Thursday, July 20, 2006

Dear Evil Discussor... Are you becoming less funny?

I've truly feared for this day. But, I knew it would come. Anon, you have outed me, and it's time I make amends. Make peace with my past. I have something to tell all of you. Something that will, most likely, shake up the blogworld at its very foundations. Something that's been eating me up inside and I just can't go on without revealing. There's just no way to hide it anymore. Its obvious what's going on here, and it's time I admit it.

I'm not funny. Honestly. I know it's hard to believe, but I mean it. I'll say it again. I'm not funny. Never have been. Never ever. It's not that I've become less funny. It's that I was never funny in the first place. I've just pretended to be funny. My most Evilest trick to date.

See? That wasn't funny. At all. Not even a bit. Not even the bolding of the words "I'm not funny" was funny. Nor the italicising. Nor the combination of both. Quite the opposite actually. And there was ample room there for some sort of joke no doubt. But, the truth is, I'm not who you think I am. The closest I've ever come to being funny was this one time, in high school, when I got up to make a presentation and nothing would come out of my mouth. I was nervous and couldn't do it. I had to sit back down. And some people laughed. They thought it was funny. And maybe it was. I wouldn't know. Cause I'm not funny. Sometimes I tell jokes, and when they're over, sometimes people laugh, and sometimes they just cough. But I'm never even sure whether the people who are laughing are laughing because the joke was funny, or because they don't want to make me feel bad. I just can't tell.

There are some things though that I'm pretty sure are funny. Everybody Loves Raymond. Pies in faces. I know its mean, but when someone steps in dog poop, that's pretty funny. Jay Leno. And the two black guys on Saturday Night Live. So, obviously I can recognize good humor sometimes. I just can't make it.

Well, then, you ask, how has this site been so effortlessly and astoundingly hilarious for so long? How have you mangaed to captivate us with your high-minded hilarity all these months? I'll tell you. I'm not proud to admit it. But its because of this guy.


You may not recognize him. But you've certainly read his words, I can assure you of that. His name is Ronnie Podowski. And he's funny. Really, really funny. He might look pretty serious in this picture, but trust me, he's funny. Or so people said. I actually never really totally "got" his brand of comedy. But that didn't matter. Anyways, just at the point when my blog was stalling, failing to gain any traction, his gig as a writer on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn went belly up. And, you guessed it, I hired him to ghost-write for me. To be Evil Discussor. To give it a try. Just to see how it would go. And boy, did it work. All of a sudden, it was like magic. He was hilarious. The blog was hilarious. And my calibre of blogsmanship went through the roof. His first post for me was Dear Evil Discussor... When you're around little kids, do you sometimes worry you'll get punched in the balls? Read it for yourself. It's absolute utter hilarity. Pure Ronnie. The change was instantaneous and enormous. I can't come up with any funny way to describe it, but he probably would have written something like, "It was like someone took a kitchen knife, dipped it in a tub of funny, and smeared it all over my blog." Something like that. But it would have been funnier than that. Much funnier. Cause that's just the way he was. Funny. Unlike me. His posts were always so off-the-wall and outrageous. His jokes, so perfectly worded. His sense of humor so "inside" and "hip." His commentary and analysis always side-splittingly spot-on and uproarious. His comedic-style so "layered." For every comment made, he would immediately have the most hysterically snarky sarcastic retort to shoot back. Always timed impeccably. Always unbelievably wacky.

It was working out so well. Things couldn't have been better. The Curbed and Gawker links. The praise-filled post on ThisIsWhatWeDoNow.com. Plus, the crazy amount of hardcore sexing I was receiving. Sometimes with 3 to 6 ladies at once. It was a wonderful time. A whirlwind of success, fame, and hilarity. Everywhere I went, people applauded. It was the perfect arrangement. He made me seem funny, and I, in return, paid him just enough to keep his crystal meth habit alive. And not a penny more. I know, that was wrong of me, and I deserve what I get, but I was desperate, and cheap, and it was a way of ensuring he would work his hardest, and do his damnedest to be funny. Which he did. Up until last week, when after months of unparalleled success, he just upped and quit, upset about the company's poor benefit plan.

Alright, fine. In the interest of total disclosure, I should be completely honest. It will be cathartic for me, actually. And make me feel much better about all this. He ODed. I mean, come on. I'm plying him with crystal meth just to keep the comedy pumping, what did you think was going to happen? Of course his overwhelming and crippling addiction soon got the better of him as it so often does. It started eating him up slowly. At first, he started showing up to work late. He was still funny, but late. Which was annoying. Then, all hell broke loose. The demons of drug addiction took a hold of his funny bone and, I don't know, ate it like a delicious chicken drumstick? (Is that funny? Probably not. My point exactly.) With each crystal meth tablet he ingested, another gag would crumble and fail, falling into the deep, dark, dank canyon of comedic mediocrity. I noticed it at first on Dear Evil Discussor... Who let the dogs out? And by Dear Evil Discussor... What the fuck, Chuck? I could tell he was getting lazy. Tired. His ideas growing more and more stale. One quick read of Dear Evil Discussor... Why did you tuck in your shirt today? and it was abundantly clear his comedic prowess was fading. His jokes went from hysterical to really funny. Then, to just being funny. Then, mildly funny. Sometimes even kind of funny. Then, eventually, hardly funny. And finally, to not so funny. He began relying more and more on scatological humor. Anything about shitting, or fucking. Always with the dicks, and the cocks, and the VGs. The humping. Dirty stuff. Desperate to get a laugh, or just be offensive. If he couldn't be deemed funny, maybe he could at least be deemed inappropriate. He had an entire post written and ready to go, titled Dear Evil Discussor... What's the craziest thing you've put in your bum? and I had to pull it. It was heartbreaking. But it was too much. It wasn't working.

Eventually it got to the point where I would have to write most of the post for him and, in between binges, he would just add on the last sentence of each paragraph, maybe sprinkle in some tepid hilarity, some one-liners that were half-heartedly amusing at best, that maybe you'd laugh at if you were in a laughing mood, but certainly not if you were in a non-laughing mood. His humor was waning. It was failing him. The jokes were more forced. More contrived. He was losing his funny. And it was showing. By the time he wrote Dear Evil Discussor... Did you just spend the entire long weekend writing knock knock jokes about Trader Joe's?, it was clear that he had hit absolute rock bottom. It was over.

Then, one night I found him curled up under his desk, nearly lifeless, clutching one of those little piggy keychains where you squeeze it and it looks like poo is coming out. Its a pretty funny keychain, but still. He looked past me, muttered the word "blerd", and his eyes rolled back in his unfunny head. I panicked, unsure of what to do, not wanting anyone to know my dirty secret, scared of what lay ahead. After a couple of hours and some chinese delivery, I threw him in the backseat, dropped him off at the St. Vincent's emergency ward, and tore off. Needless to say, he didn't make it.

Was that funny? No. It was sad. See. I told you.

Anyways, now I'm left all alone here at Evil Discussor Inc. Just me, my fledgling site, and my horrible unfunniness. So please excuse the non-funny nature of my posts as I figure out what to do next. Maybe I should just change this to a blog about gossip. Or politics. Or unfunniness. I don't know. I suppose I'll begin by sifting through some resumes and figuring out if there's anyone available for hire. Maybe find a replacement and give this funny thing one more go around. If by chance you're funny, please send your funniest bit to me and maybe we can work something out. Or if you know someone who might be funny, or is even funny just once in a while, here and there, please let them know too. Maybe I can hire their funny-ass. Hey. That "ass" part was actually kind of funny, wasn't it? Adding "hyphen ass" after a word. I'll have to remember that.

Anyways, I apologize for this ridiculously long and ridiculously not funny post. And also, for lying to you, and carrying on as if I were funny. I'd love to make a joke here to finish off, but, obviously, I wouldn't even begin to know how.

E.D.

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Firstly I'm honored that you answered my question and in such depth.

Oh man that mental picture you painted with Ronnie and the shitting keychain - that was funny.

R.I.P Ronnie

- Loyal Anon

8:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post. On another note, did you hex St. Louis with your hater post from yesterday? Way to go, ED. Way. to. go.

8:57 AM  
Blogger concha said...

i guess he was the one doing the hump day hussies. cause u missed it again this week.

10:40 AM  
Blogger copyranter said...

the keychain bit was funny, I agree.

12:33 PM  
Blogger EVIL DISCUSSOR said...

sweet conch. if i may call you that. hump day hussiness will be back next week. that's for humping sure. don't you worry your little humper.

2:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I guess I'm pretty unfunny, too, because I thought the indoor/outdoor post was funny. And this post. Especially the part about Jay Leno being funny. It's funny because it's true.

2:55 PM  
Blogger EVIL DISCUSSOR said...

i like you, mariana, because you like me. let's be unfunny together.

3:26 PM  
Blogger Maulleigh said...

This was the longest post ever written in the history of the world, and will you please sing us a song about it?

3:55 PM  

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