CATFISH

From my sketch project Harriet the Spy.

Conversations!

Some best-friend-talking-time will stone-cold CURE a hundred ails, but you two are hilarious together too, right? Of course you are. You don’t have to budget your talking points, and you don’t have to be up a tree with some hijinks, either. Wackadoo spaceballs comedy is so much fun that I have to struggle sometimes to remember that two humans on a level with each other, talking about whatever, can be a much more rewarding comedy experience for everyone. Including the audience.

“Bestie x Bestie” is a series written by former SNL featured player Jenny Slate and standup comedian Gabe Liedman.

Here they discuss “what’s wrong with your body.”

And here’s the really great improv version of “the honest conversation.” Connor Ratliff and Cathryn Mudon are improvisers at UCB New York. They’re making a series called “I’m Too Fragile For This.” (I noticed as I was writing this: both dudes and both ladies in this post are doppelgangers of each other. That probably says something weird about me.)

Chocolate! Maybe.

Both series have the performers playing characters pretty close to themselves. They have one set, not much setup, and two people talking about whatever the circumstances suggest. They turn those basics into something amazing and true.

Sketch Week! Here’s SPIRIT DESIRE.

I like sketch comedy and I like sketch comedians, so I’m going to write about a different sketch group every day this week. REALLY good groups are putting their stuff on the internet. I underlined “really good” in my notebook as I was brainstorming this idea. Like really, really good. So where’s the recognition? Here’s a little bit, y’all.

Last month, Spirit Desire finished a run of shows at The New Movement Theater in Austin, Texas. Micheal Foulk, Brady James, James Patrick Robinson, and Rob Gagnon go dark. Their characters are mostly miserable people dropped into absurd tripped-out dream-land contexts. If Sifl & Olly were humans in a regional comedy scene instead of sock puppets from a late-90s MTV show, these guys would definitely kidnap them and assume their identities.

Home Innovations has forever altered this couple’s relationship.

And you know how it is with those quick pancake things.

Their specialty is the TV parody. It’s all there: how-to videos, traditional sitcoms with laugh tracks, commercials, and yep, The World’s Most Dangerous Somersaults.

SPIRIT DESIRE!

Sketch Week! Here’s JAMES AND JF.

I like sketch comedy and I like sketch comedians, so I’m going to write about a different sketch group every day this week. REALLY good groups are putting their stuff on the internet. I underlined “really good” in my notebook as I was brainstorming this idea. Like really, really good. So where’s the recognition? Here’s a little bit, y’all.

James and JF are Emily James and Ishah Janssen-Faith from Brooklyn. You can basically put out your hand and touch their passion, as if it’s a helium balloon in a grocery store. They are cheeky ladies. They have fun. James and JF, I “like-like” you.

They go hard on some fucking fruit.

At NCCAF 2012, they performed as the incredible Channel One: the last two people on earth producing the last TV channel on earth.

They’re even looking out for your well-being. Know the facts on cabin fever.

JAMES AND JF!

Sketch Week! Here’s YOUR TERRIFIC NEIGHBORS.

I like sketch comedy and I like sketch comedians, so I’m going to write about a different sketch group every day this week. REALLY good groups are putting their stuff on the internet. I underlined “really good” in my notebook as I was brainstorming this idea. Like really, really good. So where’s the recognition? Here’s a little bit, y’all.

Your Terrific Neighbors live in Austin, Texas. They are Joel Osborne, Curtis Luciani, and Courtney Hopkin, and they are a force, a FORCE. They ride the “weird realness” thing until it’s home. They sacrifice themselves to the uncomfortable, and we are redeemed.

They know, for instance, that you need a candidate with experience.

You also need a candidate to make sure you have blankets at night…but not too many.

And you definitely need a cop show written by a 9-year-old in 1985.

YOUR TERRIFIC NEIGHBORS!

Sketch Week! Here’s KATIE CROWN and NATHAN FIELDER.

I like sketch comedy and I like sketch comedians, so I’m going to write about a different sketch group every day this week. REALLY good groups are putting their stuff on the internet. I underlined “really good” in my notebook as I was brainstorming this idea. Like really, really good. So where’s the recognition? Here’s a little bit, y’all.

Katie Crown and Nathan Fielder are Canadians from Toronto. Both of them are successful Canadian TV actors. Nathan Fielder also wrote for & acted in Jon Benjamin Has a Van. I could make a joke about “Canada not counting” or whatever, but that would be dumb & also the worst.

They have pure self-deprecating class. Delicate absurdity. A twist of sad in the happy.

Katie Crown interviews Nathan Fielder in a tree. That’s called a “treeterview,” duh.

Outdone by other Hollywood lookalikes, Pixar keeps trying really hard.

KATIE CROWN and NATHAN FIELDER!

Sketch Week! Here’s WOMEN.

I like sketch comedy and I like sketch comedians, so I’m going to write about a different sketch group every day this week. REALLY good groups are putting their stuff on the internet. I underlined “really good” in my notebook as I was brainstorming this idea. Like really, really good. So where’s the recognition? Here’s a little bit, y’all.

 
The first group is WOMEN. They are Jake Weisman, Allen Strickland Williams, and Dave Ross: three dudes who live in LA.

Smart or dumb? How about BOTH? Fuck horseshit binaries.

For example: making out with a white wall is an entry in the dictionary of poverty.

And the fellas aren’t too shy to get fizzy when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.

 
WOMEN!

Werner Herzog on Wrestlemania and Anna Nicole Smith

The audience totally thought he was joking. “All of a sudden the deformity itself becomes the chosen ideal. But I keep saying, do not avert your eyes from it.”

“For decades wrestlers would perform their characters at all times in public to preserve the illusion”

Dorky bald emotion, just out there whanging around. That is the core of pro wrestling. It shields itself from total purity of expression, of course, protects itself with over-enunciation and chewing-the-scenery facial expressions, with the strobe lights and costumes and intricate dramas recounted by the announcers — yet it outs itself by the physical fact of bodies doing crazy things to each other in front of an audience. Men (sometimes women, but come on, usually men) work cooperatively to build STORIES in an environment where competition is fake and ultimately irrelevant.

The audience, the fans, often seem to understand and accept that the fights are scripted, but don’t want to bring the idea into direct sunlight. Talking openly about the fakeness means either that you hate wrestling or you’re dumb. Pro wrestling used to treat fans like marks to milk for $$$, like the circus once did, like any occupation that operates in a reality substantially different from that of its customers. But pro wrestling is analogous to following a soap opera, or any long-running TV show for that matter. The heroes and the villains know their roles, and their roles are more important than whether they appear to win or lose. The performers sacrifice to meet those expectations, and over the course of many matches, they guarantee the audience justice. A pro wrestling fan has more emotional security than any sports fan, so is both less and more invested in the game. The whole thing seems vulnerable and sincere to a degree that is almost breathtaking. I don’t understand how it sustains itself without getting crushed by outside pressure.

If straight women were lumped into one “community” as often as gay men are, a community with “our” own icons who speak to “our” inclinations and sensibilities from across the void, I would want pro wrestling to be our Judy Garland/Madonna/Mariah Carey. Camp that somehow directly expresses what we feel we are, without actually coming from us or even being meant for us. It would be silly to start acting as though any one concept of “femaleness” is universal, but pro wrestling is a pretty direct and profound translation of my own experience of being a woman. Bodies force themselves into every story anyway, so just invite them in, recognize them, give them some love and understanding. At the same time, “people play games” “in life” and so on, but who says games aren’t stimulating. Set about with a playful spirit, they are fun. Real and fake TOGETHER til the end of time.

Eric Yahnker

Eric Yahnker is one of my favorites. His work turns pop culture absurdities on themselves, sneaking really intense provocation into images that are instantly accessible via their being funny. He has an exhibition, Cracks of Dawn, up right now at Kunsthalle L.A. and it is so good.