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April 23, 2020 7:52 AM

Makeup artists lip-syncing John Mulaney.
posted by clawsoon (15 comments total)

Mulaney's delivery is just so damn good that it transcends space, time, bodies, and what surely should be the legal limit of skin foundation for a single face.
posted by gwint at 8:03 AM on April 23, 2020 [9 favorites]

I have been wondering why comedians don't do 'covers' the way musicians do, performing someone else's material. This, though, is brilliant karaoke of a sort.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:26 AM on April 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is ridiculous and brilliant.
posted by kokaku at 8:42 AM on April 23, 2020

watched every single one. a++ post.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:08 AM on April 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

doing other people's bits in your act is basically the worst crime you can commit in comedy, and it's still pretty strictly enforced by the culture. comics labeled as joke thieves rarely lose that label even decades later.
posted by rotten at 9:15 AM on April 23, 2020 [5 favorites]

doing other people's bits in your act is basically the worst crime you can commit in comedy, and it's still pretty strictly enforced by the culture. comics labeled as joke thieves rarely lose that label even decades later.

There's the joke from a few decades ago, "Why is Dennis Leary famous and Bill Hicks relatively unkown?" A: "Because there's No Cure for Cancer."
posted by Twain Device at 9:22 AM on April 23, 2020 [5 favorites]

doing other people's bits in your act is basically the worst crime you can commit in comedy, and it's still pretty strictly enforced by the culture. comics labeled as joke thieves rarely lose that label even decades later.

It's changed a bit as newer (mostly older, and by older I mean like 16+) people have come onto the platform, but TikTok's whole reason for existing was re-using existing audio and premises for your TikTok. This is an artifact left over from the fact that the original product was called Musical.ly and it was for creating lip sync videos you could share with your friends.

The big "bits" had hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, of variations. TikTok as "Vines that are just a bit longer" is a very recent development.
posted by sideshow at 9:34 AM on April 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

"Why is Dennis Leary famous and Bill Hicks relatively unkown?" A: "Because there's No Cure for Cancer."

Is that why Leary chose that title for his 1992 album? That's pretty low if he did.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:37 AM on April 23, 2020

This is wonderful, thank you for sharing
posted by sacrifix at 9:46 AM on April 23, 2020

Truly the Best of the Web.
posted by blurker at 9:57 AM on April 23, 2020

Is that why Leary chose that title for his 1992 album? That's pretty low if he did.

I don't think that was the reason for him naming that album that.

From what I remember, Leary had stolen a bunch of material from Hicks. Leary at the time was becoming well known while Bill was much less so. Hicks (i think**) had started to raise awareness about this, maybe sue, but got diagnosed with cancer. He died before the accusations could really get wide spread, and Leary, being farther along in his career, was able to put out No Cure for Cancer.

Hicks died, and Leary's joke stealing went very much under the radar for at least a decade. In the mean time he got popular.

So that line about "No Cure for Cancer" has two meanings:
"Because they couldn't cure Hick's cancer, Leary got to steal the jokes and get away with it'
and
"Because Leary beat Hicks to the punch by publishing No Cure for Cancer, he was better known for the jokes he stole"

(All of this is based of my memory of things I read about a decade ago, so if any of it is incorrect, I'd love to be updated.)
posted by Twain Device at 10:21 AM on April 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

My pondering about "comedy covers" was more along the lines of "Ella Sings Gershwin" or Aretha Franklin singing a Beatles tune: out in the open, just a chance for audiences to see what new depths might exist in a joke or a routine when someone else interprets it... [/derail]
posted by PhineasGage at 11:37 AM on April 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

(And to not abuse the edit window:) Of course, song composers do get compensated when someone else performs their work...
posted by PhineasGage at 11:38 AM on April 23, 2020

but TikTok's whole reason for existing was re-using existing audio and premises for your TikTok. This is an artifact left over from the fact that the original product was called Musical.ly and it was for creating lip sync videos you could share with your friends.

This is super helpful, thank you. I am one of the Olds who has recently invaded TikTok and this was pretty baffling to me. I stumbled on a whole feed of white teenage girls lip syncing to Sailor J and I was like "damn, we just got closer to the singularity and I didn't even know it."
posted by lunasol at 12:43 PM on April 23, 2020

John Mulaney's wife, Annamarie Tendler, is a notable makeup artist in her own right. She had a very successful Tumblr that she parlayed into a book. I wonder if this is why the makeup artists picked John Mulaney specifically.
posted by rednikki at 3:52 PM on April 23, 2020 [4 favorites]