Last week, The Onion AV Club introduced a new weekly feature called Say Something Funny, “in which comedians submit an e-mailed response to the query, ‘Make people laugh. You have 250 words.'” First unfunny victim, Mike Birbiglia.
Seems awfully similar to early-’90s hate-zine ANSWER Me!‘s Make Me Laugh, You Impish Bastard!, in which Jim and Debbie Goad (R.I.P.), the Ronald and Nancy Reagan of misanthropy called up clowns listed in the phonebook and said “I’ve heard you’re a clown. Make me laugh.” Here’s a quick (offline) sample:
Xuxa the Clown: I am a clown. That is true. Make you laugh immediately?… Wow! I’m sorry, I don’t know if I can do that. You caught me off guard. But I really know how to make the kids laugh a lot. I do a magic show, face-painting, animal balloons, and games. And I am pretty silly.
Shudder. No wonder kids hate clowns.
4 replies on “Say Something Original”
wow, that’s pretty feeble, though the premise is fun. where do we find good examples of retorts by clowns?
Capturing the Friedmans was good, but the clown went on for considerably longer than 250 words.
Skewering banality is kinda banal, and where does it end? if you had Frank Rich’s platform, would you use it to draw people’s attention to every lame thing you’ve noticed elsewhere in the media?
At least the NYT is worth ragging on, unlike a lot of other targets on the left side of the page, many of which I’ve been very content to be clueless about, but thanks for the links anyway.
I’d think that anyone sharing your views about “Say Something Funny” and its ilk would be unlikely to seek such stuff out in the first place, or perhaps you mean this as a service for disappointed consumers of time-frittering sites like theonionavclub?
Still, some non-lame content would be more interesting to see here.
When it comes to clowns, John Wayne Gacy kind of sums it all up.