Funny

My rooming mates last night were watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. I volunteered this line from March 5th's The New York Times:

NBC picked Mr. Fallon, and he can sometimes seem like an old person’s notion of a hip young comic, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t funny or that he cannot hold his own on “Late Night.”

I think that's a good point: I'm kind of young still, and I don't know anyone who, when someone mentions the word funny, thinks of Jimmy Fallon.

Entertainment Weekly doesn't think of Jimmy Fallon, either. (I don't know how old that publication is.) About one year ago, EW came out with its 2008 list of the 25 funniest people in America and Mr. Fallon isn't on there.

Since EW's desire to maximize page views and the infuriatingly slow page load times combine to make viewing their ranking a way more annoying experience than it has any right to be, I've copied the list here:

1. The Judd Apatow Posse
2. Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report team
3. Tina Fey
4. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show team
5. Steve Carell
6. Chris Rock
7. Matt Stone and Trey Parker
8. Amy Poehler and Will Arnett
9. Larry David
10. Kristen Wiig
11. Conan O’Brien
12. David Cross
13. Ellen DeGeneres
14. Ricky Gervais
15. Will Ferrell
16. Amy Sedaris and David Sedaris
17. David Letterman
18. Jack Black
19. Craig Ferguson
20. Diablo Cody
21. Demetri Martin
22. Dave Chappelle
23. Sarah Silverman
24. Catherine O’Hara
25. Augusten Burroughs

There are some obviously solid choices on here, but I think they missed out on a few.

In no particular order:

• Drew Magary, if for no other reason than the fake Rick Rielly Twitter.
• Michael Schur, more for Fire Joe Morgan than for The Office or for Poehler's new thing.
• David Foster Wallace, for "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." [Update: I realize I probably shouldn't count David Foster Wallace, because EW didn't include dead people. But point is, in addition to being smart and awesome, DFW was very funny. And, besides, I needed to hit my weekly quota of DFW references.]
• The xkcd guy.
  

Anyone else I'm missing? Wouldn't you think, though, that there are funny people out there that don't have their own TV shows or movies or books or whatever? Is the person less funny because he is not yet popular?

But yeah, Jimmy Fallon isn't funny.