Planet Funny

by Ken Jennings

  “It’s just a crazy way”: “TV Roasts: A Crazy Way of Telling People You Love Them,” TV Guide, May 11, 1974.

  she had to sneak in: Anthony Slide, Eccentrics of Comedy (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1998), p. 44.

  rip on the convention: Oswalt appears as a bike cop who encourages Bamford not to put stand-up in her show, because it’s now so overdone. Lady Dynamite, season 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” Netflix, May 20, 2016.

  His discovery, in short: Robert R. Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 4, 27, 40.

  strict mechanics: Ibid., pp. 37, 57, 62. The only asymmetric thing about a typical laugh is loudness. Playing a laugh backward, says Provine, produces a Woody Woodpecker–like crescendo.

  thirty times more: Ibid., p. 45.

  “a social signification”: Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan, 1914), p. 8.

  “the mind [is] in”: Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (New York: Appleton, 1899), p. 199.

  bond two people faster: Barbara Fraley and Arthur Aron, “The Effects of a Shared Humorous Experience on Closeness in Initial Encounters,” Personal Relationships 11, no. 1 (March 2004), pp. 61–78.

  Homo ridens: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York: Dell, 1964), p. 63.

  recorded children: Antony J. Chapman, “Humorous Laughter in Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31, no. 1 (January 1975), pp. 42–49.

  “Our sense of humor”: Eastman, Sense of Humor, p. 230.

  hard-to-fake indicator: Hurley et al., Inside Jokes, pp. 11–12.

  “They’re a lie!”: Deborah Starr Seibel, “Funny Business: TV Laugh Tracks Can Still Cause Frowns, but the Studios Feel a Need to Be Humored,” Chicago Tribune, April 16, 1992.

  photos of women: Eric R. Bressler and Sigal Balshine, “The Influence of Humor on Desirability,” Evolution and Human Behavior 27, no. 1 (January 2006), pp. 29–39.

  “A wife”: Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, trans. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 28.

  perceived by others: Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller, “Dissing Oneself Versus Dissing Rivals: Effects of Status, Personality, and Sex on the Short-Term and Long-Term Attractiveness of Self-Deprecating and Other-Deprecating Humor,” Evolutionary Psychology 6, no. 3 (2008), pp. 393–408.

  emotional IQ skills: Jeremy A. Yip and Rod A. Martin, “Sense of Humor, Emotional Intelligence, and Social Competence,” Journal of Research in Personality 40, no. 6 (December 2006), pp. 1202–8.

  “the High Priest of Ha-Ha”: Terrence E. Deal and Allan A. Kennedy, The New Corporate Cultures: Revitalizing the Workplace After Downsizing, Mergers, and Reengineering (New York: Basic, 1999), p. 8.

  boot camp for business teams: Anthony Effinger, “Improv Training Is Making Management Throw Away the Script,” Bloomberg Business, September 29, 2015.

  “humor room”: John Morreall, Humor Works (Amherst, Mass.: HRD Press, 1997), p. 8.

  “Joy Gang”: Kateri Drexler, Icons of Business: An Encyclopedia of Mavericks, Movers, and Shakers (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2007), 1:86.

  blow on kazoos: Leigh Branham, Keeping the People Who Keep You in Business: 24 Ways to Hang on to Your Most Valuable Talent (New York: Amacom, 2001), p. 251.

  “Grouch Patrol”: Morreall, Humor Works, p. 18.

  “That concludes the musical portion”: Michael Iapoce, “Giving Trainees the Last Laugh,” Training and Development Journal 44, no. 8 (August 1990), pp. 13–15.

  a “humor first aid kit”: Geeta Dardick, “Learning to Laugh on the Job,” Principal 69, no. 5 (May 1990), pp. 32–34.

  “Staple Kleenex”: Branham, Keeping the People, p. 251.

  “Grass Valley Greg”: Mr. Show with Bob and David, season 2, episode 4, “If You’re Going to Write a Comedy Scene, You’re Going to Have Some Rat Feces in There,” HBO, December 6, 1996.

  SIX: EVERYONE’S A COMEDIAN

  fewer than four thousand people: According to MST3K superfan and ephemera collector Tom Noel.

  drawing from the album sleeve: Brian Raftery, “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece,” Wired, April 22, 2014.

  The budget was $250: Chris Morgan, The Comic Galaxy of “Mystery Science Theater 3000”: Twelve Classic Episodes and the Movies They Lampoon (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2015), p. 12.

  a flimsy satellite set: Trace Beaulieu, Paul Chaplin, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy, Michael J. Nelson, and Mary Jo Pehl, The “Mystery Science Theater 3000” Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (New York: Bantam, 1996), p. xxxi.

  “It was like being in a theater”: Mystery Science Theater 3000, season 0, episode 4, “Gamera vs. Barugon,” KTMA, December 4, 1988.

  in an industrial park: Raftery, “The Definitive Oral History.”

  Planet of the Apes rip-off: Mystery Science Theater 3000, season 3, episode 6, “Time of the Apes,” Comedy Central, December 4, 1988.

  “I have been interviewed”: How to Be Funny, and Other Writings of Will Rogers, ed. Steven K. Gracent (Stillwater: Oklahoma State University Press, 1983), p. 112.

  “but it felt like”: Apatow, Sick in the Head, p. 249.

  Carson moved The Tonight Show: Nesteroff, The Comedians, p. 294.

  twelve thousand people: Jason Zinoman, “Upright Citizens Brigade Raises Prices. Comedy Fans Shouldn’t Laugh,” New York Times, January 30, 2017.

  do people who run: @IamEnidColeslaw, Twitter, October 20, 2014, https://twitter.com/IamEnidColeslaw/status/524331993819910146.

  hi grandma?: @ch000ch, Twitter, October 19, 2013, https://twitter.com/ch000ch/status/391611930865303551.

  science defines a baby: @Fred_Delicious, Twitter, October 17, 2012, https://twitter.com/Fred_Delicious/status/258533115830599680.

  i saw an ad on craigslist: Jon Hendren (@fart), Twitter, May 25, 2012, https://twitter.com/fart/status/206196131316744104.

  Next, on TLC’s Lunchbox Wanters: Stefan Heck (@boring_as_heck), Twitter, May 29, 2014, https://twitter.com/boring_as_heck/status/472061177498467328.

  “If everyone in the country”: Apatow, Sick in the Head, p. 5.

  It’s actually illegal: Ken Jennings (@KenJennings), Twitter, July 18, 2016, https://twitter.com/KenJennings/status/755065977981767680.

  “This talent cannot”: Cicero, De Oratore 2.54.

  the “Chinese Room”: John Searle, “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3 (September 1980), pp. 417–57.

  damn girl, are you the wife of a convict: Demi Adejugigbe (@electrolemon), Twitter, May 1, 2013, https://twitter.com/electrolemon/status/329782507140689920.

  Damn girl are you a pizza: @tnylgn, Twitter, October 7, 2013, https://twitter.com/tnylgn/status/387350810176147456.

  Daaaamn girl is your name Katrina: Eireann Dolan (@EireannDolan), Twitter, February 6, 2013, https://twitter.com/EireannDolan/status/299318413821465856.

  Sext: I am a living: Patricia Lockwood (@TriciaLockwood), Twitter, August 8, 2011, https://twitter.com/TriciaLockwood/status/100808023307587584.

  Since Ariel was 16: @OhNoSheTwitnt, Twitter, June 22, 2016, https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/745607683882029056.

  If it facilitates: Jason Miller (@longwall26), Twitter, July 17, 2016, https://twitter.com/longwall26/status/754657121359106048.

  Damn girl, are you the second season: Ken Jennings (@KenJennings), Twitter, March 10, 2013, https://twitter.com/KenJennings/status/310802028391718712.

  me: Carly Rae Jepsens new album: @crushingbort, Twitter, August 22, 2015, https://twitter.com/crushingbort/status/635226763094831104.

  “ ‘Every little bit helps’ ”: This Wellerism is not from Dickens. Nobody pisses in Dickens. I first came across it in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, but versions using an ant or bird instead of an old woman date back to the Middle Ages.

  wind-up doll jokes: This unfunny example and seventy-two others ar
e in Maurice D. Schmaier, “The Doll Joke Pattern in Contemporary American Oral Humor,” Midwest Folklore 13, no. 4 (Winter 1963–1964), pp. 205–16.

  “flopcorn”: Rich Hall, Sniglets: Any Word That Doesn’t Appear in the Dictionary, but Should (New York: Macmillan, 1980) p. 33.

  Helen Keller jokes: Mac E. Barrick, “The Helen Keller Joke Cycle,” Journal of American Folklore 93, no. 370 (October–December 1980), pp. 441–49.

  elephant jokes: Roger D. Abrahams and Alan Dundes, “On Elephantasy and Elephanticide,” Psychoanalytic Review 56, no. 2 (February 1969), pp. 225–41.

  “In Soviet Russia”: Smirnoff’s act is often remembered today as a series of “In Soviet Russia . . .” reversal jokes, but in fact he almost never used the format. This particular joke actually dates back at least to the 1958 Oscars, when Bob Hope told it. Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards, 2nd ed. (New York: Ballantine, 1996), p. 289.

  “I played hide and seek”: Dangerfield says this was the joke that prompted him to introduce his “I don’t get no respect” hook. Lawrence Christon, “The Education of Rodney Dangerfield,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1986.

  “black white supremacist”: “Frontline: Clayton Bigsby,” Chappelle’s Show, season 1, episode 1, Comedy Central, January 22, 2003.

  “Pre-Taped Call-in Show”: Mr. Show with Bob and David, season 3, episode 10, “The Return of the Curse of the Creature’s Ghost,” HBO, December 5, 1997.

  mostly punny riddles: Graeme Ritchie, The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 148, 153.

  a formal language called OST: Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, and Julia M. Taylor, “How to Understand and Assess a Theory: The Evolution of the SSTH into the GTVH and Now into the OSTH,” Journal of Literary Theory 3, no. 2 (December 2009), pp. 285–312. The example here is from Julia M. Taylor, “Do Jokes Have to Be Funny?: Analysis of 50 ‘Theoretically Jokes,’ ” AAAI Artificial Intelligence of Humor Symposium, Arlington, Va., November 2–4, 2012.

  DEviaNT, it turned out, was no Michael Scott: Chloé Kiddon and Yuriy Brun, “That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification,” Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Portland, Ore., June 19–24, 2011.

  At the intermission: Megan Amram (@meganamram), Twitter, February 5, 2017, https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/B28414875156217856.

  by tickling us: Christine R. Harris and Nicholas Christenfeld, “Can a Machine Tickle?” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 6, no. 3 (September 1999), pp. 504–10.

  If Natalie Portman dated: Bryan Donaldson (@The Nardvark), Twitter, October 23, 2014, https://twitter.com/TheNardvark/status/525323195566170115.

  “There’s literally no way”: Megan Amram (@meganamram), Twitter, December 2, 2015, https://twittercom/meganamram/status/672151849278951424.

  “WHY was Mario Kart”: Megan Amram (@meganamram), Twitter, May 11, 2012, https://twittercom/meganamram/status/201142970383212544.

  “girl are u my neighbor’s wifi?”: Megan Amram (@megananamram), Twitter, November 13, 2015, https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/665261002791981056.

  “When my wife gets a little upset”: Bryan Donaldson (@The Nardvark), Twitter, September 26, 2011, https://twitter.com/TheNardvark/status/118383154598907905.

  “Relaxing family vacation”: Bryan Donaldson (@The Nardvark), Twitter, June 22, 2014, https://twitter.com/TheNardvark/status/480886627292971010.

  spotted by Alex Baze on Twitter: Jennifer Rogers and Callie Wright, “How a Middle-Aged IT Guy from Peoria Tweeted His Way into a Writing Job on Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Vulture, April 6, 2014, http://www.vulture.com/2014/04/guy-tweets-his-way-from-peoria-to-30-rock.html.

  the youngest stand-up ever: Jason Zinoman, “Evolving Young Satirist Stands Up to Convention,” New York Times, December 25, 2013.

  “There’s a myth”: Perret, Comedy Writing Step by Step, p. 217.

  a three-minute story: Louie, season 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” FX, June 29, 2010.

  a book from the school library: Jay Leno’s How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole Wide World (or Just in Your Class) (New York: Aladdin, 2005).

  “With references to everything”: The Peabody Awards, Winter 1993, http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/mystery-science-theater-3000.

  most successful video crowdfunding: William Hughes, “MST3K Breaks Kickstarter Records, Secures 14 New Episodes,” AV Club, December 12, 2015, https://news.avclub.com/mst3k-breaks-kickstarter-records-secures-14-new-episod-1798287322.

  tenth-anniversary celebration: RiffTrax Live: MST3K Reunion, RiffTrax, 2016.

  SEVEN: BON JOVI, COME HOME

  a sample alazon takedown: Aristophanes, Lysistrata and Other Plays, trans. and ed. Alan H. Sommerstein (London: Penguin, 1973), pp. 74–75. I’ve colloquialized the Sommerstein translation somewhat.

  according to Plato: In The Republic, Thrasymachus laughs at Socrates’s putting on a pretense of ignorance “so that [he] may contrive, as he always does, to evade answering himself but may cross-examine the other man and refute his replies.” Plato, Republic 337e.

  Ronald Golding insisted: Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2017), p. 229.

  “In these conditions”: François Truffaut, Hitchcock, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1983), p. 73.

  allergic to beer: Mara Bovsun, “The Case of Adolph Coors,” New York Daily News, September 13, 2009.

  Jim Fixx died: Jane Gross, “James F. Fixx Dies Jogging; Author on Running Was 52,” New York Times, July 22, 1984.

  her hit 1995 song: Alanis Morissette, “Ironic,” Jagged Little Pill, Maverick, 1995.

  a full paragraph: Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 529.

  “If a diabetic”: George Carlin, Brain Droppings (New York: Hyperion, 1997), p. 116.

  Sontag enumerated: Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 2001), p. 277.

  glued to the Nick at Nite reruns: The eighties camp aesthetic is well described in Paul Rudnick and Kurt Andersen, “The Irony Epidemic,” Spy, March 1989.

  its early mascots: It surprises many people to learn that neither Albert Brooks nor Steve Martin, despite their close association with Saturday Night Live, was ever a cast member.

  almost no jokes: Steve Martin, Let’s Get Small, Warner, 1977.

  a humidifier locked in battle: Late Night with David Letterman, season 2, episode 77, NBC, July 5, 1983.

  a random book publicist: Meg Parsont of Pocket Books made the first of her thirty-odd appearances on Late Night in season 9, episode 12, NBC, February 15, 1990.

  “Shoe Removal Races”: Late Night, season 7, episode 66, NBC, October 11, 1988.

  a full 360-degree rotation: Late Night, season 5, episode 140, NBC, December 9, 1986.

  a cartoon voice-over cast: Late Night, season 5, episode 10, NBC, rerun, September 25, 1986.

  “Words That Almost Rhyme with ‘Peas’ ”: Late Night, season 4, episode 87, NBC, September 18, 1985.

  The Great Gatsby: Saturday Night Live, season 3, episode 13, NBC, March 11, 1978.

  Anglin boasted: Andrew Anglin, “A Normie’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” Daily Stormer, August 31, 2016. The site has since been banned by domain registrars.

  “coded racist messages”: Joseph Bernstein, “Adult Swim Talent Want the Network to Cancel Its Alt-Right Comedy Show,” BuzzFeed News, November 16, 2016, https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/adult-swim-talent-trying-to-cancel-million-dollar-extreme.

  troll progressive celebs: Seth Abramovitch, “Sam Hyde Speaks: Meet the Man Behind Adult Swim’s Canceled ‘Alt-Right’ Comedy Show,” Hollywood Reporter, December 8, 2016.

  a 2013 stand-up set: Still posted on Million Dollar Extreme’s official YouTube page. “Privileged White Male Triggers Oppressed Victims, Ban This Video Now and Block Him,” June 4, 2013
, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt19Vp9uBiQ.

  over a million viewers: David Sims, “The Battle over Adult Swim’s Alt-Right TV Show,” Atlantic, November 17, 2016.

  publicly criticized the network: Bernstein, “Adult Swim Talent.”

  “Thanks for giving a racist”: Abramovitch, “Sam Hyde Speaks.”

  a bigger, livelier world: Future Time humor columnist Joel Stein describes a similar childhood experience in Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, and George Kalogerakis, Spy: The Funny Years (New York: Miramax, 2006), p. 61. Spy was evidently a gateway irony drug for a lot of 1980s kids.

  Mike Ovitz’s top secret Hollywood client list: “Ten Percent of Everything Everybody Makes,” Spy, September 1988.

  index to The Andy Warhol Diaries: “Spy’s Exclusive Unauthorized Index to Andy Warhol’s Diaries,” August 1989.

  “1,000 Reasons”: Joe Conason et al., “1,000 Reasons Not to Vote for George Bush,” July–August 1988. In the story, Spy gave the first national coverage to long-standing rumors that Bush was involved in an extramarital affair with assistant Jennifer Fitzgerald.

  a $0.13 check? Julius Lowenthal, “Every Man Has His Price,” July 1990. Arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and Spy favorite Donald Trump were the only two moguls who bothered to deposit the smallest check.

  “See, not so short”: Graydon Carter, “Steel Traps and Short Fingers,” Vanity Fair, November 2015.

  Eckensteher Nante: Mary Lee Townsend, Forbidden Laughter: Popular Humor and the Limits of Repression in Nineteenth-Century Prussia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), p. 119.

  “I need not say”: Charles Dudley Warner, Washington Irving (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), p. 19.

  “Amerikans love caustick things”: Billings, Complete Works, p. 435.

  exit from a kitchen fire: Seinfeld, season 5, episode 19, “The Fire,” NBC, May 5, 1994.

  loaf of marble rye: Seinfeld, season 7, episode 11, “The Rye,” NBC, January 4, 1996.

  entire publishing firm: Seinfeld, season 5, episode 21, “The Opposite,” NBC, May 19, 1994.

  death of a fiancée: Seinfeld, season 7, episode 24, “The Invitations,” NBC, May 16, 1996.