The number of times a post is liked or reblogged tells the poster precisely how funny they've just been.
"Pete 'n' Keely," a campy minimusical by James Hindman, is precisely as funny as a pair of bell-bottom tuxedo pants.
Cross-dressing is (or at least was) funny precisely because it plays with gender boundaries.
Scenes like the famous subtitled "jive" from Airplane! are funny precisely because they don't happen in real life.
Alison Steadman's enthusiastic brandishing of "cheesy pineapples" as Beverley in Abigail's Party was funny precisely because it was so familiar.
1. Tarantino the Rhetorician Tarantino loves elaborate rhetoric — the extremes of politeness, the exquisitely beautiful word, the lengthy, ridiculous argument that becomes funny precisely because it's so entirely beside the point.
Through his palavering narrators and theatrical characters, Hrabal discovered a crucial law of comedy: we are most funny precisely in proportion to how seriously we take ourselves - to how absolutely we have lost our sense of humour.
"Rumpus Women" is comprised of twenty personal essays by women whose prose is sincere and original and contains the kind of truth that is funny precisely because it is true.
Growing up, I saw elderly British women on Monty Python all the time, but they were men in dowdy housedresses, old bats who were funny precisely because they were interchangeable.
It is taken as read, say others, that no harm is meant by these jokes; that they are funny precisely because everyone present – performers and audience – instinctively senses that rape is a shocking thing.
"It's funny precisely because it is insensitive".
