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[melack]

I know this is probably not the effect Onstad was aiming towards, but two straight dudes watching gay porno for half an hour and making jokes about it... is just seven kinds of suspicious and or lame. It reeks of "Hey, I'm really uncomfortable with what I'm seeing, I'll cruise through this talking nonstop and I better act nonchalant and try some jokes too". The point being that doing that sort of thing for five or ten minutes would seem "normal", but keep going at it for half an hour...

Again, I know that's not what's really happening within the strips' "objective reality", where Ray is even getting new ideas for commercial opportunities, but this is just incomprehensible; it bespeaks of a level of distancing oneself from what one's watching that's just too Zen-like and unattainable for a basic dude like me. Watching people fuck*ng is not watching laundry being done.

But, anyway. Zany!

Sounds like someone is beginning to question their own sexuality after reading about two cats watching gay porn for extended periods of time! They're cool with it if you are!

[wombat]

It's another Wombat is Laughably Out of It Thursday!

I am sure I would appreciate this strip and this thread title more if I had any real conception of Andy Kaufman. He's the one who's dead? A comedian?

[chuanoplast]

We can be Laughably Out of It together, Wombat. I had to look up Andy Kaufman before understanding Beef's joke.

[CortJstr]

It's another Wombat is Laughably Out of It Thursday!

I am sure I would appreciate this strip and this thread title more if I had any real conception of Andy Kaufman. He's the one who's dead? A comedian?

Yes a comedian. He was Latka on Taxi. Did the bit on SNL where he played a record of the Mighty penis theme and with great flourish would lip sync the "Here I come to save the day!" part while remaining motionless during the rest. Claimed to be the Inter-Gender Wrestling champion. Slapped Jerry "The King" Lawler when both were guests on Letterman. At various comedy shows he would just take a nap while the audience watched. Or would read The Great Gatsby out loud until everybody left.

Lots of people thought he faked his death as a joke. His character Tony Clifton would show up in public years after his death, presumably being played by friends like Zmuda.

[littlefallsmets]

Really?

Andy Kaufman is very very high on my list of personal heroes.

Not in that highest tier with John Lennon, Kurt Vonnegut, Axl Rose and Philip K Dick...

But definitely in that second tier with Mick Foley and Michael Moore and so on.

One of the funniest people in human history, to the extent that I've been able to see human history.

[wombat]

Yes a comedian. He was Latka on Taxi. Did the bit on SNL where he played a record of the Mighty penis theme and with great flourish would lip sync the "Here I come to save the day!" part while remaining motionless during the rest. Claimed to be the Inter-Gender Wrestling champion. Slapped Jerry "The King" Lawler when both were guests on Letterman. At various comedy shows he would just take a nap while the audience watched. Or would read The Great Gatsby out loud until everybody left.

One of the funniest people in human history, to the extent that I've been able to see human history.

Um. I guess you had to be there.

[Charles Nelson Mandela]

It's another Wombat is Laughably Out of It Thursday!

I am sure I would appreciate this strip and this thread title more if I had any real conception of Andy Kaufman. He's the one who's dead? A comedian?

I just got hella depressed that there are now people young enough to not know of Lord Kaufman.

I must torrent you a copy of "The Andy Kaufman Show" S01E01 (of which there was no S01E02, and probably was never meant to be). It is possibly the only funny thing that has ever aired on PBS.

[dejavroom]

Sounds like someone is beginning to question their own sexuality after reading about two cats watching gay porn for extended periods of time! They're cool with it if you are!

Does it? How cute. But really, no. It just strikes me as forceful and weird, one of those situations where you're clearly putting more into than you're getting out of it, like being present during the filming of an episode of one of those really unfunny Warner Brothers sitcoms. You and everybody else working on the set knows it is not funny, and yet they roll with it, they have kids to feed.

[CortJstr]

Um. I guess you had to be there.

When Kaufman would perform it was a crapshoot whether you would see him doing comedy or performance art. Or a combination of the two.

A famous bit was he would come out as his Foreign Man character (basically Latka from Taxi if you watched that show) and procede to do impressions. He'd do a series of them really, really poorly. He wouldn't change his voice or manerisms at all, and would usually get the persons catch-phrase wrong. Like he'd do Nixon and say, "I am ... I not a theif." Then, just when the audience was getting nice and pissed, he'd say he was going to do Elvis. And it would spot on. Like creepy accurate. Then he suddenly go back to Foreign Man and say, "dank you veddy much" and walk off.

[wombat]

I just got hella depressed that there are now people young enough to not know of Lord Kaufman.

Ha - I feel like I've just been carded in a bar... Youth is not an excuse I can plausibly use, here.

[Charles Nelson Mandela]

Does it? How cute. But really, no. It just strikes me as forceful and weird, one of those situations where you're clearly putting more into than you're getting out of it, like being present during the filming of an episode of one of those really unfunny Warner Brothers sitcoms. You and everybody else working on the set knows it is not funny, and yet they roll with it, they have kids to feed.

But are they really putting a lot of effort into watching, or just being the professional chillers that they are, with gay porn happening to be on the screen?

[Charles Nelson Mandela]

Like he'd do Nixon and say, "I am ... I not a theif." Then, just when the audience was getting nice and pissed, he'd say he was going to do Elvis. And it would spot on. Like creepy accurate. Then he suddenly go back to Foreign Man and say, "dank you veddy much" and walk off.

And he'd do the Elvis routine for quite a while too ... at least a couple of entire songs, so that the audience got completely immersed in Elvisness. It just made the final shock even more so.

[dejavroom]

But are they really putting a lot of effort into watching, or just being the professional chillers that they are, with gay porn happening to be on the screen?

I might not want to delve any further into this. Hell, I don't.

As for Kaufman: Here's his Midnight Special, Elvis and all: http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/andy_kaufman_midnight_special.htm

[hammish]

I guess it depends on how he's sing-songing those words.  I imagined it pretty mincing before, but now I've got this heavy reggae backbeat in my head.

I note that he's sing-songing all in lower-case. With a few awfully tiny music notes interspersed among the normal ones. I call that a stoned stuffed bear.

Also, invoking Andy Kauffman in an Achewood strip is... well, it's like going to Sunday school only to find that Buddha is the substitute teacher and Mary Magdalene is in the front row and they get in a hair-pulling fight at juice time. That is to say, it's more than I ever hoped for.

[AugustWest]

I hate Andy Kaufman.  I want to punch him in the pancreas.  How dare he belittle Jerry "the King" Lawler.  And he's disrespectful to the sacred memory of Elvis.

He does give a good reading of The Great Gatsby, though.