Why did you trade Jay Buhner?
I loved the line from Seinfeld mentioned in the title. George Steinbrenner is telling George Costanza's parents that their son, George, is dead. George's Dad responds with, "Why did you trade Jay Buhner?" It was a great line because it was random. I'm not sure why, but random has become funny. Maybe it always has been. The Office, Arrested Development, and Seinfeld have all made great use of random. I am not sure anyone has done it better than Family Guy, but Family Guy is just disgusting and (what's worse) not funny too much of the time.
What about randomness makes it funny? (Loud noises!)
What about randomness makes it funny? (Loud noises!)
posted by Aaron Perry at
11:38 AM
8 Comments:
The bird has landed. Blessed be the squirrel.
One of the base elements of humor is unexpectedness. Whether it's shock in the style of a crass comedian or complete absurdity ala Monty Python.
It's what makes Colbert's bow while people clap for his guests funny every single time. He's not supposed to do that.
I think I read somewhere that laughter is one of the responses the brain makes when it does not know how to categorize something mentally. I'm absolutly fascinated by the science of humour.
Yeah, I'm not sure what makes it so hilarious, but it's definitely used intentionally and frequently in our youth group. I love random, they love random, we all cheer for random.
-Brewer
aj--interesting point. i sometimes say when i don't know how to categorize something, "this isn't funny, but i don't know how else to respond." case in point: last night after hearing about a man found dead on the toilet in a mall... yeah. i laughed.
I think, perhaps especially, coming out of an age where political correctness was king (and yet still in it to a large degree), anything outside the ordinary expected response can be comical.
It's similar to why TNT's coverage of the NBA is more famous for its half-time show with Charles Barkly than for the game itself. It's the same reason why NBC hired Brett Hull to share his thoughts during intermission. These guys, though often saying false, stupid, or annoying things, at least say the unexpected.
Much of our culture is emerging out of institutionalism and its pre-packaged arguments/answers. To a large degree, the explosion of blogdom itself is the best indicator of this. And you'll notice that one of the top 3 words in the blogosphere is 'random'. Heck, it seems 5-10% of blogs have the word as part of their titles!
To me, randomness is funny because in the state in which i grew up society was so proper, and 'guarded' and pretentious, and constricted, and stoic (in other words, german and scandinavian). it's just refreshing to hear statements and comments that do not follow any predetermined and prescribed molds and roles. randomness is funny, because it takes guts to be different, and i guess the 'shock' of deviance from the 'norm' is what is funny (thrills?) to me.
i guess that means, that when randomness becomes 'normal' then i won't find it as funny?
darrem--
i have watched scrubs. definitely creative. it's growing on me.
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