This is by Mike O'Brien, who doesn't seem to have published in The New Yorker before. Excerpt:
Identify the least cool secretary in your joke workplace and ask her to have lunch with you every day. Make a genuine attempt to get her into hip-hop. Pick a terrible local rapper and take her to every one of his shows. If you can trick a loser secretary into loving hip-hop while convincing a crappy rapper that he’s actually got fans, that’s a two-for-one alt-comedy joke. Andy Kaufman would be jealous!I looked up Mike O'Brien. Here's a Mike O'Brien Wikipedia page. He's been an SNL writer, and "In 2011, O'Brien introduced 7 Minutes in Heaven with Mike O'Brien, a comedy routine in which he interviews celebrities in a closet and closes by trying to kiss the celebrity." Mike O'Brien is a pretty generic name. I have no idea if these 2 Mikes are the same. I'm thinking no, because I found the SNL/7 Minutes Mike's Twitter page and there's no tweeting of The New Yorker piece. Nothing but retweets since 5 days ago, when he had...
Marry the secretary—the ultimate goof. But, to make sure that she doesn’t suspect anything, really fall in love and give her your whole heart. Make up nicknames for each other. Have silly traditions. The whole deal. Trust me, if you can manage the little mental trick whereby you actually love her so much that you’ll do anything for her, she’ll be none the wiser.
To heighten the joke, have kids. Raise them as if they aren’t a gag. Love them and tell them that they can accomplish anything, all the while kind of winking to yourself, thinking, I can’t believe they’re buying this crap....
All Things Considered has passed on interviewing me about my comedy album. Sucks that they gotta change their name. @npratc #somethings
— Mike O'Brien (@MikeOBrienXOXO) November 25, 2015... which amuses enough to think he is the same Mike.
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12 comments:
That's just about enough to make me resubscribe to The New Yorker. Original and funny.
So I went to a Trump Rally, just to be able to say it was something I did: you know, wink-wink Ha Ha.
I won't bore you with Trump jokes, mostly because all the good ones have been taken already. But his hair. Anyway.
I spent most of my time just wearing my early-eighties Aerosmith shirt -- from that period where no one liked them anymore before everyone did again -- and looking at the crowd.
The crowd, let's face it, was what you would expect: old and white. I'd make a Old Folks Bingo Game reference, but that would be Old School.
One old white guy caught my eye in particular: he was wearing a red-white-and-blue shirt with a trucker cap hat that said "Make America Great Again."
First of all: trucker caps are only supposed to be worn ironically, preferably with the name of a cool small tavern in some town you never went to because you bought the cap at a Vintage store.
And I think America is already great. You know,local Breweries and iPhones. But I like the Chinese, too, because they are the ones that actually put those damned iPhones together. I would hate that job, but they must be OK with it.
So I am looking at this old white guy, and I realize he is old enough and white enough to be my Grandfather. If my Grandfather hadn't died in Vietnam. Where we were making America Great Again. I guess. Too bad he couldn't have died in World War Two, because that at least was a cool war.
Speaking of World War Two: did I tell you at the Trump Rally I was surrounded by a sea of white people looking adoringly at their leader? I don't want to make a Nazi reference, but I think I just did.
So after the rally I got a ride with Uber and met up with some friends at a local indie brewery. What do you know, one of my friends had a new trucker cap with the name of a cool small tavern in some town he never went to. This town was in Vermont, and Vermont is cool.
Anyway, they couldn't believe I went to the Trump Rally, except I did and they did believe it, they just 'didn't believe it' in that way of letting me know I had edgy indie cred.
They asked what it was like, so I pretty much told them the above. Without the snark on trucker caps, of course: I wouldn't want to hurt my friend's feelings.
I am Laslo.
Mike is one of the few bright spots on SNL. He was a cast member for a few years but I think they relegated him back to writer. Kate McKinnon basically saves that show right now.
De gustibus etc.
Based on your excerpt, the whole thing sounds like the over-milking of a single slightly-amusing idea.
I'd take Laslo over Mike O'Brian 8 days a week, and twice on Thursdays.
(By take him I mean I would prefer reading what he writes. I wasn't admitting to having any perverse sexual desires.)
They considered Mike's album and found it wanting.
I had posted a comment on the alt-com 'New Yorker' article's having a snark Trump comment before my 7:05 comment, but it never showed up.
It put my later comment in a bit of context.
I am Laslo.
Mid-Life Lawyer said...
That's just about enough to make me resubscribe to The New Yorker. Original and funny.
Maybe not. This is a ripoff of an Onion article from about ten years ago about a hipster (before the name?) irritated that people don't recognize that he's wearing a suit ironically. The article gets more and more absurd, and he ends up ridiculing and demeaning his corporate career, and his wife and children, as being square and lame, and pretty much his entire life an ironic joke.
Alt-Comedy:
Think of something funny.
Make it purposefully unfunny.
Now make the unfunny version funny again, but different.
And not TOO funny.
Riff.
Purposefully negate the Riff by now abandoning it.
Riff on abandoning the Previous Riff.
Replace funny with clever.
Provide relief to the audience by being funny again. Maybe even sentimental: you've earned the right to go there.
You've been a great audience.
Applause.
I am Laslo.
It was a goof!
I think the State still counts as alt-comedy, and The Ten is from 2007.
I saw a variant of the NPR joke on The Onion some years back. It must have been during one of the occasional controversies that flare up regarding NPR receiving tax dollars. Paraphrasing the headline --"Budget Cuts Force NPR To Change Popular Show To 'Some Things Considered'." I've been chuckling at that one for years.
Also, Lazlo, if you're not doing anything more than blog comments with your humor, you really should be...consistent, high quality stuff from you.
I subscribed to the New Yorker for most of the 1980s and 1990s and well into the 2000s. I got more joy from canceling my subscription than I did from the last four or five years I subscribed.
Because I feel not merely dissatisfied with their product, but betrayed and offended by their smug sense of omniscience and moral superiority, I try to deny them my clicks, thank you, and I look forward to its approaching demise as I do that of its ideological companion, the New York Times.
The cartoons are no longer funny; the presentation is relentlessly, methodically biased; and the copy editing isn't even reliable anymore.
So don't waste too much time worrying about whether I've used up my "free looks" for the month of November -- I haven't. Nor will I in December, or ever.
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