Funny / Jonathan Coulton

• "First of May".
  • A number of fans were inspired by this song to create-in a strange, fantastical hybrid of this trope and Crazy Is Cool-the "First of May Olympics." You can probably guess what that entails.
    • But how do you get a red-breasted robin to sing "Ooh, child"?
• "I'm not a monster Tom... Well, technically I am... I guess I am!"
  • "And we'll put this thing to bed... when I bash your head open!"
  • "We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's gonna eat your eyes."
• "And he knows someday, he'll have to play/an old retarded grampa...
• "Creepy Doll": Now it’s late and you head downstairs/’Cause you just can’t sleep so you make some tea/And the doll disapprovingly asks if you really need that much honey....
  • And then all the YouTube users started commenting on how "no doll tells me how I make my tea".
• The second verse of "Skullcrusher Mountain". Yes, the one about the half-pony, half-monkey monster.
  • Don't forget "I see you've met my assistant, Scarface".
• At his "Best. Concert. Ever." show, Jonathan performed a version of "Mr. Fancy Pants". In place of the normal guitar solo, he began playing disjointed audio bites from the song over a bass line. Depending on the listener, it's either annoying or hilarious to hear him say the word "Pants" over and over again... and then he plays them so that they form a coherent statement: "Chances are you're/best in/everybody's/pants!" The entire audience erupted into laughter.
  • Also, he later improved his skills with the Zendrum to the point where he ended up Rickrolling people... and then when that started to become more well-known he switched it up to "Single Ladies."
    • And, as of recent shows, has been incorporating the Super Mario Bros. theme. And even more recently, he's been using said theme as a transition to his next song... "Want You Gone", from Portal 2.
    • At PAX 2009, the song takes a wonderfully meta twist by breaking off into the bridge of They Might Be Giants' "Particle Man", which is itself often replaced by covers of other songs when TMBG preforms "Particle Man" live.
• His cover of "Baby Got Back". Mostly because of the genre he chose to cover it with. Think 1960s acoustic folk-rock.
• In "The Future Soon":
  She would look the same
  Except for bionic eyes
  She lost the real ones in the robot...wars...
  I'll say "I'm sorry" and she'll say "it's not your fault..."
  Beat
  "...or is it?"
• On a similar note, in "Better":
  And you look like a victim of a surgical crime,
  A little Darth Vader, a little Optimus Prime...
• Which means Judah the Hammer... Judah the Hammer...
• "Chiron Beta Prime", possibly the best folk Christmas song to incorporate a Robot War ever written.
• "Kenesaw Mountain Landis", a song about the First Commissioner of Baseball, opens with a claim that he was "seventeen feet tall and had a-hundred-and-fifty wives" and only gets more baffling from there. The real kicker is the final verse:
  Shoeless Joe left baseball and became a famous popstar
  And he asked the musical question "Is She Really Going Out with Him?"
  He had a couple albums and a comeback in the 80's
  But he never won a Grammy and he never was the same
  And he never could be satisfied with critical acclaim
  Cause the critics all confused him with the great Elvis Costello
  Yes the critics all confused him with the great Elvis Costello
• The skit in the middle of "The Princess Who Saved Herself":
  Princess: "Hey Adam, tell me if this sounds like a phone hanging up!"
  (Click)
  Prince: "Yeah, it totally does! H-hello?"
• From "I Feel Fantastic", the line "All I know is the steak tastes better when I take my Steak-Tastes-Better pill!"
• From "Soft Rocked By Me": "You will be soft rocked by me / I'll use the passive voice to show how gentle I'll be...."
• After Glee used his arrangement of "Baby Got Back" without his permission, Coulton re-released his version as a "cover of Glee cover" as a Take That!.
• "Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance": The very notion of an NPR newscaster leading a secret double life dancing wildly all night in clubs is funny, but the fourth verse doubles down by having Terry Gross turn out to be doing the same.
• "Betty and Me": After the setup, the whole second verse counts. You begin to Betty's point of view on the issue.
  Betty was pretty firm about our baby being human
  I said we should give him wings and a nice prehensile tail
  He could travel with the circus
  Making money, making friends with clowns
  Betty said that's stupid
  And for God's sake would you turn that TV down?

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