Introducing Not Funny: A Substack Analyzing Comedy by Someone Who Does It
Welcome to my biweekly newsletter, Not Funny! Where I will be reviewing comedy specials with a critical lens using my experience as a comedy writer and editor. First, I need to address the elephant in the room.
Why give a shit about what I have to say about comedy?
I’m a co-creator of the satire site Hard Drive, it’s not The Onion (The Beatles of satire writing) but I feel like its comfortably in the second tier of satire websites with Reductress, The Hard Times etc. in both quality and audience. I wasn’t the singular person who defined and cultivated “The Voice” of Hard Drive, but I was as strong of an influence as anyone there in the first three years of its existence that saw it explode in popularity. Despite my tendency to downplay my accomplishments and how uncomfortable it is to write the following sentence; I have achieved more than most people who get into comedy do.
I often forget that, but figure now is a good time to remember when making the case why you should take the time every two weeks to read my comedy criticism.
The best way to describe my comedy resume is the website I co-created has a Wikipedia article, but I do not. Successful to a point, but let’s not get crazy. My career comedy earnings are below the poverty line, but I am probably qualified to start a Substack analyzing comedy or teach a satire writing class. We are grasping firmly within my reach.
As you can probably tell by my barrage of qualifiers, I don’t want to come across as bragging, or worse delusional, but sometimes you gotta flaunt some credentials to get buy-in especially when what I want is you to give me 10-20 minutes of your time every two weeks. Like my work as a therapist, I take people giving me their time extremely seriously. It is the one thing you cannot buy much of, no matter how many twenty-year-old blood boys Peter Thiel hooks up to himself. By the way, love that even evil people follow the “I before E, except after C” rule. Even the truly macabre humans among us respect grammar.
One of the things I miss from that experience is looking at comedy through a more critical lens. Looking at a piece of comedic work not only on its own merits but also figuring out how this will slot into the greater whole. This joke may be funny, but does it undermine the premise of the piece? Of the “voice” of the website? Comedy specials work the same way, the best specials have a clear vision, and every joke builds to reinforce and expand it. It also matters how they slot-in to the field as it is. It’s a double-edge sword, comedy often ages like milk because of how necessary it is for comedy to feel vital and of the moment, because things like “gay panic” go from cutting edge to cringe. Try watching the first ten minutes of Eddie Murphy’s Delirious, that was—and still is—considered a defining work of comedy! Comedy is incredibly weird in that respect as an art form, imagine turning on Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and the first song was about Roger Waters singing about how women belong in the kitchen.
This is going to come out biweekly, on Monday mornings, with the main feature being a review of a comedy special. A mixture of recent releases, classics and whatever else I find interesting. Breaking the work down within the context of its own special but also connecting it to some broader societal trend or how it fits into the history of the medium.
I’ll probably add a little postscript about my personal life, either on my comedy progress or work as a mental health therapist. Much like Marc Maron WTF monologues, I will not take offense if you skip it, but I want to at least create a space for it (As a therapist, I am obligated by my license to “create space” in all areas of my life). Plus, I think it gives me more skin in the game to be creating comedy content at the same time I am critiquing it. I’m the man in the arena, telling the other guy in the arena I think his arena-work doesn’t do much for me.
Thanks for signing up! If you are reading this now the first review is coming out Monday, November 27th and I am going to be looking at Matt Rife’s “Natural Selection”, a special that fascinated me in many ways except the one that ultimately matters.
See you on the 27th!
-Mike