TV tropes

check "comedy" under genre on the left side.

No Way! You can translate that page to Esperanto. How cool is that?!

"If you're a Canadian, chances are nobody's looking at you while they're telling the joke unless you're actually a mountie and in uniform."

That is a GREAT page, desjardins, but I think what I was looking for was more specific to jokes, not honorable "tropes", unless I missed it on the Tropes site.

Example:

One sitcom character says (for example), "I would never go to an Air Supply concert."

Other character says, "Petra, whom you're in love with, is going with us."

First character says, "How much do I owe you for my ticket?"

That's a horrible example due to my inability quickly to write a good one, but that joke is something like, ya know, "the fast turnaround", and if you think about it, you'll realize you've seen it on at least a dozen sitcoms (and that's if you don't watch much TV).

Grammar connoisseurs: feel free to tell me whether the comma in my sentence above belongs after "(for example)" or after "says", or if it really just doesn't matter.

Some time ago, I watched some episodes of Make Room For Daddy from 1953. I matched a lot of jokes and sight gags to Leave It To Beaver and I Love Lucy, as well as Three's Company and Friends. I can easily imagine Shakespeare directing some actor through a classic spit-take.

OK, that's a derail.

Very close to your example, shane, is the Gilligan Cut as described at TV tropes:

The Gilligan Cut is a classic staple of comedy. A character protests vehemently, "What, you expect me to wear a grass skirt, stand up on top of the Empire State Building and belt out the chorus of 'New York, New York'? Well, I'm not gonna... I'm just not gonna..." Whip Pan over to the character wearing a grass skirt on the 102nd floor, singing "I want to be a part of it, New York, New York!"

Ken Levine's blog is full of them, but you'll have to search a bit.

I can easily imagine Shakespeare directing some actor through a classic spit-take.

See, there's absolutely no shame in it. A good sight gag is eternal.

This is a neat site and I'd never seen it before. I guess we're all most familiar with TV, but most of them are stage tropes and literary tropes that extend way back beyond the age of TV.

most of them are stage tropes and literary tropes that extend way back beyond the age of TV.

TV Tropes actually acknowledges that, though not in an encyclopaedic way, with the notations Older Than Television, Older Than Radio, Older Than Steam, and Older Than Dirt. (Those pages are round-ups of the older-than tropes, but many individual tropes also have an older-than listing on their pages complete with examples.)

Still not the mind-blowing site I'm looking for. It was on MeFi years ago. I'll do a search when I have time.

If you find it, shane, would you post it here? I'd love to take a gander at that! I actually spent a break today trying to search for it (on and off of MeFi) with no luck.