A Piffany About Sports (and Comedy and The Olympics)

It all started with good intentions, didn’t it?

I could be referring to the above image, capturing the first-ever 100-meter dash that opened the first “modern” Olympics in Athens, Greece, circa 1896. But I’m also referring to this Tweet of mine from just a few days ago, when I asked my followers to chime in with their answer to my question: “Who’s your pick for the Comedy MVP so far in 2021?”

For the past six years, as part of my podcast, The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First, I’ve sat down with The New York Times comedy critic/columnist, Jason Zinoman, for a year-end discussion and dissection of the year in comedy through the lens of comedy’s most valuable performers. I allow Jason to define MVP his own way, while I have mine (which dates back to a 2010 counterpoint I wrote to Bill Simmons, who attempted to rewrite comedy history from 1975-2010). Anyhow. The first and best and perhaps only reply came from the one and only Marc Maron, whose pushback I felt immediately. “Yeah. Great, Sean. Just what comedy needs. Make it more like a sport.”