How Fat Is Funny?

Saw another great Patrice O'Neal show the other night, and although there was no brawl like last year, he did kick out a table full of cops for heckling-- we thought it was a joke, until then they filed out the exit, but O'Neal's girth raises another point, and this also came up during my Shakespeare class while we were discussing the humor of Falstaff: how fat is funny these days?-- I've noticed a slimming of the fat funny guy-- remember the grossly obese funny men of the past? John Candy and Fat Albert and Chris Farley and Sam Kinison and Natalie from The Facts of Life, of course, Falstaff were all obscenely fat, but Jack Black is really just plump compared to these guys, and though Patrice O'Neal can hold his own with the old school mesomorphs, you don't see as many really, really fat comics and--check out the pictures and judge for yourself-- I think Santa Claus has slimmed down over the years as well.