Introduction to Humor
This was my all-time favorite English assignment. The humor unit was all about creating some sort of humor that related to our time at Freestyle and I feel like our class is full of super funny people including my partners so planning this project and talking about it in class was really fun. My best friends from Freestyle have a lot of inside jokes about Freestyle that we are frequently referencing in our group chat so when this project was proposed we decided to basically turn all our jokes in the group chat into a rap and it was so much fun. We were able to use the new studio to record Mr. Greco and Mr. Flo singing our rap. I really valued being able to spend time making humor with my friends, it didn’t feel like school work it just felt like I was creating a fun project with my friends and I really loved seeing everyone else’s projects. As I said, we have a lot of funny people in our class so being able to watch everyone was so fun and a great final project.
Proposal
The first part of this project was we had to analyze two humorists whose work related to what we wanted to do and we had to propose what we wanted to do.
Analysis:
The two humorists that I would like to study are Weird Al Yankovic and Bo Burnham. I chose these two humorists because my group is planning on writing a rap and making the teachers perform it and I think these two comedians are inherently musical but what makes them so funny is the context and what really is being made fun of in the songs. I believe that musical number skits are so funny because they use the context of the situation which is usually a bizarre or ridiculous situation and make it into a catchy and hilarious song.
First, for Weird Al Yankovic I watched his parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana “Smells like Nirvana.” Immediately I thought it was humorous but for me, it was humorous because I knew the context the actual song Smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana is a very catchy yet confusing song, none of the lyrics make that much sense and most of the song is just Kurt Cobain screaming random words which probably have meaning to him but to listeners especially people who have only heard it once are very confusing. The original song is very chaotic and loud so it makes for a very interesting listen, some people love it and some people hate it. Now in Weird Al’s parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit, he pokes fun at the randomness, chaotic and confusing nature of this song using Exaggerism, and satirical lyrics. First off, you see Exaggerism in this piece because although the lyrics of the original song are pretty absurd I am sure some people especially in the rock work know what Nirvana is trying to get at but in verses like “What is this song all about?, Can’t figure any lyrics out, How do the words to it go? I wish you’d tell me, I don’t know” Weird Al is exaggerating how confusing the lyrics are in this song which leads to a comical outcome. Second, he uses satire in his song to poke fun at Nirvana for example in the lines “And I forgot the next verse, Oh well, I guess it pays to rehearse, The lyric sheets are so hard to find, What are the words? Oh, never mind” he is sarcastically making fun of Nirvana because their lyrics are so absurd that you would think that they just made it up on the spot and the fact that Weird Al is singing this in his song is quite satirical. Overall, I thought this was a very humorous piece and I like how Weird Al pokes a little bit of fun at the artists and I am definitely going to incorporate this into my Project.
Next, I analyzed Bo Burnham’s Welcome to the Internet. This song was very interesting and relatable. In this song, Burnham basically lists off in a very overwhelming and fast-paced (like the internet) tune, everything that you are likely to find on the internet. This song is a wild culmination of all types of humor. To name and identify a couple there was black-and-blue humor and the whole thing felt like it was diffusing anxiety. The Blue humor came about in many different ways, I am not going to quote them but they are pretty easy to spot. There were many examples of Black humor, one being “Start a rumor, buy a broom, Or send a death threat to a boomer, Or DM a girl and groom her” This calls attention to the big issue of pedophilia online but in a humorous, rhythmic way. I thought this song was very funny and I liked how there was irony in the sense of this song was just so internet but it was simultaneously making fun of it at the same time. Weird Al and Bo Burnhman’s styles of musical humor are very different, from what I have seen from both of them: Bo Burnham likes to call attention to current events or current trends and make fun of them in his music, the internet being a big theme in his music, while Weird Al likes to poke fun at each individual song that he covers. Both are very different types of comedians but I have learned a lot from them and plan to take from each one when writing my humor project.
Reflection:
To me, humor is all about making light of the context and I think both Weird Al and Bo do this perfectly. I am not a huge standup person because to me for something to be humorous, it needs to come up naturally and match the context of the situation. I have always loved the types of humor that diffuse anxiety or the type of humor that comes about in an awkward or out-of-the-norm encounter.
So, for this project, I want to have the project be about Freestyle and because we have been in Freestyle for almost two years I think there are a lot of things that we can joke about. I also believe that for something or someone to be funny, they have to know what they are joking about well, for example, if someone is making a joke about a class, to me it would be the funniest if they incorporate a little bit of the content in their joke so for my project which I think is most likely to be a musical number of some sorts probably a rap about Freestyle I know that I am going to want to incorporate a lot of the content we learned into the rap. Another thing that I know I am going to use is Wit, something that I have noticed in rap is that the bars are quite witty, they have to be, the bars have to have a minimal amount of words and still get across a point. For example, in the song “All falls down” by Kanye West, a lyric is “Couldn’t afford a car, so she named her daughter Alexis” This line conveys many different meanings, first, it is a play on words with the name Alexis and the car named Lexus and two, it shows the kind of person the women in the song is. Lines like this are very witty but also convey a point that relates to the meaning of the song in a clever way and so I really want to incorporate some witty bars into our rap and not just verses that rhyme. Another thing I want to incorporate is something similar to Wisecrack. I would like it in our rap if we could incorporate some plays on words.
I am definitely going to look into other comical music numbers to get some more inspiration and really get into the nitty-gritty of what people find funny in musical numbers. I have also always loved this rap SNL skit featuring Pete Davidson and Timothee Chalamet and so I am definitely going to take inspiration from that.
Overall, I would like to make something that I think is humorous obviously but something that serves as a time capsule for my time at Freestyle, something that I can look back on and remember some of the humorous things that we have done or things that have happened.
Script
These are the verses for our rap.
Mr. Flo:
Yo it’s Money Flo from Digital Media
Keyboard shortcut encyclopedia (F9)
Bars get meatier, kids get greedier
When it comes to internet, ours is speedier
Cookin in the stu and i’m as hot as a meteor (hot)
Seasick beat when it’s leaving you queasier (bleh)
My name is Mr flo, if there’s no wind row
My whole life story is on the evo (what)
Listen to the beat i made in pro tools (MIDI)
Im the music master dont play with me fools (It’s Flo)
Flexbox, after effects, i’m the tech preacher
Greco remember how I was your teacher
I love making photoshop compositions (blend modes)
Big new campus thats a new rendition (huge)
I got a big laser that cuts some wood
you know money flo was raised in the hood (slatt)
My laser cutter catches every detail (precise)
If you want some info, check your email (spam)
No other teacher that raps this hard
Go to freestyleacademy.rocks/bars (bars)
Mr. Greco:
Big steppin, Roth-ko reppin
G bands in the house with no discretion (yeah)
I read essays for a living, that’s my jo-ob
My rhymes are cool like my cousin Rob (it’s Rob!)
Reading rothko and we’re painting him red
I could be making money but I teach instead
Optometry and glasses you can call me an owl (Purdue)
English to the bone when I’m teaching you vowels
When i’m at the club you know i’m getting mobile
That line was anec-do-tal (*laugh*)
I got that dog in me you know that i’ll bark (woof)
I love taking theo out to the park
They say, all my opps are a threat
I say, all my opps are dead (slatt)
Don’t even think about spinning the block
My wife solves crimes so you’ll get caught (shh)
Earthseed is the new deuteronomy
My nut graf fresher than Eminem’s discography
I know a lot of words, I don’t know about you
I just hit a lick, then I wrote a Haiku (poet)
Call me Walter White I cook like no other
Don’t have a little sister but I love Big Brother (Orwell)
Freestyle rapping, I’m a god, and it showsThis verse will leave the rap game dead, so it goes (dead)