The notion of a significant portion of a magazine's readership buying a very obviously fabricated story, on April Fools' Day, no less, is so antiquated that the idea itself is practically unbelievable.
But it was only a little more than a quarter century ago that our country's pre-eminent sports publication and sportswriter teamed up to craft what would go on to become the Museum Of Hoaxes second greatest April Fools' Day Hoaxes of all time, and serve as a cultural time capsule of America before the Internet.
Here's the latest in New Era's series of ads featuring Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski tormenting each other because of their competing allegiances to Northeastern baseball squads. There's a little less Baldwin in this one than I'd prefer, but really, what right do I have to be greedy? Most baseball cap ads are far less entertaining than these.
Los Angeles Laker/fan puncher Ron Artest has a stand up tour. Caroline's says that it will be "THE comedy event of the summer." Sorry, actual comedy events! This one wins, I guess.
If you're looking to distract yourself from the Super Bowl while watching the Super Bowl this weekend, swing on by Splitsider, where our friends at WitStream will be hosting a live-updating stream of the funniest Tweets made by funny people before, during and after the "big game." I can personally guarantee that it will be funnier than every single Bud Light commercial aired during the game. I can't say the same for that E-Trade baby. He's hilarious!
If you listen to ESPN in the background while you do the dishes, you know that Jeremy Lin is the greatest basketball player of all time if judging by how easy it is to make puns out of his name. Well a year ago, before all of this current Linsanity, Harvard Sailing Club's Adam Lustick (along with Splitsider's own Matt Fisher) challenged the soon to be star to a rousing game of P-I-G.
Watch Adam Lu-STICK it to Jeremy "A People's History of the United States by Howard" Lin, above.
Here is the sixth and final installment of New Era's series of ads featuring Red Sox fan John Krasinski and Yankees fan Alec Baldwin tormenting each other over their regional rivalry. In this spot, our two heros watch the end of a tense game between their two teams, with pausing the game to use the restroom just not being an option.
Other than one super racist Yao Ming joke, Seth Meyer's ESPYs monologue was killer last night, though it's hard to get a read on the intensely quiet crown. To be fair, most of the jokes were hand-delivered to him via Giants reliever Brian Wilson, who showed up with his signature insane beard and wearing a skin-tight Spandex tuxedo. "What did you do with Batman?" Meyers demanded from the stage, before inquiring "I've been meaning to ask. Did you ever get that fiddler off the roof?" Other sports-related tragedies making Meyers job delightfully easy included the well-known charity The Los Angeles Dodgers of America, Michael Vick's feline fan-base and [...]
Ugh, Super Bowl commercials. These ads, which have become events worth paying attention to by virtue of their pricetags, pretty much provide a master class in what not to do as a comedy writer. They're full of lazy, sometimes-offensive punchlines, and they all follow unsurprising formulas that we've seen a million times before. If people tried to write crap like this into sitcoms, they'd never get work. Or maybe they'd get work on the most popular comedies on TV on CBS? I don't know, guys. Let's just look at some examples.
Attention comedy nerds! You’ve probably been too busy combing the Internet for the perfect Two and a Half Men outtake to realize that we are smack dab in the middle of Super Bowl Week! This Sunday, the Packers will clash with the Steelers on the gridiron, and most red-blooded Americans will be watching. But if you love Will Forte’s "The Falconer" and have never heard of the Atlanta Falcons, you’d probably prefer to spend Super Bowl Sunday watching a marathon of SNL episodes hosted by NFL superstars. To help navigate the minefield of football players trying their hand at comedy, here’s a handy viewing guide to the best [...]
"At center, number 13, he's a Scorpio and a horrible dancer, Joakim Noah!" Will Ferrell did such an awesome job introducing the starting lineups of the New Orleans Hornets and the Chicago Bulls at their game last night, he might need to be promoted to Chief Comedian in Charge of Sports. Come to think of it, it's too bad he couldn't do all the intros in the game scenes in his own basketball movie Semi-Pro. Assuming there were game scenes in that movie and not just montages of Afros and short-shorts.
912 is a joke! In the fourth of six planned John Kransinski Alec Baldwin New Era ads, Baldwin's burning hatred for the Red Sox results in him accidentally setting his heavy mahogany furniture and supple leather sofas aflame out of spite. In the end, Alec and John have to move in together a la The Odd Couple, forced to get along despite their competing personality quirks and the increasingly obvious fact that, in this world, Alec Baldwin has completely lost his mind.
As of right now, there's no football season happening this Fall. That could change any day due to ongoing negotiations, but really, who knows? But Funny or Die was nice enough to give a dozen or so players some work during their unexpected downtime. Also, Taylor Lautner.
The new short, directed by former full-time Funny or Dier Eric Appel and written by Alex Fernie and Ryan Perez, also stars Ray Liotta, Dennis Haysbert, Kevin Costner and NFL Network talking heads Rich Eisen and Marshall Faulk. Meanwhile, Tom Brady is somewhere shooting commercials for Uggs.
Welcome to the WitStream and Splitsider's Super Bowl Tweetathon! In the widget above you'll find a constantly updating stream of curated tweets about the game from some of the funniest people on Twitter. So stop listening to your unfunny friends try to make jokes and leave the funnymaking to the professionals.
Splitsider Presents is a digital comedy store selling great comedy directly to you. There are no hoops to jump through, and you don't need to hand over your identity. Buying is simple and straightforward; you don't need a credit card or an existing account. You can complete payment and be watching a show in seconds, choosing to pay via either Amazon or Paypal.
Splitsider keeps only 20% of the cost of the purchase after transaction, bandwidth and legal costs, with about 70% going directly to the artist.
You can stream your purchases on whatever device you like, or download them to your computer to keep forever in DRM-free file formats.
Purchase/Playback Info
For $5 you get 5 HD or SD DRM-free downloads and 3 streams, allowing you to watch on your computer or any other device. You can choose to pay via either Amazon or PayPal, and you'll be able to log into the site whenever you want to re-download or stream your purchases.
WATCH videos online
DOWNLOAD videos (HD+SD)
SIMPLE payment system
ACCOUNT to access videos
Need Help?
Buying and watching shows on Splitsider Presents should be simple, quick and undemanding, but if you run into trouble, we have an excellent <A href="http://splitsider.com/store/docs/help">help section and customer service</a> to assist you.
