The Last Funny guy!
Sure, we had lots of 'em back in '07, but not so much now!
Or:
The Day The Funny Died!
Remember when it was OK to laugh?
Or:
Maybe George Orwell Was Right!
He missed by 38 years!
(Set in 2022)
It all started when they let lesser skilled comics perform on cable TV in the late eighties and nineties. Then a couple of one joke wonders like Dice Clay, Carrot-Top, and Michael Richards of recent racist fame made it semi-big. Idiots like these two poisoned the well and prevented a lot of capable attitude acts from getting their shots. (And some joke acts as well!) Then everything just went downhill from there.
Only seven years into the new millennium, some stupid standup act primed the pump to censor us all as he insanely suggested that his free speech was being encroached...if he couldn't make bomb jokes at the airport. Well, we all remember he spent five years in Camp X-Ray at Guantanemo Bay, Cuba. (And he never did get that Tonight Show spot.) Next, some online columnist in Zapatas Rojo wrote an article about being Dick Cheney, and he disappeared, never to be heard from again! Rosie O'Donnell had the balls (figuratively speaking of course!) to resist this fascist trend, before NYC Child Welfare stepped in. To this day, I still believe that if Angelina Jolie and Madonna hadn't done those nude protests in Times Square, Rosie would've lost most of her adopted kids!
Then, as those of us old enough to recall, in 2008, some damn fool made one too many jokes about the President. I heard it was Leno, but I've always remembered it was on the Letterman show, that started quips about our Commander-in Chief being outlawed. (All Dave did was replay clips of Bush's recent stumble-bum speeches!) They used to say nobody could keep comics, as a bunch, in line, but when Homeland Security arrested Ellen Degeneres, the word went out. Six years later, when the brutal truth about what happened to road comics who were captured and detained by TSA hit the tabloids, it made most of our surviving practitioners sad and very wary.
On that infamous day, April 1st, 2009, events snowballed when the mass arrest sweeps in Manhattan, Hollywood, and The Catskills were completed. Notables like Gallagher, The Reverend George Wallace, Paula Poundstone, and Carlos Mencia found themselves banished from The USA! Now, these acts were reduced to working third-rate cruise ships sailing the Black Sea! (Ironically, that was Yakov Smirnov's starting point.) Martin Short, Steve Martin, Martin Lawrence and Shorty Martin were executed because of an alphabetical mistake, and then that insanity was hidden! Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and then they cover up!
Amidst this surging perfidy, some well-known names were left unmolested. Bill Engvall and Jeff Foxworthy turned Benedict Arnold and joined the other side. Dennis Miller was ignored because reigning authorities classed him as not being funny anymore! Bill Maher bought Catalina Island near L.A., had himself elected Governor, then declared new statehood! That jurisdictional mess is still in the courts, and his bastard children may face incarceration or untold riches, depending on which way Chief Justice Nancy Grace rules.
With a twist that would make your upper left chest cavity hurt, it fell to standup's unlikeliest member to vainly fight back! Pauly Shore (aka: The Weasel) used his mommy's millions to buy a Senate hearing, that not even CSPAN would show. Some background data helps here: Weasel Pauly is the son of Mitzi and Sammy Shore. Sammy was Elvis's legendary opening act. Mitzi made The Comedy Store on Sunset World Famous. Together they made Pauly, so there's still some bitterness on all sides today. I'll never forget Sen. Brownback asking that haunting question: "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of The Comedy Party?" which was quickly followed by America's first televised caning of a Beverly Hills rich kid. But, at least the kid tried.
Oh, there was resistance to the ban on ridicule at first. The bald guy, the last honest booking agent that ran the old Comedy Caravan tour, was marooned on the mountaintop at Masada. Some renegade comics in hiding ambushed Texas booker, C.W. Kendall, tore him to pieces and then ate him! (C.W. invented the ten-hour drive between one-nighter gigs!) Brad Greenberg from the Comedy Zone named names and supplied locations and phone numbers for The GOP! He was found with 18% commission stuffed down his throat! (This double-dipping lowlife once deducted $795 in airfare owed him by a recently dead headliner from the opening act's pay.) Oh sure, some mutants in Chi-town and Beantown still gather small crowds in the wrecks of old comedy clubs, but, by and large, since laughing at our government screw-ups became illegal, most savvy standup comics just melded into the landscape like they were Iraqi insurgents. Things in the Homeland don't seem so funny now.
Now, in 2022, since the clone wars have gone to another truce, urban legends are being passed about the last of the funny guys. In Kentucky, freedom fighters for laughs are heard in Bloomington, Oxford, Lexington, and Owensboro again. In L.A., fables of red shoes hanging from light poles advertise underground meetings full of sarcastic jokes about our silly government. In NYC, stories about punchlines being told through bullhorns in the skyscraper canyons (to avoid police hassles) are flowing through the masses. The people seem to want to laugh again! And, there's this one lone wolf.......
Internet sources have been babbling about The Last Funny Guy ever since the Vice President took over. Fom Georgia to West L.A. sightings are being reported. Until China censored him, you could hear him worldwide on NetRadioLive.com This Last Funny Guy promises to stop the losers on Last Comic Standing from being put to death! He is said to have re-established the Aspen Comedy Festival last year. And despite the injury of several jugglers and impressionists (from crowd rioting) then, he says he'll stage the Festival again next year! He vows never to allow the impostor known as Gallagher Two to touch another prop. Why he will do these things remains a mystery.
A reasonable person might surmise that since 2007, the world needs a prescription to relax. Are we
taking ourselves to seriously? I think maybe, we are. Does the world...this world ...that world...does
any world realize how ridiculous life can be, and that mankind needs to laugh at fools? This last vestige of mirth, this singular monologist, this hero of sarcasm wanders our country trying to revive the will of our people to laugh at their predicament. Look for him.
So, we still have hope! Risk it, and listen for The Last Funny Guy! He's looking for you!
