Readers, we like to think of ourselves as mildly humorous here at the LC but, as many of you well know if you've ever tried to write something funny, it's not always easy.
In today's odd post, we consider three examples of local humor, two of them successful, the other not so much.
JabberJosh's Sam Gunnerson is headed to New York to hone his comic chops and we caught a farewell set from the brothers Gunnerson at Love Garden on Friday. This was only our second time seeing these maniacs and, while their pummeling musical assault hurts our sensitive scenester ears, the comic aspect fascinates us. While most bands shy away from between-song patter (and wisely, since most suck at it), Sam fires off strings of absurdity. This show opened with the statement, "We're from Alabama. Not the state or the street, but the band," followed by some fairly specific statements about the ancient country artists, followed by an assertion that the set would then begin with a cover of the drum part of "Rapid Eye Movement's 'It's the End of the World,' " which would soon transition into an "actual song." Indeed, JabberJosh has a penchant for "covers," but instead of playing the songs they just play two or three second bursts of the songs. So they offered on this night a three-second burst of a Saliva song. "I bet this is the first time a Saliva cover's been played at Love Garden?" Sam asked Kelly Corcoran, who responded, "Well, in this store, but not in the old one," to which Sam quipped: "Who was it? Drakkar Sauna or some shit?" to which Kelly responded: "Will Oldham." (nice comedy routine, gents!). Song titles too are a source of humor: "This one is called 'These Milkshakes Are Alan Fucking Thicke.'" Sure, much of this is greeted by stone-silence from a puzzled crowd, but our hats are always off to weirdness!
On the not-so-successful humor front, many are displeased (displeased to the point of death threats, apparently) with KU"s Dean of Education, whose e-mailed masturbation joke regarding the recent turkey-torture incident at a local frat party accidentally got forwarded (by an Associate Dean, who added another joke) to an irate woman in Indiana who had previously contacted the Dean to complain about the turkey incident. Read the LJ-World coverage of the story here .
Chip: "I'm going to stand by the Dean here. The party in question is an annual event called the "Turkey Pull," and anything with "Pull" in the title is naturally going to necessitate a few jokes about masturbation. Plus, we all know that every frat party climaxes with a circle-jerk anyway. So the Dean may have just been stating some facts in a way that got misinterpreted as a joke."
Well, we can't really know, Chip, since the LJ-World's standards and practices prevent actually sharing the jokes in question.
But let's turn to the talkbackers for their usual astute analysis (and humor):
Perses says: "I would fire them for simply being an embarrassment to the University. My guess is that they were both "chokin the chicken" and were distracted."
Blindrabbit says: "Kansas: Land of Speaker of the House Owens racial jokesters! Sea of Galilee swimmers! Dean of Education crude e-mailers! State Representative shooters of aliens from helicopters! Board of Education evolution deniers! Home of supposedly Christian funeral protesters! Koch-a-Kola voter suppressors! No wonder we are the "laughing stock" for the rest of the country."
And rockchalker52 wisely brings things back around to the real issue: that a bunch of drunken frat boys tortured a live turkey at a party until someone stepped in and killed it: " No harm, no foul...unless you were the bird. Then it's plenty of harm to the fowl. Don't lose sight of what makes this disgusting. It isn't the email."
Finally, one of the most reliable sources for meat-based innuendo is Biemer's BBQ, who have kicked off the new year with this sign that makes Chip howl with laughter every time he passes by:
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