Irony In The Post-9/11 Age: Comedy And Tragedy As 'Very Strange Roommates'

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/09/03/140150115/irony-in-the-post-9-11-age-comedy-and-tragedy-as-very-strange-roommates

Humor analysis in a Post 9/11

Comedy Since 9/11: Comics Reflect On What It Took To Get New York Laughing Again

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/sep/05/comedy-911-comics-reflect-what-it-took-get-new-york-laugh-again/

Yoshua Okon's Octopus

From Hammer Museum: We were invited behind-the-scenes at the shoot for Yoshua Okon's latest video Octopus. The piece, shot on location at a Los Angeles Home Depot store, explores the relationships among Guatemalan day laborers who at home fought on opposite sides of the Guatemalan civil war, yet here in the U.S. are working side-by-side in their efforts to find employment. The work was produced during Okon's residency with the Hammer. He explains more about the work in this video. (Run time: 8 minutes) 


From Humor As Art: YOSHUA OKON talks about the HUMOR in his art piece OCTOPUS. This is a rare view into how an artist constructively uses HUMOR in art to convey messages. But not only that to stir up other emotions outside of laughter. FANTASTIC!!!!

Tokyo-based author and translator Matt Alt has a post up today on Altjapan about the history of anthropomorphizing tsunamis in Japan.
Actual Article

Disaster Jokes du Jour by Christie Davies

Disaster Jokes du Jour 

by Christie Davies  

April 04, 2011

Japan’s recent combined earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear-reactor disaster has led to the usual spate of jokes across the globe. In the modern world such jokes are universal and appear very quickly after disasters, threats of disease, and celebrity deaths. There were jokes after the space-shuttle crash, 9/11, Princess Diana’s death, and after Ted Kennedy killed Mary Jo Kopechne. There are jokes about serial killers, airplane accidents, swine flu, AIDS, and terrorism. Jokes often get recycled from one disaster to another. The latest outburst can draw on the earlier wave of Indonesian tsunami jokes, previous bons mots about earthquakes in Mexico and New Zealand, and old one-liners about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
In circulation right now:

Why did the Japanese bloke fall off his bike? He was hit by a whale.
Today an elderly Japanese couple asked me to take a picture of them. When I said “Wave,” they ran like hell.
Give a Japanese man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Give a Japanese man a net, and he may find his family.

“What is stupid is that the politically correct seek a world where such jokes do not exist.”

Apple are releasing a new device in Japan: the iPaddle.
BBC News Headline: America is to send two nuclear experts to Japan. The last time the Americans sent two teams of nuclear experts to Japan, they killed 135,000 people.
Can we start making jokes, or is it too tsunami?

It is not entirely surprising that celebrities telling such tasteless jokes in public have been censured. What is stupid is that the politically correct seek a world where such jokes do not exist. Just as stupid are their attempts to explain the very existence of each new joke cycle in terms of the presumably sinister motives, feelings, and personalities of the individual joke-tellers. Today the jokes are said to express hostility to the Japanese. But did the wave of space-shuttle jokes after the Challenger crash express hostility to astronauts? Are the current Australian jokes about New Zealand’s recent earthquake an expression of hostility to a close neighbor?

More Kiwis (New Zealanders) have been buried alive than at any time since Gallipoli.
Why aren’t New Zealanders upset at their earthquake? Because all the sheep are vibrating.

At the time of the space-shuttle jokes, it was claimed that they were circulated among a small group of unfunny, callous, and warped individuals. Yet the jokes spread all over America and to other countries. There is no independent evidence that these people were anything other than ordinary citizens who in their everyday lives were caring and helpful to others.
Another explanation was that the jokes were a response to a fear of danger. True, those in dangerous occupations such as soldiers and police officers frequently resort to “gallows” humor. But unless you ride in a space vehicle, why would you and the other joke-tellers be anxious?
When Princess Diana died in a Parisian car accident with her Muslim paramour Dodi Al-Fayed, British liberal media pundits called the resulting jokes a coping mechanism, a way of dealing with grief. But while some in Britain wailed, keened, and came close to rending their garments at Lady Di’s death, later surveys showed that most people were indifferent to yet another simple casualty of French drunken driving. They had no need to “cope,” a word whose usage insults the grief of those who actually have to persist after the death of a family member or close friend. Why should anyone care deeply about Diana—a mere picture on the television? Besides, the jokes were worldwide. I found Diana jokes on the Internet in French, German, and Spanish that depended on wordplay in those languages. Others used distinctively American and Australian forms of English, and many appeared in English on Dutch and Danish websites. It was a great international joke-fest. Those who invented, told, and circulated these jokes did not seem distressed by her demise.

Did you hear that Diana had blue eyes? Yep, one blew out the left window and the other out the right window.
What do Lady Di and Pink Floyd have in common? Their last big hit was The Wall.
Lady Di finally lived up to her name.

Sick jokes involving sex, ethnicity, blasphemy, aggression, and politics liberate us momentarily from an irksome verbal constraint. They amuse because they sneak around the social rules that stifle how we speak. Sick jokes have always been with us, but disaster jokes date only from the latter part of the twentieth century and the advent of TV news programs that try to fool us into thinking we are present at the disaster scene and ought to experience the same anguish that those on the spot are feeling. This is a lie whose message is rendered incongruous by what follows—advertising jingles and banal quiz shows. Such incongruity leads to jokes. The television liberals have invented a new language cage for ordinary folks to use when speaking of distant disasters. In doing so they have called into being a new species of sick joke: the disaster joke. Unlike natural disasters, this new mess is entirely manmade.

http://takimag.com/article/disaster_jokes_du_jour/print

eHarmony Video Bio

Click to Play

Im Debbie, i love cats and i just want a soulmate!

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Tags: parody, incongruity, cat humor

Just Kidding Episode 6

Don Draper makes out with Freddie Mercury

Click to Play

A remix observation of one of Don Draper's lovelies; this one happens to resemble Rock God Freddie Mercury

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Tags: don draper, freddie mercury, art, humor

New Way to beat Super Mario Brothers Level 1

Great delivery on this one; masterfully executed

New way to beat Super Mario Bros. Level 1 from Jubadaba on Vimeo.

Just Kidding Episode 1

Boston Photographer, Dagan Barrett plays the role of Karl Stevens in his absence.

Just Kidding Episode 2

-Co-Host Karl Stevens finally shows up
-Anal Sex talk with Karl, Abigail and Jamie
-Karl's comic, Failure, turned into a film adaptation
-technical difficulties
-good times

Europe According to Americans

-- Posted from my iPhone

Boston Typewriter Orchestra Interview

A re-edit of the extended interview with the Boston Typewriter Orchestra at Cambridge Community Television

Click To Play

Boston Typewriter Orchestra

The Boston Typewriter Orchestra is a group of human beings who organize sound to create rhythmic patterns using typewriters.  I had the opportunity to interview them this past month.

Click To Play

A joke from Gilbert Gottfried

Click to Play

Taken from the roast of David Hassellhoff, and some kind of Arab cartoon show from Arabia.

A Good Joke by Nick Fox-Gieg

Click to Play

This short was commissioned by Project Mosaica. It's based on an old joke, a perennial in compilations of Jewish humor.

Although the details differ between versions, the scene remains the same: a priest challenges a rabbi to a debate on the spiritual condition of Jewish people. But neither speaks the other's language, and...well, I won't spoil the punch line.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Tags: humor, ethnic humor, jokes, humor as art

Hot Chicks...

The below series of websites encompasses the wild west nature of internet humor.  The first is a series entitled "Hot Chicks".  At first glance it is appears as an over the top satire on the Hot Chicks with Douche Bags site which paved the way for hot chick picture taking juxtaposed with atrocities.  These sites are like bar hypothetical ideas derived from a night of drinking with your best friend come to life.  I know that when I look at these websites I am reminded of thousands of conversation on the very same topics with my great friend Mike Risicia.  Aside from the personal investment and connection to the humor of these sites, I believe these sites are an important footprint of contemporary humor.  Not only is there a lot of meta-humor laid out in the collection of these sites, but the satire also speaks to the current climate of where society is, using the internet as it's frame serves as a reinforcement.  I shouldn't ramble on.  Here are the sites:

http://hotchickssmilingatgroundzero.com/

http://hotchickswithhotdogsintheirmouths.com/

http://hotchickspickingupdogshit.com/


http://hotchicksplungingtheirtoilets.com/


http://hotchickswithdogswithboners.com/


http://hotchickswithdogswithboners.com/


http://hotchicksblowingtheirassesdry.com/


http://hotchickswithsanddicks.com/

Other great sites I enjoy as Humor As Art are:

http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/


http://poopinaroundtown.blogspot.com/

American Nightmare

Click to Play

1991 Artifact - all PUNK all ANGRY

Time will continue to make this laughable.

The Time I Gave Gilbert Gottfried the Limerick Book

Click to Play

This moment in time means a lot to me; the time I was able to give my favorite book to Gilbert thanks to my best friend Karl Stevens who bought me the tickets to see my favorite stand up comedian.

It's difficult to put into words the reverence and artistic relevance Gilbert Gottfried's humor lends to modern stand up humor. It can be described in some pantangical phrases like post-modernist meta humor or comedian's comedy or cognitive hilarity, but to frame the idea in lay terms won't do this passage justice for the average facebook reader's mind to comprehend. The very notion that you may still be reading is laughable.

DVblog

This site (and this link specifically) has a category 45, which is their humor category.  The videos are fine art-a-plenty and are categorized by specific topics.  I love this site and so will you.  A great resource for humorous  quicktime video and fine art video in general.

http://dvblog.org/?cat=45