As you may have noticed, the Rotten Appal went un-snarked last week. This is due in part (mostly) to a hectic schedule in which I didn't have the time nor the effort to write up a blog post concerning their comedic transgressions. However, it is also due in part (slightly) to a vast improvement in content. While still humorless and worthy of a mass protest, it was, for all intents and purposes, a step in the right direction. If you write for the Rotten Appal and are reading this A) Leave while the ship is still afloat and B) Your concepts of humor are improving but the execution is still lacking. Fix that.
But, as you might expect by this post you are currently reading, with every step forward must come two steps back. In the case of the Rotten Appal, they inched forward slightly before being propelled backward by a jet engine of mediocrity. This week's batch, while certainly bad, is mainly weighed down by dry delivery and awkward phrasing coupled with concepts that just don't have much humor to extract.
To begin, the Canadian PR bit is tired and unworthy of further exploration by the comedy community. Yes, Rob Ford smoked crack and Bieber is a little shit. This has been dragged out and commented on for several months now. In other words: It's old news and everyone that has already done the bit has done it better than you ever will. With this sort of medium, you can't afford to engage in the same humor tactics as a Twitter commenter. You need to address far more obscure concepts. Think observational humor with less apparent self-awareness. That said, there is such a bevy of current events to choose from in terms of making jokes about pop culture that it's almost insulting and lazy to go for the Canada joke. We have the Olympics (which, admittedly, got a half-assed article), the State of the Union, the recent 150 point drop in the DOW, the media's weird obsession with heroin following the death of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. You had no excuse to dredge up old news for cheap chuckles. I digress.
The other article that struck me as particularly bad was the one concerning the sorority girl and her phone (or lack thereof). Never mind that the delivery was, as expected, awkward and that the writing was subpar. The true source of my distaste for this article was its laziness. This bit could have been written by an alien who only used a gif-filled Buzzfeed article titled "20 Things Sorority Girls Love" as reference and it would have been equal to or better than the original story. This piece takes a well-known stereotype and then surrounds it with words written by someone whose only experience with sorority girls must have come from a TFM article. Now, here, I would normally come up with an insulting description of this article in order to best display my utter dislike for it. However, in the interest of inclusion, I have created a list below with some of my favorite insults and you may choose which one best suits your reading experience.
1. This piece is about as funny as the official police transcript of a 3 pm jaywalker.
2. Listening to Charlie Rose read the ingredients off of a ketchup bottle is exactly twice as interesting as this article.
3. The sound Tom Waits makes during a self-administered enema is, coincidentally, the only sound that can aptly describe this article.
4. Up until 1690, writing these words in this order was punishable by upside down crucifixion.
5. If you shoot yourself against a white background, 9 times out of 10, the blood splatter will look exactly like this article.
Assuming you've chosen your joke/insult of choice, thank you so much for reading and be sure to check in every Wednesday for my review of the Rotten Appal. I didn't cover nearly as much as I wanted today but, as I said, I'm short on time and I can only muster up a modicum of shits to give about the Rotten Appal. Until next time!
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