The Daily Show's Alchemy: Or, Chemistry For Comedians





All I learned about alchemy I learned reading The New York Times piece on The Daily Show's cultural importance. If you are anything like The Corsair, you peobably skipped the college majors that involved a chemistry requirement on the grounds that it didn't involve language, philosophy, religion or coolness. Chemistry, though we have studiously tried to avoid it, kept popping up -- like tightly-bound tangles of polymer chains injected with water -- in Michiki Kakutani's profile in Sunday Times' Arts and Leisure profile of Jon Stewart. For example, Stewart discusses his comedy and, more sublimely, the chemical process in which energy changes from one form into another:

"'Hopefully the process is to spot things that would be grist for the funny mill,' Mr. Stewart, 45, said. 'In some respects, the heavier subjects are the ones that are most loaded with opportunity because they have the most — you know, the difference between potential and kinetic energy? — they have the most potential energy, so to delve into that gives you the largest combustion, the most interest.'"

-- The conversation veers towards the bio-chemical processes of the liberation of toxins:

"What the staff is always looking for, Mr. Stewart said, are 'those types of stories that can, almost like the guy in The Green Mile' — the Stephen King story and film in which a character has the apparent ability to heal others by drawing out their ailments and pain — 'suck in all the toxins and allow you to do something with it that is palatable.''

Finally, we learn about fermentation and comedy (glugglugglug):

"'We often discuss satire — the sort of thing he does and to a certain extent I do — as distillery,' Mr. Colbert continued. 'You have an enormous amount of material, and you have to distill it to a syrup by the end of the day. So much of it is a hewing process, chipping away at things that aren’t the point or aren’t the story or aren’t the intention. Really it’s that last couple of drops you’re distilling that makes all the difference. It isn’t that hard to get a ton of corn into a gallon of sour mash, but to get that gallon of sour mash down to that one shot of pure whiskey takes patience” as well as “discipline and focus.'"

Indecision 2008 is like an Organic Chem class to fulfill a prerequisite for grad school.