The World’s Compost Authority

Irwin Corey, who was reportedly funny at some point, has died at the age of 102. As a stand-up comic, film actor and activist, Corey was renowned for his unscripted, improvisational style, which convinced Lenny Bruce that Corey was "one of the most brilliant comedians of all time.” It is worth noting that Bruce ingested enough drugs to kill a wildebeest. Corey’s best known shtick was his Professor character, wearing a black swallowtail coat, string tie and sneakers, which he also appeared to have used to comb his hair, and spouting long streams of nonsense and doublespeak. Offstage, the lefty supported Cubans, cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the American Communist Party. He was blacklisted in the 1950s and claimed that dogged the rest of his career. He appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982 and never returned, which he attributed to the blacklist, which makes sense with the notoriously establishment-friendly Letterman. In 1974, Corey accepted the National Book Award on behalf of the publicity-averse Thomas Pynchon, with many thinking they were finally seeing the reclusive author, only to be confused by his mangled syntax and bad jokes. Perhaps his best bit came at the end of his life as he was living in a $3.5 million-dollar house in New York while panhandling for change from motorists exiting the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, then donating the change to charity.