In tribute to Albert Brooks's classic Esquire piece "Albert Brooks's Famous School for Comedians" (1971), we asked Patton Oswalt to create his own version for today's aspiring comics. The original, of course, remains the master work. —The Editors
Forty-four years ago, when Esquire published its first Famous School for Comedians brochure, the future of comedy was bright—but narrow. Comedians, it predicted, would be replaced by hundreds of "joke bots"—sophisticated androids that could unspool hours and hours of preprogrammed comedy routines. A single joke bot was estimated to do the job for twelve individual comedians, with zero demands for comp drinks, post-show narcotics, or even the shabbiest hotel room.
Boy, do we have free-range, small-batch artisanal egg on our faces! With only four currently operational joke bots working in the American Midwest, the field of comedy has instead opened its doors to scores of unjustly marginalized voices! Every week, new boundaries are broken (and ribs are tickled!) by comedians who are women, minorities, gay and lesbian, transgendered, asexual, "otherkin," "pronoun-fluid," "post-trans-racial," and "pre-cis-hetero-flex-lycanthrope."
Which is why we are proud to have, as our dean for the 2015-16 academic year, forty-six-year-old white male comedian Patton Oswalt to welcome one and all to the most exciting, revolutionary, and forward-looking era of comedy in the field's history!
Meet the Dean!
A recognized thought leader in comedy, Patton Oswalt's expertise focuses on issues related to platforms, branding, optimization, and organic reach.
[Fig. 1] Holy City Zoo (c. 1993)
At some comedy club in the nineties!
[Fig. 2] Patton Pending (1999)
His first sitcom. Lasted a whole half-season!
[Fig. 3] You Call That Funny? (2006)
With Caroline Rhea and Mario Joyner on the seminal comedy-competition show!
[Fig. 4] Generally Patton (2015)
Hosting his brand-new Webseries!
Now, Your Syllabus, Featuring...
Podcasts were invented in February of this year by Marc Maron. Since then, more than twenty million new podcasts have launched, with three of them becoming profitable for their hosts. For comedians, podcasts offer a completely uncensored, stimulating frontier for stretching the form of comedy.
[Fig. 1] Learn how to interview
Comedian guest Ron Funches speaks to comedian host Shelby Fero on Fero's podcast, Whaddya Got?
[Fig. 2] Learn how to be interviewed
Later the same morning, comedian guest Shelby Fero speaks to comedian host Ron Funches on Funches's podcast, So What Else?
Twitter is a terrific, 140-character online medium for sharing quips, jokes, zingers, and humorous thoughts. If you think 140 characters sounds too restrictive, remind yourself you can fit the chorus of Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time" into that space with room for 12 more characters with which to wow the world with your comedic prowess. Eddie reached the number two spot on the Billboard Hot 100 using only 128 characters. Think of what you can do with the full 140!
[Fig. 1] Tweet your comedy...
[Fig. 2] ...Then revel in the almost immediate response!
In our Webseries 101 class, you'll learn how to shoot something unique and never-before-seen on a shoestring, free of encumbering network notes, as well as how to build a massive, loyal core of online viewers, which will hopefully garner you the attention of a network, which will give you the resources to do your vision (with the help of network notes) for mainstream television, which fewer people are watching in favor of groundbreaking online content.
[Fig. 1] Bleak Street
Go dark!
[Fig. 2] Ain't That the Truth
Or have fun!
Oh, and About That Vine Class...
Get to Know Your Deans Emeritus
The honorary rank of Dean Emeritus is a special distinction conferred upon only the most outstanding individuals whose contributions to the school and to comedy have left an indelible mark.
Tenure: 1971
"A comedian's comedian is much the same as a writer's writer or a trumpet player's trumpet player. The difference is that being a writer and a trumpet player are not the same as a comedian."
Tenure: 2002
"Entire lives have been wasted in nightclubs trying to develop a 'unique' style. Don't add yours to the pile."
A Note on Diversity
Is the Famous School for Comedians 100 percent inclusive? In 2015, we can respond with a braying, overcaffeinated "Yes!" Even if you're not a professional comedian who's never brought a single smile to another human's face, you can still participate in the ever-changing world of mirth! Whether you're a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) who can see through the fog of privilege that surrounds most joke tellers, a Person of Color (POC) who's hip to the phrase "context doesn't matter," or a panicky Men's Rights Activist (MRA) who's alarmed that the 99.9 percent dominance of straight white males has slipped to an alarming 99.7 percent, there's guaranteed to be Something in Comedy (SIC) to provoke Massive Emotional Hurt (MEH). In fact, the paragraph you've just read has been scientifically designed to contain eleven micro-aggressions, seven medium aggressions, and three venti aggressions with almond-milk foam and a caramel shot.
And Now: A Pop Quiz!
Read the following story fragment and identify the offensive or triggering words or phrases. Answers below.
Mick sighed and tried to unknot his stiff neck. They'd been driving for three hours and he desperately needed to stretch his legs. But I don't want to look like a whiney pussy, he thought ruefully.
"Lend me a fag?" he asked Tran, who was staring out at the rainy highway. Tran tossed him the pack of Silk Cut unfiltereds, never speaking. Mick tapped the bottom of the pack. A single cigarette rose, stiffly.
"Y'owe me for that one. You already gypped me on lunch earlier today," said Tran.
Indian giver, thought Mick. Tran was niggardly about splitting lunch tabs, hotel bills, everything. Thank God the car ran on biofuel. Or would Tran charge him for the rapeseed oil mixture the engine was currently burning?
Tran caught Mick's sour look and laughed. "Ass, gas, or grass. Nobody rides for free."
Answer Key
Outrage: These paragraphs were typed on a laptop constructed by unskilled slave labor in China.
This Year's Special Seminar
The MAGIC in "ProbleMAGIC" (popularized by Sean Tejaratchi on the "LiarTownUSA" Tumblr) comes from taking a simple joke, which would normally give a brief moment of amusement to a small group of people, and extracting the "problematic" aspects of it to give hours and hours of concern, challenge, and satisfying self-righteousness to dozens—possibly two dozen—people on the Internet!
Fig. 1: Pre-2015...
...a single joke only had two possibilities—make an audience laugh, or not.
Fig. 2: But Now...
...a single joke not only has the potential to garner a laugh or silence, it also provides employment, amusement, and attention for a whole industry of people—most of whom don't even need to be present when the joke is told!
And Finally, Futureproof Your Career for 2016...and Beyond!
Believe it or not, the year 2015 will one day be a sepia-toned memory. It's true! Someday your downloaded consciousness, speaking from the vocal horn of a lab-mutated elk-crocodile hybrid genetically engineered to live on the sentient slag-plains of what used to be North America, will tell your grand-crocelks about the turbulent, creative apex of what comedy was in 2015. And those little crocelks will wave their hind tentacles in disbelief!
And that's why the Famous School for Comedians is introducing its forward-looking "hypothetical education" survey course. These "hypo-cational" classes will have you rolling your eyes and smarmily saying "Seen it" when the future of comedy hits your friends like a brakeless tractor-trailer full of cattle intestines!
BlpBlp for Poets
This class covers the oft-rumored, forthcoming sleeker version of Twitter. Seventeen characters, no vowels. Comedians will be able to BlpBlp forty-one unique jokes per minute. An "xclnt" way to build a "fnbs."
WH1FF
The Future Smells Like Comedy! This scent-based app will make fart jokes as subtle and haunting as an Ingmar Bergman film. And twice as funny!
Going to a Comedy Club and Listening to Jokes and Then Going Home and Not Writing a Blog About Your Journey When You Disagree with One of the Jokes
Like pickling and soapmaking in 2015, the joy of embracing a now-lost craft from the past will never go away, no matter how far into the future we blunder! The postmillennial generation (which we predict will be called either "maple tigers" or "FuckMarryKillennials") will, once or twice a year, leave their homes without any sort of personal-communication device. They'll sit together in a dark room and drink alcohol and listen to someone tell jokes—funy, or offensive, or just plain not funny, and then shrug off anything that bothers them and commit the parts of the night they enjoyed to memory and never go online to talk about it, only to other friends face-to-face. A brief glimpse into our pioneer past.
Published in the June 2015 issue.
