Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 125: What Makes Something Funny? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 125
Episode Date: December 18, 2017Rhett & Link go down the rabbit hole about humor, from what makes things laugh out loud funny, their experience with doing a live comedic show many times over, and workshop one of Link's tour jokes on... this week's Ear Biscuits. Listen to Ear Biscuits at:Â Apple Podcasts: http://applepodcasts.com/earbiscuits Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2oIaAwp Art19: https://art19.com/shows/ear-biscuits SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/earbiscuits Follow This Is Mythical: Facebook: http://facebook.com/ThisIsMythical Instagram: http://instagram.com/ThisIsMythical Twitter: http://twitter.com/ThisIsMythical Other Mythical Channels: Good Mythical Morning: https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2 Good Mythical MORE: https://youtube.com/user/rhettandlink3 Rhett & Link: https://youtube.com/rhettandlink Credits: Hosted By: Rhett & Link Executive Producer: Stevie Wynne Levine Managing Producer: Cody D'Ambrosio Production Manager: Jacob Moncrief Technical Director: Meggie Malloy Editor: Kiko Suura Graphics: Matthew Dwyer Set Design/Construction: Cassie Cobb Content Manager: Becca Canote Logo Design: Carra Sykes To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This, this, this, this is Mythical.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link, you!
Today at the round table of dim lighting,
we're gonna be talking at each other and to each other.
I'm certain that we'll listen to each other at times
and respond.
We're gonna go down the rabbit hole.
We have no clue.
And you said today instead of this week.
I mean I'm already listening to that.
Right now.
I like it when you say this week
at the round table of dim lighting.
This week at the round table of dim lighting.
There you go.
Rhett and Link are gonna talk at each other.
And I just spoke about us in the third person.
I don't care what you say after you say it.
As long as you say this week at the round table
of dim lighting, everything is good for me.
We have no clue, Mythical Beast,
where this is gonna go because we're gonna release
the rabbit, it's gonna go down a hole,
and the way we release the rabbit is we open
this sealed envelope, it's actually got a piece
of Scotch tape but we're gonna open that up and there's something
that is a topic that one of you submitted.
What makes it scotch tape?
And we're, that's a brand name.
I know but what makes them, did they?
And then we're gonna go.
Is it scotch?
Down that hole after the rabbit for as long as it takes
to talk about what we need to talk about.
Originally is what I'm saying.
Don't know.
Is it from, because if something is Scottish,
that's from the country of Scotland.
Something is Scotch, it's a drink.
Well, if you're Scotch Irish.
If you're Scotch Irish, which I am,
then you're of those places, you're of the British Isles.
So did my people invent clear tape?
I'd love to think so.
Like your line?
No.
I don't think you got it in you, Rhett, I'm sorry.
Not specifically, just my people as a people.
Technically they're your people too
because you did the 23andMe thing
and you're also from the British Isles.
I mean, we're probably cousins.
Distant, distant.
So we're gonna do that.
But before we do that, we're gonna just quickly
let you guys know about this,
the impending travel extravaganza.
At an interesting time.
For the past two weeks, we have been basically
what I would say on, and by on I mean working,
you know, professionally participating
in our professional participating profession
every single day for, we're probably going on three weeks
now, but from either.
Yeah, no day that's not something happening professionally.
On any given day, it's making Good Mythical Morning,
being at the Tour of Mythicality or traveling to and fro
across the country and I know you're on fumes
and I'm on fumes too, man.
Yeah, I mean.
I can't even say the expression right, running on fumes.
I'm very in touch with, you know, we talked about this,
how I'm beginning to be in touch with how my brain
is just not working that great.
You know, I'm very much in need of this holiday break.
I'm super excited about just not having specific obligations
of the professional variety for a number of weeks.
So as we record this, you know,
there's a palpable expectation of.
Relaxation?
Of just letting my brain just sit for a second.
But it's not over because tomorrow. of just letting my brain just sit for a second.
But it's not over because tomorrow. Oh no, it's an expectation and we're not in it.
Yeah, certainly not.
As we record this, again,
and I'm not trying to gain any sort of points.
No, I'm not complaining, it's just an interesting time
to explore verbally.
Just to give you the reality.
So we basically shot the last episode to explore verbally. Just to give you the reality. So,
we basically shot the last episode of Good Mythical Morning for the year today.
Tomorrow, we get on a plane, we go to Orlando.
Friday we have a show in Orlando,
then we fly to Atlanta, we have two shows
in Atlanta on Saturday, then we fly to Durham,
North Carolina, we have a show on Sunday night in North Carolina.
Homecoming show to wrap up the tour of Mythicality.
But then we don't come back home.
No, no, no, no.
We then fly to New York City for Monday
where we will be on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
So as of the release of this,
if you're listening to this fresh,
tonight we'll be talking with Mr. Fallon once again.
Then we wake up the next morning, get on a plane again,
go across the country back to Los Angeles.
Because the plan was when we did the Durham show.
To stay.
To stay there because our family would come with us
and then we found out that they have to be in school
until the following Friday.
So that plan got busted, we have to fly back.
We stay home. Wait a few days
and then fly all back with them.
And then we fly all the way back
with the fam to North Carolina.
So I'm disappointed that our family can't be
at our homecoming show.
I mean they've seen the show multiple times
but to be there with family,
we're doing a pig picking with family before the show.
But the pig will have been fully picked
by the time we eat it.
Yeah.
They're not bringing a full hog head on hog.
Of course we could probably request that.
We could, it's not too late for us.
But by the time you're listening to it, it's done.
So you can't help us out there.
But yeah, I mean, it's the downward spiral
into the holidays.
But when you go-
It's funny how the year just unravels at the end.
But in years past, you've gone home,
like neither of us has a relaxing time,
but I do generally stay in the same place.
We stay with my sister-in-law
the whole time that we're there.
So I'm not, I'm going a lot of places,
but every night I'm back in the same place.
You're typically in multiple places
but isn't that changing this year?
I'm typically over the course of almost two weeks
in seven different places.
Yeah that's not. Like quite literally.
That's not relaxing.
I've become an itinerant person.
And you wanna give your best to your family but.
And that's tough, it is tough.
Especially at the end of the year,
you're just like, I got nothing.
They're like, man, they went out there to Los Angeles
and became zombies.
Yeah, I think it will, you know,
I'm hoping I'm gonna have a refreshed attitude
towards seeing everybody.
Towards people?
Yeah, towards people in general.
You get together with family
and there's this dynamic, especially now
when we only see them in person,
sometimes some of the family members once a year
and this is it, you know, but the thing about
those family members is that they're not used
to you living in their space.
So it's difficult for them too.
I mean, so it's difficult for them too. I mean, so it's difficult for everybody
because we should just get a hotel
and then we can have a visit experience
instead of like we're setting up shop
with three kids in your house.
But the thing is is that both parties feel.
It's a lot of adjustment.
Both parties feel an obligation to stay in the home
because as a visitor, you're like, well,
I feel like I should want to be here with you.
And then you're like, I feel like I should want you
to be here with us.
Sure.
But technically,
But practically, in practice.
If you were in a hotel, both parties would be happier.
But this is just the way humans work.
Right.
We have to do things that make us unhappy
because we're trying to make each other happy.
I'm staying in less places.
So ironic.
Because my sister-in-law and my brother-in-law
have a new place that it's bigger
and can accommodate our family.
So we're gonna stay there longer.
But that doesn't mean we're not staying at my in-laws
and my mama's house and maybe Nana's house, I don't know.
They live pretty far.
And then my dad's house, you know,
and then he's got another place at the beach
and he's going down there and it's like,
how much am I gonna see before you go down to the beach?
You know, oh gosh, it's all this stuff.
But what if it was like an uncle,
is it Uncle Randy in Christmas Vacation?
Is that what Dennis Quaid?
Don't ask me.
Randy, no, Randy Quaid plays Uncle,
somebody looked that up.
I don't know why I'm not remembering it,
but he has, he has an RV.
What if we had RVs that just stayed.
Tight quarters in an RV, even with your fam.
Stayed in North Carolina.
You're like immediate family, that's tough. No, but then you're just like, well, I'll be out in an RV, even with your fam. Just stayed in North Carolina. You're like immediate family, that's tough.
No, but then you're just like, I'll be out in the RV.
He's always talking about how he's gonna be out in the RV.
I think I understand.
But the one thing that is different besides staying with my sister-in-law in her house now
is did I tell you that my dad called and said,
we made a decision,
did I talk about this on Good Mythical More?
I can't remember. We made a decision. Did I talk about this on Good Mythical More? I can't remember.
We made a decision this year, I just wanna let you know,
I talked to your Aunt Tisi,
we're not giving gifts to each other this year.
We made a decision.
And Cousin Eddie is what Nikki is saying.
Yes, Cousin Eddie.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the movie.
I'm familiar with the movie, I just haven't seen the movie.
You haven't seen Christmas Vacation?
Watch it with your family.
No, no, no, seriously.
That's a great thing to watch with your family.
Is there nudity?
There's usually like toplessness
in those 80s vacation movies.
I don't think so.
I think that's the first vacation.
Christie Brinkley, but I don't even think
it's actual nudity.
Maybe I blocked it out.
Well it's not shown but it's implied
and it would be very awkward.
I mean it's just anatomy.
Kids will get through it fast, they'll learn something.
But I think.
Kids will get through it fast and they'll learn something.
Christmas Vacation, I mean they sucked on the things
when they came out of the womb.
I mean what's the problem with seeing some in a pool?
I don't understand.
But anyway.
Do you want me to answer that?
But Christmas Vacation is great.
You watch it with your family.
I watched it with my family.
I don't remember anything inappropriate.
Well, I'm ashamed to say I've been so busy
we haven't even watched the greatest movie of all time
for any time of year and any time of earth in the history of movies, Elf.
It's the greatest. The best movie.
It's the greatest Christmas movie.
It's my favorite movie of all time.
It wasn't until you started like brr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr It's my number one. You said that before, man. It's my number one. It's never been my number one until right now. It's a great movie.
It's the best Christmas movie. I'm tired of it.
I'm tired of you dogging it.
It's not the best movie.
I love the movie, but to say it's the best movie
of all time.
It is a perfect movie.
Just means you haven't seen enough movies.
But you're gonna watch that.
You should also, do it.
So we're not buying Christmas gifts for each other.
Double feature.
But we are still gonna get them for the kids.
It's my dad talking.
Oh, well that's nice.
And I, and you know, cause there's like.
You shouldn't care about that.
It's like not for the adults.
And it's like, yeah, cause all,
cause my dad said, We're gonna get you anyway.
All we're gonna do is exchange money.
I'm gonna give you money, you're gonna give me money.
Yeah.
And I'm like, dad, you're a genius.
And I get off the phone and I tell Christy,
I'm like, we got big news.
We're not getting each other presents
at the Neal Christmas this year.
And she's like, I am so relieved.
Like, I mean, there's so many people that like,
we had no clue, what am I gonna get Kurt?
Like cousin Kurt.
Like, I don't know, like another.
You should still get your dad something.
But don't get, I mean he's your dad.
Well I'm his son, he's not getting me anything
and I think it's a beautiful thing.
I'm gonna give him love and my presence.
And he's gonna, and by presence I mean with a C.
Your physical presence.
And he's gonna give that back to me.
And that's what it's, that's better, man.
I'm not gonna, I give him a Lowe's gift card.
He gives me money.
Well the problem is I've set this precedent
with my parents.
Like last year we got them like a night
at a really nice bed and breakfast
and that's got an amazing restaurant attached to it.
And it was like a night at this restaurant,
a night at this bed and breakfast and then this restaurant
and we kind of went all out.
And it's like, but now once you do that,
you gotta keep, once you dip that deep,
you gotta dip that deep forever.
Did they go to it?
They loved it. Did they give to it? They loved it.
Did they give you details?
They called me and texted me while they were there.
Oh good.
Are you trying to make it seem,
you don't think they went?
No, it's a place that we knew that they loved
and they had been, we spent our first anniversary there.
I think that's great.
It's an incredible place.
I guess I'm a, you know, I don't love getting gifts
because I have this
psychological thing about how much did this cost?
How much, you know, I get tripped up with a lot of the gifts
and it's just not my love language.
So if everyone agrees, then it's like.
If he initiated it.
Especially when it's like now it's, you know,
we enjoy seeing the kids open presents,
but we just wanna be together and catch up.
We only see each other once, twice a year now.
So to like, to relegate that to my dad trying
on a button-up shirt that's way too big
and then saying, this shirt's way too big.
Is the receipt in here?
Because my dad does not pull any punches. Well, getting people clothes is always a mistake
unless you know specifically their size and the brand.
Yeah, so we're gonna get through this weekend and stuff.
It's gonna be great wrap up to the tour of Mythicality,
which was a tremendously positive experience
meeting so many Mythical Beasts
and seeing so many faces in person.
We would do the tour, we would do the show,
then we would have a Q&A and it's just very valuable.
It's an experience for us to feel connected.
But now that we've done that, okay.
Well, and I think it's like-
I'm gonna go holiday it.
And also it's the kind of thing that
I think I would feel differently about,
it's been great while we're in the midst of it,
but I would feel differently about it
if it was the only thing that we were doing for like,
oh, we took a month and we did this thing.
Yeah.
I think it's the mixing of so many different things
that makes it difficult to keep up with.
But let's transition to the rabbit hole.
But before that, for those of you who have not agreed
with your family members that you're not gonna give gifts
to each other, we have the perfect holiday gift.
For any person. For anyone.
Yes, you may think we're nuts and we are a little bit.
We have developed a fragrance, Mythical No. 9, comes in this handy dandy black
and sparkling cologne-y, perfume-y looking thing.
It is a scent for all people.
Yes, so this is- Men, women, children.
This is a unisex fragrance that we formulated
with our friends at Beard and Lady.
So again, with everything that we do with our friends, Lance and Lacey, over at Beard and Lady. So again, with everything that we do with our friends,
Lance and Lacey over at Beard and Lady,
we start with this concept and then we start working it out
and it took us, and then we get everybody involved here
so we basically got all these different scents.
Everybody was spritzing, spraying,
scenting and sniffing.
Basically the crew collectively.
Fighting, it was like arguments about it.
Decided that this is the fragrance that we all love.
And I'm really proud of it.
I have never worn a scent.
I didn't know where to put it.
Well, you can put it anywhere you want.
Put it everywhere.
Except your eyes or your mouth or your nose.
Does it say that on there?
You don't put it everywhere except your eyes,
your mouth and your nose.
Put it everywhere except an orifice. We should have written that on there. There it everywhere except your eyes, your mouth, and your nose. Put it everywhere except an orifice.
We should have written that on there.
There is a note from us on the back
that I'm not gonna read
because I want you to read it when you buy it.
But it's a good amount of fragrance here.
It's not so much that you can't put it
in your toiletry bag on the flight.
Now I had a guy.
But it's almost, it's the perfect amount.
I had a guy, I had a dad come up to me
at the Tour of Mythicality and he said,
I wanna let you guys know that your beard oil
and your lip balm.
Good stuff.
And your pomade, it's really good.
Like you did, and you know what?
A couple of YouTubers decide to make products like this.
Yeah.
You're like, well, what kind of,
you know they didn't have anything to do with it,
but as we've made clear many times,
we were intimately involved in the development of this stuff
and they use only the best materials for this stuff.
Feel the same exact way about this, so it's quality stuff.
Smell like us.
Yeah, this is the way we can.
When we smell the way we want to smell,
not the way we sometimes end up smelling.
We can all identify each other.
Should've put that on the packaging too.
This is the thing, if we all start wearing this
as a mythical herd, then you'll just be able
to notice people just in public.
I smell a mythical beast and you make a new friend
and that was really the reason that we decided to do this.
Plus it's magic and it'll make you smarter.
Did I say that last part out loud?
What, the magic and smarter part?
No, you didn't. Okay, good.
I didn't hear it.
All right, you ready to go down the rabbit hole?
Mythical.store, you ready to go down the rabbit hole?
Yeah, do it.
I'm gonna touch it, but you pick it up.
This is risky, guys.
So this is a fan prompt, right?
That's where we get these.
We get these from the Mythical Beasts themselves,
and then we're just gonna follow.
Do we have a backup if we think this sucks?
Okay.
Yeah, of course they know that.
They know us well enough.
Thank you.
This comes from Joshua.
Wow, Joshua, what spells his name differently
than the Joshua's that I know?
Joshua Tolley.
What makes something funny?
And why do I laugh harder at some things than others?
Wow, this is pretty interesting.
Were you involved in this conversation recently
that we were having about this very thing?
Well I know at one, I don't know,
I don't think so recently but I did some reading
on the subject about nine months ago
and I think we talked about that maybe as an episode
of GMM so which means it could have been two years ago.
It runs together.
But are you saying you were talking to someone
about what makes something,
maybe I was there, I don't remember though.
What was the nature of the conversation?
It was me and Mike talking about this,
our friend Mike, our intellectual friend Mike.
Oh yeah.
And so I don't know how we got started talking about this,
but we were talking about specifically
what makes something funny and he talked about how
he had these theories about what makes something funny,
but he had once brought them up in the presence
of Pete Holmes, comedian Pete Holmes is a friend of his,
and he was like, Pete Holmes shot everything down.
Basically he said, well, this doesn't apply
and this doesn't apply and I think the conclusion
of that conversation was that there's not one thing
that makes something funny, but.
No, but I know you can categorize the different things
that can make you laugh, like the element of surprise
or subversion or, you know, people have scientifically
analyzed and categorized these things
but it kinda removes the power of it.
I mean we can get into it.
Let's start there because I wanna tell you
what Mike told me because I had a theory, right?
And then his theory kind of dovetailed
into what I was saying.
Okay. I was actually thinking about this
in the context of the Tour of Mythicality
and how we've been in this group setting
where we've been delivering these jokes.
And you immediately know if the thing
that you thought was funny actually was.
And we've noticed this thing where different parts
of the show are funny based on where we're at
in the country, whether or not people are sitting down
or standing up.
So some venues everybody's seated and some venues
everyone's on the floor standing up
and then there's like a balcony.
List any variable and it is a viable contributor
to whether something is found funny or not.
Lighting, temperature.
Temperature is a big one.
You know.
If people are hot.
General comfort.
Too hot, too cold, whatever.
Expectations.
But one of the things, I was thinking about,
one of the things that we've kind of hung our hat on
just as a comedic device and we've done this
and you see this in so many of the things that we do,
is that we start in a place that's relatable.
Like so we bring you in and get you hooked
on something that's relatable,
and then we subvert that thing that's relatable,
and there's an element of surprise or subversion
that then kind of makes you laugh.
And you'll see that is a pattern that we follow
in a lot of the jokes that we write
and a lot of the concepts that we have in like Buddy System,
but even Good Mythical Morning.
So I was talking with Mike about this and I said that
I feel like there is something in a laugh
that is a non-lingual vocalization of me saying,
is a non-lingual vocalization of me saying,
I relate to this, and then if I hear you laughing at the same thing, you're like, I relate to this.
It kinda goes back to the whole first chapter
of the Book of Mythicality, where we connected
in our senses of humor, and it was just like,
it's a way to say that I just observed something
and I have a vocalization that I can make
that is almost bypasses the language parts of my brain,
which I'm gonna get back to with Mike's
super intellectual analysis of this in a second
because this is exactly what he said.
That lets you know that I kind of get
and understand something and relate to something
in a way that moves me to laughter
and then you can also do that.
You know, so it's the same, and this is one of the reasons
that like, you know like when you get something,
you get a joke and you kinda, you reach over
and you kinda nudge somebody.
Laughter is coming from the same part of the brain
in my estimation.
And this is just one kind of laughter.
Relational laughter, we'll call that.
But Mike, I was talking to Mike about this and he said,
well interestingly, there's been some research done
and this is also kind of his theory.
I don't know how much is his theory and how much he's read
but he was just telling me about it.
But he's a smart dude so it could be a lot from him.
But he was talking about how before humans
could actually use words,
so there was some point where we developed
the ability to speak, but before that,
we just were making vocalizations,
so you've got your caveman grunt sort of situation.
And so you kinda know like, I'm happy!
I'm hungry. You observe chimpanzees and they're gonna be
making these types of vocalizations.
Well, he said there's a situation where,
and I wish he was here to explain this,
but there's a situation in which you've got somebody
who's walking in the night and you're walking outside
and then another primate kinda comes up to you walking in the night and you're walking outside
and then another primate kinda comes up to you and you surprise each other at the same time
and instead of, there's no language,
you're not speaking language,
but you want to be able to do something
to keep yourself from getting attacked
and to say I'm friendly.
And so you surprise somebody and say.
That is a completely disarming thing
that immediately you recognize a friend and not a foe.
Now I didn't do a good job of explaining that.
But there's some, and again, that's where it kind of comes
from this relational place.
So I think that one aspect of what makes something funny
is you're basically just saying,
yes, I have that exact perspective on that thing.
I totally get this.
I remember, you remember when we used to watch Sinbad?
When he would, you remember this comedian, Sinbad?
Well, yeah.
And he would be doing his Apollo set or whatever. And I remember he would, you remember this comedian, Sinbad? Well yeah. And he would be like doing his Apollo set or whatever.
And I remember he would just tell these stories
about his grandma or his mom punishing him.
And as kids who were being disciplined by our parents,
I would watch that and I would laugh my butt off
because I was also being disciplined by my parents
in ways that were very relatable to what he was saying.
And so the way I would kind of just recognize that
is by just laughing my butt off, man.
So I think that's one aspect of it.
That it's just like a, it's a defense mechanism,
it's an evolutionary, that's the evolutionary explanation
that it comes from a defense mechanism.
Well, that's.
Kinda takes some of the joy out of it.
Well, good luck with digging into anything scientifically.
I mean, if you dig into the origins of love scientifically,
you're gonna become disenchanted pretty quickly.
But that doesn't mean that it's any less meaningful.
It just means that there's a natural explanation for it.
It is very meaningful whenever you can,
without saying a word at all,
you can express like utter agreement.
Like it's so pure because you can't,
you can fake it, but it's fake.
Like when it's not fake and you're laughing with somebody,
like you said, that's what solidified our friendship
was that we laughed at the same things.
It's that moment where, you know,
when you're really having an honest reaction of joy,
you know, it's like, it's a beautiful thing.
But what about when you're laughing at something
that is wrong?
So what is it?
Well if someone else is also laughing at it,
then it's okay, is what we're saying.
Is it schadenfreude, is that the word?
Laughing at someone else's misfortune.
So that's a different thing, right?
So that, but different thing, right?
But again, there's definitely some sort of
deeper explanation that's in our genetics. But that could be a situation where
there's some adaptive advantage to the fact that
me and you see some dude do something
and we kind of team up and laugh at him.
We're separating ourselves from somebody who screwed up.
Right?
Which seems like a horrible thing,
but ultimately the reason that you have a tendency
to do that is because there's some adaptive advantage
to sort of teaming up against somebody who is falling,
who's fallen in some way.
But specifically that whole laughing
at somebody's misfortune,
I kinda go back to the community college rant
that I did on GMM recently
that got a really interesting response to that, right?
Because the vast.
I hope people found it funny.
Oh, the vast majority of people were like,
this is so funny, I loved every minute of it,
I'm a community college student.
I got messages and tweets from a lot of people
basically just saying that I'm in community college
and I thought it was hilarious.
Now I got other people who said I'm in community college
and I busted my butt and I am offended by what you did
and I think you belittled it.
And what I was trying to say in the moment was.
You're making fun of a stereotype.
Yeah. I don't remember
what you said but I mean it's just.
And nothing that I said,
when you think about my intention,
nothing that I said actually disqualifies or undermines anything
that you've accomplished with a community college education.
Which was a point I was trying to make,
but of course I'm just trying to be funny
when I'm doing that, so I'm even undermining
my explanation in the moment just for the comedy.
But what makes that funny, right?
So, and how much has humor changed
because if I had made that joke 20 years ago,
absolutely no one would be offended.
Like no one would, but like we live in a-
No, it wasn't a joke.
I think it was joke. We live in a completely
different time.
First of all, it was like, it was a shock joke.
It was surprising that you said something derogatory about community colleges
because you don't expect that from us on the show.
And then you were probably laughing at my reaction
at the same time, which supported the fact
that I was also shocked.
And then the fact that I was trying to like smooth it over, I hope was found funny
because it built it.
And people are laughing at you.
It supported the initial reaction of shock
and then it was like, yeah, he's squirming.
So there's like discomfort.
So that's a different type of humor.
But they're relating to you at that moment.
There's a relation and then there's, or it's just different type of humor. But they're relating to you at that moment. It's a relation and then there's,
or it's just I embody the discomfort.
Yeah, so they relate or they just find that funny.
Which is the similar dynamic is,
again, this is something we go to,
we go to this well quite a bit,
where you'll be doing something that's just ridiculous.
You may be gagging on something,
you may say something that is unintentionally sexual
or completely crazy in some way,
and my response is just to kind of look at you
like you're a moron, or better yet,
look directly into the camera,
like can you believe this guy?
Which I never see that, by the way,
because more than my glasses are built.
People laugh at what you do initially
and then they laugh at me because I'm trying
to establish a connection with the audience
to be like, now I want you to relate to me
in the way that I perceive this guy.
Yeah and we have this advantage with that
because it's two different,
if you don't think what I'm doing is funny,
then if you act like you don't think it's funny,
then they think it's funny that you're acting that way.
So we got double the chances
of people finding something funny.
Even, I'm sure there's people who watch the show
who just, it goes beyond they got a favorite.
It's like, I actually don't find what Link does funny.
Or what Rhett, like Rhett kinda annoys me
because you fill in the blank.
I'm sure people feel that way.
And that's, you know, we try to take full advantage of that.
You know, it's like, it's foil.
I take, and this is what's wrong with me,
is I take joy in knowing that there are people
who are upset about my community college conversation.
I think then there were other things that became funny
because first of all, there was the surprise
of the fact that the segment derailed.
Like I was getting so much, I loved the fact that like,
it was very clear that none of this was planned
and that we sunk or swim
based on what happened and I think that that's another,
you know, I don't know if it's as much funny
as this is just a delight response in,
oh, they're off the rails.
So there's like a delight moment. And then the fact that you,
is it a different reason that it's funny
that you would backtrack and then you would,
you'd step in it again on purpose.
That became the bit.
Like finding that bit was, I think, funny
for a different reason, that it was a hapless thing.
I don't know what they call that when it's like,
it's more of a clown.
It's like if you bring that down to its essence
at that moment where you started stepping in your own poop,
it was like a clown.
It was misfortune.
And it was a throwback.
Which it's just so.
Oh you mean a runner.
Yeah but I mean I kept throwing back to it
which is a runner, yeah.
But it's so crazy because.
But none of this, I think the beauty of all of it
is that nobody needs to understand.
You can't define it.
You know, it's that nobody needs to understand.
You know, it's fun to talk about it. I'm not making a point that we shouldn't talk about this.
I am just saying that the beautiful thing is that
it's so instinctual.
I think that's where you enjoy talking about
the evolutionary origins of it is that,
you know, it feels like magic that all of a sudden
something burps out of you because you're reacting
honestly to something with delight.
Like, that's, it's just an amazing moment that like,
you don't, like the intricacies that we just,
you know, we just broke down why we thought that was funny
and it didn't make it funnier.
Well, and we're just, and also-
And that's a beautiful thing.
We're just scratching the surface
and we could be wrong, you know?
Well, I mean, but my point is,
whether we're right or wrong,
when you laugh, when you smile,
when you like, that deep belly laugh that happens
that like, if you did one of those a day,
you would live 10 years longer.
You're adding life to yourself.
You know, you're, unless you get hit by a car
or fall off a cliff or something.
Well, like, you're creating longevity
with those belly laughs and it's not something that,
you can place yourself in a position to do that
but you can't fake it.
It's just something that happens.
And that's why comedy should win Oscars.
There should be a category.
There's nothing harder than making somebody laugh.
And there is musical or comedy.
It is a category.
Yeah.
Well, hold on, what's the, no,
they don't have a best actor in a comedy,
is that what it is?
What's the, there's an Oscar thing they don't have
that recognize comedies.
Well, they don't have like funniest actor,
they don't have that, but they have best musical or comedy
and they put it together with musicals, so they.
Well, I'll put it this way then,
I think that comedies should be for best picture
and they should be legit comedies.
I do think that it's, you know,
it's difficult to do lots of things.
It's hard to scare people but I think it's even harder
to make people laugh.
Well let's, okay.
A lot of people do it though.
The way that we think about, like the energy
that goes into making somebody laugh so.
I guess I'm biased because I try to do it.
Well yeah, of course, but one of the things
that we talk about with having done the tour is like,
you know, once we get out on stage
and people are responding, we're having a great time.
But there are moments, especially on the show,
the days that we do two shows, where after the first show,
I'm like, I kinda would rather not do this next show.
You know, if it was just up to me,
I would just go to my hotel room and go to sleep.
And we've talked about how if I was just a musician,
if that was all we did and it wasn't funny songs,
it was just songs,
there's a way to kind of get lost in the music
and just kind of just connect with the music
and the people are there witnessing that.
But when you're trying to make people laugh,
it's not about your performance,
it's about your connection, right?
It's about your connection to the audience.
And it takes a certain amount of energy
that I personally believe is significantly more
than it takes to play music.
Now that doesn't mean being a musician is easy
and also we've said many times as much as people say,
you guys should write serious songs and sing serious songs,
we know our limitations as musicians
and we think that doing comedic music
is a real sweet spot for us.
But it is a different level of energy
because it's so relational.
It's so much about a connection with the recipient
of whatever you're throwing out there.
It's just a different, it requires something different.
Do you feel like it's like a singer songwriter
who wrote a song about that was like very poignant
and personal to them, maybe like let's say
the death of a loved one, getting on stage
and performing that song
and just breaking down in tears every time
in order to give that particular audience
to convey the depth of the experience of that loss
that they're singing about in the song.
Like sometimes I do feel like, you know,
we can say the joke and it'll be funny to get a laugh,
but there's other times you can say like,
well, it's weird because I'm on stage a lot,
we're both on stage a lot,
listening to the other person talk,
and I've found that the best,
one of the best things I can do
is actually find what you're saying funny.
And we haven't talked about this,
so I'm curious what you think.
There's certain points where we're on opposite sides
of the stage, sometimes there's a light up on you
and there's not one on me, so I'm in the dark.
But when I'm, and I can tell that people
are still watching my reaction.
And if I can find what you're saying funny
as if it's the first time I've heard it
and I'm not actually acting, but there's like,
that's a hard place to get back to you
when you've heard a joke 40 times.
Sometimes it happens and I do believe
it helps the audience find it funnier.
What are you doing when I'm trying to say something funny?
When I'm in the dark?
Not those moments. Well, no, at the beginning of the show when something funny? When I'm in the dark? Not those moments.
Well, no, at the beginning of the show,
when you're talking and I'm in the dark,
I'm looking at one, I'm usually looking at one place
and like this with a very slight smile on my face.
I don't wanna be a distraction.
Like a statue.
Yeah, and I wanna be,
because the original intention of that portion of the show
when we wrote it was that the other guy
would be completely in the dark.
And in some venues, we are completely in the dark.
But there's other venues where the lighting is different
and it bounces off certain things
and so you can basically just see
and there's somebody like three feet from you
and they're like, I can look down there
and I can see they're looking at me,
especially the parts where we start talking about each other.
Yeah.
Now all eyes go to me when you talk about me
and vice versa.
And at those moments, I still,
I kinda just pick my smile up a little bit.
But you don't look at me?
I do not look at you during those portions of the show.
But.
What about when the, I do.
When the lights are up and we're next to each other,
yeah, I'm just, I'm engaged with it and there's a,
you know, I saw somebody tweet.
One of the great things about,
somebody was tweeting about what happened in Minneapolis
or Chicago, I don't know what show it was,
maybe it was Chicago, when you're, the sweater,
you took the sweater off?
Yeah.
And then the sweater became a bit
and I grabbed you by the sweater
and led you like a horse.
Well let's say what happened.
Okay.
Do we need to?
No.
It seems frustrating to say,
you remember the thing with the sweater,
but then you don't tell them what happened with the sweater.
Well, I think.
Well, basically, I mean, you can make it quick.
I forgot, we start a song and we're singing along
to a track and I sing first
and I totally blanked on the song.
Like I just said.
First time the whole tour that's happened.
And it was because I stopped the song.
And then before I restarted it, I said, well,
I totally blanked on the start of the song
because I was thinking about whether I should be wearing
this sweater while singing this song.
You wore like your big Mr. Rogers sweater.
And it was Mr. Rogers singing about like an R&B song
and I just felt weird about it
to the point that I totally blanked on the lyrics
and we discussed this on stage.
But you took it off, you stopped the song and then.
I restarted the song.
And then when you restarted the song,
like I have this opening thing that I say
and I made it about your sweater
and then at the end of that song,
we have this thing where we're like facing each other
and whispering to each other on stage
and then you got the sweater
and I was pushing the sweater away with my foot
and then you were upset with,
this is all obviously just for show,
but then I picked it up and I grabbed you.
I was upset because you were making my sweater dirty.
Yeah and I put it around your neck
and like tried to make you bow
like I was leading you like a horse.
And I saw somebody tweet who was at that show
and they said, I don't know,
the great thing about this is I just don't know
what part was planned and what wasn't. Yeah. So I don't know if the great thing about this is I just don't know what part was planned and what wasn't.
Yeah.
So I don't know if the sweater is a part of every show.
Well, it's not.
And yeah.
I'll never wear the sweater again
because it made me forget the lyrics.
But if I, and I knew we could never recreate that moment
or I would do the sweater every time but.
But what you're kind of talking about is.
It's not honest enough.
There's, there are things that are,
everyone who's there knows that were written, you know, like I know
that they're telling a story that they knew about
ahead of time, but then there's the,
oh well Link just said something in the middle
of Lorette's story or vice versa
and now they're riffing on something.
Well some of those riffs are things that happened
on the third show of the tour and then we were like,
oh what did we say, that was really funny,
let's make that part of the script.
And so now there are riffs that are part of the script,
but then every night there's new riffs
that may replace existing scripted riffs
or they may just be added.
And so, you know, like heading into this final weekend,
four shows in a row.
And also like, it's the end of the tour
and it's like we're a little bit looser,
we know the material.
So the ground is very fertile for just ad-libbing
and riffing on something.
We're living for those moments.
But now, there's this, well, the first time Link said
that thing about so-and-so, I laughed at him
and then said this, so it isn't like the next time
that I say it, I'm not gonna also laugh at you.
But now my laugh has become an act.
Yeah.
But my goal is that you as the audience
are perceiving the laugh as,
well, he's responding for the first time
because if I take that laugh out
and now I'm giving you half of the reality
that happened three shows ago,
I want you to get the reality
that we created three shows ago
so you'll react the same way
the audience did.
And it may seem a little less authentic to us,
but it feels the same to the audience.
Well the fascinating thing to me is like a lot of it is,
well there's certain points where we're commenting
on the photos behind us and there's like subtle things
that like the first time you decided to ad lib
one more joke about how big your pants were in that picture,
I was looking at the audience and then I had to look back.
And then if I just stay there and keep staring
at the photo waiting for you to say the pants joke,
it doesn't help.
But if I turn back to the audience and then I'm like,
okay, if I really recreate this as an honest moment,
if I reenact it, I gotta react at the right moment.
Oh he's got one more thing, he must have just made that up.
Because people pick up on the most subtle things
and I think that's one of the things I enjoyed
about the show doing the tour the most is that
you realize the psychology of what makes something funny.
It's not just the words coming out of your mouth,
it's every single thing.
And the cool thing about it is you can fine tune it, right?
So we sing a song as part of the tour show
that we wrote 15 years ago.
And I don't wanna, for the people who,
well the tour will be over for the most part,
well yeah, I don't know when we'll do the show again.
I don't even have to say what the song is.
Well we're trying to make a version that people can watch
so I don't wanna spoil too much.
It's a song we wrote a long time ago
and it's really interesting because,
we actually talked about this in the Q&A
at one of these places because there's a difference between,
I think one of the reasons that we use a song
from 15 years ago is because we wrote that song
when we weren't making YouTube videos,
but if we were doing a funny song,
it was in front of a crowd.
And so we wrote songs that made sense in like a live setting.
But then once YouTube came along
and we started writing songs,
we were thinking just as much about the visual
that was gonna accompany that as we were the lyric.
And so now we've got a lot of songs that,
sure they may be funny to listen to,
but they're intended to be very funny
when you watch the music video.
But if we were to just break those songs out
and sing them live, you'd kind of be like,
in fact, the one song that really is like that,
in the show, we show the music video as we sing it.
Right.
Whereas the rest of the songs are songs
that pretty much exist for an audience to just enjoy.
So there's just this dynamic.
Well it's a different type of comedy.
I mean, to get a laugh on a stage in a song
is different than to get a laugh in a YouTube video
when you have the visual component.
And we started writing towards that
and I think that's why we, that's why, again,
why I enjoy the live show so much is that
it's a different way to be funny.
I mean, everything is scripted, I mean,
which is in stark contrast to Good Mythical Morning,
you know, and so it was energizing for us
from a comedy standpoint to say, okay,
how do you make somebody laugh in person?
That's not what we've been doing.
I mean there are points when we just,
we just couldn't give, we didn't wanna do
a Good Mythical Morning live.
We could certainly do that later and yeah,
you would find it funny and it would be recreating
the screen experience in real life. I mean, from a creative standpoint,
that wasn't as exciting to us
because it would have been the same thing.
Well, I mean, right now, I don't think we'd be happy
to go out for this long weekend and do it one more time
if we were gonna sit behind a desk
and do the same type of comedy.
It kinda goes back to what you just said
when you're talking about the person
who sings a heartfelt song.
So let's say there's somebody who has this very moving song
about somebody dying and they cry when they perform it.
And then you go to the concert and you see them do this
and you see them cry and you're like,
well, they can't cry every, this is a performance, right?
Seeing somebody cry, even if they're legitimately great
at it and there's tears flowing and everything
and they're able to conjure up some kind of emotion,
if you saw that every night, that's a much different
sensation than seeing somebody laugh and knowing that,
they probably laugh at this point every single day.
Like that's a much easier pill to swallow
to see somebody fake humor than fake actual sorrow, right?
We don't tolerate that as a species.
Someone who is entertaining us,
and I actually knew a guy like this
who had this way of speaking
when he was getting very serious about something
and he started to sound like he was crying.
Like he was crying?
But he wasn't crying.
Was this what he would do?
Yeah, but it was a.
I just wanna say one more thing.
Yeah, but it wasn't that fake.
It wasn't as fake as you're going,
but it was this tinge of I'm very sad right now,
but I knew that he was just saying something to me
that he had said to other people before.
And I had this really negative reaction to it.
Well, yeah. In the same way
that I don't feel. One thing to be on a stage,
it's another, when it's like, okay, this is a mode.
But you know. But do that
interpersonally is a bit odd.
There are comedians who laugh at themselves.
I mean, we do that quite often.
I just did it a little bit right there.
But when people.
You laughed at yourself.
When people.
Was that fake?
Is that what you're saying?
No, it wasn't, I mean, this is fake.
Right now?
I mean, this, yeah.
This is fake.
I can't decide if what I just did was fake.
Really?
That's how far we've come.
You're kidding me.
I had an emotional reaction,
a positive reaction to what you did
until it dawned on me it was fake.
But my knee jerk reaction was
I felt good for one little second
and then I felt really bad
because I determined it was fake.
But if you take something like a funny Broadway show,
so as far as I know, unless somebody's phone rings,
Broadway shows don't have a lot of improv.
You know what I'm saying?
That's not what you're there for.
They do the same show every single night,
99% identical unless they screw up.
Comedians feed off the crowd.
They do a different thing.
Somebody says something, somebody heckles,
they get in on that and they dig in on that.
They may change things up.
But when you've paid to see a Broadway show,
you wanna see the Broadway show that you paid to see.
Those people are doing, and let's say it's like
Book of Mormon or whatever, so it's a funny show.
Those people are doing the same thing
night in, night out,
you know, six, seven nights a week,
I don't know how many nights a month sometimes
for some of these people.
And they're trying to capture that performance.
I've thought a little bit about what that might be like,
having just done like a few shows in a row.
Mm-hmm.
And I think that those people might be able to retreat
a little bit into the performance.
And they know it so well that they may be up there
performing.
I think you can pick it out.
And they're thinking about,
oh, I've gotta pay the bills when I get home.
If you have a decent seat,
I think you will experience a difference.
Not if somebody's great.
Not if somebody's a great performer,
I don't think you pick it out.
Well, I think all you really mean is that
if they gave the performance of a lifetime,
you'll be blown away, but just their baseline,
phoning it in, if they're great, it's still gonna be great,
but it's not their greatest.
The perception of, I think ultimately
what this comes back to is the perception of authenticity
is a very important part of humor.
Well, I'm also interested, I'm certain that,
Even if it's not real.
I'm certain there are musicians that are like,
oh, it's the same for me, it's the same for us musicians.
And I'm not gonna disagree with that.
I watched enough of American Idol and The Voice Coaches
about how you gotta believe the words
in order for that to convey.
Yeah, but we've also been in a band though.
I mean, it wasn't anything like what we have now,
but there was a time for a couple of years.
When I believed it, it still A, sucked,
but B, was a better performance.
It was like, well, it sucks,
but I can tell he believes in what he's doing.
But the music is the thing that sometimes energizes you,
even if, because obviously we played
for the smallest of small crowds.
We would go to some places and there'd be seven people there.
That's tough.
It's tough, but then where do you find the energy?
You find the energy in the music.
Close your eyes, I close my eyes.
You find it in the music.
But I wouldn't just go fish-eyed and just be like.
But can you do that with comedy?
Can you go to a comedy club and have seven people
who aren't laughing at all and get up there?
No, it's gonna be awkward and the air is gonna be taken
out of your performance.
I mean the way that you can get lost in the music,
you can't do that with comedy.
I mean I'm thinking about Born Standing Up,
the Steve Martin book, autobiography, it's autobiography.
Yeah.
That I mean you mentioned in a Q&A a couple weeks back.
Yeah, one of my favorite books.
Maybe I wanna reread that.
I recommend that you read that if you haven't,
if you're interested in this type of stuff
because that gets inside of his life, his psyche.
But I particularly remember like his,
what was going through his brain when he was on stage and how you got this one joke
and it all comes down to this one moment
and if somebody sneezes at the wrong time
in the very back, like the bartender
in the very back of the venue.
It's such a fragile state.
Just has a little sneeze and it's like,
it's thrown off and you're like,
okay, I gotta let that one go.
And it's exhilarating when you're like,
your brain is firing, you're so on,
and then it's like okay, I want something to go wrong
so I can prove that this is not something,
that this is something that's just popping off
the top of my brain right now.
But you want it to go wrong at the right place
because one of the things you're.
Yeah but you want it, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I kinda switched tracks there in the middle.
You want it to be, it's such a fragile thing
for it to work the way you've planned.
And you want something to go wrong.
And then to be so good at it when you've planned it
and then when, that's a whole other level that you can.
But you want something to go wrong because of you
in a lot of ways.
I mean, yeah, sure sometimes somebody says something
in the crowd and you make a moment out of it,
but I think that that's one of the things
that just as a performer is frustrating when there's,
you know, and there'll be,
we've got these moments in the show
where the whole point is that
there's nothing happening here.
And sometimes there's like a,
the lights go out and we're moving to a new position.
And you know, in an ideal world,
if the stagehands knew what was going on,
which incidentally, the stagehands for our shows,
it's always a new crew, it's the house crew,
so they have to be taught what all the beats are,
and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not.
But if something kinda screws up
and all of a sudden there's seven new seconds
in this blackout that you never expected,
well a crowd's natural response at a show like ours
is for somebody to yell out something.
And depending on what they yell out,
if they yell out something and the lights come up
less than two seconds after they yell something,
the expectation is well Rhett and Link
are gonna say something about that,
Rhett and Link are gonna respond to that.
And then there's this choice
that we have to make in the moment.
Am I gonna respond to the thing the person said
or am I gonna say the thing that I know
I'm supposed to say right now?
But if they say something and it dies back down
in like four to six seconds have passed,
then the moment's gone and you just say that.
It's such a fragile thing and like you said,
if you begin to talk and then they say,
like if you're beginning to talk as the lights come up
and that's when somebody decides to say something, you know,
it's part of being a comedian and our crowds
are generally like super respectful
and they're not trying to make the moment about them.
But I can only imagine what it would be like
to be like a standup comedian.
I have so much, I mean I have such a,
People who don't know you.
Renewed and heightened appreciation
for what it means to be a good standup comic,
having done what we do.
I mean, that's an aspect of what we're doing.
I would not call us standup comedians
by any stretch of the imagination,
but we're in that mode a few times.
And for the people that are great at it,
it's like, well, that's, I mean,
that's what, it's as hard as anything that's,
any occupation that's difficult to do and then nail it.
It's, yeah, I got a lot of respect for those people
having done what we've done.
And you know, this, you see this a lot,
where there's somebody who is really funny in a crowd.
They tend to say funny things at the right time.
They seem to have good timing
and they're kind of the life of the party.
And then people are like,
you should be a standup comedian.
And what you'll find more often than not
is that someone who's actually a good stand-up comedian,
if you meet them in person, you'd be like,
what's special about this person?
This person doesn't talk a lot.
What's eating that person, I think,
is what you would actually say.
This person seems to be thinking a lot right now.
This person seems to be super introspective.
What, that dude is such a downer.
Watch out for that person because they're gonna be,
that's where your standup comedian's gonna be
because it's somebody who's observing
and internalizing the things.
Now that doesn't mean that there's not these
life of the party, you know, you throw, I don't know,
we met Kevin Hart in person and he was on when the camera was on
and he was on when the camera was off.
We rode across town with him, just the three of us in a car
and it was like, first of all, he was super nice
and all business when we were just talking.
Yeah, he wasn't funny.
He wasn't trying to be funny at those times.
Yeah, no one laughed.
But he can turn it on super easy,
but I think that, I'd say the majority of people,
you just meet somebody and they just seem
like a thoughtful person.
The person who's great in a crowd and super extroverted
and always says the right thing, when you say,
hey, go put together a standup set,
it doesn't follow that they're gonna be able
to create something from thin air
and then take it in front of a crowd.
It's just a totally different,
it's coming from a totally different place.
I wouldn't wanna do it.
I wouldn't want, we have all these crutches
that we can hold onto.
We go to a place and everyone there,
except for the very few people
who've been dragged there by relatives know who we are,
like what we do, and know why they think we're funny.
So we've won the battle before we start the show.
Oh yeah.
And then we're doing things like,
well this scripted part here and this song here
that's gonna be a crowd pleaser.
But just to stand up there raw.
And I think this is one of the reasons
that traditionally stand up comics
don't really respect musical comedians.
Like, oh, that guy with the guitar.
Because it's like, it's a crutch, it's a barrier,
it's a wall you stand behind,
it's a way to protect yourself from the audience.
But you take that guitar down
and all you have is a microphone.
Now it's you and your mind being exposed
to a crowd of people.
And you have to be able to translate what's in your mind
in a way that makes them laugh.
And as we've already established,
there's something scientific going on,
but it's very complex.
Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's,
I'm glad we talked about this
because it gave me a renewed appreciation
for the experience we've had on the tour that you sit down and we write out
and plan out what we're gonna do on stage
in order to get laughs and then now at the end of the tour,
we see how much it's changed because we weren't right
about everything and we fixed, we had to fix it.
You know, and I still gotta fix that
like deceased grandma joke about Christy's grandma.
Like, cause,
You can't say that on a Sunday night.
I cannot say that one in front of,
I mean, it's kind of an anti-joke anyway.
It's a joke intended to get a reaction that's not a laugh.
Well, it's a setup for the next a reaction that's not a laugh.
It's a setup for the next joke where people do laugh,
but you can't say it anymore.
But now I can't talk about how her grandma was deceased
because Christy's parents are gonna be in the audience.
So I'm gonna lose that setup, but I still gotta.
They will not take that joke.
So then the thing that I have to say after,
I still gotta say, I gotta move on.
So it's just gonna, I'm gonna feel a little defeated inside
but I think that I can take one for the team.
And I went all directions with that thing
and I never, it bothers me that I didn't land
on something new.
I just came up with the joke.
I just came up with the joke.
Can I pitch it to you right now?
Yeah.
I think your new joke should be.
Should I say what the joke is?
I don't wanna leave him out of this.
Well yeah, so I tell the story about how
I emailed Jessie's grandmother as a conduit
to then have her print the email out
and then mail it to her.
The story from the book, if you've read the book.
The story from the book.
And then I talk about how that was awkward
and whatever, and then Link says.
I say, well, when Christy and I first started dating,
communication was difficult for us too.
Because her grandma didn't have an email address.
She was deceased.
It still makes me laugh.
The whole, I love that kind of humor.
The whole crowd just is like, oh.
But a few people laugh at her grandma
didn't have an email address.
Yeah, it's not, I wish that was a better joke.
So here's my pitch, let me just throw this,
try this off the side.
And then I say, but that's a setup, which is,
because then everyone's like, ooh, that feels really bad.
And then I'm like, I don't know if you know this about me
but I have a talent for making things awkward
and then everybody laughs because A,
everybody there knows me and knows that that's true about me
and B, I just did it.
It breaks the awkwardness.
It breaks it.
The tension.
Breaks the tension which is another way to be funny.
But what if you said.
And by the way, her grandma was deceased
and by the way, we all do that.
We all deceased?
Yes.
Now.
And sometimes I've said that to the audience
and it hasn't helped.
What about this?
What if you say, and I'm not saying
that this is comedy gold,
but I think it's a step in the right direction
and it's appropriate for the crowd when the grandma
and when your in-laws are there.
If you say, communication was difficult
for me and Christy as well,
I didn't know her grandma's email address.
I'll try it.
That's better.
The only thing is having done it so much,
I got like a muscle memory.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm gonna be so fixated on saying that right
that I'm gonna screw it up.
So I gotta practice in the shower a lot.
Yeah, just practice it.
No, you know what, I'll do it,
I'll have to do it on the Atlanta shows.
Yeah, just do it. I think I gotta try it out.
It isn't like the joke has been so great
that you've taken it out ahead of time.
And if it works, I can still do the she was,
and plus she was deceased.
Like if I screw that up and don't get a laugh, I can still do the she was, and plus she was deceased. Like if I screw that up and don't get a laugh,
I can still say the deceased one in Atlanta.
And I'll have three times to practice it.
Yeah, and you can see what kind of laugh
you get on the front end.
What was it?
Because I didn't know her grandma's email address.
I didn't know her grandma's email address.
Now the question is.
It's a dry joke.
It's like, and it is a little awkward.
What if you wet it up a little bit?
What if you say, because you say, for the life of me,
I didn't know our grandma's email address.
That's a you joke, not a me joke.
My joke would be say that,
but then do something weird with my head.
You know, it's like that thing I started doing.
Well, you do that shortly after that.
Right, yeah, I do that after.
You can't do that there,
because then when you do the thing with the head, then it becomes annoying. You can only do that like two that. Right, I do, yeah, I do that. You can't do that there. I can't do it twice. Because then when you do the thing with the head,
then it becomes annoying.
You can only do that like two times a show, you know?
So I learned that, you know,
Rhett will pitch me jokes like that
and then I'm like, yeah, that would be a great joke for you.
But it's like, put a chicken neck in it.
I got a better one.
Communication was also difficult for me and Christy
when we were getting to know each other
because I didn't know Gaga's email address.
So like you wanted to use my same grandma
because Gaga refused to send,
because Gaga refused to print my emails out from,
this is getting better, see we're getting better.
Yeah.
You say, you're finally deciding to help.
Communication with me and Christy was difficult
in the early stages of our relationship too
because Gaga refused to send my emails to Christy
to print out my emails for Christy.
That's it, that's the joke.
I guarantee you that I'll get laughs.
Now why is that funny?
I don't know.
Because I came up with it.
Why was that funny?
Because it was not true.
And why was that funny? Because it was not true. And why was that funny?
Because it was true. Because it was true.
Now we're relating!
Wow! Wow, this is humor!
We're friends!
Oh, this is beautiful!
I'm glad you were here for this, guys.
I think, Joshua, we have not really answered your question,
but it was an inspiring start to a fun conversation which allowed us to, thank you,
you allowed us to appreciate what we've been through.
You allowed us to appreciate ourselves.
And any time we can do that, we feel better.
You know that's not what I was trying to say.
I think at a moment when we're utterly exhausted
and I wanna be done with the tour,
I now feel motivated to do it.
These last four shows, man.
Four more times and to do it the best ever.
And the high point's gonna be that joke
that I just came up with for you.
Ah, you're gonna need to write it down.
You know what?
Can you get Gaga to write it down?
She'll be there on Sunday night.
Well you write it down and mail it to,
she can mail it to me.
See, it's not working that great.
Okay, yeah.
All right guys, I know we're at the end of this thing
but, and we meant to say this at the top,
but we are taking a break for the next few weeks
from recording in Ear Biscuit.
The next Ear Biscuit will be delivered fresh to you
on January 15th.
Yeah.
In the new year, we'll have lots to catch up on
and we will fold you in like the biscuit batter in the bowl.
You just fold it and fold it and then we'll bake it
and January 15th that thing will come out.
So sit tight, we got lots of old ear biscuits
so you can listen back through.
They don't get stale.
They do not get stale.
They're canned.
Some of them have a cheese surprise in the middle.
Really?
I didn't tell you.
Okay.
I've been putting cheese surprises in the middle.
Listen to every one and see which one has cheese in it. Thank you.