Monday, July 19, 2010

Emo Phillips


Emo Phillips dominates smart comedy, and rightly so, he holds 3 spots in GQ'S Top 75 jokes of all time.(numbers 44, 54 and 55)
I have loved his humor since it first dominated the college dorm that I was in when Emo's first album was released. (an album is primitive CD rom technology)
There was a good comedy performance in Bellevue this month in which Emo Phillips flawlessly presented the best religious joke of all time ... which he has been tirelessly telling over-and-over since the 1980s.

The best part of the evening is when Emo and I wrote a gag together.

I was early enough for the first show that I could stand in the fan line and get a signature on a poster. (I had been meaning to create a poster like this for years.)
Emo stared at the ink blots - and could not think of a worthy gag to accompany his signature. I enjoyed just standing near the Emo aura of funny talking about writer's block. Eventually I said, "I have tickets for your next show, that will give you an hour to think of something". Emo agreed, and I looked forward to standing in the fan line again to see what he might come up with. After the show he was still stumped, so I borrowed a line from his first album and said, "just tell me what you see when you look at the ink blot" (I think that I am terribly clever - the top ink blot is a Photoshopped inkblot-like-photo of Emo).
Emo replied "I think that this is the inkblot test for narcissism." "Then that is what you write. Perfect!" And that was what was written on my soon-to-be framed poster... along with: "Yours in Freud, emo phillips"

After the stimulation of working out a gag from my favorite comic over the course of the evening the final moments were spent confirming that narcissim is spelled n-a-r-c-i...
If you do not remember which number in the Rorschach the lower inkblot represents ... it is number 4 in the series... the upper inkblot is the test for Emo narcissism (the original inkblot reference is from a great joke somewhere near the "My Childhood, Yes" track on E=MO2)

Challenge to Emo:
Make another CD as Parent Friendly and amazing as your first.
(in the first CD there's no profanity, except when you try to unwrap it.)

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