This week, Time Out New York not only listed the “50 Funniest New Yorkers,” they ranked them. Now we know for certain that John Hodgman (#35) is slightly funnier than John Mulaney (#36), and both are not nearly as funny as awesome video maker Reggie Watts (#9). The list includes comedians, writers (#31 David Rakoff), filmmakers (#8 The Coen Brothers), and whatever Howard Stern is considered (He came in at #30, one spot worse than Hannibal Buress). Congrats to Edith Zimmerman, editor of our sister site The Hairpin, for beating Michael Showalter and coming in at #49.
There’s a lot you can say about how stupid it is to rank people by something as subjective as funniness, especially when they don’t include some fine New Yorkers like, I don’t know, Adam or I or my foreign landlord, who has 12 cats and answers my calls singing in Polish (Classic NYC punchline – see you next year, Time Out), but it’s a fun read and it’s hard to argue with #1. Do you think they got it right? Who was snubbed? Should they have ranked all eight million of us and created a funniness-based economy, where a farmer’s market head of lettuce costs one joke and a gym membership costs five jokes a month (after a ten joke sign-up fee)?
