Twist Street

“It’s the weird thing about comedy,” [Tony] Roche said. “It’s sort of like boxing. You’re constantly throwing punches, and you might have one really big punch that everyone remembers—the really funny moment—but you’re trying to soften them up the whole time: joke, joke, joke, joke.”

“Whereas drama’s two people in a boxing ring just looking at each other,” Armando Iannucci said.

— From The New Yorker’s profile of Armando Iannucci, which estimates that the f-word is used in his new show Veep “two hundred and fifty times in the first eight episodes.” Also, interesting talk about his process and how he creates an “exhausted, lived-in” look of “panic” in his actors.

franksantoro:

This is possibly the best review I have ever read of my own work. The most thorough at least. Written by a college student in an art appreciation class.

The Tales Designed to Thrizzle review: “I don’t think that i would recommend to people over 38 just because the humor may be mistaken for stupidity and that is not whats going on in the book.”  38! It’s a review from the world of Logan’s Run.  Run, Runner!!!

by Robert Anton Wilson

Each script correlates to each of the 8 circuits of human conscioussness

1. The biosurvival

Winner: “I will live forever or die trying.”
Loser: “I don’t know how to defend myself.”

2. The emotional-territorial

Winner: “I am free; you are free; we can have our separate trips or we can have the same trip.”
Loser: “They all intimidate me.”

3. The semantic

Winner: “I am learning more about everything, including how to learn more.”
Loser: “I can’t solve my problems.”

4. The sociosexual

Winner: “Love, and do what thou wilt.” (Anon. of Ibid)
Loser: “Everything I like is illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

5. The neurosomatic

Winner: “How I feel depends on my neurological knowhow.”
Loser: “I can’t help the way I feel.”

6. The metaprogramming

Winner: “I make my own coincidences, synchronicities, luck, and Destiny.”
Loser: “Why do I have such lousy luck?”

7. The neurogenetic

Winner: “Future evolution depends on my decisions now.”
Loser: “Evolution is blind and impersonal.”

8. The neuroatomic

Winner: “In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind. There are no limits.” (Dr.John Lilly)

Loser: “I am not psychic, and I doubt anyone is.”

So good: like a guided tour of 20th century comedy and pop culture, from Danny Kaye to Tim & Eric with stops at 60’s and 70’s sketch troupes in New York and Greenwich Village, Python and Little Richard, Lenny Bruce’s concert at Carnegie Hall (which… Some people call Bruce overrated, but his Why The French Hate Us bit at that concert is one of my all time favorite bits), obscure TV producers and Bill Hader and SCTV and… All with Willard, who is just this enthusiastic fan of everybody (but not stupid about it). Loved it.