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Mel Gibson: The Twitter comedy gift that keeps on giving

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I know that millions of fans relish following Justin Bieber on Twitter, hearing all about his bromance with Kanye West, but for me, the real Twitter art form is comedy. With only 140 characters to work with, your jokes have to be sharp, short and salty. It’s like writing comic haikus. For a gag writer, it’s like crafting jokes for David Letterman, except for the fact that the material has to be tight as a drum--and of course the gig doesn’t pay as well.

I don’t know who the comic geniuses are behind Real_Mel Gibson, but when it comes to Twitter humor, it’s the form at its best. First you have a wonderful subject: the bigger-than-life Hollywood star who has self-destructed before our very eyes, thanks to the tapes of his chest-heaving rants and threats against his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. But when it comes to humor, Twitter is the Web’s own version of a sitcom, allowing us to follow a character as it takes on new and different comic dimensions. The humor is all in hearing what Mel Gibson would’ve said or thought about a particular topic, but in his own voice, or at least the voice that we imagine hearing from a sadly self-destructive star in eclipse. And yet it’s simple: All you need to know about Gibson is that he’s had problems with booze, women and his self image--and all the jokes make perfect sense.

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One tweet, for example, simply said, ‘Do we really have to call it that?’ It was followed by a link to an IMDB post about Edward Furlong’s estranged wife obtaining a temporary restraining order against the actor for leaving threatening voice messages on her phone. The article’s headline: ‘Terminator Star Restrained for Pulling a Mel Gibson.’ Another recent tweet provided a link to the Twitter topic: ‘#wordsthatleadtotrouble,’ adding what Mel would’ve surely thought were the words that applied to him: ‘Honey, do I hear a tape recorder in the background?’

Here’s a few recent Real_MelGibson tweets that best capture its barbed comic sensibility. All you have to do is imagine hearing Gibson saying them:

-- I regret saying the Jews are responsible for all history’s wars, OK? But they ARE responsible for Vampires Suck. And that’s worse.

-- Whoever said ‘Money can’t buy everything’ didn’t have enough of it to accurately make that statement. Trust me. I own a Kangaroo.

-- They say you learn something new everyday. Today I learned that you CAN overdose on Flintstones Vitamins...It takes 6 bottles.

-- You know why we can never have a woman President? Well, let’s just say, it wasn’t men that made Eat, Pray, Love #2 at the Box Office.

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-- Either I just took too many mushrooms or Gollum from Lord of the Rings is actually sitting on my couch watching reruns of the sitcom Coach.

-- Just got some blood drawn. Doc said he’d never seen such a high alcohol to blood concentration. I was like, You should see me on a weekend.

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