First, and foremost I love the Commedia dell'Arte tradition. Stooging is a time honored tradition. I'm pretty sure if you set up a screen in front of some tribe who has never seen a movie and ran 3 Stooges shorts they would laugh. Without context, or understanding the dialog, or even understanding the setting they ARE funny. So are Harpo, Chico and Groucho - that kind of comedy is long gone and does not seem to be coming back yet.
And I like Twain and Will Rodgers and H.L. Menkin and that entire school of American Satire and irony.
But my first love is Lenny Bruce. It's sad that the routines have aged so poorly, he was the icebreaker who changed the way stand-up worked, even at the cost of his life in many ways. But when I first heard that stuff it changed my life. He was no Rush Limbaugh picking on people half his size (well almost everyone is half Rush's size), Lenny went after the Kennedy's, J.Edger Hoover and the FBI, patriotism, The Pope (gee, like almost half a century before Sinad O'Connor did) sex, and drugs (back when few even knew what 'drugs' were. I still walk in Vegas and think about the "Tits and Ass" routine. That, and getting arrested in San Francisco for saying ->-bleeped-<-. That stuff supports our tourist trade now, then it just got Lenny busted. George Carlin took up where Lenny left off, hitting his best stuff right at the end when he knew he was dying and no longer gave a ->-bleeped-<- what anyone thought. The last 2 HBO specials are beyond awesome. Bill Hicks took up where George left off and died way too soon. Anymore I think only Lewis Black is doing that kind of stuff, and I try to work every show he does round here just to see him. Loved Burns and Allen too, Gracie was a natural.
All the stoners (and in California, that was just about everyone) loved Firesign Theater and Beyond the Fringe, and that stuff is pretty timeless. When I went to college we were all listening to Monty Python records (imagine our shock and surprise when we found out that it was acted out, I thought they were just doing a Firesign/National Lampoon Radio Hour deal) and we were dying. Then when we got to watch the TV show, we died all over again. Together they were about as smart and funny as any comedy group has ever been.
Oh yeah, and the original Saturday Night Live cast.
I love Frank Zappa too, he's one funny Mo-fo.
And I think it's very hard to do comedy now. Hell, half the real headlines look like something The Onion would have printed. It's hard to create a punchline in a surreal world.
