Content tagged with “comedy”

“ We’re still not totally sure why we find things funny, but scientists are (very seriously) studying it. ”

“It’s tough to review this book. It was written 150 years ago, and I am clearly not the intended audience. It’s a children’s story, which came from a story that the author made up to tell to three young girls one afternoon. To be clear: there’s no real narrative here. The story is basically a fever…”

“I bought this because (1) I loved Broad City , and (2) I have always wanted to drive across country. This is a book of essays and personal reflections from Abbi Jacobson – one of the creators of Broad City while she decided to drive across the country, from New York to Los Angeles. About a third of…”

“To appreciate this book, I think you need to know who David Steinberg is. I didn’t know who he was. The whole thing didn’t make a lot of sense until I did some research on Steinberg. He’s a Canadian comedian. I was born in 1971, so I didn’t know him because his heyday was the 60s and 70s. He was…”

“ A bizarre, mind-bending, and occasionally disturbing send-up of the intro from every network TV show of the 80s. Buckle up. ”

“ A surprisingly informative comedy segment that mocks and meta-narrates a typical news report on the economy and explains why they are the way they are. ”

“ A history of the laugh-tracked sitcom, and why ‘The Big Bang Theory’ was the last major hit to use one. ”

“ A man tried to cash in 7 million Pepsi Points for the harrier jet that a TV commercial jokingly offered. Pepsi refused, so he took them to court. The court had to explain, in legal terms, why the joke was meant to be funny. ”

“ A touching retrospective of the careers of Chris Farley and Adam Sandler – two comedians who defined the 90s. ”

“ An SNL sketch where Jon Lovitz and Tom Hanks imitate Jerry Seinfeld without naming him, which is odd since this was right before Seinfeld launched and he was still a fairly unknown comic with just a couple TV appearances under his belt. Few people watching would have known who he was. ”

“ Keegan Michael Key provides the anger for Obama’s laid back speech, from the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2015. ”

“Bill Hader tells some hilarious stories about his interactions with Tom Cruise while making ‘Topic Thunder.’ But what’s incredibly eerie is that when he does impressions, the face of his target is deep-faked over his own in such a smooth way that you don’t notice when it starts and ends. The effect…”

“Notable for a one-minute sequence in the middle where Rogen recollects the moment at an award show event when Hannibal Buress told him that Bill Cosby was a rapist, with Cosby standing just a few feet away. Rogan says that Buress started referring to this in his stand-up routine about a month…”

“ A short, fast-moving account of the five seasons of ‘In Living Color.’ ”

“ An Onion editor regrets going easy on Joe Biden, with a broader reflection on how comedy and entertainment outlets frame and validate public figures, and what their responsibility becomes. ”

“This book infuriated me. I wanted a serious discussion of systems theory, but what I got was a Dilbert-esque attempt at comedy. The book is incredibly hard to follow. I started off diligently trying to highlight stuff and make sense of it, but the writing is scattered, and is going for laughs most…”

“While it was interesting to see the source of a lot of pop culture references that I’ve grown up with, the book itself is awful. Sorry. It’s an attempt at absurd parody that feels like it was made up as Adams went along and was never edited. It hardly makes sense, isn’t funny, and it took every…”

“ Incredible oral history of Saturday Night Live. There’s no actual narrative to this book – the entire thing is just a series of anecdotes told by cast members, writers, occasional hosts, and others. I loved the format, disagreements and all. 750 pages, and would have gladly read 750 more. ”

“This is a nice little introduction of logical fallacies, with examples of how we encounter them in real life. Each chapter is an introduction to a category of fallacies, and then it’s further broken down into specifics. The author covers things like Post Hoc fallacies, refutation by reputation, ad…”

“I love Mindy Kaling so much, but she’s not nearly as funny in this book. The book is sort of an auto-biography, but not very deep, and with the obvious intent to be more funny than anything else. Throughout, she has short chapters which are meant to be funny little essays. Some are okay, but a lot…”