David Letterman influenced the comic sensibility of an entire generation (according to the presenter of his 1992 Peabody Award) by taking "one of TV's most conventional and least inventive forms -- the talk show -- and infusing it with freshness and imagination." Letterman always dreamed of hosti

Clever, Funny, Ironic, Wise assy, Witty

His delivery was flat. His beady eyes revealed a mind constantly at work. Andy Kaufman threw every joke away -- he delivered bad lines, well, badly. Herein lay the source of his genius: he committed to the premise of the joke and ignored punchlines as byproducts of the comedic process. Every bad gag,

Bombast, Clever, Excessive, In-your-face, Rebel, Wise assy

With titles like "Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail," "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness," and "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," Charles Bukowski's work is still the stuff that teenage poet-boys read on the bus. Bukowski is a movement-less poet: not a Beat or a Confes

Beat poetry, Beats, Gritty, In-your-face, Masculine, Minimal, Smoky, Wise assy

Children will sometimes say the darnedest things -- on "South Park," children say the crudest, raunchiest, most obscene things imaginable. This show is obviously the work of warped minds. Its creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker began collaborating in the early '90s. They were commissioned in 1994

Funny, Grotesque, Profane, Quirky, Wise assy