Time for a new cliché, Tom?
In an article in the Dallas Morning News, Tom Maurstad, “Media Critic” opens thusly:
There are comedians who joke about airplane food and a guy walking into a bar. And then there are comedians who joke about current events and the everyday absurdities that are…
Snip.
Considering that airlines have all but ceased serving food on airplanes (and have done so now for years), is it not time for the “media critics” and others in the MSM to find a new cliché to use as shorthand when identifying hackneyed comedic premises supposedly used by standup comics?
Maurstad manages to use a cliché from standup’s Cretaceous Period (airplane food) and the Triassic Period (a guy walks into a bar). Perhaps if the DMN’s media critic were to go to a comedy club once in a decade, his copy wouldn’t be encrusted with such linguistic fossils.
(P.S.: We figured since the article’s about Dennis Miller, the obscure references to the Mesozoic Era were highly appropriate.)
3 Responses
Reply to: Time for a new cliché, Tom?
Imagine if every article you read about music complained about Dylan going electric…
I was just thinking about this after watching Tropic Thunder.Our showbiz cliches (stand-up comedy and otherwise) haven’t changed for something like fifty years. The only new stand-up cliche people outside of comedy touch on is still itself from 1989 – the “white people and black people are different” cliche.
From my recent travels, I would like to offer up some current replacements for “airline food is awful,” as the Prime Hack Example.For your consideration:“Beat your kids/time outs/knockouts.”“The herpes ads makes you want herpes!”“If those are the side effects, then what the fuck!?”“I open the door…Chris Hansen!”with apologies to Bill Burr, Doug Benson, and all the guys who had good ones before it became a hack epidemic.