Smart laughs delivered in the dumbest possible ways

Shane Torres on King Of The Hill and his other comedy favourites

As he heads to the Edinburgh Fringe with his show Skinned Knees – at 8:50pm at Assembly Roxy from August 5 – Texan comic Shane Torres picks his Perfect Playlist…

Norm MacDonald: The News

It’s a complete gem. Half of the jokes in this very much feel like they are for Norm himself and the other half have been sitting there waiting for anyone to say them, and of course Norm is the one who found them for us.

It starts off as an observation about the news and then fully turns into a full-on dark confession. Good jokes should pull you in like a tide, and before you know it, you have no idea how you got so far away from where you started. This is a brilliant example of that.

King of The Hill Season 15

Admittedly I am biased as a native Texan and grew up on the show. This show from cover-to-cover and reboot are chock-full of very smart laughs delivered in the dumbest possible ways, a very undervalued thing in comedy.

Some jokes by smart people are delivered intelligently and dumb jokes delivered in a ham-fisted way. It's very hard to deliver a stupid joke in a way smart people don’t see coming. It’s even harder to deliver a smart joke and make sure dumb people get it. Very rarely does a show keep growing and stay funny in the way that made it successful. Like this dialogue between Hank and Dale visiting the Bush Presidential library.

REDNECK: Can I be Obama’s Kenyan handler?
HANK: Obama was born in Hawaii. That is reason enough not to vote for him.

Andy Daly’s Nine Sweaters

One of the things I enjoy most in comedy is watching someone who does something completely different from what you do. This is Andy Daly doing nine insane characters based on nine sweaters he found (this is what I was told). Every time I listen to this album I find something new to love about it.

Tracy Morgan: 30 Rock, SNL Sketches Astronaut Jones and Brian Fellows

Tracey is magic. These sketches kill me. Brian Fellows is a sketch about a mentally unstable zoological expert that has delusions about his animal guest ruining his credit and showing their private areas to his audience.

I love these sketches because the character makes every other character in the sketch uncomfortable, but seems to be well intending. That's something good comedy often has, notes of discomfort.

Astronaut Jones is a parody sketch of blaxploitation films. I burst out laughing in these very funny, very immature sketches. Sometimes as a comedian you just want a joke you only enjoy and don’t have to dissect.

Maria Bamford: Enemy From High School

I love her for many different reasons, a big one is she is vulnerable and dynamic at the same time. She can tell stories, she does voices, she has a perspective, and she has jokes that are fully rounded out.

Something I love about her act is that I was reminded that we have all these tools at our disposal as comedians and she uses so many of them. Watching her can make me a better comedian.

Eddie Pepitone: For The Masses

From the jump, this special is a shotgun blast of comedy. It’s dark without making the jokes cheap. He seems to be teetering on the edge of madness and comfortable with it because he is correct about the things he points out.

For instance, when he takes on true crime as a form of entertainment and says, ‘Put on another murder. Crank it! That’s a good one.’ Screaming in an unhinged manner and then moving to a voice that sounds like you're listening to an audio book. It's filled with peaks and valleys, not just in the jokes but how they are actually delivered.