Now We Know

ONE OF THE THINGS I love about the internet -- and those things are dwindling -- is the ability to discover crap. Great crap. Crap you totally haven't seen.

So it was that I got sent that link to British comedians Mitchell and Webb's Notes sketch. If you haven't seen it, you can try Alex or Kung Fu Monkey. 'Tis verra funny.

I've never heard of these guys - but thanks to YouTube, you don't have to work very hard to find more. So I'll link to this one of theirs instead:






Interesting thing -- just goes to show you the other side of comedy that we sometimes forget about. Oh yeah, we're all about stoking the surprise...but sometimes we forget the kind of comedy that's a little older -- where the laughter and satisfaction comes not from seeing something that totally surprises you -- but by seeing something build to exactly the place you thought it was going to go, and the satisfaction you get from seeing it get there. Commedia Dell'Arte - where all the characters were stock and recognizable, was like that. You kind of got a hint of it in the Marx Brothers or the Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. And now, there are bits like this one from Mitchell and Webb:




It goes on to part two, but that build to the punchline....I mean, that punchline is not a surprise...but it's still funny.

In this day and age where lots of people look at something like Family Guy, with its weird, impossible to predict randomness, it's interesting to remember that anticipation can sometimes be as potent a comic weapon as surprise.

And for my fellow North Americans who'd never heard of these guys til they got that notes session clip in their inbox, this may strike you as ... odd. Yessir, it's localized Apple content!



Neat, eh?

Ah, Internet. You have pleased me.