Wine comedy, and why I wish more of it was funny

This year, I wanted to do more silly stuff on the blog – after all, wine is supposed to be fun. The Winestream Media is almost always deadly serious, and even I fall into that rut more than I should. So the do-it-yourself wine review and the April Fool’s Day post were my attempts to lighten things up.

Unfortunately, though I can write funny, it’s not easy. Rob Petrie I’m not. So I have been searching the Internet for wine humor to use once a month or so, but with very uneven results. This Mel Brooks’ bit isn’t especially funny (the wine stuff starts at the 6:40 mark), and I didn’t think it was possible for Mel Brooks not to be funny.

The problem, as wine humorist William Tish told me, is that most wine comedy “is just the same old, same old. How many times or ways can you make fun of snobbery?” And Tish is right – that’s the theme in most of what I found, whether a skit in the Tamil language, a couple of Australian comics, or a marginally tasteful “gay men know best about wine” video.

What does it say about wine that people around the world, regardless of any other cultural differences, make fun of the same things about wine? We are entirely too serious, aren’t we?

So I’m stuck – either beat my head on the keyboard in the hope I can write something funny, which defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to do with humor, or keep scouring the Internet in the hopes something Cleese-like will show up.

Any thoughts, as well as wine humor from blog visitors, are welcome. Send me an email or leave a comment. We need to have more fun around here.

For more on wine and comedy:
• What's wrong with the wine business: Cartoon edition
• "Am I boring you?"
• "Wine writers -- donkeys that most of them are"
• "You won't show this, will you? I'm a wine merchant."

Comments

[Thomas Kruse]

Something is funny to someone when they perceive an incongruity. Then there are filters that most people have that interfere with their reaction to something that is incongruous. If something is inappropriate for some reason the filter usually kicks in and a laugh is stifled.
Th thing is that the whole of the wine business is laughable. All the work and the cost to produce a beverage that people will imbibe to alter their state of consciousness while ranting about perceptions of taste that amount to parts per million or billion in some cases. It is just plain crazy.

[Jeff Siegel]

Fine analysis, Thomas. When I made some calls for this post, the stuff that was really funny was, as Tish called it, inside baseball. And that may be funny to you or me, but it's not going to be funny -- let alone make any sense -- to the average wine drinker that I want to read the blog.

[Dan Fishman]

Hosemaster of Wine is hilarious. But it's pretty much targeted at people in the industry or close to it.