Can’t Singh Her Praises

I am a comedian.  I don’t mean that I make my living in comedy or as a stand-up comedian or anything like that.  I like comedy and for whatever the reason, I like to make people laugh.  Being an introvert, even saying that sounds weird because in general, I shouldn’t have the mindset of wanting to do anything for anyone.  Still, I like to think that I am funny and as has always been the case with me, I have always had an appreciation of comedy as an art form and as a form of entertainment.  I also believe that comedy should come naturally.  In this regard, I believe that some people are just naturally funny.  Some people have to work at it, and they make it look natural.  Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have people who just aren’t funny and even if they try, they still aren’t funny.

Before I continue, I want to say that it is not my intent to make fun of anyone who makes their living as a stand-up comic or anyone who is currently in the middle of trying to make their living on stage as a stand-up comedian.  I will be the first to say that stand-up comedy is difficult work and that it takes a lot of perseverance and struggle to make it.  I can’t imagine coming up with multiple sets, filling those sets with all kinds of jokes and bits, remembering and scripting how those jokes and bits are presented, and finally, having the stage presence to put it all together and make a crowd laugh consistently for at least 20 minutes.  There’s a whole process to it, I’m sure.  I enjoy my day job as it is, to where I doubt that I would ever pursue a career in stand-up comedy.  I think I fear the potential persistent failure with trying to figure out my jokes, saying them just right, and hopping on a stage and presenting these jokes in a cohesive manner.  I don’t want to say that this all sounds like it would be very difficult, but it would be very difficult and I don’t want to try it.

Having said that, as a consumer of comedy, I know who I like and whose lines of logic I can follow without even trying.  These are the comics who have genuinely mastered their craft as stand-up comedians and whom I could listen to for days on end.  Off the top of my head, three of my favorite comedians are Dave Attell, Patton Oswalt, and Wendy Liebman.  When I hear their names and know that they are performing a set, I have no doubt in my mind that they are going to be funny.  I don’t ever have to question it.  These are excellent comedians, hands down.  They know their craft.  They make comedy look like it comes to easy to them, even if it doesn’t.  I’ll never know the difference.

Now, in saying all of that, there are many comedians out there who are just downright terrible.  I don’t go out there and try to find the worst of the worst that the comedic world has to offer.  I know there are bad comedians out there.  There has to be.  If you have your average comedians, as well as your stellar and exemplary comedians, then there has to be those garbage comedians who are inevitably bringing up the rear on this whole bell-shaped curve.

One of the worst, if not THE worst comedian (and I use the term “comedian” with this person very loosely) that I’ve heard in quite some time is Lilly Singh.  I don’t know much about her history, but I believe that she developed a following on YouTube, where I assume she used the platform to test her brand of humor.  Somebody noticed, didn’t really care that she wasn’t funny, and decided that she needed to have her own late-night talk show.  I never watched it during its run and for that, I am grateful.  I’ve seen clips, otherwise bits and pieces, of the show and suffice to say that I was not impressed with anything she said or how she said it.  She is NOT funny.  She just isn’t.  Her material is terrible.  Because of that, it really doesn’t matter how she presents her so-called jokes.  If what you’re saying isn’t funny or you’re not saying anything worth hearing, your delivery and stage presence really don’t matter.  She likes to tell jokes about feminism and about there are disparities with how men and women are treated in the world.  Maybe this is just me, but her material is the kind that nobody cares about and it makes for some pretty dull sets.  She’s forgettable, as is her material.

Singh is not the only person out there who dabbles in comedy and fails miserably at it.  Steve Carrell is another such person who I think tries too hard to be funny and who in the end, also comes up ridiculously short.  I have developed this aversion to anything with Carrell’s name attached to it.  Similarly, I now have this aversion to anything with Lilly Singh’s name on it.  I see no point in wasting my time consuming anything these two are putting together because they aren’t funny and it stands to reason that their respective projects and endeavors won’t be funny either.  Why even bother?  I have zero interest in watching any episode of The Office.

I don’t know what prompted this rant about comedians who aren’t funny, but there you go.  The focus was going to be Lilly Singh, but Steve Carrell managed to ooze into the festivities.  I intended to write more on Singh, but I just sort of gave up right in the middle of this entry.  She’s just such a bad comedian that I found myself giving up on the whole entry, being that I lost interest in writing about someone who is just bad at comedy.  She’s a buzzkill and her brand of comedy can hardly be referred to as comedy.

Lilly Singh is straight garbage and no one can ever convince me otherwise.