This Friday night, IFC airs “Zach Galifianakis Wears Rolled Khakis And Shoes With Brown Laces,” the 100th episode of its absurdist quasi-talk show Comedy Bang! Bang! This is quite an impressive accomplishment for any series, let alone one so stubbornly odd and opaque as this one. And yet, even over the course of five seasons of celebrity-enhanced, cheerfully surrealist, basic cable shenanigans, the person in charge of the show’s chyrons has never bothered to learn how to spell preppy, sweater-loving host Scott Aukerman’s name correctly. Shouldn’t that have been covered during orientation? Apparently, it wasn’t. Over the course of 100 episodes, Aukerman’s name has been mangled in 100 different, usually amusing ways. It helps to undercut the host a little and keep him humble, lest this posh gig go to his head.
Week after week, the superimposed caption presents a new bastardization of Aukerman’s moniker. He might be “Cop Swapperman” or “Mauve Sweaterman” or even “Not Letterman.” Think of it as Comedy Bang! Bang!’s answer to the “couch gag” or the “chalkboard gag” on The Simpsons. Sometimes, the chyron is matched to the theme of a particular episode. For the second season premiere, for instance, the host was “Second Seasonman.” More often, though, it’s just random nonsense, like “Font Jokerman.” In honor of the series reaching the 100 episode mark, IFC has assembled a four-minute supercut of all Aukerman’s many, many nicknames.
One person who definitely does know Aukerman’s name is Aukerman himself. He says it over and over again in this video, nearly always in the same genial tone of voice, while looking directly into the camera: “I’m Scott Aukerman. I’m Scott Aukerman. I’m Scott Aukerman.” Repeat until the end of time. Hearing him say the phrase repeatedly for four solid minutes has an almost hypnotic effect. “I’m Scott Aukerman” becomes a strange kind of mantra. The words themselves lose meaning and are reduced to pure sound. In that respect, this supercut makes a nice companion piece to the infamous “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall.”