Final Clarification and Conclusion

For my last post on here, I would like to return to the subject that started it, Andy Milonakis, and the subject I highlighted in contrast, Toby Jones. In my second blog post, I mentioned that the reason I thought Jones still held water while Milonakis ceased being funny was because Toby Jones was just a character used to promote the humorous businesses. It’s been pointed out to me that Milonakis is just as much a character, so that argument doesn’t really hold. I would like to clarify.

vs.

It is certainly true that Andy Milonakis, for the "Andy Milonakis Show" at least, was a character that Milonakis created to be funny. But there is a fundamental difference between the humor created by Milonakis and the humor created by Robert Hines (“Jones”).

Andy Milonakis’s show was based on the fact that it seemed like an adolescent boy was writing and producing it. The humor was not sophisticated, and in many cases it was legitimately bad. But when I thought that a kid was making it, it took a certain level of intelligence that I respected. I laughed because it was funny in the context of the televised musings of a boy who somehow made it onto MTV. Once that context was taken away, the humor was stripped of its shield and went back to being unsophisticated or bad.

The Toby Jones videos, on the other hand, were not based on the fact that Toby Jones had to be a real person. The real humor was in his delivery, in his script, and in his ridiculous businesses. I laughed at the commercials themselves, not just because I thought Jones had produced them. When the context was taken away, and I found out that Toby Jones was really Hines, it didn’t really make a difference because the delivery and the editing were still just as funny.

It is from these two examples that I have generated a conclusion about this type of humor. In the case where humor is based primarily on the belief that an imaginary character is real, if the character is discovered to be fake, the case stops being funny. If, on the other hand, the humor is based on something other than the imaginary character’s perceived existence, it doesn’t really matter if the character is discovered to be false.

Why Does This Humor Exist?

In this blog, I’ve examined examples of the various types of humor that exists in such a way that you can’t always tell from first glance whether or not they are real. Now I would like to spend a post discussing why this type of humor exists at all.

The main reason that I think this type of humor has gotten so big is that it is relatively easy to do and still make it look as though you were not consciously making it. That is, even though you are doing it on purpose, it’s easy to make it look like it was not on purpose. This applies less to people like Milonakis – although his condition did give him an edge for fooling his audience – and more for Turquoise Jeep or “Toby Jones” and their YouTube released and promoted videos. YouTube has opened the door for anyone and everyone with a camera and an internet connection to upload blogs, home movies, and humorous videos. 

Take, for example, this video of one boy supposedly secretly filming his brother’s reaction to a cancelled video game account.

At first glance, it seems pretty legitimate. The boy talks to the camera before hiding it, and it was probably filmed with a real webcam. But since the brother admitted it was a fake on the Comedy Central show Tosh.0 (warning: language), it’s clear that the two boys were just trying to make it look as real as possible.

The reason that they were successful is because this type of video has many real counterparts. From “Candid Camera” to “Punk’d” on TV or hidden webcam videos on YouTube, the world has plenty of precedent for a secret filming of an outrageous reaction. I think that this is an essential part of the equation. There must be real counterparts somewhere for it to be believable.

“But wait, what about the Turquoise Jeep videos?” you may be thinking, “Surely you don’t think there can be a real analog to such sexually ridiculous lyrics and atonal music!” Indeed I do, reader, and don’t call me Shirley.

Take for example this real song and video, which is entirely serious, called “Smell Yo D*ck” by Riskay.

(I’ll refrain from linking because it is not appropriate for all audiences.) 

Discussing the back and forth between a woman trying to confirm if her man has been cheating (via the test described in the title), the song includes such gems of lyrics as, “You was on the dance floor grindin’/ with a stripper-hoe named Diamond.” The chorus is somewhat catchy but badly sung, and the rapping is laughable. 

But it is entirely serious, and therefore so may be Turquoise Jeep Records.

Keep the Jeep Ridin'

My first post was about a situation where something stopped being funny when I found out that it was fake.


My second post was about a situation where something continued being funny in spite of the fact that I found out that it was fake.


But something else can happen with these videos, and it happens when you can't tell if something is real or fake. Only certain videos can achieve this state of limbo, but those that do are so bewildering. You stare at the screen, thinking, "This can't possibly be real," and yet there's nothing about the people involved on the internet to prove you wrong. Personally, these are my favorite types of videos. I love to be shocked watching them. I love showing them to other people who end up equally shocked.

Long story short, I'm smitten with a set of videos I discovered last semester from a record label named Turquoise Jeep. And it's not because the songs are good; indeed, it is quite the opposite:

The songs, though somewhat catchy, are for the most part made with simple beats, contain overtly misogynist and sexual lyrics (one song is called "Shuyamouf" [Shut your mouth]), and are phrased in hilarious ways. The performers, who go by "stage names" such as "Young Humma" and "Flint Flossy," do ridiculous dances and some even appear to be wearing conspicuously fake facial hair. The videos look like they were made by a middle schooler who just discovered the effects for a movie maker software. It all adds up to a bunch of guys trying to be funny.

But are they trying, or do they just not know how ridiculous they are? Take a look at one of the videos. Be warned, it is rather explicit, but not in its use of foul language, but with its obvious sexual metaphor.

The chorus, "how you like your eggs, fried or fertilized?" Is a little funny in itself, but they play off an old joke ("How do you like your eggs in the morning?" "Unfertilized"), but it's the delivery that puts this video over the top. Young Humma is much too intense ("I ain't playing, girl, don't think you realize"), and as if it were not obvious enough, he explains the difference between fried and fertilized in detail after his girlfriend gets it "misconstrued."

I've showed this video and the others by Turquoise Jeep to a lot of friends, and many make the same claim: "They can't possibly be serious." They cite the colors that change, the green screen backgrounds that go wild, the fact that somebody used "misconstrued" in a rap song. But the fact is that Turqouise Jeep is selling albums, has a twitter to follow (written almost exclusively in ALL CAPS) and seems to take themselves very seriously. I have yet to find something on the internet to prove to me that they are aware that they are being laughed at.

So for me, the jury is still out, and I don't really care if I get an answer. The ambiguity about how serious they are about their laughable dancing, hilarious lyrics, and over-the-top videos, in my opinion, just adds to how much I enjoy them.

Toby Jones and his Businesses

From my last post, you might think that any piece of comedy that I thought was real at some point, then discovered was actually fake, would cease to make me laugh. But this is not actually the case for everything. In fact, one video in particular continues to make me laugh in spite of discovering I was wrong about its origins.

“Jones Big A** Truck Rental and Storage” is a set of commercials for a storage company supposedly in the back yard of a warehouse owned by “Tobias Jones” in Chicago, IL. The commercials appear to be made by Toby himself, with perhaps a film crew of a couple friends. I would post them here, but as this is for a public audience and they contain some adult language (as you may be able to tell from his business’ name) and I don’t want to offend anyone. If you don’t mind, you can look it up yourself.

Anyhow, the commercials describe Jones’ cavalier attitude toward the storage that goes on in his warehouse, explaining how if it is in his yard, he doesn’t care. He goes on to list many different items that could possibly be stored in his yard, including a “suitcase full of money” or “your mother-in-law.” There is also a link on the website to his next business, “Jones Good A** Bar-B-Que and Foot Massage,” a combination restaurant and massage parlor that will even “massage your feet in any of these fine sauces.” The corny jingle and dance in the beginning screamed amateur and I was convinced that both of Jones’ ventures were real businesses.

Others were less sure. In fact, one of my friends insisted that it couldn’t be real, and I insisted just as adamantly that it sure could.

Long story short, I was wrong. As it says in this article for NBC Chicago by Emily Lobdell, "Toby Jones" is actually a Chicago comedian named Robert Hines. The businesses were fake, and so was Jones. So that’s when it stopped being funny, right?

Nope! It’s still funny today, and I still show the commercials off to my friends whenever I can. In fact, there’s even a new business for the Jones brand – “Cheap A** Pre-paid Legal and Daycare Center.” But why didn’t Hines go the way of Andy Milonakis for me? I wouldn’t be so quick to say that it is a particularly higher level of humor (although the editing in the commercials is fantastic). I guess the root of it is that the humor itself was not related to the deceit. For Milonakis, the whole point of his act was that you were supposed to believe that he was a child coming up with all of the shticks. But “Toby Jones” was just a character – the humor was in the way he spoke and the way his businesses were really so ridiculous. I probably should have caught on that they were fake, but perhaps I really wanted them to be real.

In short, something I believed that turned out to be fake will not always stop being funny. Instead, it seems that if the humor of the particular situation is unrelated to its false premise, it can still be just as funny.

The Andy Milonakis Show

After my Dad started working at Comcast, we got cable for the first time – and it was an embarrassment of riches. With the employee benefits, we had thousands of channels for free, so we were discovering new shows left and right. Of the shows we knew nothing about, one stuck out that we tried to watch together whenever it came on: The Andy Milonakis Show on MTV.

If you watch the theme song I’ve posted, you’ll see how the show was set up. It looks like the low-budget type of home movie a 15 year old boy would make, with the same type of humor and the same special effects. We were instantly captivated by this little kid, and couldn’t believe he could come up with the short sketches that made up his show. The things this boy did were hilarious, but then there came a revelation:

Andy Milonakis is actually a 30-something year old man.

He has some sort of growth hormone condition that has slowed the look of his aging, according to this article from the Washington Post. But when my family found this out, Andy did not just stop being a little boy, he stopped being funny.

Watch this quick video of one if the skits from the TV show:

It’s a typical sketch; it starts off with a “hand-drawn” title card, has a little bit of juvenile humor (in this case, some semi-gruesome slapstick), and then has an even more childish resolution that serves as the punch line. At first glance, it’s pretty funny – relatively stupid, but funny. My family and I thought it was funny because we thought that Andy came up with it with his 15-year old self.

Now watch the clip again – but actively keep in mind that this was a man who was almost 30 at the time he was filmed. At least for my family, the “funny” was gone, and only the “stupid” was left. Once our assumption about his age proved false, it wasn’t “real” anymore, and we didn’t laugh anymore. I remember feeling almost deceived. Even David Segal, who wrote the article I linked earlier, admits, “Part of the joy of his shtick is the assumption that it springs from the addled mind of a rambunctious high school sophomore.”

To Segal, that meant his age didn’t matter for the comedian to be funny, but to me and my family, it meant that the Andy Milonakis Show was no longer watched.