I received a Myspace message yesterday (which was deliberately personalized enough to indicate that it wasn’t a robot) offering me this most unusual business proposition:
[Our site has] technology that enables comedians, like you, to deliver their jokes as ringtones from their website for free in just minutes. If you choose to, you can also sell your ringtones and wallpapers to your fans and you get to set the price.
1) I haven’t done standup in about six months, since I prefer the more realistic, human contact you can only get from blog writing, and I’m not sure if my fifteen-minute Elian Gonzalez routine is still topical enough to turn into a ringtone.
2) I don’t have a Myspace Comedy profile, they must have found me through my sketch group and been like, “He says funny sentences occasionally while acting in these scenes, he must have an arsenal of snappy one-liners that would sound awesome if they were muffled and coming out of someone’s pocket!”
3) I’m a pretty devout standup nerd, I own probably 50 standup cds, taped VHS specials, and podcasts, I pretty much had every George Carlin and Eddie Murphy routine memorized by the time I was fourteen, and I can probably name about thirty current comedians who I love more than most of my favorite bands. If I can’t think of anything more awkward and useless than having a standup routine as a ringtone, then who in the name of ungodly crap is buying these ringtones???
I must admit, though, the more I think about it, the more I laugh at the idea of receiving a call and having my phone yell Martin Lawrence’s “women, wash your crotches!” bit, or Robert Schimmel’s “having sex with an electric vagina plugged into the wall” bit, or maybe just blaring all seven dirty words on repeat whenever I receive a text.
