Maury Paternity Tests!

I can't get enough of those paternity tests on Maury. They're a complete trainwreck. There's always that one whore who slept with too many whorish men and there are only a few possible outcomes:

-Jamarcus, you ARE the father

-Rondell, you are NOT the father

-Cleatus, You are NOT the father. (uh oh, only one guy left. Cross your fingers!) When it comes to 2 year old Dixie May, Rondell, you are NOT the father

Then the poor piece of white trash runs backstage crying and embarrased.

Even though these paternity tests run the same format everytime, I can't look away. I think it goes along with Hobbes' theory that people are "forced to keep themselves in their own favor by observing the imperfections of..." other people. And talk about imperfections! I don't know how Maury can keep a straight face when these loser guests keep coming on his show with the same sob story over and over. I'll practice my broken-English dialect i've been working on since reading all those "negro" stories in Roy Blounts Book of Southern Slave Stories, I mean Southern Humor, to write like one of the guests would speak in giving these sob stories.

Generic Whore: " Moey, Ima dousand puhcent show dat Jumachus iz duh fada of mah baybe. I'za ben'za sleepin' wit dat may'un fo duh pas tree years. Iz aboutz a time dat he starts tuh pay me duh munny foz my baybe Roshahnda. When dat puhternity tes comes back posative, Ima showz da ho wer'uld dat hez'a dedbeet day'ud."

And why is that when the man comes out, he is automatically booed by the audience?! I was watching the show today and a man came out in a wheelchair and they booed him! And it turned out he wasn't the father!

Generic Whore: "Das ok Moey. I didntz want dat may'un to beez duh fada of my baybe n'ewayz. Howz iz he spose'd to take cay'a of Roshanda n'ewayz wen hez in da weeyal chairuh. Ima findz uh may'un, a reel may'un who can takes cay'uh of my baybee."

Maury: (Further exploiting his guests) "Generic Whore, we can always give paternity tests to other men who you think might be the father."

Generic Whore: Iza donts tink so Moey. Das gotz tuh be like tirty udda may'unz i'ds haves to getz to comes out hurr. Ima big 'ole ho. Nose, I tinks Ima jus go back to duh pra'jecks wit my baybee. We aint need no may'un n are lives.

I think this is why shows like Jerry Springer and Maury thrive. They get the stupidest people in the country to make fools of themselves in front of the whole country. And we watch it. We can't get enough of it. It is absolutely detestable, but it's a circus for grown-ups. Only we've replaced the trapeze artist with Amber who doesn't know if her child is her fiance's, or her fiance's best friend who she has been sleeping with on the side. Instead of the clowns driving their small car, we've got a clown like Mo'nique, who thinks one of these eight men could be the father of her child and all have criminal records.

And these people's lives are shattered right in front of us. And who really gets screwed the most is the baby who will either never know her father, or will grow up in a broken home, or both. But I'll keep watching this filth. "For men laugh at mischances and indecencies, wherein their lies no wit nor jest at all." The Maury show is absolute trash, but its guests' imperfections sure make me feel a lot better about myself!

Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins

Paulla Gunn Allen's Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins succeeded in Cicero's theory of humor in which "...we expect one thing and another is said; here our own disappointed expectation makes us laugh."
As a person who has seen the cliff dwelling and pueblo villages, I completely expected that the author would be taking her friend to see an ancient native american ruin. Once the two arrived at a high-rise apartment building, it was clear Allen was playing a trick on her friend.
We soon find that the relics Gunn refers to are actually her mother and grandmother, cue the laughter.
The short piece fits in with Cicero's theory, but I think Grawe's theory of human survival as well. The women, Gunn tells us, "...still live in pueblo style in high security dwellings way up there where the enemy can't reach them just like in the olden times." Here we see that Gunn's mother and grandmother are still surviving, in a metaphorical sense, just as their ancestors had.

Class Performances

I want to say congratulations to everyone who performed and thanks to my classmates who were very respectful toward everyone's performances. I think we all learned that trying to be funny isn't easy, and it takes a lot of balls to put something together and show it in front of the class. So classmates, give yourself a pat on the back for giving everyone the respect they deserved for doing something so hard.

ESPECIALLY for our boys and girls that performed in front of the class. I got to give you kids mad props for doing so. It's one thing to put together a video, press the play button, and then sit back down in your seat. It's another thing to stand up in front of everyone, our eyes beating down on you, wanting to laugh, and you guys maintained your composure and had some hilarious jokes. That took A LOT of courage. Good job guys and girls.

I'm bad with names, so the group that put together the Radish Enquirer, it was awesome. A fan of the onion, I thought your fake website was great. I LOVED the literary allusions. I havent heard anyone mention The Yellow Wallpaper since my senior year of high school. Birtha in the attic? That was fantastic. And More Mad Props go to the Cask of Amontillado reference. That is my favorite Poe piece. Fuck you Fortunato.

Whoa, Courtney. Whoa. Let's take a step back here. Next time you're in the quad, or in a class, or at humphreys, lacleeds, iggys, wherever, take a good long look at the women around you. I don't know what St. Louis University YOU'VE been attending, but trust me, it's us GUYS who have been lowering our standards. You can't expect EVERY guy at SLU to look like Bart Posnick or Ryan Trimberger or Thomas Martin. Still, there are plenty of good looking guys on campus. Women? Well, as the saying goes, if you have nothing nice to say...
But that would've been my only critique. Props for pointing out the North Face trend. I too am in that cult and hell if it aint like EVERYONE has a NF. Who wants to wear Columbia??!!!
And Stuff White People Like is a fantastic blog.

The SLU 101 video...thank god me and Donovan did not do that. You girls have no idea how similar our videos would've been. Even I had come up with a joke about peeing on the billiken. I'm glad me and Pat hadn't shot that. We were also thinking about doing a joke about the getting hit by a car rumor! People would've thought we copied each other! But being that I thought about doing that billiken joke/hit by a car, and you girls did do it, props go to you girls for having a good sense of humor.

Really, great job by everyone.

And now I shall return to watching Maury

The Waltz: A Dance or Metaphor for any uncomfortable Conversation You've ever had

Parker's The Waltz can apply to just about any uncomfortable situation one has ever experienced. The facade of enjoyment when talking to one you despise. Or telling your boss you will gladly stay extra hours in the office per his request, knowing that you'll have to tell the guys you won't be able to make it to the bar. Or just telling your girlfriend she looks great in that shirt, even though it is WAY too tight and that muffin-top is ready to blow.
The Waltz is so easy to relate to because we all have to hold our tongue at times for the sake of being respectful, even if it is the last thing we want to do. Through the incongruity between her respectufl conversation with "Mr. Jukes" and the suffering thoughts within her head, I felt like I was dancing in Park's shoes: getting kicked in the shin, dying to get off the dance floor, wanting to get as far away from my dance partner as possible to avoid further shame and physical pain.
Although many of us can relate to these uncomfortable situations, I have sympathy for Parker being a woman, with expectations upon her to simply give in to Jukes' request for a dance and with no way of getting out. Jukes, as a man could at any time have decided to end the dance, sit back down, do whatever the heck it is he wants to do. Poor Dorothy. She has to remain "lady-like" and let the jerk take her wherever he chooses.
While it may sound insecure, there are many times when guys, including me, upon taking a girl out, or dancing, wonder: Is she enjoying this? Having fun? She is smiling, but inside, does she want to get the heck out of here ASAP? Certainly, one does have a good idea if a person is being sincere with their smiles and their "thank you's". Still, with social pressure on all of us to be polite toward one another, one can never be certain if the other person is just dreading their time with you. The Waltz takes us into that dreadful position of having to remain polite, while hating every second of what is going on. We laugh at the situation because we are on the outside: Reading every thought and word of dialogue with dramatic irony knowing the true feelings and thoughts of Dorothy as Jukes is completely ignorant of her attitude.
We've all been in that situation or one similar, Therefore I, and I believe most of the class liked The Waltz because we could relate. I just might have to tell my boss to go screw off in the future. I'm hanging with the boys tonight.

Unable to Relate to Skillet and Fode

Upon reading Relating to Skillet and Fode, I had no clue as to what was going on in the story...at least what was supposed to be humorous. With nothing to write on the humorous aspect of the story, there is none, I did some background research to understand what message Percy was trying to get across.
I still have no idea what he was writing about. I checked out his page on Wikipedia, and was surprised to see that Percy, though the son of plantation-owning U.S. Senator, conversed regularly with Harlem poet Langston Hughes and others of the Harlem Renaissance. All I could really appreciate about Skillet and Fode is the kind disposition Percy had toward Skillet, a black-boy he played with in his youth, and Ford, his worker/companion during his older years. The dialogue between Ford and Percy is not necessarily what one would expect between a black man and a white man during the early 20th century. Though racial tensions ran high in the south during this period, and still decades later, the two carry on like good time friends. Ford, able to call Percy a "little old fat man" and Percy with a sub-par comeback of "You damn fool". That Percy could see beyone Ford's color during these times is something to admire.
Let's be honest, there is absolutely no point to any of the stories Ford tells to Percy when the two are overlooking a river. As a 22 year old in the 21st century, I find no deep meaning to any of the stories Ford tells. It appears that neither does Percy, remarking that the second story Ford tells him is "just as inconsequential" as the first. Perhaps someone of these times could find meaning: A former slave, a slave owner, a white or black man living in the south at the times.
It was only through discussing the story in class that I understood the meaning of "Martin" in the second, inconsequential story. The point being that the "negro" man kept waiting around in the scary house, peering at the cats in front of him. Getting bigger and bigger as they come, the biggest cat says something to the point of "we aint goin do nutin til Martin comes." Who is Martin? A literary reference, also used in Twain's Roughing It, to describe a person who evokes fear even in the biggest of men, or in this case cats. Although the story then made sense, once understanding the meaning of Martin, it still didn't seem to have any meaning to the overall story.
If I had to struggle to find humor within this story, which I will do, I will say that when the black workers jestered that Percy's car is actually theirs, because it is THEIR work that payed for his car, and that Percy is initially unaware of their observation, the dramatic irony does work somewhat to produce a smile, but not much more.
The third story, of a black man who puts off work he promised to a white man, only to be told by a cooter that he "talks too much" isn't so much funny as it is a prophecy. Should the black man have said nothing about the cooter, he wouldn't have receive the whooping from the white man once the cooter did not speak in the white man's presence. Hence, the black man should have said nothing, but couldnt, because, as the cooter says, "nigger, I tole you you talks too much."
Should I have been alive during the early 1900s, or have been familiar with "negro stories", perhaps I could have found something to relate to within this entirely irrelvant story. But with no lense within which to view this story, Skillet and Fode failed to make an impression on me.

Sykes, Pryor

One of the more interesting portions of the comedian presentations were their backgrounds. I had already known, from an interview she had on The Tonight Show, that Sykes had previously worked for the N.S.A.. It's surprising to hear that a woman as funny as her, had previously worked for a government agency. Employees who aren't immediately thought of as funny or humorous, but connotatively thought of as dull, boring, and work-orientated. That she used to work for the government and has become a successful comedian just goes to show that anyone, no matter what their profession can possess a great sense of humor and story-telling ability.
Sykes' routine on how woman think too much is a common joke in comedy. However, she made her routine unique by acting as the "average" woman who thinks 100 words per second only to find herself thinking about why she "thinks so much". Though our presenter, Alex, told us that Sykes' rarely uses racial humor in her routine, Sykes was also unique in that when she did use racism in her routine, she personified it through a racist dolphin. The joke here was enhanced with the idea of a racist dolphin, as opposed to a racist human, making it hilarious that a dolphin would shun a hug from Sykes.
Although I had known that Sykes had previously worked for the N.S.A., I had no idea that Richard Pryor's father was his mother's pimp, and that he had grown up in his grandmother's brothel. It's one thing to go into comedy after working for the government, but to become one of the most successful comedians of the 20th century with that kind of childhood is incredible. I'm sure that when Pryor was expelled from school at 14, no one excepted much from him.
Though I knew Pryor was a successful comedian, I had only seen him in movies never having watched his stand-up. He succeeds, as our presenter was saying, at making fun of himself. The best way to make -light out of a bad situation is to laugh about it. When Pryor lights a match and asks the audience" do you know what this is? It's Richard Pryor running down the street!" he is changing that audience's attitude toward the incident to make them think it wasn't so bad.

Acceptance in Comedy

Ellen Cleghorn had a funny bit in her comedy routine about her dating a black man who is very dark, much darker than her. Cleghorn's grandmother told her that she had worked real hard to get Cleghorn as light-skinned as she is, and now Cleghorn was going to screw it all up by being with a dark-skinned black man. It was a funny bit as it talked about a common theme in comedy these days, race relations. Of course Cleghorn doesn't sound like a jerk or racist in her comedy because as a black woman she is able to make that joke about darker-skinned vs. lighter-skinned black people. The boundaries placed on what is acceptable for someone to say in their routine is largely based on the comedien's sex, race, age, background. I laughed hard at Cleghorn's joke, but had a white man or woman said the same joke, I would've found my self cringing.
Christine Rhea is able to diss her audience without coming off as disrespectful. She begins her routine by saying something to a male audience member, but she shows off those pearly whites with a big smile after doing so. See, she isn't so mean! She's able to tell off the audience member, but not come off as disrespectful. At the same time, a comedien's personality will let the audience know if they should expect to be disrespected. No one is going to a Don Rickles performance expecting to get a warm compliment. The persona Rickles has created allows him to get away with some rather nasty comments.