Lame Dane

I never understood the whole Dane Cook thing.

Probably has something to do with me not being a 14-year-old girl, but I've never thought he was even the least bit interesting.

I watched his HBO special. And the few episodes of his Tourgasm so-called reality so-called show were nearly as painful to sit through as an Oprah home sex tape. Of course, that would at least be entertaining.

But Cook just isn't funny. He's up on stage, flailing his arms around like the monkey he is, twisting his face making fart noises -- and the kids are eating it up. I'm thinking to myself: "This is the next George Carlin?"

Well thankfully, I'm not alone. According to CNN, it turns out that Cook is to comedy what MySpace is to intellectual discourse. In fact, Cook is basically the Paris Hilton of comedy. He's a celebrity because he is a celebrity, not because he has talent.

He went out on MySpace, gathered 1.5 million very close "friends" and leveraged that to HBO for a comedy deal. Of course it helps to steal a few jokes along the way, to give yourself the appearance of legitimacy.

"Where are the ... jokes?" wrote Rolling Stone. "How can any comedian get this famous with no jokes?"

Indeed. I suspect this is another example of what Joel Mathis called "The end of pop culture."

Thankfully, it looks like most people over the age of 16 have realized Cook is all style and no substance.

tagged: comedy, Dane Cook, pop culture, humor