i really love our generation’s joke trend of like, very calm but incredibly inflated hyperbole. like nobody says “oh she’s pretty” anymore we say “i would willingly let her murder me” and everyone is just like “lol same”
i think “same” is also great and “me,” i love when somebody reblogs a picture of like, a lizard, and just says “me” and we all know exactly what they mean. the current online Humor Discourse is remarkable because we trade exclusively in metaphors and implications and nobody ever, ever says anything outright and yet EVERYBODY understands each other perfectly
This reminds me of the time when I was on vacation with my family and we were hiking, and after using a rest stop, the conversation turned to the grossness of outhouses and port-a-potties, and I said that if I ever got splashback from a port-a-potty, “my soul would depart my body.” My parents found that hilarious, and my dad commented that my generation can be so clever with words bc he would only think to say something like “It would be disgusting” which doesn’t convey the sentiment nearly as well as “my soul would depart my body.”
I find this so intriguing because it opens up so many possibilities for future writers to connect with their readers.
Does that mean we’re literally “Darmok and Jalad”-ing language? We speak in stories and references and memes, never saying what’s actually going on, just making reference to other things.
One of the funniest things I ever experienced was when I went to go see John Mulaney live, and halfway through a bit about how expensive college in the States is, he looked down at the sleeve of his suit jacket and just. stopped. dead halt, mid sentence.
And after like three seconds, where we’re all trying to figure out the punchline because the story clearly hadn’t ended, and John Mulaney quietly says, “Has there been tinfoil on my buttons the whole goddamn show?”
He’d taken his suit to the drycleaner, and they’d wrapped the buttons on the sleeves and the coat with tinfoil to protect them, and John Mulaney didn’t notice until half-way through his set, and was SO FLABBERGASTED that he never did finish the story about college and instead did five minutes on how stupid it was that his buttons were reflecting the light and he just didn’t notice, and in that moment I understood more about John Mulaney as a person than I ever have.
during one of his portland shows, he noticed this like 7 year old girl in the front row and asked her (and her parents) if she ‘is aware that she is physically here right now’ or if she was just brought along. turns out her favorite john mulaney bit is the “and I’m new in town” bit and that she’s seen all his stuff. He was so shocked and discomforted by the fact a SEVEN YEAR OLD has seen his shows, that he couldn’t get through a bit about donating to charity without interrupting himself at least three times to import good life lessons on this small child, as if that makes up for all the horrible things he’s said that she heard
When I saw him in Ft. Lauderdale, there was a bar in the lobby that people kept leaving to go to. At one point, a guy in the front row just got up and BOOKED IT to get drinks. John Mulaney looked over at a woman who was next to the empty seat and asked, “Are you with him? What’s his name?”
She was, in fact, with him, and she did tell him her date’s name. John Mulaney considered this, looked around, and unplugged his microphone. Leaning in to us, he told us that we were going to trick this guy so fuckin hard. He said, “At some point during the show, I am going to stop and say, ‘Well, you guys know what they say here in Ft. Lauderdale,’ and then you guys are all going to scream back ‘WE LOVE MILKSHAKES!’ He’ll be so confused.”
He then continued on with the show as normal, the drinks guy returned to his seat, and that was that for quite a long time. We thought he had forgotten about it until, at some point during what I believe was his McDonald’s drive-thru bit, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “You guys know what they say here in Ft. Lauderdale…”
Naturally, we erupted with “WE LOVE MILKSHAKES” and John Mulaney SWUNG around to face the drinks guy and said, “I bet you’re real confused now, huh, JASON?!”
ah so john mulaney is a chaotic neutral cryptid
i saw him last night and there was a good ten minute interlude where a woman told him everything she found wrong with his suit, including that his pants were too high waisted to which he replied “that’s where my hips are” and someone in the back shouted “look at that high waisted man he’s got feminine hips!” and he yelled back “that’s my joke! i’m offended!!”
chuck tingle, two time hugo award nominee and author of such erotica classics as ‘space raptor butt invasion’, ‘i’m gay for my living billionaire jet plane’, ‘bigfoot pirates haunt my balls’, and ‘there’s a bitcoin in my butt and he’s handsome’ just published a short story about the importance of consent and how it’s okay to have a loving relationship without sex if you want to???
that’s lovely on its own but it’s also called ‘not pounded in the butt by anything and that’s okay’, which is my favourite book title ever