WEB TICKLERS
Bone up on the funny sites vying for the Webby Award in Humor

by Stuart Wade
05.10.00

Whatever happened to the great humor publications? During the 1970s, National Lampoon set the standard. In the eighties, Spy inherited the NatLamp mantle, but last decade, only Might-- progenitor of McSweeney's--measured up before dying young, a noble failure. But thanks to the Web, we are now entering another Golden Age of print humor:

Comedy Central

Despite having been a Webby TV nominee in 1999, Comedy Central's clever site remains a 'tweener: too humor-centric to prevail over other TV sites last time out, and too TV-oriented to take the cup from the humor-only sites now.

GWBush.com

This parody compelled the Bush camp to file a complaint, later dismissed, that the site amounted to campaigning (and as such had to comply with certain laws). Of course the complaint brought in thousands of visitors. Hysterical, no? Well, no. GWBush.com indeed comes off far more mean-spirited than clever. Simply put, it does not deserve recognition as an outstanding _humor_ publication.

Leisure Town

Ingenious design in this photographic comic strip. Leisure Town is the great-looking domain of a bunch of inflatable toy animals cruising around San Francisco.

Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency

The online companion to the print quarterly that calls itself a "repository of odd things one could never shoehorn into a mainstream periodical" is a lock to win the 2000 humor Webby. Which is ironic, since its main use of the Web medium is as a distribution outlet. McSweeney's often suffers from excessive pretentiousness, but it--along with Modern Humorist --is currently pointing the way for the future of humor, online and off.

The Onion

In the 1920s a few writers at the Times of London staged a secret contest to see who among them could successfully submit that newspaper's most absurd headline. The winner: "Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Killed." A straight line can be drawn from those wags to the Madison, Wisconsin-based parody newsweekly which remains the Web's best-known humor site. Though some would say this joke has run its course, nobody does fake news better than the site that has won the only two humor Webbys awarded to date.

Stuart Wade has contributed to both The Onion and McSweeneys.net, so he probably should have been disqualified from writing this piece. But hey, it's just humor. No one takes that seriously, right?

Editor's note: Newcity.com is a sponsor of the 2000 Webby Awards, but its coverage of the event remains independent of that agreement.