. J. Simpson, Ohlmeyer’s personal friend. Immediately afterward, Macdonald went on David Letterman, who asked how he had reacted to getting canned. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not good,’” said Macdonald. “And I said, ‘Why is that, now? And [Ohlmeyer] goes, ‘Well, you’re not funny.’ And I said, ‘Holy Lord, that’s even worse news!’”

When I go looking for random YouTube comedy videos, Macdonald and Bill Burr are the two comedians watch most often.

There’s no shortage of great Macdonald clips out there:

His standup routine on the last episode of Letterman:

The “I’m not sure if you’re a history buff…” intro gets me every time.

His sendoff to Conan O’Brien:

Bob Dole offers a classy tribute:

And Norm would have loved this tribute:

Squirrel Ninja Warrior

Thursday, July 30th, 2020

A light, diverting video for your amusement…

Six Degrees of Marty Feldman

Saturday, September 10th, 2016

Probably because I was searching for various clips following Gene Wilder’s death, this video about Marty Feldman’s life came up on YouTube. I thought I’d see a few minutes of it and actually ended up watching the whole thing.

Here in the U.S. Feldman is probably know mainly for appearing in Young Frankenstein, but in the UK he was revered as a radio and TV comic writing and performing genius who held his own working with many of the people who would later form Monty Python. Indeed, Feldman co-wrote the famous “Four Yorkshiremen” skit Python would later adopt as their own, and when Python first went on the air, Feldman was staring in his own Marty show on the BBC.

It’s worth a watch.

MST3K Reunion Concert Rebroadcast Tomorrow

Monday, July 11th, 2016

If you missed the live broadcast of the MST3K reunion concert, you can still catch the rebroadcast tomorrow, July 12.

Having attended the live simulcast, I highly recommend attending seeing it to any MST3K fans, where the combined Rifftrax/MST3K crews tackle such shorts as Shake Hands With Danger and At Your Fingertips: Grasses, a school arts-and-crafts film of such depressing sadness (“It’s Jim Henson’s Blair Witch Babies!”) that you realize how desperately kids of the 1960s and 70s needed the Internet and video games to be invented.

And new star/test subject Jonah Ray did a pretty good job holding his own in the riffing, only flubbing once.

if you’re a fan of MST3K or riffing, you should definitely check it out.

“Shoegaze Band’s Pedalboard Becomes Self-Aware”

Saturday, June 18th, 2016

Heh. I missed this from last year:

Local shoegaze rockers and engineering hobbyists, Whale Coma, accidentally created the world’s first artificially intelligent band member when their pedalboard became self-aware Sunday night.

Guitarist Connor O’Hoolihan excitedly connected yet another pedal to the now-conscious tangle of cords the band has affectionately dubbed “SkyPed,” a functioning life form of questionable intent and motivation that has begun to formulate rudimentary yet coherent speech through O’Hoolihan’s Electro-Harmony-Vocal Synthesizer Pedal.

“I told him not to add a Rat Stink Fuzzy Big Muff™ when he’s already running two Fat Boy Moose Knuckles™ and a Red Bitch Psycho Trem™,” said Willy Bennett Dyson, the band’s third guitarist. “We’re playing with something we don’t fully understand.”

Berkeley Breathed Wins April Fools

Friday, April 1st, 2016

With Calvin and Hobbes 2016:

Interview With Spinal Tap Manager Ian Faith

Sunday, January 17th, 2016

Here’s a modestly amusing link for a cold Sunday morning, a video interview with Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith on faking his own death, why “Big Bottom” is better than “Stonehenge,” and who he could make a lot of money off of were they to die.

Keep you expectations modest…

Kung Fury

Tuesday, November 24th, 2015

Sunday I saw Kung Fury, the crowd-funded parody of every cheesy 80s cop show, science fiction movie, and fighting video game, rolled into one absurdist package.

It has everything you could ever ask for in a short film featuring a kung fu cop traveling back in time to stop Hitler, including dinosaurs, Tron-era grid computer graphics, obviously fake video compositing, and a soundtrack that sounds like it was composed by Giorgio Moroder after a 72-hour Jolt Cola binge.

Rael Bob says check it out…

Living Door-Knocker Prank

Thursday, October 1st, 2015

It’s an ad, but it’s pretty amusing, and a nice way to kick off Halloween season:

“Remove yourself from my veranda!”

For Your Enjoyment: A Chicken Sneezing

Saturday, May 16th, 2015

You really have to turn the sound on for this one…