Splitsider

You ever get the feeling that the stars of Parks & Recreation knowingly act like their characters? Nick Offerman seems to revel in the extreme masculinity hoisted upon to him. Chris Pratt, though far more capable than Andy, apes his characters wide-eyed, big ol' lugness. In his interview with GQ, there are many quoteables that easily could be something Andy would say, well, if he was an actor who played a character like Andy on television. Mostly though, he comes off as humble mixed with Andy's sense of wonder:

It's a good thing I enjoy humor because, if I had to estimate, I'd put the number of humor pieces I've read this year somewhere in the low thousands. As a fan — and as someone who's numb to the embarrassment that comes with laughing aloud while riding public transportation — I imagine I'd have read some fraction of these just for fun. But as someone who’s had the privilege of editing Splitsider's Humor Section for the past nine months and compiling the list below (who am I kidding? tl;dr), I’ve been overwhelmed in the best way possible by the volume and quality of the humorists populating the [...]

I guess when you're Joan Rivers, even wildly successful standups who've been performing for 25 years are just "starting out." Rivers pays tribute to Louis C.K., who's been named GQ's latest Man of the Year, with some bleak but solid advice:

Your chosen life's work, comedy, is a steaming shithole of cruelty and degeneracy owned and operated by deranged, unattractive thieves. Ignore them. Push forward. Play by your rules and KEEP GOING. Wear blinders if necessary, but KEEP GOING. Don't let other people tell you what's funny. Don't read your reviews— the bad ones hurt too much and the good ones make you weak. It's all about ego [...]

What a man. Kristen Wiig has joined Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake in the ranks of GQ's 2011 Men of the Year. To honor her achievement, Jon Hamm remembers shooting the opening sex scene in Bridesmaids with Wiig:

Bounding around in a flesh-colored thong, trying not to sweat all over Kristen while a hundred crew members are literally like, "Can we get this done, please?"—our embarrassment coupled with everyone else's exhaustion lent that scene a particularly awkward sensibility.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that day of shooting…would have been kinda tiring and boring after a while, probably. Better to just watch the [...]

How do you do a sexy photoshoot with a subject like Ken Jeong, who isn't exactly a sex symbol? If you're GQ, you do your standard sex photoshoot with model Kate Upton and some pretty dude, and then you have Jeong attempt to ruin every photo. It's a pretty great formula, really, although now that I've got this association linked in my mind I'll probably start getting mildly aroused whenever Chang shows up on Community. Could be worse!

"There's something dangerous about what's funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary." These Christopher Walken quotes are a little bit eerie, but also quite informative if you're wondering how he feels about zoos, golf, spaghetti and question marks.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are today's GQ Men of the Year, and here's how Jon Stewart describes their Broadway debut The Book of Mormon in his piece about the pair:

A doctoral dissertation in funny-as-shit satire. A hysterical, full-throated defense of faith that somehow also manages to make perfect sense of a lyric involving eye-fucking God. When you witness a work of such quality—and this is coming from someone who traffics in their field—there is only one thing to say, and I cannot say it emphatically enough: Fuck those guys.

Yeah, fuck them! I like this way of complimenting people. Fuck you! All of you! You're great! [...]

Steve Carell has a lot more in common with pizza than meets the eye. To honor his being named a GQ Man of the Year, his Date Night co-star Tina Fey points out that like pizza, Carell is wonderful, comes in many varieties, and really should have an Emmy by now. (The Pizza Emmys, by the way, are held every third Tuesday in my kitchen and hosted by Johnny Depperoni and Parmesean William Scott.) (Sorry about those puns.)

Look at these two horsing around. GQ's Men of the Year Issue includes Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, "the two most thrilled-to-be-alive, irony-free, super-duper shamelessly happy men on the planet," and the interview is about as fun as should be expected from that description. Here's their response to the standard "why are you both so excited and happy all the time" question:

Jimmy Fallon: There's something so fun about taking that risk and doing live stuff. I think we both have that in our DNA. So we're like "Let's go, man. Is this going to be good? I don't know. But we're about to go live in like [...]

Well, here's a picture of Community's Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs in lingerie acting out a "lesbian scene" for GQ. There's a video as well. It's the comedy issue, which also has a scantily clad Mila Kunis on the cover. The year of Women in Comedy continues, I guess? Don't worry, I hear there's a picture of Joel McHale giving Donald Glover a reacharound in the issue as well to balance things out.

Parks & Rec's Nick Offerman and Chris Pratt have written a guide to surviving the 2012 Mayan apocalypse, and it's full of whiskey and bears and woodworking. In other words, it's exactly like Nick Offerman's regular life.

3. Assemble a posse of hooligan underlings, choosing a mix of muscular physiques and corpulent ones. Harvest fat from the chubbies and cook the muscular folks in it. When the fatties run out of cellulite to harvest, they are now prime, lean cooking specimens. Obviously you'll need to be fattening up new "team members" as you go, perpetuating the savory cycle.

Obedient, chubby team members? Finally Jerry will be useful for [...]

Lonely Island staged these amazing-looking album covers for GQ, and all we can do about it is buy sweaters? SWEATERS? Will sweaters have us humming catchy tunes about incredibly mundane things all day? Will sweaters produce music videos that look like 1970s swingers party populated by Eurotrashy amateur DJs? Will sweaters introduce us to Justin Timberlake? (Note: if you know of a sweater that does any of these things, please tell me so I can buy it.)

There's also an interview with the Three Islandeers, a terrible alternate name I just invented, in which they reveal that Michael Bolton was the first and only choice for the [...]

Way back in January, Aziz Ansari told us that GQ had sent him, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, and Momofuku chef David Chang to Tokyo after he tweet-requested the trip. Almost a year later, GQ's account of their trip is out, and it is completely surreal. The article is four pages long but manages to include friendly toilets, Aziz playing with a potbellied mannequin, a mass blind-date, a sexy Buddhist monk, a racist photobooth, and lots and lots and lots of food. More food than that. I would be very surprised if this trip doesn't get made into a movie called something like The Hangover Part III. [...]

Based on Louis C.K.'s GQ interview for their August comedy issue, it's clear he really, truly regrets making those awful/hilarious Sarah Palin tweets last September, specifically the statement "kudos to your dirty hole, you fucking jackoff cunt-face jazzy wondergirl," while drunk on a flight to L.A. "God, what a mess. I really shouldn't have done that. I regret it a lot. I wish I hadn't done that," Louis says now, explaining "I'm not a political comedian. That's just not what I do."