Time for a new cliché, Tom?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 22nd, 2008

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.)