Kings of Comedy

Comedy. One of my favorite things in the entire universe (and that's saying plenty because I am absolutely in love with the Andromeda galaxy). I love good comedy and am obviously bad at it (as proven by my Andromeda galaxy quip), but I can still fully appreciate something that is covered in deliciously crafted humor. However, lately I've noticed a growing trend of collections of "comedians" banding together to form funny man groups. Excuse me, not just groups, but comedy royalty.


This strange phenomenon all started with the "Original Kings of Comedy", which consisted of Bernie Mac, Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer and D.L. Hughley. Now, when these guys first hit the scene as a band of stand up comedian brothers, I became confused because I didn't remember electing anything comedy related in the last election. Then I looked at their title again. Kings of Comedy. Not the presidents or ambassadors of comedy, but the kings. Then I wondered, "Whoa...did Richard Pryor die and split his kingdom up amongst these four? And if so, why the hell is it not on the news?" After hours of extensive research* I found that not only was Richard Pryor still alive, but these four goons were not bequeathed this title by anyone but themselves. Naming yourself a king of anything is just foolish and will meet you with much dissent and anger, much like when I declared myself king of my neighbor's backyard and ruled with an iron fist and tree branch scepter while basking in royal glory from my lawn chair throne. I begged them to at least let me keep the tree branch, but they just gave me an annoyed look and threw me out. But back to subject at hand, it's bad enough when people give themselves nicknames and then become hopelessly confused when you try to explain to them that it doesn't work that way. But, to bestow upon yourself a title of such authority without clear reason? That's just asking to be hated.


After gathering my thoughts and wondering if it was an opportune time to insist that my friends begin to refer to me as "Asskick Musclethorpe: Supreme Lord of Comedy and All Things Awesome, Sexy and Totally Cool", I began to wonder if maybe I was just jealous and that these men actually had a divine mandate to rule over the kingdom of funny. At that point, I was fairly familiar with the acts of Steve Harvey and D.L. Hughely, knew that Bernie Mac was somewhat unintelligible and difficult to comprehend and Cedric the Entertainer enjoyed...um, entertaining...and...uh...fedoras. What I did know about the self-proclaimed kings wasn't very impressive to me, as it seemed like your typical, bland racial commentary through observational style jokes. Basically, it seemed to be just a few varieties of your regular "Do you notice when black people ________? When white people do ___________, it's more like ____________! Ha! White people crazy!" Not that there's something inherently wrong with observational humor, but when it's been done by a million other comics, I don't think it should be glorified and given a loftier title. Oh wait, D.L. Hughley also does "make fun of people in the crowd" jokes. Oh, D.L.! Where do you come up with this magic? From your royally appointed wizards, perhaps? Every time I've seen him do his act, inevitably he would point out some ridiculously dressed old man in the audience and call him a "broke down pimp", then move on to a woman wearing some kind of animal print and proceed to ask the audience, "Is it the Lion King up in here? ha HA!" Occassionally, and if you're lucky, he'll find someone who is overweight and wearing red and call them the Kool-Aid man. But that deserves credit** because let's be honest, the Kool-Aid man is just....so....Ohhhh Yeaaaahhhhh.


Anyway, I'm sure up to this point I seem like an idiot that's about five years too late on a rant. But, as I mentioned earlier, this act of forming royal families of comedians seems to be a growing trend that I'd like to see replaced by a growing trend of supermodels trying to molest me. Well, it's not technically molesting when you're willing, right? Whatever. The fact of the matter is, someone needs to stop collections of culturally and/or racially homogenous, mediocre comedians from forming with the ostensible purpose of creating multi-headed comedy crapfests.


It should be noted that I realize the Blue Collar Comedy Tour does not have the word "Kings" in their title, but I'm sure that if it didn't go completely against the "we're just good ol' blue collar, poor, country boy rednecks " act, they'd be called the "Kings of Boring Hick Jokes". Also, the "Latin Kings of Comedy" should rename themselves the "Isn't It Funny How In Mexican Families, _________ Happens? Kings".


You know what? I'll be honest, my complaint isn't so much about the fact that all of these talentless, self-promoting pseudocomedians are taking the world of comedy by storm and not helping matters, because there's already an inundation of crappy comedians being spawned by Comedy Central's stand up shows and Last Comic Standing. No, that's not my main gripe with this fad. It's the fact that I want to create my own group, but can't. I sent out notices regarding my desire to form the "Filipino Kings of Comedy" only to find out that there's only one funny Filipino in the world. His name is Mark, he lives in South Carolina and the people who know him aren't sure, but think he's either Puerto Rican, Middle Eastern or Chinese. I also overlooked the fact that I, myself, am not funny, making this endeavor rather daunting. I figure that maybe I can just find a bunch of guys with at least slightly tan skin and see if they can pass as Filipino. That or we can just hold out hope that the audiences we play for don't have any clue what a Filipino is, but are drawn in by the word "King" and "Comedy". Either that, or I can keep the title but form a group of racially diverse people just to confuse and anger everyone.


Wait...wait...yeah, those were terrible ideas.


Anyway, that's really all I have to say about that*** so I'll end it here.




Love,

Asskick Musclethorpe: Supreme Lord of Comedy and All Things Awesome, Sexy and Totally Cool



*by that, I meant 2 minutes on google.com
**no it does not
***I ran out of stupid arbitrary jokes