Without Jonathan Winters, there’d be no Robin Williams. Williams himself said so. The two comedians’ style is often described as “madcap”, but a more accurate diagnosis would be “bipolar”. In Winters’ case, it was literally true as he once spent 8 months in a mental hospital.

Winters got his start when the Ohio TV station where he worked refused to give him a $5 raise. He quit and, with $56.36 in his pocket, moved to New York, promising his wife he’d return if he didn’t make it in a year. He started doing stand-up and got his break in 1957 when he landed a spot on “Omnibus”, a Sunday morning TV show hosted by Alastair Cooke. Sunday morning TV with Jonathan Winters and Mr. Masterpiece Theatre—who says the fifties were boring?

Breaking the mold of the wise-cracking but sane comedian personified by Bob Hope, Winters shtick was the one-man sketch, for which he provided sound effects and voices of the characters that poured forth from his imagination. In this clip, Winters is handed a pen-and-pencil set and asked to improvise. In less than three minutes, he creates twelve characters, including a water skier and a wood nymph—live, on network television.

Just as Winters gave birth to Williams, Williams cast Winters as his son on Mork & Mindy. Ever wondered where Mork’s “Na-Nu Na-Nu” came from? In one of his acts, Winters was impersonating a baby named Elizabeth. Baby Elizabeth’s mom tells her: “Take that groundhog out of your mouth—you don’t know where it’s been!” Baby Elizabeth’s answer?

“Ne-Nu-Na-Na-Nu-Nu.”

What? Exactly.

It’s been over 80 years since Al Jolson’s dark turn in The Jazz Singer, but that doesn’t mean white guys imitating black guys isn’t still high-larious. Presidential contender Barack Obama may be half-white, but these YouTube impersonators are all white. And not in the good way, like bread and doves and roses and Castles and blood cells and fence pickets.Who says integrity is dead? The white kid impersonating Obama in “50 Impressions (not perfect)” admits his shortcoming right there in the title. And he’s correct:

The three stiff words in his Obama riff go by quicker than you can say, “Does he look 14 or 15?”. The other 49 are not perfect either. Like the great white northerner in the thesis-titled “Impersonations of 2008 primary contenders,” these guys follow a certain line of logic to its natural conclusion: if you’re no good at any one impression, why not do lots of them? And throw in a Canadian flag backdrop to enhance the realism. Uncanny!

The real Obama is easily recognized by his well-groomed look, so if you didn’t recognize his snakeskin cowboy hat, Transitions lenses, and shoulder-length dirty blond hair in Barack Obama Impersonation, we don’t blame you:

What’s the opposite of impression? Depression? But who says an accurate impersonation needs to get the looking and talking right? No matter what you think of Obama’s speeches, everyone can agree that they are rarely short. If nothing else, this white guy’s “Obama Impersonation” totally nails that whole being really long thing:

the truly blacker Obama knows, the essence of good marketing is selling your message. So when “Perfect impression of Barack Obama!” loads up, you have good reason for hope. But much like life itself, your dreams are ultimately dashed and it all ends quite badly:

You’re not cynical for doubting Dad does Barack Obama impression, because he doesn’t. It’s hardly clear what the hell Dad is doing:

All the wisdom in this family lies with the his off-screen son, whose supple young mind is the only one among YouTube’s whitest Obama impersonation clips to grasp the obvious: “You can’t, you’re white.” Some barriers don’t need to be broken.

As the Olympic basketball tournament enters its elimination round, fans have one question: can USA Basketball take home the gold? With a team of world-class athletes from the country that invented the sport, they should dominate the competition like China dominates its ethnic minorities, but they didn’t even medal four years ago. It turns out FIBA (which stands for International Basketball, somehow) is a much different game than the NBA. The 5 main differences:

1. The FIBA rulebook ignores NBA Rule 585.67B: ” If Lebron James charges into the lane, cradling the basketball in his arms, and dunks the ball while knocking down an opposing player trying to get out of the way, the opposing player will be charged with a foul.”

2. Teams are allowed to play five white guys at the same time.

3. Uniform numbers are metric, forcing Kobe to wear number 21.94.

4.International referees are completely corrupt. While this is also true of NBA refs, the FIBA refs are controlled by the European Mafia—bribing them is a complex process that can take months, involve dozens of intermediaries, and require sending seven boiled lobsters to the Prime Minister of Andorra.

5. The 3-point line is three feet closer. Seriously, this is extremely important.

It’s super annoying when parents and other old people mistake our hair styles for “just rolling out of bed.” Yeah, it looks this rad by just sleeping on it…NOT! Try several cans of Mega Hold Hair Spray! Not to mention a regular trip to the drug store for some green dye. Or whatever color is currently the most shocking. On any given day we have nearly a dozen products in our hair and we’re tired of the old fart generation refusing to get it.

We don’t want them to accept us. Just don’t confuse our intentionally messy hair for not having combed it at all. It’s NOT BEDHEAD! Although we use that too. The art of getting you hair to look like you didn’t even touch it is getting tougher all the time. The slighted misplaced cowlick can blow the entire statement. Retro can mistaken for Lazy if you’re not careful. Celebrities often get it all wrong.

Because we are in a band we know that image is everything. We don’t just play songs, we scream them. We haven’t ever played our guitars. We WAIL THEM!!! If we had some $9.99 Super Craftmaster Plus cuts we would confuse our audience. Our messages would be lost. Although we don’t have any written lyrics our statement is always clear. “We are rebelling!” At least two weekends a month. None of us have cars so we need to bum rides to gigs or borrow Larry’s step-dads van. He is super paranoid that we will get eyeliner on his seats so sometimes we don’t even bother asking him and just take the bus. Just because our parents live in one of the richest areas in town doesn’t mean we don’t roll public transit. It’s one of the only places where we feel truly at home. You’ll find our gum on most of the back seats. it’s a point of pride.

The important thing is that when we show up at a show ready to thrash, our hair looks like we’re headliners. It’s so perfectly manicured that you would assume we’re either homeless or supernatural. Or somewhere in between. The crowd notices the effort and they respect it. They bob their head to our distorted tunes while our elders shake their head in disappointment. Our parents and other lame old people think we are leaving the house “looking like wrecks.” Yeah, a twisted wreck of GothRock, Rad Hair and and Rebellion! The good news is that Summer is winding down and the windy Fall weather is really great for inspiring new in your face hair trends.

We’ll try to write again soon but we’re all leaving on a family trip to Orlando. We’ve agreed to go to Disney world but I guarantee we’ll get kicked off the Tea Cups.

Posted By:

Goth For Gigs

(If you are interested in booking us, go to H-E double hockey sticks! We don’t deal with fascist capitalists!)

I knew just from its name, even before clicking on the link, that I’d probably appreciate it: Animal Internet. Did the site live up to my expectations? It did, but it’s possible that those expectations were not difficult to meet. (More on that later.) What you can find on Animal Internet is exactly what you (but not you) might expect: content written from the perspective of animals. “It’s a place where polar bears can share their New Year’s resolutions with horses,” explains Casey, founder/CEO/dog of Animal Internet. At last, a place for that.

Not to be missed are the “Animatorials.” In one, Elton, a fox, reveals that he is an atheist. In another, an owl named Cheryl discusses her struggle with bulimia: “I don’t know how it started, and I’m not pointing any wings” she writes. You get the idea — a real hoot for all you animal-pun enthusiasts (sorry).

The humor of Animal Internet relies entirely on an age-old assumption, one that has for decades inspired the masterminds of the birthday card industry: when animals do things normally done exclusively by humans, hilarity ensues.

I’d like to think my sense of humor is more sophisticated than this, but I have to agree. Why? When a dog acts like a human, we compare ourselves with dogs. And if you think about it, a dog is sort of like a human that just came out wrong; his brain is the size of a peanut, he’s covered in fur, and occasionally he eats his own poop.

Now that’s comedy.

As the world turns to China and the Olympics this week, we at Comic Wonder are celebrating our hometown laugh-letes. Standing atop the podium this week is “Scotch” for his hurdling performance of “80 year old uncle and his new 20 year old wife.” It’s a moving tale of 80 year old Uncle Ted relying on his stamina to win the ultimate race. Scotch will now be among those prestigious comedians who have their name in the record books. He is also in the running for Comic Wonder of the Year. Scotch decided to tell this joke in the first person and that’s a big part of what propelled him to fame and fortune.He almost told it too good so my Comic Wonder Doctors are conducting a blood test. After last week’s performance enhancement scare with “Oiltrash44” we must be cautious. That test found an oily substance between his toes. We originally though that it was a new strain of but we did learn that he actually works on an Oil Rig so it’s likely just Petroleum.

Congrats to Scotch and keep up the proud American tradition of joke telling! Even if the joke book you use was manufactured in China. And the phone you call in on. Likely your computer too.

Dr. Victor Urea

Comic Wonder Regional VP of Toxicology & Author of “Humor-roids. These are your jokes on drugs!”

OMG! I am so sick of hearing about the Olympics!  So like what’s the big deal anyways?  I heard they’re in China and all but I guess I don’t really get the excitement.  Although friend says they have some of the best Chinese food on the planet.  It’s like “oh wow, you ran really fast!”  I feel like mass of the Olympic sports aren’t even fun.  Long Jumping?  Javelining?  Fencinging?  Those are so lame.  Like, NO THANKS!  They should make the Olympics about sports and stuff that we all like to do.  

My friend is like the fastest ever on finding suff on the internet.  One time I was like “I wish I could find a decent spa to get a  vichy detox wrap at” and he was like “I’ll google it.”  In like 10 seconds he found a spa that was like perfect.  He can always find stuff online super fast.  I told him that he’s “the fastest googler on the planet.”  I bet he is.  That would be a fun Olympic sport to watch.  I also have a girlfriend who can fall alseep in like 30 seconds.  Even at a loud nightclub.  They should have a competition where people are hooked up to like electro machines that can tell who falls asleep the fastest.  It would be so cool because you would be like super lazy and an athlete at the same time.

I also think that the sports should be more like the stuff we grew up learning. Soak em, freeze tag, scarf juggling and stuff like that.  Maybe even dress up games.  It could be fun to have like all the countries compete it best dress up.  Americans could have like flowing dresses and stuff and other countries like South Africa, such as, could wear like other stuff that they think is pretty.

I’m just saying that all of this hype around the Olympics is sorta annoying because even my magazines are wasting time talking about the athletes and not what Brangelina’s nursery looks like.  I can celebrate best barista in the world or even like the hottest hand bag designer but Taekwondoing eachother is like lame.