collected wisdom

clearly this is just for me. Metaphors and not similes. Every joke has a victim. Build with tags and dont finish with them. Speed, volume, pacing, confidence

today in bjj i learned

this is not about comedy, but it is something i want to write down for later. Today in bjj i learned two sweeps: a pendulum sweep, and a hipbump sweep (remember to plant your hand down on the hip bump). In both cases i need to work on pulling my opponent further forward. I also learned a guard pass, stacking the opponent and moving to side control, and then a pass to mount.

Stay in the Pocket

I was at an open mic a few weeks ago, and this local comedian Brad Brake came in. This guy is a headliner, has been doing comedy for years, and is crazy and unpredictable. Hes known to take his pants off a lot on stage, do crazy audience interaction shit, whatever. Anyway, he came into this thing, and he was yelling at comedians to "stay in the pocket". I couldnt tell if he was drunk. At the time, I just thought that this was something ridiculous he was yelling. The more i think about it, the more i like the metaphor of comedian as quarterback, staying in the pocket. To me, this means you take your time with your jokes. You dont get desperate. Eventually you get the metaphorical ball to your receivers; the audience. Sometimes no one is open, and you take a coverage sack. But you dont force it, you dont scramble unless you have to.

Audience Participation

I was at TCC last night. The first comic up was this super sweet, super weird guy named Skippy. His sets are manic and high energy and scatterbrained at the best of times. They almost always involve him yelling "ram it in skippy" with no context while slapping his own ass. Yesterday was apparently his one year anniversary in comedy, so he put on a gladiators costume, giant gloves, an afro wig, had somebody blow bubbles, and made a giant penis pinata full of candy that he had somebody break open with a handled penis dildo. He played music in the background, and he had a blow up doll that he left in the front row. A large part of comedy is preparation. There was a couple in the back, and the woman was yelling at him to get off the stage for a decent part of his performance. She kept loudly saying "this isnt new york city". It was odd that she was saying that, because the only place in the world that i can think of where its acceptable to yell a comedian off stage is the apollo theater in new york city. I came over and talked to her a bit and she calmed down, and was (mostly) quiet for the rest of the show. The vast majority of audience members at these shows are quiet (ish), and sometimes attentive, and on rare occasion they even laugh. However, some people try to be a part of the show. I did this when i was going to my first open mics. I felt engaged, so i figured that i got to be a part of it, especially if i had something funny to yell. Thats just not how it works. As an audience member, youre like an extra in a movie scene. Your job is to be quiet in the background. The comic has a (rough) script of how their set is going to go, and if you decide to give yourself a speaking part, you are deviating from and derailing that script. Its great that you want to be funny, but ultimately its the comedian who is responsible for how entertained the audience is while he is on stage, so even if what you say cracks everyone up, youve quite possibly fucked up the rest of the time that he is on stage. We have a term for people yelling things from the audience. The term is heckling. That doesnt just apply to yelling negative things at the comedian, its anything at all. Dont do it.

ego, continued

I talked to some comics at the open mic last night. Its a little unusual for me to ask people for advice, but thats exactly what ive been doing. If youre in comedy, and i respect your opinion (and sometimes even if i dont) i want to hear what you have to say to me. Some of it was bullshit ("there are no bad audiences. Its your job as a comic to get their attention and make them laugh, no matter what"... yes. thank you) and some of it was really useful. Some of the stuff that stuck was that its REALLY important to make a connection with your audience, to get them to like you. The thing that was most useful to my current situation is that its not always a good thing to advance faster than youre ready for, because if it goes poorly, you dont get a chance again for a long time. Talked to a guy named Jeremy Whitman, who has been doing comedy for 10 years. He said that somehow or other he got into SICC after two years and just wasnt ready. He was all cocky, and got his ass kicked. So that helped me put things in perspective a bit. A number of people talked to me about patience. Im starting to think that maybe i dont need to go to the bad open mics. I can probably get by on 3-4 open mics a week instead of 7. Parker asked me how missing open mics would help me get better, and i guess that the answer is that in the long run it helps me get better by keeping me enthusiastic about comedy, and my place in it.

Ego

Its hard to let go of the ego, because thats why i do most of what i do. I do comedy for the rush of making people laugh, and the pure ego-stroking joy of hearing people tell me im funny, or that i had a good set. In this sense i am like every other comedian out there. So its hard to let go of the ego when I cant get booked, or get the recognition I feel that i "deserve". This spills over into poker as well. Im supposed to be playing poker to make money. Actually, money is probably the third or fourth reason that i play poker. For the most part, i play poker to impress people. Its alright (to some extent) that my reasoning for poker is fucked up, because impressing people and maximizing profits tend to dovetail a bit, and many of my opponents are playing for even worse reasons (they want to gamble). New topic: Did a showcase to get into the SICC a couple days ago, I think that it went really well. It was probably the best set that ive ever done. I made a real effort to connect my jokes and segue between them. It felt polished. I got good laughs throughout. I experimented a bit with just pausing after some of the sillier punchlines and flashing a big, cheesy, kind of rueful smile at the audience and they seemed to love it. I went up the next day (yesterday) for what was basically a crappy audience and still managed to do well. New topic: I find myself with a bit of a dilemma. I have all of this free time, but everything that i want to do happens during the evening. The evening is when the comedy shows are. Its also when the poker games get good. Its also when people want to go rock climbing. Its also when people want to hang out and do other stuff. So I have these free afternoons, when I just fuck around and do nothing, and then three things to do at once every evening. I should be climbing in the afternoons, but its harder for me to climb by myself, because (see above) a lot of the joy i get out of climbing is impressing the people im climbing with. That probably sounds pathetic, but I think that a lot of our true motivations are. Im OK with the fact that im a social animal, and that there are hierarchies in each environment i find myself in. New topic: Ive been intensely annoyed that people have been flaking on me for various plans recently. There are various levels of this. From the least annoying: canceling with plenty of warning and a good excuse; to showing up very late; to canceling at the last minute; to not showing up or saying anything at all, which is usually enough to make me want to kill you. It seems inconsiderate, and disrespectful. I try not to take it personally, because I understand that thats how that person is; not just to me but to everyone. That thought doesnt help that much. It makes me less interested in making plans with them. The problem is that the types of people who are weird and interesting and capable of surprising me tend to be the same type of people who suck at getting to places theyre supposed to be, and are too wrapped up in themselves to fix it. God knows ive been guilty of this before. Last topic: Speaking of ego: there was some out of town comic at the open mic last night. He came on and talked about how he had writing credits (I looked it up, 4 episodes of MAD TV) that they hadnt mentioned, and that hed been in movies. He did a pretty good/funny Cosby impression (he was an older black guy) which is kind of hack, but was well executed. Then he rambled, got the light, SAID "oh shit, ive only got a minute", then launched into a long story that could have never concluded in a minute. Somewhere around 30 seconds over time, the host turned on the music and played him off. I heard him upstairs afterward complaining about how you should never play off a big timer like him. Fuck you dude. Thank you for being there as a reminder to keep my ego in check. This isnt your city, nobody knows who you are, and you arent that funny. You want special treatment, you need to at least talk to somebody about it first. Welcome to seattle.

Breaking Through

This was going to be a chronicle of my journey into stand up comedy. Ive journeyed for a while now without bothering to chronicle. For a while I was frustrated that I wasnt getting more recognition, wasnt getting booked for gigs, wasnt getting invited to eat at the grown up table. I saw people who did worse at open mics getting booked for shows, while I and other people I thought were funny got nothing. Im learning how much of this is socializing/ shmoozing; probably about 80%. Im starting to get there. Last week there was a woman at an open mic looking for comedians to work a show she was organizing. I volunteered, and apparently thats all it takes some times. Did that show (hula hula comedy/karaoke) yesterday, and another comic who was there who has definitely seen me on stage at least a dozen times told me that he wants me on his next showcase in september. I dont know if this is based on the strength of my set yesterday, or just because we got to talking a bit. I hit a nice little personal milestone. The VERY first time I did stand up was at the odd duck. There was one non-comic and 4 comics in the audience. I did three minutes and got one laugh on one joke. It was a horrifying experience. Last thursday I went back for the first time. There were two non-comics in the audience and 4 comics. I did ten minutes (actually 11, but I was supposed to do 10), and every single joke landed. All of them. It feels great to go in front of a great audience and get a ton of laughs, but it also feels really good to go in front of a tough audience, when other comics arent doing well, and do well. Tomorrow I head down to the Royal in Olympia with Billy and Patrick and some guy named Jeff who is a bartender at the underground. Gonna do the same 10-12 minutes that ive done at these last couple of gigs. I expect it to go really well. I feel like I can definitely refine this chunk of material, but I also feel like its solid. I have a good ten minutes that I have in my back pocket. Time to write more. Time to work on the next ten minutes. When Im in the right state of mind, I can be quite prolific. Generally Ill write a lot on a subject, then throw out the weak part and im left with some thing decent. Ive also found that the more I do, the more I live life, the more material there is. Laying in bed and writing blogs doesnt run you into the unfamiliar and the odd. Time to go do something worth making fun of. ALSO: heres video of me from Hula Hula. Kelly asked us for plugs, which is the only reason I would tell a bunch of people in belltown that I was appearing an hour away in a couple of days (and doing almost exactly the same material) Chris Leher, a fellow comic, was kind enough to film this https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3jFe0FZRbnJQm9yc281Q1Zoelk/edit?pli=1#

I've been writin this blog for myself, and neglecting my readership. Let me say this: if you are reading this, you are wonderful, and I want to make love to you on top of a conference table, while the people in the next room over wonder what all the noise is next door. I want to travel back in time with you and show our younger selves how much more and less we are then we thought wed be. Then we'd go hang out with ol dirty bastard when he was 14. If you're reading this i want to thank your brain and eyeballs for their diligent and dedicated service. Most of all, if you're reading this I want you to know that I'll be back in Seattle tonight with my cock, my time machine, and a thick wad of cash. If you're readin this: I'm goin to fuck you until the screws rip out of the wall, the bed collapses in a pile of splinters, and the neighbors write a formal complaint to their congressman. Mom: I hope you're not reading this. If you are, none of the above applies to you

A newish leaf

In the beginning, Id get so annoyed at comics who would do the same material over and over. Now I aspire to be that guy. There are several things:
1: It helps to polish your old material, so you have it down pat when you need it for an actual show
2. It feel really good to have people really laugh throughout your whole set. Bombing sucks.
3. In case any comedians or bookers or whatever happen to actually pay attention, its helpful if youre doing your better stuff.

Point 3 is really starting to sink in for me. Comics wont laugh at your shit anyway, they just react to the crowds reaction.

Went up at TCC tonight and KILLED. I did wutang (20) / fists (30) / bathrooms (50) / (short callback on bathrooms) / naughty republican (60) / fisting (90). Audience reaction was great. Theres something amazing about how fisting builds on itself, after those pauses... people are just so shocked when i come back in with the next part. I got actual cheering -- not polite applause when i finished my set. Felt amazing. Im going to keep doing the same 10 or so jokes with slight variation until ive done every damn show around.

Jack FM contest at Parlor

I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to put together a "clean" 3 minute set for the Jack FM contest. I planned to dedicate some part of the afternoon to it, but then i took a 4 hour nap. Got to the venue and worked on a list of jokes, solidified it, and then found out that their idea of "clean" was just no F-bombs or other dirty words. Decided to save the fisting jokes anyway, and did Wutang (abridged) / I see fists / amish scifi / jews for jesus / circumcised mormons / naughty republican. Thats a lot of jewish material. I was up 31st, and was in and out of the room, trying to nail down and remember my jokes and segues in the proper order. Because of this, I didnt really get to see too many of the other comics, but from what I saw, nobody was getting great crowd reaction. Then I went up there and killed it.

I really like the lighting at parlor. The stage is lit enough to put the focus on the comedian and see him/her clearly, but its also possible to see the people in the audience from the stage. I love being able to see people react to the jokes; its so much more like being funny in real life, and you feed off of that energy.

Other comics have been telling me this (especially Billy): you start off nice and clean and friendly and self-effacing and you build up good will. Then at the end you hit them with the dirtier stuff and they dont feel bad about it because they already like you. Thats how it went tonight. I added a couple nice elements to pre-existing jokes. On the circumcising mormons I added: Id just drive around with a shovel, looking at those "Im a mormon" signs, thinking "yeah, youre a mormon now. Wait till I get to you". On naughty republican, the line "how whitebread do you need to be before I look like a rebellious sexual choice?" always gets a big laugh, so I added: "thanks for agreeing that im sexually uninteresting". Very much a Myq Kaplan style tag.

I had two people come up to me to compliment me on my tuesday Jai Thai set, which I didnt even think was very good. I debuted the pinata joke, which got very little response, but im pretty sure that joke is a winner and im going to keep working on it.

Take a topic 1: carrots

Im taking clean, non-humorous topics, going to wikipedia, and writing as many jokes as possible. The first is carrots. Some of these jokes arent that great, but im not censoring too much. I may just post the next topic as a response to this post.

1) Carrots contain vitamin D, which helps prevent depression. Thats why bugs bunny is always so fucking chipper, even though elmer fudd is trying to kill him [ok, looks like i made the first part up]

2) Do you think that carrots are mad at oranges for getting to be the color? Why arent oranges carrot?

3) There are purple, yellow, white and even red carrots, but you never see or hear about them due to the inherent racism in the system.

4) The domestic carrot has been selectively bred for its greatly enlarged and more palatable, less woody-textured edible taproot. How come its ok to breed carrots to be delicious, but when I try to do it with people...

5) If you eat too many carrots, your skin will turn orange. This is how they made oompaloompas before spray tan was invented

6) Some ancient peoples used to refer to carrots as "devils-plague". None of these people were good christians. Its hard to be frightened of hell when you think theyre going to torture you with carrots for eternity

7) The city of Holtville, California, promotes itself as "Carrot Capital of the World". The title is almost entirely ceremonial. There is no real carrot-power in holtville.

8) Carrots can be stored for several months in the refrigerator or over winter in moist sand in a cool place. If its easier for you to get moist sand in a cool place than a refrigerator, then just go ahead and eat the carrot.

9) Almost half of the worlds carrots are produced by the chinese, which isnt surprising, because they are assholes.


I think #s 4, 5 and 7 are the best, but none is particularly hilarious. Its fun to just write though. On a total side note: I want to work on incorporating a hilarious segue or topic change into a set.

I almost forgot

these have to be the worst blog post titles ever. Some guy did a bit today where you kept expecting him to say something, but he just never got there, and it built this pressure that was hilarious. So im going to try and work that into a joke. That and misdirection.

I love PROK

probably the best open mic in seattle. Cozy room, no bright lights in your eyes. Always at least half a dozen humans (non-comics). The host said that he was going to rate everybody as a Nicolas Cage movie, and I was rated as Face Off, which is... high praise.

I started with the following. "A friend of mine just posted about a car accident on face book. He said that the car is totaled, but he is completely fine. Im not sure that the "like" button is nuanced enough for this situation, it could be taken the wrong way". Then I did wutang / fists / martin luther / naughty republican / Amish Sci Fi / smoking. I think smoking is totally great, although it very much reminds me of the Louis CK bit about his ankle at the doctor.

gonna just post this now so as not to let it evaporate

catching up

Apparently the well has run dry in terms of writing new material. I must say, Ive been rather distracted this past week.

tuesday was jai thai. I tried match.com, got heckled out of it. Did some stuff with the hecklers, then martin luther, amish scifi, and the matrix

wednesday was TCC, not really sure what i did. I know martin luther was in there cause it didnt really go. Oh! Thats right, I did I see fists, and then led into fisting. That was fun. Also did amish scifi and a gazillion callbacks

Thursday was TCU, and a horrible small crowd. Everyone ahead of my bombed. I did wutang/fists/amish scifi/juggalos/be the change/ and circumcising mormons.

Next wednesday im gonna try the JACK FM contest at parlor, so I need to develop a clean 3 minute set. My plan is wutang (without the word fuck) / fists / naughty republican / amish scifi / juggalos / predator. Im gonna try it out at PROK tonight, nothing new, oh well.

Terrorist fist jabs of love

Did Bump List at Benders for the first night and crushed. Crowd was great. Im enjoying the challenge of placing at least one callback in each set. Tonight, I did two. Nigel Larsen was up before me and did a joke about people telling him he doesnt sound like hes from NY, so I did my "you look like a stand up comic from NY" for the first time. At the beginning of the show, the hosts kept saying something about "white titties" so I did the "I see fists" joke, and then ended it by saying "I dont see white titties; I just see titties. I judge titties by the content of their character, like Martin Luther King taught us".

Then I launched from fists into the fisting material, which got a great reaction. I lost myself a bit on remembering it, but it still killed. So, to recap. Comic in NY / I see fists / fisting.

well, so much for that

i had a long post written out, and then this page got refreshed and it disappeared. Heres what ive been thinking about. There are a lot of different elements to being "funny" onstage. Im gonna call them humor, wit, and funniness. Maybe funniness could be changed to presentation. And i could subcategorize these all day. The point is that some people are just naturally funny. Funny looking, likable, funny physically, good timing, charimsatic. And the simple fact is, im not that funny. I have very little of those previous things going for me.

I am somewhat humorous. I can craft a joke pretty well. I have an instinct for when a subject is going to be funny somehow, and then i can go back and try to find whats funny about it. Honestly, im nothing special in this department. My strongest area has to be the wit. By wit i mean quick ability to react humorously and honestly to a situation. This is what i have going for me. Im inclined to test it out with crowd work, improv, and just throwing myself in dangerous comedic situations and seeing if i drown. I might not be ready for this yet, but its something im gonna start testing out soon. Ill try to work on getting funnier too.

crushed

Show went great. I talked shop with a comic for a few minutes before, and learned a bit more about local open mics. Did the jokes I was planning on, plus predator and a couple of little riffs on other comics. Timing was good, crowd reaction was good. There was a girl kind of drunkenly yelling earlier on in the night, and i was looking forward to intereacting with her, but she left. Looking forward to performing with Tom tomorrow.

Scary car: a raccoon in a wedding dress

Tonight will probably be tacoma comedy club. Last week went well. I did wutang/juggalos/gang signs/pizza, and it went over great. Tonight im planning on doing: i see fists (20)/naughty republican (45)/ jews for jesus (20) / dead mormons (20)/circumcision law (60). Thats 2:45 which seems about right for a 3 minute set. If the crowd is really interactive i may try: how much herpes (45) again. If the guy fucks up my name again, I may just try and do the whole set on my name, but that stuff isnt really ready yet. I have maybe 105 seconds on that, assuming I can remember it all.

Perhaps a hack

Showed up an hour early for the Jai Thai show by accident, so i wandered down to the crescent where another open mic was going on. They let me just wander up without signing up ahead of time. I tried a mix of old and new stuff. One joke went particularly well: I lead off by saying "How much herpes... is the right amount of herpes to have?" and this guy yells "None!" and I say, "Some people say none. I say, stop yelling your answer in the middle of my joke." Adlibs, bitches! I got 'em.

I told the transvestite prostitute story; it got laughs in places, but it still needs a better ending. The phrase "lady-penis" isnt as funny as id hoped. I came up with a joke in between the two shows: I hooked up with a girl in oregon last year, and afterwards she rolled over, looked me deep in the eye, and said "if my dad only knew that i just had sex with a jewish democrat". Now how whitebread do you need to be before i represent a rebellious sexual choice? I think that joke can work, i just need to work on it a bit more.

Tried the joke about tourettes at a clan rally and it completely failed. Told the joke about getting beaten up by both races in high school and it got a big laugh. Very pleased about that. I also told the To Catch a Predator joke because i wanted to add something to it about pedophiles being like pokemon. This comic who I think is hilarious comes up to me after the show, and I think hes about to tell me how funny I was. He says, you know that to catch a predator joke? That was on robot chicken, its the same almost word for word. Fuck. I go and look it up, and it isnt even CLOSE to the same. There ARE a couple videos on youtube of someone making the same general joke, but they go in vaguely different directions with it.

Make those fuckers laugh

OK. From now on this is a blog about my attempts at stand up comedy. Ive been at this for just over a month now. Ive done about a dozen open mics. Its rough. Im still nervous on the stage. I dont interact with the crowd enough. I dont make use of the space. I dont incorporate those theatrical elements that i see working so well for other people. Thats the bad stuff. I think my material is good; im putting a lot of time and energy into thinking about jokes. Im getting laughs; maybe not as many as I would like, but theyre there. Im able to come up with new material much quicker than most of the other comics. I can usually riff off of stuff that other comics do or say.

Tomorrow is the tuesday open mic at Jai Thai. Last week didnt go so well. On the one hand, I know that these are open mics, and that this is the place where im supposed to get the kinks out and fuck up. On the other hand, I dont want the other comics (who comprise 80% of an open mic audience) to write me off. There are several comics who I know are going to be awful every time and who I simply tune out when theyre on stage. I dont want people doing that to me.

Here are the rough beginnings of the jokes im working on today:

-I got beaten up equally by black kids and white kids in high school. I dont see race, I just see fists

-Jesse's doctor broke the news to him that he wont be able to jazzercise ever again with his bad ankles

-Pedophiles are like pokemon. Youve gotta catch em all, and theyre both trying to appeal to that same age demographic

I also want to tell the story about the guy looking for the transvestite prostitutes. I just need to settle on an ending that works and gets me out of the story on a funny note.

Gonna make an effort to shmooze a bit more and to be a bit more relaxed on stage. Hopefully ill break a leg.