Surprising Revelations About humor gleaned from thumbing through the New Yorker's recent "Spring Humor" issue:

--With a deadline looming, an inscrutable political cartoon involving a society woman, a butcher, and a reference to trickle-down economics is an editor's best friend.

--Black people dance like this (photo inserts of MC Hammer doing the "typewriter," James Brown shuffling his feet); white people dance like this (inserts of a 1950's-type patriarch smoking a pipe and tapping his foot, Hitler)

--Successful television sitcom writing involves a great deal of time devoted to speculating about the contents of Courteney Cox's vaginal cavity.

--Bruce McCall finds that a pithy animal necrophilia joke will reliably deliver some low-brow chuckles, especially if one joshes about killing the animal oneself.

--Woody Allen has never been remotely funny.

--David Remnick finds Elizabeth Kolbert's constant flatulence hilarious, and has on more than one occasion left a cork on her desk with a note indicating the cork's Victorian-era utility as a "foof plug."

[Permalink] | [E-mail]