Madonna on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Yes, Madonna, as in Madonna.

For reasons yet to be explained, Madonna decided to make her stand-up comedy debut on Thursday night’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Unless you want to just take the music idol at her word for it when she told Fallon that she fancied herself as “kinda a closet comedian.” Maybe keep it in the closet, Madonna! Oh! Whoa! Check me out, putting music idol Madonna in her place! I’m edgy! No. Not edgy at all. Actually.

Let’s put this in perspective. Madonna has more than three decades of experience and exposure in the most public of eyes, performing on the biggest stages of the world. And yet, even she’s reduced to open-mic status when she tries telling jokes.

Such is life in the comedy boom, when everyone and anyone thinks they can call themselves comedians. But give Madonna credit. She knew it might not go all that well, asking the audience before she got up from her chair next to Fallon: “Will you guys laugh if my jokes suck?”

And then, explaining one of her jokes, she turned her attention instead of toward her material, to her equipment. “I’m just worried about this microphone covering my face.” She should have worried that making jokes about owning Warhol and Picasso paintings might alienate her audience instead of giving them reasons to identify with her. At least she could replace the memory of this gig quite quickly over the weekend with a new one, sucking Drake’s face and soul out of his body at Coachella.

Unless that was supposed to be the punchline?

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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