Other Groups '89-'92
Good: Erasable Ink (Maryland)-- source of Mosh and Performance Art. Strong, cohesive players, lots of character, lots of funny women, if I remember.
On Thin Ice (Harvard) -- small, agile
Improvidence (Brown) -- slick, but good (save it, WB)
Vertigo-go (Swarthmore) -- sibling group for a year, felt like Za.
Eh: Purple Crayon (Yale) -- showoffy, but funny
Just Add Water (Yale) -- hit or miss ,though the illustrious Adam Stein was its mainstay. I liked them, others didn't -- our equals for a year, we eventually eclipsed them.
Viola Question (Yale) -- also-rans (what was the 4th yale group?)
Fools on the Hill (Kenyon) -- best sketch of Skidmore '90
Ad-Liberal Artists (Skidmore) -- who knew? Barely had to try for laughs on their home turf
Whistling Shrimp (Cornell) -- full of themselves -- got lotsa laughs, don't know why
Weak: IT (William & Mary)
The guys from UVA -- tried hard, though
Cheap Sox (Tufts)
Wrecking Ball liked Columbia's 6 Milks.
On Thin Ice (Harvard) -- small, agile
Improvidence (Brown) -- slick, but good (save it, WB)
Vertigo-go (Swarthmore) -- sibling group for a year, felt like Za.
Eh: Purple Crayon (Yale) -- showoffy, but funny
Just Add Water (Yale) -- hit or miss ,though the illustrious Adam Stein was its mainstay. I liked them, others didn't -- our equals for a year, we eventually eclipsed them.
Viola Question (Yale) -- also-rans (what was the 4th yale group?)
Fools on the Hill (Kenyon) -- best sketch of Skidmore '90
Ad-Liberal Artists (Skidmore) -- who knew? Barely had to try for laughs on their home turf
Whistling Shrimp (Cornell) -- full of themselves -- got lotsa laughs, don't know why
Weak: IT (William & Mary)
The guys from UVA -- tried hard, though
Cheap Sox (Tufts)
Wrecking Ball liked Columbia's 6 Milks.
posted by Toby Miller at 12/18/2004 02:46:00 PM
19 Comments:
Wow -- shades of the AIDS song from Team America...
Moo, baby! Moooo!
That is a great Rich story. If you can't mock the pretension of the Skidmore Comedy Festival at Skidmore, where can you mock it? If ever there was a time for Rich to break the imagined wall between character and reality, that was it. All hail, Rich!
Did you really moo for three minutes? I don't believe it. It might have seemed like three minutes, but three minutes of moo-ing is an awful lot of moo-ing.
I'm with Steve on this one (note: Steve and I seldom agree about anything. For instance, how to use house funds. I wanted to blow it on opera tickets, but Steve thought hiring strippers for a party would be pretty nifty. We ended up letting Peter decide and he bought eighty pounds of tapioca and a used Pat Boone cd).
Fagan's Timmy Prudente stories weren't funny because of phrases like "cum guzzling gay boy." The source of the humor was the character and rich social setting he described. The phrase worked well for the character, in the particular setting, in the warped version of Reading that Fagan had constructed. There is no wordsmithing behind "cum guzzling gay boy." By itself, the phrase is simply offensive.
The same is definitely true for "cuntcake." I have no idea why that phrase might be funny. I can see several obvious reasons why it is misogynistic and vulgar. Would someone at some point describe the skit to me, so I can understand why the group thinks the phrase or idea is funny rather than simply offensive?
Comedy troupes in college have WIDE lattitude for making jokes. The bounds of decorum in shows are far beyond what would ever happen on network television. Steve is right, gratuitous profanity and misogyny is unacceptable. As Keith pointed out on a different thread, the blog is semi-public and some limits should be observed. Use vulgarity towards some purpose.
On that Strand blog, in a photo if you scroll down a little, the guy in the blue shirt looks suspiciously like my younger brother, who has recently moved to New York.
I also want to weigh in on this "offensive" thread. I believe the phrase "cum guzzling gay boy" on its own is amusing, as delivered by Fagan is hilarious, but both are shades along the spectrum of funny. Think about it, don't just automatically reject the words.
Visualize how much semen you would need in order to actually "guzzle" come. Now that's a lot. Where would one procure this much come? How would you transport it? For what purpose would you want to guzzle it, anyway? I can't remember the last time I guzzled anything.
My point is, everything's relative and funny is funny. Let the culture wars continue.
I had forgotten that "Wheel of Fortune" skit we had done for Basement Tapes. It wasn't funny? I think I hurt myself doing that skit, falling around. It better be funny because its premise is essentially the same as the short film I'm about to spend over $30,000 to produce.
Ohhhh crap....
oh, you're right, a slur is funny and unobjectionable when it involves excess. My bad.
Don't be getting all sarcastic, it doesn't become you.
Look, my point was funny is in the eye of the beholder. We're all friends on here and I agree with everyone else that the GW "Rent" parody skit about the t-cells was unfunny, basically because it wasn't trying to be funny, they were just trying to get a reaction. It's the same reason I don't think most of Jackass or Howard Stern aren't funny. Nonetheless, I think when we did "cuntcake" and when Fagan said "cum guzzling gay boy" it was a good balance between offensive and funny. They are not mutually exclusive.
I don't know what else to say on the subject, and frankly I find being censored the most offensive thing of all.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I know you're there, Nickerson! You can erase but you can't hide!
Seriously, I don't even know that this is an issue beyond an academic one. As far as the reunion goes the most controversial thing that's come up is trying to get Felipe on Oprah and that's a whole different kind of tasteless.
Apologies all around.
There was never a suggestion of censorship. The deleted comment above is censorship. As manager of the blog I have the power to delete any comment or edit any post. I haven't and won't do it because it is the group's blog and it isn't my place to decide what is said or how it should be said. Y'all can continue to be foul mouthed if you want. I also have the right to suggest that there are alternative modes of expression. Jason can revel in gratuitous impolite words. Steve and I can suggest that we would prefer the discussion toned down a little.
We're hardly Puritans (well, maybe I shouldn't speak for Steve -- he did like dressing up as Hester Prynne). Nor are we censors. I don't think I can outline exactly what the proper boundaries of decorum are (and some comedy lives on the boundaries), but I do think the blog has crossed the line in a few places into homophobia and misogyny.
We are all friends here.
Considering that two of my three roommates are gay and we joke like this all the time, I am not worried about accusations of homophobia.
Considering that I have never had a relationship with a woman that lasted more than a couple months, maybe misogyny is valid, dunno.
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Yo, yo, yo! Jeff, you're a good egg. I don't think anyone participating so far is misogynistic or homophobic (nor do I recall any of your posts that have crossed my line). To analogize your roommates, all I am suggesting is that the group is larger than three roommates and we're in a restaurant. Be loud, boisterous, and have a good time (just say some potentially objectional phrases in a slightly softer tone).
Suckle me Elmo was awesome. Sadru looked so happy and content.
Tackle me Elmo was fun to do.
Don Rickle me Elmo -- was it Felipe and Rich he mocked? It sounds like something you'd come up with.
I think my favorite thing about Don Rickle-me Elmo was that while they were being insulted, Rich and Felipe (or whoever it was) just bowed their heads, ashamed, as if they recognized the truth of the slurring they were getting.
Who's Wagsy?
I personally think Steve's right -- it's the gratuitousness I don't like about most "comic" vulgarity. Vulgarity works when it's deliberate, though -- it was such a pleasure to watch Team America and think, "that's really funny in a way totally different from the way I like to be funny -- I can enjoy it without feeling competitive or intimidated by it -- and I bet they'd like the way I do stuff as well for the same reason. It's a big tent." I think comedy is much bigger than we're led to believe.
Some words are inherently amusing, like "pudding", "funktastic", and "cooter", but I have always found the v-word to be more clinical than anything else.
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