Recently I was hired as a comedy consultant to help some brand creatives think outside the box.
Normally I despise hearing people talk seriously about comedy. But the money was good.
Turns out the only thing worse than witnessing a panel on comedy is being part of a panel on comedy. People made sweeping generalizations and self-important observations. It was a difficult 75 minutes.
I did two things to simultaneously take my role seriously and (kind of) subvert it.
First, I arrived dressed as Dr. Millard Rausch, the jerk who appears on the panel show in George A. Romero's
DAWN OF THE DEAD. (Fans will remember I wore this costume when I hosted
Kevin Geeks Out About Dummy Deaths -- honestly, it works better with the beard.)
Second, I tried to answer vague questions with a painstaking amount of detail.
For example, the bizarro question packet wanted to know "What are the genres of comedy?"
I suppose they want simple answers like "parody" and "slapstick."
Instead I wrote up 125 different genres of comedy.
I figured it would be fun audience participation, they could shout out a number and I'd reveal the specific sub-genre I listed. And it pointed out how dumb the question is in the first place.
After the panel I never heard back from the agency -- dashing my hopes of a lucrative consulting position. But here's my official comedy research listing the 125 genres of comedy. (I could've listed more, but I think I made my obnoxious point, don't you?)
125 Comedy Genres
1. Christian ventriloquism
2. Greek plays by Aristophanes with lots of phalluses.
3. Pre-Civil War Minstrel Show
4. Internet Cat-based humor
5. Porn parodies of popular culture
6. Political cartoons with too many metaphors
7. Nostalgia-based coming-of-age storytelling
8. Post-PORKY’S teen sex comedies screened late at night on basic cable with all the dirty parts edited out
9. Humorous fortune cookie
