Every few years or so, between its now clearly delineated epochs or eras, Saturday Night Live has a “growth year” or “building period” or “godawful season.” For example, the 1980-81 season was the first without the original cast, and the bloated, 1994-95 “Saturday Night Dead” year.
This is a comedy site, but rock God and androgynous British spaceman David Bowie is enough of a pop cultural icon with legitimate comedy chops — Extras, Zoolander, that video for “Dancing in the Streets” with Mick Jagger — for us to give him some recognition on his 66th birthday. (May we all be that cool when we are pensioners — because British.) Here then are 6 of the funniest Fake Bowies of all time, encompassing a number of Bowie’s many eras and alter egos. 
Comedy has thankfully evolved from its universally beloved origins as Milton Berle one-liners and saucy harlequins. Broadly put, comedy at its best is a patient, pointed examination and calling out of the absurdity of human existence. Narrative comedy, from Shakespeare to M*A*S*H, takes that conceit and adds “making the best of it” to the mix.
The Middle debuted in 2009 in a timeslot right after what ABC thought was going to be a huge hit: Hank, a cynical mess about a laid off rich guy that used the words “bailout” and “recovery” a lot. It went after a middle American, working class audience while also making fun of that same audience. The Middle seemed like it might have been that kind of thing, too: a modern-day take on Roseanne, centered on a family of slobs from a state nobody in the writers’ room had ever met who can’t make ends meet and are gross and lazy but God love ‘em because they love each other and are real Americans, right real Americans sitting on your reinforced couches? Actually, at first, The Middle was exactly that. It was pretty bad, but so were Parks and Recreation, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Newhart. The show found its footing and has since evolved into a sharp comedy that is darkly satirical of a listless America, but is also Cosby sweater-warm and family suitable.
Often crude, at least vaguely drug-influenced comic music performed by two guys devoted to each other. Before Tenacious D and Flight of the Conchords, there was Ween. But Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo and Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman are not a comedy duo, as they don’t do parody songs and they don’t go for the broad laughs and obvious punchlines. They parody not songs, but specific styles or bands, and from deep within. If “Weird Al” Yankovic is a mainstream stand-up comic like Brian Regan, Ween is UCB, character work, Andy Kaufman. They fully inhabit the world of a song, then ably mock it.
Funny or “novelty” music is nothing new — Spike Jonze, Stan Freberg and Tom Lehrer were doing their funny musical shtick way back in the ’50s. The most famous funny musician of all-time, however, is undoubtedly “Weird Al” Yankovic, whose 30-year career has made him one of the most durable musicians of any kind, parodist or not. But Yankovic primarily covers Top 40 and mainstream rock, leaving the door wide open for acts in other genres to step up and be the “Weird Al” of their own particular style of music—or at least that’s their hope.
Usually the most famous people in the world do not have a very good sense of humor about themselves, or a capacity for self-effacement. Angelina Jolie and Bob Dylan, for example, look to be joyless chores of boring and seriousness. Fortunately the Beatles, the biggest celebrities who have ever dared to walk amongst us and change the weather with their moods, were perhaps too famous to ever not be completely weirded out by fame, and thus had a pretty witty attitude about the whole thing. What I’m saying is that unlike Jolie or Dylan, John, Paul, George, and Ringo, have been consistently funny and game over the years. (I’m not counting the innately funny Beatles projects like A Hard Day’s Night or Help! — strictly solo stuff here.) 
For me, Zach Galifiankis getting big is akin to when you like an indie band before they become huge. It’s also a little weird seeing a bizarre comic like Galifiankis starring in The Hangover because I knew him from three things: the time a friend of mine met him and got him to tell me on my voice mail that my parents didn’t love me, his piano-based standup I’d seen a decade prior on Conan O’Brien’s old show, and his first major mainstream exposure (except for Bubble Boy and Out Cold) the genre-mocking/convention-shattering/short-lived (of course) 2002 VH1 talk show Late World With Zach.
There was a lot of sketch comedy on TV in the '90s. Emerging cable networks, particularly Comedy Central, had lots of airtime to fill, as did other networks, particularly if they were youth-oriented, like MTV, Fox, or The WB. And what did the kids in the '90s like? Inventive comedy. Scenes were thriving in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Austin, among other places, where TV talent was rapidly being developed. In the late '80s, non-Saturday Night Live shows, such as the Canadian import The Kids in the Hall, which aired late nights on CBS, showed that there was a big market and interest in the U.S. for non-SNL sketch comedy.
The Princess Bride is best known as a classic, perfect movie from 1987, but the original novel by William Goldman published in 1973 should be checked out, have you never done so. All the great fairy tale stuff and smart humor from the movie is there, but so is a large amount of inconceivable (see what I did there?) dark comedy, meta storytelling, and just overall gleeful fucking with the readerness.
TV is usually a tightly-controlled, highly-regulated corporate appendage, except during the loose, early days of a new network, when everybody involved is still trying to find both and audience and an identity, and are left largely or somewhat to their own devices, to experiment on air, to throw stuff to the wall and see what sticks. For example, Nickelodeon. Now a perpetual glitter lip gloss commercial, the channel began in the late ‘70s as an extension of, and at first consisted primarily of, an Ohio-based puppet show called Pinwheel, along with a lot of weird European cartoons and Canadian short films.
“Weird Al” Yankovic is untouchable. He’s given us so much, beginning with song parodies like “Amish Paradise” and “Fat” that are still funny upon multiple repeat listens many years later, as well as musically sound original works (“Dare to Be Stupid,” “One More Minute”), and screen entertainments such as the classic UHF and underrated Al-TV specials. Most novelty song performers end up dated, corny, and obscure, but Yankovic has been around now for more than 30 years, longer than most non-funny musicians. Today, he’s basically a part of the L.A. alt comedy community out of appreciation, nostalgia, and the fact that he’s widely regarded as one of the nicest people in entertainment. He won’t even officially release a song parody unless the original artist approves it. This isn’t a legal requirement; it’s a gesture of goodwill.
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Why NBC Will Regret Not Picking Up 'Mulaney'
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