removed, thanks for the advice all!
removed, thanks for the advice all!
Last edited by attwla; June 12, 2010 at 4:59 PM.
Sounds good to me. You and that guy with the invalid brother should get a comedy act going.
You're scraping the bottom of the long empty midget jokes barrel with this one.Originally Posted by attwla
And "5 1/2 notches on bed post"? Ick. It screams 19 year old frat boy.
This isn't a joke. Not yet, anyway. It's an observation waiting for you to turn it into a joke.
Is the gym a big part of your life? If so, then keep working on your observations here...but it seems to me that "gym culture" is 20-30 years old...and observations about the gym were probably worked to death during the "funny suspenders" era of stand-up comedy.
So, if you're not a gym rat with very precise and specifically original observations on the gym, there's likely to be little gained by trying to digging this topic up.
Good luck trying not to sound like an asshole telling this.
Good luck not sounding racist when you try this one!
BOTTOM LINE: Almost every observation on every topic has been tried by someone, somewhere in some context. What's going to make what you do "yours" is how you do it...how you incorporate your unique, original observations with your unique, original perspective that can surprise an audience with a revelation that makes them laugh...
So, posting a list of topics, potential premises and general observations isn't going to do you much good. And if you're really an absolute beginner when it comes to stand-up, don't sweat your first efforts of material too much--because once you learn what actually works for you on stage, you're going to write far better material than what you THINK would work for you...and it's best not to get too precious about how clever you think your original material is...
And no one is better at letting you know if some of your material is too close to the material that other comics have done...than the other comics who you meet at the open mics you'll be going to regularly.
pg--Oh, if you were looking for blind validation and praise for your being clever...get used to not being able to feed that hunger for awhile. Beginning comedy is not the best way to bolster your ego. Comedy crushes hopes and dreams without mercy. Best to assume that right from the start.--bridgetown
Last edited by pg13; April 23, 2010 at 2:28 AM. Reason: Forgot a tag.
We'll just take the fact that this was too long and that you didn't read it...as read.
^^ I love pg13!!! He's so honest and raw but instead of scaring you to not want to try comedy he inspires you to challenge yourself and your comedic insight.
I know, right? I was just going to say 'Those suck', but PG's input was more helpful.
Bob LaRitchie, Brian's Friend
edited
Last edited by attwla; June 12, 2010 at 4:59 PM.
Just go out and do it, man. I tend to agree with pg on a lot of your premises, but the bottom line is that you have to just go out and do it. The approval or disapproval of AST is not going to make or break you as a comic. Your ability or inability to make an audience laugh consistently will do that.
Go out, do some open mics, maybe get one of them on video, then post it here and maybe some of us will have more to say. But just looking at words on a screen...almost anything looks unfunny that way.
i thought the wheelchair joke was the best one but i'm kind of an asshole
Rather than just toss out a bunch of one liners, maybe try to link all those together into some sort of 'personal' narrative, whether it's truly personal or not.
And please don't come out of the gate with a 'my dad's an X, my mom's a Y, I guess that makes me a Z' joke.
people offering you gym advice outside the gym when you tell them you work out because it doesn't look like you work out
Yeah, I think there's ways this could work, but the key is finding it, I think one way this might work in a basic way.
I work out
You're doing it wrong!
Like Pg said, it's a bit useless doubting your material before you go on stage your first time.
Something in the vein of Todd Glass' bit about people telling you that you like tired?
I think a big part of the problem with all of these is, as Supa already mentioned, that they're not narrative. This is standup comedy as it was before the Bruce/Carlin/Pryor revolution. Trenchant, occasionally observational, sometimes even funny and/or original, but totally impersonal (I think I just now comprehended the significance of the title of PFT's first album--I'm dumb) and not very creatively rewarding. It's not art, it's journalism.
The difficult-to-accept reality seems to be that there aren't a whole lot of original premises left anymore. Most of what makes a comic original is his or her ability to personalize the premise, while also maintaining its accessibility to the listener. You can't just write jokes, you have to tell stories and be a communicator and have a persona and some consistency.
I'm pretty sure it was a member of this forum that said, at some point, maybe to me, probably to someone else, that effectiveness in the form is one-third joke-writing, one-third storytelling, and one-third delivery (which takes us back to my earlier post saying that not much critiquing can be done from dead, inert words on a screen.) Either someone on this forum said that, or I'm saying it now. But I'm pretty sure someone else said it.
Oh, no comic starts out telling stories. Some comics eventually migrate in that direction (for various reasons), but few if any novice comics have mastered the form sufficiently to tell a true story faithfully while simultaneously getting enough laughs to make the performance worthwhile as stand-up. (And that's just on the writing end -- performance is another matter entirely.)
I'd also challenge your assertion that storytelling is somehow a "higher" form of stand-up than others. It's better for doing some things, and worse for doing others. It certainly gets the performer right out there in front of the narrative, generally making it a lot easier to build some kind of connection with the audience. But it's a very strict form for structure -- there are a lot of pacing things you can't do with it, because you have to get the details in there. (That's another reason it tends to be veteran comics who gravitate to story-telling: it's a lot easier to do when the audience is paying attention and trusts that all this is going somewhere. One part veteran stage presence, one part veteran name recognition.)
But plenty of the best comics out there don't tell stories, or don't tell stories which are to be taken literally. Make your own list. Harrumph.
I think what you're trying to say isn't that there isn't a "story". It's that there isn't a joke there. Jokes don't have to be narrative in format -- they don't have to be "here's a thing that happened to me", or even "here's a thing that happened to me (but we both know it really didn't." Jokes can be "hey, here's a thing I believe (which I may or may not really believe)" -- that's just as artistically valid. In some ways, more so. (The telling of literally true stories has its own artistic pitfalls.)
But there has to be SOMETHING there. If not a premise people haven't heard before (the "there's nothing new to talk about" line is bullshit, by the way -- there are millions of things to talk about, it's just that most people seem to keep going back to the same four or five and acting shocked they've been picked clean), then at least a novel opinion, a clever turn of phrase, something.
A hint to start -- if you expect your audience to agree with you when you say something, it's probably been said before. "Yes, that's right, I DO believe that!" is one of the worst reactions you can get from a crowd. Figure out what structures your view of the world, what worries you, what fascinates you that doesn't structure, worry or fascinate anyone else -- start from there.
(I'm not saying to be a contrarian or anything -- that works in small doses, but people who are up there trying to be shocking all the time are invariably utterly tedious. Think what you believe, or at least fancy, that's ADJACENT to what people believe -- things other people generally have no opinion on. That's where you work from -- you always want to understand what you're talking about better than your audience does.
Which is another reason a lot of comics end up talking about stories from their lives. It's hard to doubt a premise like that. If I say "I don't like butterflies", people can say "I DO like butterflies, how dare you?" or "I don't like them either, tell me something I don't know" or "I don't believe you really don't like butterflies, and this affects my ability to be immersed in your act."
But if you say "my wife and I went to a place and this weird thing happened to us," the first two objections get closed off. And if it's a true story and you tell it well, that removes the third. Of course, people can still say "this isn't funny" or "this isn't an interesting story" or "you're a jerk", but...
Eh. Rambling!
Erik Charles Nielsen is a moderately funny fellow... right?
I guess "storytelling" was too specific. By storytelling, I was kind of referring to a broader thing. For example, PFT's bit about the canned peanut brittle. Not true, PFT isn't even pretending that it's true, but it's storytelling in a certain sense. So I guess what I mean is just extensiveness. I don't know.
I don't think that there are that many genuinely original premises left. I didn't say there's nothing new to say or nothing new to talk about. I wasn't trying to make excuses for some awful standup comedy that I'm about to unleash on the forum. I just don't think that many of the premises that are still available are truly uncharted. Not even most of the premises that the comics I like use are truly uncharted. But frankly, I feel kind of attacked and am not really up for fighting you, so let's just agree to disagree.
I don't know why you'd feel "attacked." That certainly wasn't my intent.
Erik Charles Nielsen is a moderately funny fellow... right?
I just didn't feel like our friendship had progressed to the level of calling each other's ideas "bullshit" yet. So it seemed aggressive. But if that wasn't your intent, then that's cool.
Oh boy
It would be an attack if the notion that there's nothing really new to talk about was in fact originated by you. It's a very old idea, the court jester probably complained about it. Recognize the posts that are meant to make you feel bad about yourself, they have the name "scamboogah" to the left of them.
It would be incredibly ironic if the notion that there's nothing really new to talk about was in fact originated by you.
But yeah, that didn't strike me as an idea for which you were claiming credit, or even an idea for which you were claiming a deep personal belief. It seemed you were sort of tossing it out as a reassuring-type adage or cliche -- "you know, people say this, so don't worry." Sorry if I misinterpreted that.
Erik Charles Nielsen is a moderately funny fellow... right?
Good, we're back at Defcon 5 and Matthew Broderick can go home.
AT&TWLA go and do your jokes, get your feet wet and let us know how it went. Keep in mind standup comedy is meant to be heard. If Brian Regan was an unknown and said hey guys check out these jokes I wrote we probably would just shrug our shoulders..that is until he performed his 'act'
Last edited by funkyrhino; May 24, 2010 at 5:57 PM.
white folks ya'll do this...not in my hood!! In my hood we...(insert black reference)
Do what you think is funny and practice it. Then think about it. Record your performance before you go up to be objective and see yourself so that you can make adjustments (if you're fidgety, use your hands too much, not enough, statue, etc). If you fail, take it as a learning experience that you can try something else with that joke or add a different punchline. If your 1st time is not on Lettterman, don't worry too much. Also take the advice of Bill Burr and don't tell anyone you know about this comedy attempt. If you bomb, it's better to bomb in front of strangers. Good luck.
I checked out some self-help audio tapes on how to get over procrastination from the library. I've been meaning to take them back, they're like 3 months past due.
...and then I found ten dollars.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote