Tag Archives: humor

Brilliant, snarky humor of Paul Rudnick

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(Wikipedia) Paul Rudnick is an American writer. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world. He is also known for having written the screenplays for several movies, including Sister Act, Addams Family Values, Jeffrey, and In & Out.
I’ve been reading his stuff all morning and have yet to find one that wasn’t laugh-out-load funny.

Ivanka says she won’t be joining her Dad’s campaign to focus on:

  • Guarding her money in a cave
  • Learning her kids’ names
  • Teaching Jared to sound out big word
  • Telling the mirror “Good job!”
  • Shrieking at the new nanny, “No eye contact! Tiffany, we talked about this!”

Sarah Cooper

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One of the few bright spots of the last 8 months is Sarah Cooper and her brilliant videos. Nice piece in the Washington Post.

In a medium where teenage gamers become instant multimillionaires, Cooper is the strangest kind of overnight star. She has earned a master’s degree, written three books and developed more than a casual understanding of John Maynard Keynes. She was in her 30s before she did her first standup set, and spent the bulk of her adult life working at tech companies, most recently Google, where she led the team that redesigned the company’s popular word-processing program, Google Docs.

Gotta say it… I’m impressed by the Google Docs thing. She went from doing gigs in a pizza place in January to a Netflix special on October 27.

It is not your standard Netflix comedy show. For one thing, “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine” is not standup. The special is a darkly hilarious and political sketch show filmed on the covid-claustrophobic set of a fictitious morning program hosted by a needy and desperately cheery character named Sarah Cooper.

If you’ve been living in a cave (or watching nothing but Fox News) you can check out her work on YouTube.

Turbo Encabulator

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YouTube notes: “This is the first time Turbo Encabulator was recorded with picture. I shot this in the late 70’s at Regan Studios in Detroit on 16mm film. The narrator and writer is Bud Haggert. He was the top voice-over talent on technical films. He wrote the script because he rarely understood the technical copy he was asked to read and felt he shouldn’t be alone. We had just finished a production for GMC Trucks and Bud asked since this was the perfect setting could we film his Turbo Encabulator script. He was using an audio prompter referred to as “the ear”. He was actually the pioneer of the ear. He was to deliver a live speech without a prompter. After struggling in his hotel room trying to commit to memory he went to plan B. He recorded it to a large Wollensak reel to reel recorder and placed it in the bottom of the podium. With a wired earplug he used it for the speech and the “ear” was invented. Today every on-camera spokesperson uses a variation of Bud’s innovation. Dave Rondot (me) was the director and John Choate was the DP on this production. The first laugh at the end is mine. My hat’s off to Bud a true talent.”

View on YouTube