Mankoff: Guys want women who laugh at their jokes and women want guys who are funny.
Schaal: Yeah, but I don't think guys want women who are funnier than them.
Hanson: I don't like women who are sexier than me. I'm threatened by it. But really, I love women who are funnier than me.
Myrin: I think some guys like it at first, but then get competitive about it.
Do you use sex in your act? Either trying to be sexy or making fun of the expectation that you be sexy?
Myrin: There's a braveness, a certain fearlessness. You can't be worried about how you look—you just have to leap off. It bothers me in movies when the funny character is just a super hot girl who does a pratfall or something. It's a bummer because there are so many super funny girls and it would make the movie so much funnier.
Schaal: We had something on The Daily Show called "News I'd Like To F***," because it's so obvious networks prefer hot women. Not like they're going to change.
Hanson: I once wrote a headline for The Onion that didn't get picked. I was hanging out in the lobby at 30 Rock waiting to do a part on Conan, talking to all the PAs there who all look like models. It was, "Intern Just Happens To Be Beautiful 22-Year-Old Woman." Like through sheer coincidence, she just happened to be the most qualified one for the job.
Tell me one of your favorite bits or jokes in your own genre.
Mankoff: A wonderful cartoon called "January 3 at Rockefeller Center." It shows that entire huge tree upside down in a tiny little basket. No matter what, Christmas is going to be over.
Myrin: I love Molly Shannon. I love that her characters start out kind of still, and that they're all at some point going to explode, but you don't know where or how.
Mirman: Andy Kindler was talking about a TV show and said, "Not only is that not my cup of tea, it makes me hate tea."
Hanson: We haven't talked about anti-humor. Somebody once at The Onion did an anti-joke where they said, "Phrase?! More like slightly different phrase!" Things like that get me—that deconstruction.
Lipsyte: In terms of anti-jokes: A playwright, a friend of mine, Will Eno, had a joke in one his plays, Thom Pain. A horse walks into a bar. Bartender says, "Why the long face?" Horse says, "I have AIDS."
Mankoff: I like jokes with very long narratives. But there's one short joke I like where a guy says, "Pretentious? Moi?"
How have your personalities influenced your humor?
Mirman: Whatever you grew up with is what you become. If you were treated a certain way as a kid, you eventually see yourself that way.
Mankoff: Going back many years, the guys at The New Yorker didn't go to Harvard, and it wasn't a training ground for The Simpsons. Now I deal with a lot of kids who were president of the Harvard Lampoon, 800 on their SATs. I don't see that type of damage. Why would they feel inferior? There doesn't seem to be that hurt. But they are very clever.
What's their humor like?
Mankoff: I see a lot of incongruity, slapping things together. They're clever but there's nothing to say because they haven't experienced anything. It could just be that they're young. They see the forms, the tropes, they look at the Lego set and extend and twist it and make something really nice.
Hanson: I think jokes have to say something or there is no point. There has to be a sort of underdog element.
Anyone else? How has your personality influenced your humor?
Myrin: I just think I'm super retarded. I got married and my friend's toast was, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're the most retarded person I've ever met." It was such a compliment! I just think I'm a super goofy girl. I don't have a lot of other skills, so I'm grateful I can pay my rent doing this.
Lipsyte: Today my 3-year-old son was trying to tell me jokes, or what he considers jokes, but they weren't funny, I hate to say. My wife and I laughed. "Ha ha, that's a great joke!" Well, if he was saying 2 and 2 is 5, we wouldn't say, "Oh, you're great at math!" We would say, "No, it's 4." But we discussed the importance of encouraging, and he'll get there. "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Orange." "Orange who?" "Building."
Schaal: Is that his joke? I like that joke.
Mankoff: Experiments on kids show that up until age 3, incongruity is perfectly fine. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be unexpected.
Lipsyte: I think of humor as an activity with my friends. We're not going bowling, we're just going to sit around and laugh. They're not professionals but they can produce laughter in other people.
Hanson: I'm going to have to disagree. I say leave humor to the professionals.
