Skits Aren’t Funny and Other Comedy Tips for Old Wall Street

January 21st 2012

Dear People Who Obsessed Over Getting Good Grades Your Whole Lives And Following Orders:

Congratulations, you have won.  You are the fire-ers and not the fire-ees.  You are the last remnants of Wall Street 1.0, celebrating and "lampooning" each other just as a three-mile-high wall of water gathers the momentum necessary to pour over the remnants of your ruined walls.  It is nice to hear that you're all in such good spirits for the Last Hurrah.

We'll try to remember you in this way - jovial and brimming with bonhomie - once the entirety of your existence is washed away in the floodtide of progress.

I read about the doings of your Kappa Beta Phi "night of comedy" at the St Regis with great interest this morning.  In A Raucous Hazing at a Wall St. Fraternity, we learn that while some of your number have gone into hermetic seclusion either because they've bankrupted a firm or are awaiting sentencing, the party continues for the self-styled Masters of the Universe unabated.  The article's author, Kevin Roose of the New York Times, is a modern-day Pliny the Younger - he has done nothing less than capture the city of Pompeii in all its hedonic wickedness just moments before the 79 AD eruption of Mt Vesuvius.  And the rest is, shall we say, history and a gift shop.

But I address you today not to merely rehash the obvious reality that your world is ending (ended?) and that the future belongs to the smart and honest as opposed to the connected and protected.  No, this missive is meant to help you with your comedic blind spot in case Destiny should permit another year or two of your self-congratulatory yukfests to take place.

And so without further preamble, my constructive criticism below:

1.  Skits aren't funny.  I don't mean some skits aren't funny - I mean no skits are ever funny to anyone who is in the audience of any event.  I know while you're writing and rehearsing them you feel daring and clever.  But you aren't.

2.  "Lampooning" is for Harvard D-Bags who haven't yet taken over dad's company.  Grown men playing women with mops on their heads for wigs are never funny, ever.  Nor are amateur impersonations of one's own friends.

3.  Song Parodies are perhaps the single most horrific form of comedy ever devised by man.  Each time one is attempted in my presence, I pray that god reaches down from the heavens and twists one of Weird Al Yankovic's nipples as a form of compensation for us, the victims.  Changing the words to a song and then performing that song in public should be done only very sparingly and by trained professionals.  To really hammer home this point, I'd ask you to pay particularly close attention to this passage from the account of your event:

The bulk of the entertainment came in the form of musical spoofs. Inductees sang Wall Street-themed versions of “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” (replacing “cowboys” with “traders”) and Abba’s “Dancing Queen” (which was retitled “Bailout King”). Mr. Lasry, along with two other inductees, dressed as a member of the Village People for a financial rendition of “Y.M.C.A.”

You know that cringing feeling you get when a white sitcom dad starts rapping (or worse - beatboxing) on TV?  And it's like "jesus if someone doesn't change the channel in the next five seconds I'll have to bite off my own tongue so I can choke myself to death with it."  That's the feeling the rest of us get from privileged bailout-recipients singing "Bailout King" performed to the tune of ABBA.

4.  You know what else is SUPER-not funny?  Mocking poor people, you sick fucks.  It also doesn't read well in print, for example: "In another skit, William Mulrow , a senior managing director at the Blackstone Group, put on raggedy clothes to play the part of an Occupy protester."  Feel good about yourself?  How about retards - can we get them too?  And hungry children, they have it coming right?

5.  In fact, I am now thinking that perhaps there really should be no joke-writing whatsoever among your lot.  Exhibit A: "Two initiates did a comedy act lampooning Mr. Corzine and Steven A. Cohen...'What do Steve Cohen and Jon Corzine have in common?” the joke went. “They’re future cellmates!'"  I'm trying to decide who's more lame, the teller of that or the person who hears it and laughs.  Finding that amusing is a consequence of being cut off from the internet and regular human beings for ten years, I suppose.

I'll conclude here with a conciliatory remark that I hope smooths over the acerbity of my critique: It's not your fault.

Wealthy people just tend not to be funny at all - a fact that afflicts even those who were once the very funniest people in the world.  Take Jerry Seinfeld if you will, or Jay Leno.  Once they begin buying buildings just for their sports cars to live in, maintaining the edge necessary to do comedy gets somewhat lost in the shuffle.  When was the last time you laughed at Jim Carrey?  I bet it was before he began earning $20 million per movie.

So do not judge yourselves too harshly and, certainly, do not feel bad.  Because you have already won.  And as the first drops from the aforementioned towering wave begin to rain down on Old Wall Street's dominion, far be it from us to deny you a final smattering of levity avant le déluge.

Your friend and erstwhile colleague,

Josh

 

 

 

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