Upload Some Stuntmen, That'll Fix It
I hate the baby with my life
Welcome to (Mostly) Good Dumb Fun, an email newsletter that we hope will deliver on exactly what the title promises.
This email is written by Jordan Zakarin, Emily Gaudette, and Eric Francisco. We’re gonna collect the best of the weird stuff we find throughout the day and then send it to you every evening. Everything is bad right now, so hopefully this helps a little bit.
Stunt people are some of the coolest people on the planet. They’re ultra athletic but lack the egos of actual actors, since they actually have to risk their bodies to get cool shots that live on forever. There was a time I briefly considered being a stuntman, back when I was remotely in shape from wrestling and tae kwon do.
A whole bunch got together to make this bomb ass video, which I saw on Twitter. Unsure of the origins, so if someone can confirm it, that’d be great.
Oh, also: Amazon is premiering a new show, Upload, on May 1. It’s really good, even compared to The Good Place it holds up as its own thing. Read my review on Inverse.com. - Eric
So, I saw this TikTok of a gigantic baby last night. Something about the fact that he’s bouncing on what looks like his dead father, coupled with the puffs of baby powder coming out of his diaper on impact and his bizarrely toothy grin gave me actual nightmares. I’m not saying that to be funny; I dreamt about this large, heavy baby. I remember being in that liminal space between asleep and awake, semi-concious of not wanting to wake my boyfriend or our dog, but sweating and moaning under my breath as I imagined the giant baby running after me down endless hallways. He’s just so meaty and happy looking. I imagine struggling to hold him on my hip and I feel nauseous.
Anyway, I told my boyfriend about the baby this morning, and he looked up the TikTok and watched it a few times. He then proceeded to trick me into looking at the baby’s face several times, by telling me he’s sending important information via text. Just now, as I was typing this, I heard the music from the TikTok coming from the living room, and I looked up and he was watching the Large Baby on his laptop AGAIN while smiling at me like a gremlin.
The last time he tricked me, he started laughing so hard that he was choking on an ice cube over the sink. I hate it. I hate the baby with my life. - Emily
Here’s my bullet-proof theory of comedy, rendered in three steps:
Something is funny.
Repeat it for a little while and it is far less funny
Continue to repeat it and eventually, it’ll be hilarious
Some people may quibble with this theory, especially when I act upon it myself, but all that means is that they don’t know shit about comedy. What makes me so sure of myself? Oh, maybe it’s the fact that geniuses like Matt Berry obviously agree with me, as you can see in this clip from Berry’s semi-bonkers sitcom The Toast of London.
I’ve been watching episodes of The Toast of London the last few nights in between far less amusing episodes of mental panic about my career, my paltry creative output, and my dwindling bank account. Berry co-created and starred in one of my favorite shows of all-time, the demented haunted soap opera send-up Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, and while The Toast of London doesn’t quite reach its level of deliriousness, it’s still pretty great.
The names of the characters alone are worthy of highlighting; Berry plays a shitty blowhard actor named Steven Toast and it only gets more bonkers from there. Here’s an incomplete list:
Clem Fandango
Axel Jacklin
Duncan Clench
Hamilton Meathouse
Dinky Frinkbuster
Jenny Spasm
Betty Pimples
Cliff Bonanza
They also mention an out of work actress named Strawberry Rathbone in the third episode of the first season, but since we never meet her, I’ve made the hard decision to not include her in the list above. Sorry, Strawberry Rathbone.
