Link Banana

Neither of these bits would have merited a post on their own, but they made a nice pair. And I love Louis CK.

• Louis CK interviewed about that Conan clip (LBed here).
• Louis CK on a comedian’s Letterman set he liked, and the art of the talk show set.

(via BF and @darrenhoyt, respectively)

I’d never heard of the comedian before, but this is a funny set.

(via matt.cc)

Another reason to like Louis CK.

(via Jack Shedd)

I link to this primarily because it made me think of Louis CK — who isn’t afraid to use profanity when expressing his disdain for his wife and children — and Louis CK makes me laugh.

(via Buzzfeed, which is apparently letting us know what we missed in June)

Tim Goodman, a confessed snob, stoops to reconsider CBS’s plebeian Monday night comedy lineup and finds it rather enjoyable. His consideration of snobbery:

The problem with sophisticated comedy — be it anti-obvious in nature, keenly observed absurdities or ironically dumb by choice — is that it creates its own little laugh ghetto from which you never get out. You don’t want to watch “Two and a Half Men” because, well, it’s “Two and a Half Men” with Charlie Sheen, for God’s sake. What more need be said?

And yet, there’s a smugness - almost a righteousness - to people who can only tolerate “30 Rock” or “Weeds” and sit around lamenting the death of “Arrested Development.” Hey, it takes one to know one.

It’s true that CBS is awash in laugh tracks and anyone unfortunate enough to end up in hell will find pretty much the same sound there. And that tired sitcom pacing - setup, punch line, setup punch line, big bang before the commercial break - is enough to make you really do damage to a free-standing TV set. But it’s also true that funny is funny. It answers to no specific genre or network. From Milton Berle to “Flight of the Conchords,” if you laugh, then it’s funny. It worked.

(via TV Squad)

With a title like that I had to read Troy Patterson’s piece. The problem?

“pseudo-satire,” which is cynical and shallow and treats politics “like an infection” and stands in contrast to the real satire that, for instance, Jon Stewart offered on the subject of the botched joke and the way it was spun: “After an election in which the GOP has been beaten up by, let’s say, reality, the party has rediscovered a winning issue: the has-been’s faux pas.” Where O’Brien’s pseudo-satrical joke trivializes the political process, Stewart’s engages it by laughing at that very trivialization. The distinction isn’t simply a matter of what’s funny; well-constructed pseudo-satire often deserves more laughs than preachy satirical jokes. It’s about the fact that comedy can perform a watchdog role and seems more ready to shirk it than Judith Miller. “By avoiding issues in favor of personalities,” writes Peterson, “and by ‘balancing’ these shallow criticisms between conservatives and liberals, late-night comics are playing it safe but endangering democracy.”

I’ll just leave the introduction to Snarkmarket, who did it better than I can:

Funniest thing ever, five minutes ago: Patton Oswalt doing his riff on KFC Famous Bowls.

Funniest thing ever, now: Patton Oswalt writing about actually eating a KFC Famous Bowl for the first time.