Steve Hely writes to me:
I'm a real admirer of your blog. You offer such great recommendations. But it seems you rarely recommend any comedy. Are there any books, TV shows, movies, etc. that have made you laugh in recent years?
It's well-known that comedy hits don't usually export well to other countries, because comedy is so culturally specific and also so subjective. So these are not recommendations. What I find funny is this:
1. On TV: Curb Your Enthusiasm and the better ensemble pieces of Seinfeld and also The Ali G Show. The best Monty Python skits are very funny to me, although I find their movies too long and labored. I find stand-up comics funny only when I am there in person.
2. Movies: The last funny movie I saw was I Love You, Man. I like most classic comedies, though without necessarily finding them very funny. Danny Kaye's The Court Jester is a good comedy which most people don't watch any more. I enjoy the chaotic side of W.C. Fields in short doses. Jerry Lewis is funny sometimes, plus there is Pillow Talk. I like the first forty minutes or so of Ferris Bueller. Stardust Memories is my favorite Woody Allen film, though I like many of them.
3. Books: I don't find books of fiction funny, blame it on me. I do find David Hume, and other classic non-fiction authors, to be at times hilarious.
On YouTube, I find the economics comic Yoram Bauman funny. Colbert can be very funny.
I wonder how many dimensions are required to explain or predict a person's taste in comedy?
I break into giggles over CSPAN and gales of laughter over Sunday talking head tv.
Tyler have you had a chance to watch Big Bang Theory?
“I wonder how many dimensions are required to explain or predict a person’s taste in comedy?”
Probably a few dozen factors. Several hundred is sufficient for a person’s writings.
I like satire that is funny to the degree it is accurate and vice versa, probable due to my intense preference for realism.
“I don’t find books funny, blame it on me.”
I’m wondering how someone who doesn’t find books funny could possibly understand literature.
On TV – I liked ABC’s “Better off Ted” before it got cancelled. It had a very Arrested Development feel to it.
“Louie” is great – I second Dirk.
Movies – I saw “The Other Guys”. Funniest Will Ferrell movie in years. I understand many people have gotten tired of him, but Mark Wahlberg makes this movie feel different.
On comedy books: while I usually read non-fiction, I recently re-read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I had forgotten how funny it was.
“The Tetherballs of Bougainville” by Mark Leyner. Fantastically funny novel.
Hi Tyler,
you should read some P.G. Wodehouse. His books are quite funny.
Tyler, how could you forget Bill Simmons???
I know you love his columns as well as “The Book of Basketball.”
He’s undeniably funny.
I second the indication of P.G Wodehouse. Jeeves and Blandings Castle don’t appeal to you?
Predictive readers usually don’t find books funny for three reasons: 1) what makes one giggle is usually not essential to the plot so they skip it; 2) if they can predict it, they won’t find it funny; 3) they read so fast and there is no time to giggle.
I’m willing to bet that one’s taste in comedy is no more difficult to describe to an another person than is one’s taste in pizza. And one’s taste in pizza (Is there anything comparable to a Pizza Margherita with rocket and buffalo mozzarella enjoyed at a table outside a cafe across from the Pantheon?) is no more difficult to describe than one’s taste in movies (City of God anyone?).
it is now completely understandable why you’ve never recommended any comedy.
Tyler,
Louis CK is a “comic’s comic” and has a new, at times surreal, show on FX – *Louie*. He negotiated for himself tremendous latitude from the network – he writes, produces and directs it, and they have very little input in the process. The result is a unique – if at times uneven – show, one that doesn’t conform to generic formulae. It’s thoughtful, cerebral, and funny. I think you might like it.
No books? Really? Not even Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy??
I loved the first 3 seasons of The Office (does a great job at picking up all the awkward aspects of office life). Parks and Recreation is a copy of The Office, but still funny. Modern Family is solid. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is great.
It is striking that the past decade as witnessed better TV dramas than comedies.
IMHO, Airplane is the best comedy.
Bill Simmons recently had a post in a reader mailbag with a list of Comedy MVPs by year going back to 1975. It’s a good read.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100722/mailbag2
That misses the primary dimension of comedy tastes — sneering at The Other vs. laughing at ourselves.
There seems to be a connection between sense of humor and taste in music. Not in a “Dvorak fans tend to like Steve Martin” way, but I bet if you grouped people by the degree of intersection of their favorite musical works, the fuzzy sets of their favorite comedy would highly correlate.
I enthusiastically recommend the stand up of Louis CK and his show Louie. He is the best stand up and a lot of his newer stuff is particularly Hansonian.
Michael Frayn’s novel, Downfall, is funny.
Faulkner and Twain are hilarious. Garcia Marquez can be as well.
Compared to other Tyler Cowen culture recommendations, these are actually somewhat uninspired recommendations.
Season 2 of Jersey Shore. Really.
I find spambots mildly amusing….
I suggest Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder novels. The guy shoulda won a Pulitzer.
Funny things no one has yet mentioned:
TV: Slings and Arrows, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The State
Film: Death at a Funeral (the Frank Oz version) and In The Loop
Literature: CHOKE by Chuck Palahniuk and anything by Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut or Dave Eggers
“On YouTube, I find the economics comic Yoram Bauman funny.”
This is one of the funniest sentences I have read in a long time.
Alright, Shakespeare, on stage done well, is side-splitting. I also think that Jane Austen is quite funny in an “oh, snap” kind of way. Both are humor through word play so you have to be paying pretty close attention to the characters and their relationships. I second (or third) that Faulkner is funny (the scene from As I Lay Dying that involves picking cotton and having sex still makes me chuckle years later).
Reading Bill Bryson in public is dangerous. I get weird looks when I bury my face in the book shaking to keep from laughing too loud.
Arrested Development is fantastically funny, but you have to be willing to sit through three episodes to get to know the characters well enough to understand their interactions.
I think it’d be interesting to know how important humor is to friendships. I have a circle of friends who all share a similar sense of humor which is very central to our interactions (especially email ones). Are your friends funny? Is that an important quality for you in others?
Thomas Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” is the funniest book ever written.
To Be or Not to Be, one of the best comedies ever made–the original of course. Lubitsch, Lombard (tragically dead by the time it was released), Benny and of course Concentration Camp Erhard. Check it out on Netflix.
I like all that, plus Terry Prachett and Danial Pickwater. And Death To Smoochy. And occasionally Top Gear, plus I now actually know what “torque” is.
TV – The Larry Sanders Show – Never once laughed at Seinfeld or Curb (curb is actually torture)
Film – Let It Ride, Office Space, Caddyshack
Fiction – Anything by Ring Lardner
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