Comics

[Kepler]

We need one, we do enough.

I don't know where we are on the cancel cycle, but Shane Gillis can kill it.

 

[state of hockey]

We need one, we do enough.

I don't know where we are on the cancel cycle, but Shane Gillis can kill it.

“I’M GONNA BE A DICK ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

There are enough other comics defending him that he’ll be fine.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Gillis is a generic white guy doing generic white guy comedy for generic white guys (there’s a reason why he does Bud Light commercials). I do not understand why you guys defend him so much.

If you want “edgy” white guy comedy Stavros Halkias is right there. At least he’s not punching down and will readily admit he’s a POS.

 

[Kepler]

It is less a defense than saying the auto-da-fé is silly. Point me where Gillis said or did things that are grounds for being cast into utter darkness and I'll fire up the stake with you.

We have enough trouble with overly aggressive policing with ICE.

Stav is OK (TBH, less funny than Gillis) for his shtick because his politics passes. The whole point of comedy is it is supposed to open your mind, not fellate you. None of these guys are special, though like Gillis I'm sure Stav also has bits where he is better than that clip, but they aren't especially BAD MAN!!! either.

If it's not making you uncomfortable, it's not doing anything for you but telling you "you're good, Billy, you're good." That's what politics and Hollywood are for, not comedy.

 

[Kepler]

https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-funniest-stand-up-comedians-in-entertainment

I'd break this into a 2x2 grid: timeless vs timebound x funny vs unfunny. To be a great you need to be timeless. Whether you're funny or not is not required, and being funny doesn't mean you are timeless. Robin Williams and Steve Martin are incredibly funny, but timebound.

There's also guys like Brooks, Carson, Atkinson, David, Fry, and Cleese who aren't stand-up in any important way. They are timeless, but in other ways.

From their list.

Timeless: (Remember, they can be unfunny. Bob Hope.)

1. Chapelle
2. Carlin
3. Pryor
7. Dangerfield
8. Macdonald
11. Rickles
17. Red Foxx
18 Burnett
26. Newhart
29. Wright
31. Burns
33. Winters
36. Patrice
38. Hope
42. Kinison
43. Hicks
58. Carr
59. Bruce
62. Rivers
69. Kaufman
70. Benny
85. Lewis
100. Silverman
110. Izzard
127. Berle
147. Fields
150. Cosby
221. Franken (& Davis)
NR (Abbot &) Costello
NR Mort Sahl
NR Groucho Marx
NR Woody Allen
NR Gracie Allen
NR Dick Gregory
NR Tig Nataro

 

[Jimjamesak]

Any list that puts Chapelle at #1 is immediately invalidated. If the list stopped at about 2008 then yeah sure Chapelle would be near the top, but he’s current form of hacky anti-trans material and Riyadh comedy festival sell out crap drags him down pretty hard. And that’s not even getting into the debate of how much was it Chapelle and how much was other writers like Neal Brennan.

I think you’re forgetting the most important part of comedy: Does it make people laugh? You can have “brilliant” pieces that “make people uncomfortable” but they mean fuck all if they’re not funny.

Again, you’re spending a lot of energy defending unfunny people.

 

[aparch]

Shane Gillis makes me cringe in a bad way because I feel like I need to protect *my* drink as well as my wife's around him.

Anthony Jeselnik makes me cringe in a good way because his punchline makes me laugh, but I really really shouldn't have laughed that hard.

 

[Kepler]

Any list that puts Chapelle at #1 is immediately invalidated.

The numbers are there only to cross reference.

The #1 of all time is Pryor, period.

If you want to judge my personal Rushmore, it's Pryor, Benny, Winters, Newhart. All very different, all very personal.

 

[Kepler]

Again, you’re spending a lot of energy defending unfunny people.

I'm spending energy to say something worth saying: cancellation is reserved for people with great talent who suck as people -- it bestows something that a normie 9-to-5er doesn't deserve.

Bill Cosby was a great. He should be canceled. Shane Gillis should be ignored if you don't like him.

Do you bother canceling Kid Rock?

 

[Kepler]

I think you’re forgetting the most important part of comedy: Does it make people laugh? You can have “brilliant” pieces that “make people uncomfortable” but they mean fuck all if they’re not funny.

Everything makes somebody laugh; that's no standard at all. And if we just count up the laughs among the population that makes Larry the Cable Guy a "better" comic than Steven Wright, so fuck that.

Comedy is slapping you out of your everyday bullshit so you can see. It's a door around the concrete clogging your brain and soul poured in there by your parents and your religion and your society. That is why Pryor was #1.

 

[Slap Shot]

I like Shane Gillis and I think he's actually more intelligent than his detractors realize. Plus he has no problem taking shots at himself which I appreciate.

"He's just an aw shucks" comedian.

So fucking what?

 

[Kepler]

I don't know what the Big Hate is. Maybe he really did something genuinely abhorrent. His sin appears to be that he does not genuflect to current hemlines. We do not like being reminded the worms in our heads are as perishable as those of the people we despise. Or, for that matter, that we can take no credit in our values. Born in another place and time, we are the slaveholders and the Good Germans. We aren't special. We're all driftwood.

Being ethically superior is a matter of the good fortune not to be born to derps.

On his ability as a comic, from what little I have seen a good number of his jokes show he is looking inside the joke to see what humor consists of, and playing with it. Good comics do this. Mulaney does it. Burr, Ansari, Jeselnick do it. Seinfeld, who has never been funny in his life, does this, or anyway Larry David does it and then tries to explain it to him the way you'd try to teach an elderly dog not to piss itself. Oswalt's whole thing is climbing inside those mechanisms and tweaking them. Burnham does it in song, which is super impressive. None of these are timeless -- none will last -- but they have an idea of what they are about and they are messing around with the acoustic equipment, they aren't just laying down tracks. They aren't the Beach Boys, but they aren't Styx either. They're ELO.