Listen now: Pandora’s new April Fools’ Prank Calls Mixtape Hello, is Al there? Al? Yes, Al. Last name: Coholic. Let me check. Phone call for Al. AlCoholic! Is there an…
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As long as there have been dads, there have been dad jokes—groan-worthy quips and puns designed to embarrass sons, daughters, and anyone with good taste who happens to be in earshot.
Remember taking a visit to the salon or barbershop and proudly announcing to your father that you got a haircut? Dad would take a long, hard look at your head and say “A haircut? Looks to me like you got ‘em all cut!” Or that all the times you said “I’m hungry,” only to have Dad zing back with “Nice to meet you, hungry, I’m Dad!” And of course sometimes Dad needed no prompting wax philosophical: “Without geometry, life is pointless.” …
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As long as there have been dads, there have been dad jokes—groan-worthy quips and puns designed to embarrass sons, daughters, and anyone with good taste who happens to be in earshot.
Remember taking a visit to the salon or barbershop and proudly announcing to your father that you got a haircut? Dad would take a long, hard look at your head and say “A haircut? Looks to me like you got ‘em all cut!” Or that all the times you said “I’m hungry,” only to have Dad zing back with “Nice to meet you, hungry, I’m Dad!” And of course sometimes Dad needed no prompting wax philosophical: “Without geometry, life is pointless.” …
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It’s a great time to be a female comedian. With the rise of new media, women can steer their own career paths in innovative ways. The inventive, commanding, and very funny Jacqueline Novak is a shining example of this trend.
A former poet, Novak’s lyrical tendencies weave throughout Quality Notions. Her voice is a brassy, lilting, cocktail that’s equal parts Judy Tenuta, Amy Sedaris, and Megan Mullally, served with a twist of old-timey 1930s Gal Friday. She’s meta without disrupting her conversational delivery, flirting with established gender tropes before plunging into an alternate take so original that the audience forgets gender was ever a factor to begin with. Despite her disarming use of grammatical no-nos (ain’t is a favorite word), Novak’s fierce intellect demands to be reckoned with, whether explaining how to eat a single slice of pizza or expressing love “the hound’s way.” …
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To be a standup comic in the San Francisco Bay Area is to live in Robin Williams’ shadow. He lived here. He came up here, performing in the legendary Purple Onion and Holy City Zoo comedy clubs. Every so often, my Facebook and Twitter feeds would light up with posts reading “ROBIN WILLIAMS IS AT MY SHOW” or “Robin Williams saw my set and told me I was funny!” or simply a photo of an open miker, beaming next to a comedy demigod who looks exactly as kind in reality as he did on the big screen in his Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting “inspirational teacher roles.”
I never met Robin Williams. Not once. I never found myself standing in a room with him, and even if I had, I doubt I would have approached him. I don’t take photos with celebrities, as a rule—it always feels self-serving and weird to me, a strange visual humblebrag that my Midwestern upbringing tells me is inappropriate. And what on earth would I have said to Robin Williams? “Hey, I’m a comedian, too, sort of. I have a day job, but someday I’m going to quit, and then I’ll be a real comedian, like you.” That, too, feels gross—if I couldn’t tell Robin Williams “I’m a comedian,” full stop, with no qualifications, then I wasn’t really a comedian. I would wait. I would become a real comedian. And I would run into him some other time, later.
Pandora has been offering comedy for over two years now and we thought it was about time we shared some of the inner workings of our Comedy Genome Project. This month we have a guest post from our esteemed Comedy Analyst, Dave Thomason. In addition to analyzing comedy bits in his day job, Dave is a fine stand up comic in his own right. Thanks for reading!
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I think it’s some sort of rule that if you’re going to talk about analyzing comedy, you have to mention that E.B. White quote: “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.” I’ve been analyzing comedy at Pandora for two-and-a-half years, and I thought it would be fun to explore some of the characteristics we listen for in a typical comedy track.
In our Comedy Genome, the categories of genes I find most interesting are the ones that characterize the “Comic Hook” of a particular track. These genes try to answer the question, “What’s funny about this?” We don’t have an objective measure of funniness; a joke that you find hilarious and insightful, another person may find dull and offensive. But what we try to do is keep track of some of the most common devices comedians use in pursuit of a laugh. …
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Funny stuff is happening at Pandora!
This week marks two years since Pandora launched the Comedy Genome Project. Just like our music stations, Pandora Comedy is designed to give our listeners a personalized listening experience to help them discover comedy they love, while providing artists with radio airplay and a new way to connect with fans.
Since May 2011, our Comedy collection has grown from 10,000 comedy tracks to over 25,000 tracks, and from 700 to 1,700 comedians. Each of those tracks has been analyzed according to specific comedy traits before being added to the collection. We’ve captured exclusive content at performances in both New York and Los Angeles and hosted live comedy sessions at our Oakland HQ for comics Jason Love, Don Friesen, Beth Stelling, Will Durst, Ian Karmel, and Kevin Avery. Since the launch, we have also doubled the number of comedy genre stations with exciting additions like Women in Comedy, Alternative Comedy, and Latino Comedy. …
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