Comedy could be Keller’s calling

Posted on by Andy Durham

Comedy could be Tom Keller’s calling. TK from the N&R high school sports desk, made the Big Splash at the Idiot Box downtown, on South Elm last week, in the Ultimate Comic Challenge and YES! WEEKLY’s Brian Clarey was there to take it all in and Brian had this to say about Tom as the potential “Last Comic Standing”:

I can’t help but pull for Tom Keller, a colleague who reports on high school sports for the News & Record, but his set starts slow with a piece of hackery about drinks named after sexual acts. The kid earns some pop-culture cred, though, when he compares himself to Steve, DJ’s boyfriend from the show “Full House.”

“Nicely played,” I jot down in my notebook. Then he starts talking about porn and the internet, and discusses the existence of erotica so strange and exotic, “even Google is like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, buddy.’”

The scene-setter by Brian Clarey on, Deconstructing the funny:

Deconstructing the funny
I’m going to tell you something about yourself that you might already know, but may have forgotten: You think you are a pretty funny person.

It’s okay — everyone thinks that they have a great sense of humor, just like everybody thinks they’re a little smarter than average and that their families are more messed up than anyone else’s.

And now I’m going to tell you something else about yourself: You’re probably not all that funny. Don’t feel bad about it — not everyone is funny, just like not everyone can roll their tongues or type more than 100 words a minute or hit a hanging curve ball. Even people who are funny aren’t funny all the time. And there’s the matter of subjectivity. I think Woody Allen is funny, but some people genuinely don’t. I don’t think novelty redneck teeth are particularly funny, but there are those who believe them to be the height of gag comedy.

And then there are things that are always funny — a pie in the face, for example, or the slow, alto tones of a high-pitched fart. But tonight at the Idiot Box in downtown Greensboro, contestants in the Ultimate Comic Challenge have to shoot somewhere in the middle.

To read the entire article by Brian Clarey at YES! WEEKLY,
Click Here.