Trevor Moore’s Abraham Lincoln Sketch Is One Of The Funniest Things On The Internet
The pioneering comedian passed away over the weekend, leaving this as his magnum opus.
Over the weekend, Trevor Moore of the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U Know died following an unspecified accident. He was 41.
Moore had a long and illustrious career as a comedian. In 2002, he joined the writing cast of Saturday Night Live as part of an internship that was meant to last a single semester — due to Moore’s comedic chops, he stayed there for an entire year. After honing his surrealist, unique skills, he formed the Whitest Kids U Know with a group of his friends, eventually turning their stand-up sets into an acclaimed and long-running television series.
Wherever you dip with Moore’s work, you’re sure to find gold. There’s the exceptional ‘Gallon of PCP’ sketch, a send-up of awkward run-ins with old college pals that morphs into a diatribe about blood-thirsting drug-runners and felony crimes.
There’s the genuinely boundary-pushing monologue about the one sentence you can’t say on television, a work of art that takes a significant personal risk the likes of which most comedians wouldn’t even dare to sidle up to.
There’s the glorious lunacy of the Opposite Day sketch, in which a beleaguered lawyer resorts to increasingly childlike tricks in order to help his definitely guilty defendant get off Scott free.
And there’s the very simple joy of a very stupid astronaut who can’t wait to until he gets to space in order to open a series of increasingly ludicrous food items.
But perhaps none of these sketches can hold a candle to Moore’s finest work as a comedian, the exceptional “real story” of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
The short scene shows off everything that is great about Moore and the Whitest Kids U Know. It’s a simple premise — what if Lincoln was an absolute dick? — taken to new and strange places, pushed past the point of respectability and into a colourful world entirely of its own making. How can you not laugh at the President hollering “ho, acty!” at performers that he has been resolutely talking over the top of, only to get his ass beaten with a hammer? It’s revisionist history of the highest order, and the blueprint for everything from Drunk Histories to the hysterical yet human inanity of I Think You Should Leave.
Watch it and have your day immediately made: