Recently I was hired as a comedy consultant to help some brand creatives think outside the box.

Normally I despise hearing people talk seriously about comedy.  But the money was good.

Turns out the only thing worse than witnessing a panel on comedy is being part of a panel on comedy. People made sweeping generalizations and self-important observations. It was a difficult 75 minutes.

I did two things to simultaneously take my role seriously and (kind of) subvert it.

First, I arrived dressed as Dr. Millard Rausch, the jerk who appears on the panel show in George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD. (Fans will remember I wore this costume when I hosted  Kevin Geeks Out About Dummy Deaths — honestly, it works better with the beard.)

Second, I tried to answer vague questions with a painstaking amount of detail.

For example, the bizarro question packet wanted to know “What are the genres of comedy?”

I suppose they want simple answers like “parody” and “slapstick.”

Instead I wrote up 125 different genres of comedy.

I figured it would be fun audience participation, they could shout out a number and I’d reveal the specific sub-genre I listed.  And it pointed out how dumb the question is in the first place.

After the panel I never heard back from the agency — dashing my hopes of a lucrative consulting position.  But here’s my official comedy research listing the 125 genres of comedy.  (I could’ve listed more, but I think I made my obnoxious point, don’t you?)