The effect is a dark Scheherazade charm, as if this personality is joking for its life.
The slate of new musicals announced for Broadway this season is distinctly thin, so much so that "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" — long the butt of jokes for its cast injuries and $75 million budget — has a decent shot at a Tony Award nomination for best musical next spring.
The United States Open is not ready to install retractable roofs over its stadiums, even though it lost nearly three days of play to rain last year and was the butt of jokes for its low-tech method of drying hardcourts with towel-wielding brigades of workers.
The dome, which resembles an upside-down wok, is a national joke, mocked for its dearth of visitors and attacked for its expensive upkeep.
And like his characters he probably uses too many of them, making the same point a few times too many, or parading in-joke cleverness for its own sake.
Today the tower is frequently joked about for its phallic shape and has earned the nickname "Big Dick".
Windows Phone has been a joke for most of its existence.
Body odour is no joke for those afflicted by it.
Even Lamar's own name (so similar to that of the seductive screen siren) is chosen for its joke value.
