Weird how these woke kids keep killing comedy while still being the best comedians, and it’s always the ones leaning on their 30+ year old sets that think it’s a problem.
The deal with airline food has nothing to do with the food, but everything to deal with the dry, low preassure air in an airplane lowering the sensitivity of our tastebuds, making thw food taste bland.
It’s not low pressure. The cabin is pressurized to 5k feet.
Are you saying that people that live in Colorado or other high altitude locations have trouble enjoying their food because of “low pressure”? The answer is no.
The reason airline food sucks is because it’s highly processed and filled with preservatives to keep it “fresh”. In other words the food sucks.
And the issue with the joke is that it’s painfully obvious that serving meals to thousands of passengers on a cramped metal tube that’s sensitive to weight would result in something less than gourmet. THAT’S the deal with airline food. As an offhand comment from a sympathetic stranger sharing your experience, it’s mildly amusing. As performed humor, it’s lazy and not funny.
I don’t know if Jerry specifically ever did airline food (but he probably did). Still, it describes pretty much the entirety of his stand-up.
I think it just goes to show how out of touch he is.
Reality is airlines stopped serving food a long time ago outside of international travel, which means most young people today haven’t even experienced this before.
It’s hard to be funny when you don’t even relate to your audience. Thing is Seinfeld was “funny” in the 90s when his comedy was more relevant.
Since then the world has changed dramatically and his comedy has stayed stagnant. He’s behind the times. It’s not that comedy in general is dead. It’s just his view that died because the world changed and he did not change with it. Happens to most comedians.
What’s the deal with time passing? It just happens! You don’t want it to, but it does. One day you’re riding high, one hand on Larry David’s coattails and the other up some high school girl’s skirt. You’re thinking, “I’m gonna be on top forever. Everyone loves me now and it’s always gonna be this way.” Then the next day you’re complaining about woke on a drive time radio show with Kid Rock. What’s his deal anyway? He’s not a rock, or even a kid. He’s a man. He should be called Man Man.
You know who had a 30 year old set that was still awesome and hysterical to the very end? The Amazing Jonathan.
I got to see him in Vegas probably a few years before he died, he was doing shows in what amounted to a fancy conference room somewhere. I was the person called up to the stage, and even though I knew every single thing he was going to say and do, it was still just funny. I got to look him right in the eyes up close, and it was clear that he knew he was doing the same set he's done forever, in a conference room. and it seemed like we both knew that "WTF am I doing here?" added a whole other layer of funny to the whole thing.
Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe it was just the methamphetamine.
I have a favorite link that for “full stand up comedy special” on YouTube and new ones pop up like every day. Listen to it on my commute, shower, dishes, etc.
If you haven’t heard it: Bill Burr Philadelphia Rant.
Look it up on YouTube. It’s unfortunately a crappy video, but the audio is straight gold. For 30 whole minutes it’s just Burr trashing the audience and Philadelphia and its perfection. Better than any stand up of the last few years because it’s organic and in the moment.
Bo Burnham is also fantastic if you want something introspective at the same time. Inside, by Bo Burnham was a critical piece of Covid media.
What’s funny about this is there’s never been anything edgy about Jerry Seinfeld’s standup act. And as far as Seinfeld goes he was barely involved in the writing. That was all Larry David and other talented writers. Of 180 episodes Jerry Seinfeld had 18 writing credits and all of them were shared with Larry David. Of those 18 credits 5 were in the first season which is undeniably the show’s weakest and most forgettable. Jerry was always just the name. Larry was the talent.
I guess that’s probably why Larry David just wrapped the final season of Curb this year while never once complaining about “not being allowed to do comedy” anymore like Jerry is. Turns out, you’ve always been allowed to do whatever comedy you like, you just have to actually be funny.
So much of his standup depends on making initial observations of seemingly absurd things and then not putting a single ounce of thought or research into them to determine if they’re actually absurd. It’s low-hanging fruit for tipsy people at a comedy club.
He was utterly, perfectly cast as a supposed straight-man who’s just as callously thoughtless as his bizarre friends but with a veneer of “insight”. It was brilliant. I wonder if he quite realized why.
You know, why we’re here? [he means: here in the “Comedy club”] To be out, this is out…and out is one of the single most enjoyable experiences of life. People…did you ever hear people talking about “We should go out”? This is what they’re talking about…this whole thing, we’re all out now, no one is home. Not one person here is home, we’re all out! There are people tryin’ to find us, they don’t know where we are. [imitates one of these people “tryin’ to find us”; pretends his hand is a phone] “Did you ring?, I can’t find him.” [imitates other person on phone] “Where did he go?” [the first person again] “He didn’t tell me where he was going”. He must have gone out. You wanna go out: you get ready, you pick out the clothes, right? You take the shower, you get all ready, get the cash, get your friends, the car, the spot, the reservation…There you’re staring around, whatta you do? You go: “We gotta be getting back”. Once you’re out, you wanna get back! You wanna go to sleep, you wanna get up, you wanna go out again tomorrow, right? Where ever you are in life, it’s my feeling, you’ve gotta go.
seinfeld final episode:
It seems like whenever these office people call you in for a meeting, the whole thing is about the sitting down. I would really like to sit down with you. I think we need to sit down and talk. Why don’t you come in, and we’ll sit down. Well, sometimes the sitting down doesn’t work. People get mad at the sitting.You know, we’ve been sitting here for I don’t know how long. How much longer are we just going to sit here? I’ll tell you what I think we should do. I think we should all sleep on it. Maybe we’re not getting down low enough. Maybe if we all lie down, then our brains will work.
…what particularly about these bits is either edgy or genius?
The last office bit is so true specially on Fridays when people have the wonderful idea of pushing to prod, instead of waiting to Monday with all hands available and everything triple checked
You don’t have to find it funny. Did people laugh at it how and when he said it? If so, it was funny. Too late to cast your vote now. That’s how comedy works.
I’m just saying that its pretty funny in and of itself that Jerry Seinfeld is like “you can’t say anything in comedy any more” and all his bits are about losing a sock in the washing machine
Yeah he’s obviously wrong about that and lives in N elite bubble. He’s colored by how he saw the left treat Dave Chappelle and Louie CK, for example. But he also saw how the right treated Lenny Bruce and Dice Clay, for example. He should know better that nobody on the left is actually wanting to put comedians in jail for their jokes, that’s exclusively the province of the right.
Also, this is the daily mail. It’s probably not even real quote.
Unfortunately for Chapelle and Seinfeld, James Acaster did that bit that absolutely destroyed their whining.
And Unfortunately for Louis CK, his sex-pest-intimidation is just too memorable.
Why don’t we mention Michael Richards (Cosmo Kramer) while we’re at it.
Maybe the issue isn’t “you can’t say anything nowadays” and instead it’s “you can’t say the n-word, the t-slur, and look-its-my-dick-im-jacking-off-at-you nowadays”
As for Andrew Dice Clay, the man’s schtick was just racism, sexism and pretending to light a cigarette. it was hardly one for the ages.
And then as for Bruce, yes, him being arrested for saying cocksucker is the only legitimate example of being cancelled for comedy on the list - but also he impersonated a priest and stole donations meant for a leprosy charity, which you’d be cancelled for in 200BC as well as 2024 AD
I don’t think anyone was “cancelled.” That’s a righty-wing bogeyman word with no definition.
Nothing any of these comedians said or did takes away the fact that when they deliver their acts, they bring down the house. They connect with the crowd and the crowd laughs, involuntarily! The crowds are voting with their laughs and any one of these legendary comedians on an average day can play any room and get laughs. You’d be lucky to witness it. Laughing is involuntary. If the crowd is laughing, can’t say the act isn’t funny, that’s some election denying bullshit. You certainly won’t find it funny if you don’t realize it’s an act. Punchlines aren’t true statements of the comedian’s personal point of view or opinion, they are an act. Sometimes the joke is that the thing was even said in the first place.
At any rate, all the examples I gave are real things that happened. The three most justifiable shit storms, against Kramer, CK, and to a lesser extent Chappelle, are examples I gave of the left coming after a comedian.
Bruce, you agree, is as an example of the right coming after a comedian. You are wrong to lump Dice Clay in with CK and Kramer; Dice Clay cleared the way for comedy as an artform, and, again, the crowds laughed.
A better example I’m sure you’ll also agree is not justified is South Africa, where the political right simply banned stand up comedy as a practice. That’s the usual example, too, in far right countries: no laughing allowed!
Man, if you can’t find the humor in these people’s acts, not just Seinfeld, but also Dice Clay, or whatever other dirty or sexist or whatever fart jokes you think you’re too whatever to laugh at, all these comics would laugh at your discomfort, which is with one person standing in front of a room full of people and talking for an hour straight. Anyone can buy a ticket. How provocative could it possibly get before they get booed off stage? You should go to a Chappelle set and turn the crowd against him; just explain why he’s not funny like you do online. Should be no problem for you.
I’m not debating that they had good gigs and at those gigs made people laugh.
I’m saying that they did some shitty things, and their problem is not what they claim - that you can’t do comedy any more. Its that society moved on without them and they don’t know how to be funny any more. Yes they were funny, in context, in their respective haydays, but have since
done a racism
done a sex crime
dated minors
done a hatecrime
If I was an Olympic figure skater arrested for robbing and killing the attendant at the gas station, it would be incorrect for me to say “Man people really hate Olympic figure skating nowadays - I guess everyone’s too sensitive about skating, you just can’t skate any more”
No, bruv, you blew a teenagers brains out over a kitkat, it’s nothing to do with figure skating.
He was a well-known comic before he did the show. Perhaps not a household name but very few comics ever are. He had already been on Carson like a dozen times, as a stand up in the 80s that’s like the height of fame. You might even say that Seinfeld’s TV show elevated him to a status that no comic had ever before achieved.
Certainly a status he couldn’t have achieved on his own merits. 95% of the people going to his shows go there because they know him through the TV show, not because they’re interested in his stand-up. Nowadays he’s mostly famous for being famous. But a douche, too.
It’s also funny because It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still airing too, and that is massively more edgy than anything seinfeld ever did.
I think that the problem is that jerry want to be edgy and still be considered the good guy. Which is not how Curb, IASIP or even the Seinfeld tv show ever was. They always were presented as bad/flawed people doing bad stuff. You 100% can still do that type of comedy. But you can’t do comedy where the characters are supposed to be good but do bad stuff
Cringe take. Always Sunny creator was recently apologizing for previous seasons and said they are working with streaming services to edit older seasons to be less offensive. Snowflake cancel culture ruining another classic.
Don’t bother, the guy posted “if it ain’t white it ain’t right” in another post.
Just another boring 20 something white guy trying to feel powerful by inciting others. Just block him and forget his existence, everyone else will too.
It’s also funny because It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still airing too, and that is massively more edgy than anything seinfeld ever did.
And that’s always been my argument when it comes to this particular dead horse. I don’t think any jokes are off the table, you just really have to make whatever discomfort you’re summoning be worth the punchline. The edgier something is the more it has to be funny to compensate, the point of offensive humor is to be funny not to offend, right? This has to be common sense. I don’t get how it flies over the head of so many people.
There are a lot of people who seem to think offending is all it takes. I think Sam McMurray’s character “Glen” in Raising Arizona, who is constantly telling “jokes” about Polish people being stupid that none of the other characters find funny, is a perfect example of the type.
Same thing with folks who say they are in to the ‘brutal honesty’ thing, it should be about the honesty…essentially it’s about the earnestness of the thing instead of just using comedy/etc as cover to be an asshole (like Chappel).
Exactly. Either risk it and have a big payoff, or insert a point behind it. Make the audience think after they laugh, or search within themselves why that was funny, or the context behind the joke.
Or if you go for the edgy or dark joke, and get called out - you rolled that die, live with it. Crying “it’s just a joke” or “comedy is cancelled” after your bit failed to land is hacky
Normally when people identify all the "P.C. crap" that Seinfeld complains about as coming from the "extreme left" I figure it's because they've gone so far to the right that from way out there Bill Gates looks like a communist. But it's tempting to give Seinfeld the benefit of the doubt and assume that he might just be confused and ill-informed. The same refusal to accept reality that leaves him unable to let go of the urge to put a llama with a human head in his movie about Pop-Tarts may also have been sufficient to prevent him learning anything at all about politics for the past 30 years.
The trailer seemed like somebody took a single diner conversation between George and Jerry and made an entire movie about it. It didn’t look terrible I guess, but I think it’s going to drag at anything over 100 minutes, and probably well before that.
Dude, you’re getting banned because you’re being an asshat. Just downvote, block, and move on when you find that someone isn’t worth replying to. Lemmy is still small enough that you’ll filter out the people you personally consider shit quite quickly.
I can understand maybe thinking she was older when he talked to her and then finding out later she was underage and backing off, but he definitely just went for it. Creep.
my favorite part of Seinfeld complaining that woke has killed comedy is that Curb Your Enthusiasm just finished a 24 year, 12 season run and their last season has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
You see, “crackers” means White People. Really, he was trying to start a conversation about race relations. Or was that when Jerry ate a black and white and got sick after comparing the cookie to race relations?
I listened to much of the interview on the radio. He touched on a lot of good points and then came to the absolutely wrong conclusion. He talked about how many writing rooms are “writing by committee” where jokes will go through a review by many different groups. If this is truly the case (I don’t know) that is not an issue if the “far left mob” but rather the enshitification of comedy due to corporations and Wall Street bankrolling these productions wanting to ensure return on investment. This kills creativity by reducing risks. Topical comedy is a risky medium by default.
Also, shout out to Rob McElhenney for his sarcastic one word response. In Jerry’s imagined world, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia can’t exist.
people seeing issues brought about by capitalism and concluding that the people who are fighting against capitalism are the REAL problem, a tale as old as time.
You really think the average Barbie-watching lefty can be equated to the communism bordering Lemmy dweller? Please, just because they’re not on the right doesn’t make them the same.
But see, he wants it to be funny because he thinks making fun of homeless people is funny. It would instead be funny because of how fucking stupid Kramer is. That’s really the big turn in recent comedy: laughing at bad characters doing shitty things (and usually getting their comeuppance) instead of laughing at shitty things happening to people.
That’s because it already has a huge following. I’m saying if that season one debuted now it would. Just like tropic Thunder hasn’t been pulled but I doubt they’d let it today
edit: so all the downvotes imply you all say that a white guy in black face can air today? yea no way, y’all trippin hive mind shit. I’d love to see someone try lol
That’s always the last bastion of people arguing against it happening. Throwing up their hands and saying “things change”.
Wow, what an insightful addition to the discussion you absolute dingus. Nobody is denying that things change, what is argued is that the overly woke mindset has a negative effect on said evolution. Maybe next year when your favourite orange man gets back in the office, we’ll just throw up our hands and say that things change without asking the question why we got there, sound like a plan to you? Or do you think that sometimes it might be a good idea to reflect on why we end up where we do?
A dislike for conservatism does not mean that every change is progress, you know.
I really don’t know, you may be right. I feel like that whole season was them tackling tough to swallow social issues by making themselves idiots at best or bigots at worst, but the satire and irony was clear in their intent to expose as as an outdated way to think.
That’s quite the hollow argument. To first deny that comedy changed and then state that it’s just moved on to something they don’t like and then insult them for it. I think you’re really undermining your own argument by conflating the evolution of comedy with the tendency to clean it up because we are no longer supposed to offend anyone while handing out participation trophies.
You’re free to deny this is happening, but maybe you’re just too young to notice it, kiddo.
When did I deny comedy had changed? It hasn’t changed. I’m saying that 2005 wasn’t some golden era where things were so much less politically correct. It’s because I’m not young that I know this. I grew up with Family Ties and Alf. I remember Don’t tell me TV was more edgy in the past. I’m old, I’m just not naïve.
Correct me if I’m wrong but you are the only one mentioning the year 2005. You agree things have changed, but in each of your comments you are suggesting that nothing is going on. Which is it?
Because it’s the year the show you’re claiming couldn’t be made today premiered. Comedy changes, but that doesn’t mean an old comedy show couldn’t be made today because of some sort of political correctness directive, it means modern audiences find new things funny because the comedy landscape changes.
That wasn’t my comment, and it obviously was just an arbitrary example.
but that doesn’t mean an old comedy show couldn’t be made today because of some sort of political correctness directive, it means modern audiences find new things funny because the comedy landscape changes.
If the issue were simply a different taste in comedy, people wouldn’t be up in arms about it, it would just be ignored, like many things that aren’t popular. If you want to deny that there is a tendency to comb through everything just to find something offensive to rage against, then the discussion is pointless.
If you can’t even admit that woke culture tries to clean everything up and has exacerbated the issues then you’re simply in denial. It’s all around you, it’s on TV, it’s in comedy clubs, it’s in movies, it’s in universities. If you can’t even acknowledge that, it suggests to me that you can’t really argue with it, but rather need to act that it doesn’t exist.
But the thing is… writing by committee has always been the norm- including for Seinfeld, which makes me wonder how much he was actually involved in the writing process.
The very idea of a writer’s room is writing by committee.
I got the sense he meant more that it would go up through business-side committees to double check the work and make sure it wasn’t inappropriate. If that was the case that again would be an indication of corporations being risk adverse.
Jerry, kids aren’t laughing at you because you’re still doing the same style of comedy you did in the 90s and they don’t think it’s funny.
And I say that as someone who does think he’s funny.
Edit: I did standup in the 90s too (obviously nowhere near his level). There are many reasons why I don’t do it anymore, but realizing that what I was doing was getting out of date was definitely a factor. Get out when you can and people might still think of you fondly.
Don’t worry. Won’t be around for long. Lemmy instances seem even more ban happy than Reddit. Disagree with any of the commie mods gets a ban pretty quick. Sad state of affairs these days but it’s ok.
I agree with this take. RWNJs and reactionaries are still human beings and all human beings deserve to be cared about, even if they have low levels of empathy towards others. However, I don’t think that they are entitled to our time or acceptance of their shit takes. The “kumbaya” shit isn’t going to work with bad faith actors, so, ostracize away to protect those that they would harm.
Oh I am also in the “here” in your statement. They deserve to be loved and cared about but they can fuck right off. After spending multiple decades under the mistaken assumption that right-wingers were acting in good faith and coming from a place of ignorance, I saw the mask drop with 2016 and realized that a good portion of them are purely malicious and knowingly desire to subjugate others. I’ve got no time to waste on em.
Honestly it was just another instance. Dno how this one will be lets see. I don’t use slurs, bad language, violence or anything. But just like reddit if the wrong mod reads something they dont like, insta-ban. Time will tell I suppose.
I watched a woman do stand up recently who looked to be in her late 30s/early 40s. All of it was unironically about those stupid millennial kids and how they’re running comedy because they “are woke”. Seriously.
The material is 20 years out of date and she’s a member of that group (or damn close). I think she stole the act from someone 20 years ago who thought a movie like Tropic Thunder would never get made.
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