cathrynmudon:

aapruzzese:

ryanxilliams:

jonbershad:

uncannybrettwhite:

khealywu:

jeffscherer:

comedycentral:

Back in 1978, when Steve Martin released his sophomore album, Wild and Crazy Guy, he made this video for the sales team at WB Records. 34 years later, it’s available for the unwashed masses to watch for the first time.

Oh, Steve.

Here’s a question for my comedy friends. If you had to pick five ten influences that gave you the sense of humor you have today, what would they be? Not necessarily who you most enjoy or respect now, but who taught you how to be funny in your formative years.

I think mine, in no particular order, would be:

1. Steve Martin
2. Mad Magazine
3. Bill Cosby
4. The Muppets (including Sesame Street)
5. Monty Python
6. SNL
7. Tom Lehrer
8. Peter Sellers
9. Looney Tunes
10. My dad

1. I Love Lucy
2. Kids in the Hall
3. Douglas Adams
4. All the stand up from the late 80s and early 90s. Heavy points to Ellen DeGeneres, Marc Maron, Kevin Meaney, Dana Gould and Dana Carvey
5. Robin Williams
6. Jim Carrey
7.  Classic Looney Toons
8.  SNL (‘80-‘92 because those were the seasons that were rerun on Comedy Central)
9. Eddie Izzard
10. John Candy

I love top 10 lists, and I think I pull humor from weird places. Not in an order.

Joe Kelly’s run on “Deadpool”

Peter David’s early ’90s run on “X-Factor”

“Animaniacs”

“A Very Brady Sequel”

90s NBC sitcoms, specifically “Friends”, “NewsRadio” and “Seinfeld”

SNL (Myers/Carvey/Harman era, them particularly)

“I Love Lucy”

Comedy Central back-to-back UK “Whose Line” and “Kids in the Hall” lineup

“Ellen”

Jeff Foxworthy (impossible to escape in the mid-90s, especially in the South; Foxworthy was the first stand-up album I had and knew bits word for word)

I swear to God I was going to do an exact list like this a few days ago when writing about Sam & Max.

In no particular order:

• The Simpsons
• Lucas Arts Adventure games (particularly Sam & Max, Monkey Island, and DotT)
• Early Sunday mornings on Comedy Central when they aired: 

1. Mystery Science Theatre 3000
2. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
3. Benny Hill

• My father trying to describe scenes from Holy Grail to me and laughing so hard that he couldn’t finish the killer rabbit scene, thus making that movie and comedy in general a thing of unimaginable mystery and interest to me.
• Saturday Night Live reruns (and particularly the fact that my parents didn’t want me to watch them so I had to sneak it)
• The Far Side collections my friend John always carried
• The Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes collections I always carried around

I cheated a bit on that last one. I apologize.

Jon Lovitz

David Letterman

Steve Martin

Austin Powers

Roseanne (Laurie Metcalf especially)

Monty Python… Holy Grail

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason ie Murphy Brown / Julia Sugarbaker

Dennis Miller / Norm McDonald SNL Weekend Update Anchors

Grandma Hillary

Ed Grimley / Peewee Herman

Oh man, let me over think this for a second..

• Late Night w/ Conan O’Brien - specifically staring contests between Conan and Andy, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, & “In the Year 2000”
• My Dad, Carmine Apruzzese
• Eddie Izzard’s “Dress to Kill”
• Adam Sandler’s “They’re all gonna laugh at you” & “What the hell happened to me”
• My Blue Heaven (Steve Martin and Rick Moranis)
• SNL casts from 1992-2004 - specifically, Farley, Ferrell, & Norm
• Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” - I was WAY to young to be watching this, one of the perks to having an older brother.  He also gave me the Sandler CDs.
• The Simpsons 
• Major League 
• Tommy Boy

EDIT: Worth mentioning:  The Far Side “Gallery 5,” In Living Color, License to Ill by the Beastie Boys, Ace Ventura, The Mask, The Jerky Boys Volume 2, and Ernest Scared Stupid, & The Critic

We didn’t have cable or internet, so my formative years had a lot of PBS, network tv, and great vinyls. My list reveals me to 87 years young: 

Smothers Brothers

Bob & Ray

Victor Borge

A Bit of Fry and Laurie 

David Sedaris 

Perfect Strangers 

Golden Girls (especially Bea Arthur) 

Seinfeld (especially Julia Louis-Dreyfus) 

Lucille Ball

Christopher Guest 

This is fun, but I didn’t have time to think about this the other day. I’m going to limit my list to things that influenced me that I would have been enjoying before the age of 13:

1. Jim Henson
2. Warner Bros. Animation (good & bad, any era from 30s to the awful 1960s junk)
3. Rocky & Bullwinkle
4. Weird Al Yankovic
5. Jack Benny
6. Bob Newhart
7. David Letterman
8. Matt Groening (pre-Simpsons! Life In Hell)
9. Charles Schulz
10. Sergio Aragones (mostly Groo The Wanderer)

Of course, junior high and early high school would bring Albert Brooks, Woody Allen, SCTV reruns, Monty Python, SNL, The Simpsons, Andy Kaufman, etc.