Month: December 2015

Young Louis C.K. Video

Writing “Young Louis” reminds me of “Young Link.” Like, from video games. Which makes me think: “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if there was a comedian video game? You know, where like you go to clubs every night and try out jokes for ten years and then you go on late night and bomb? No, you’re right – that probably wouldn’t be fun.”

I’d still love to see an animated “Young Louis” though.

Well, here’s a clip of Young Louis doing a set when he still had all his hair. Part of him certainly sounds like he does today, but there are lots of differences too.

 

 

Some Interesting Reddit Threads On Comedy

I found some cool threads over the past several days. The first one is called What comedian do you find terribly unfunny? and it’s pretty funny to hear what people tend to say. It reminds me of the article I wrote about how people can find very different things funny or not. It’s always interesting to see which names come up more often and hilarious to see how angry people get trying to argue who isn’t funny. It isn’t that serious…

I also saw this other thread: ELI5: What makes our brains go “that was funny, now let’s laugh”? which is pretty damn interesting. The guy who wrote the top answer actually wrote a book on what makes people laugh and he also shared a great podcast episode about it. He gives an explanation of his thesis and there are a lot of comments filled with speculation. Which, to me, shows how ridiculous humor research can be. Through my experiences, everyone has a slightly different explanation for laughter. It’s caused by surprise or the unexpected. It’s a social relationship thing. It’s something to do with pain. Whatever. In my opinion it just is what it is. Interesting to think about, though, maybe.

Crowdsourced Tips From Podcasting

As I’m getting ready to launch a podcast with my comedy friend Matt (who also happens to be my roommate), I’ve been trying to find out more about what it takes to make a good podcast.

I just found this list of comedy tips that a comic named Simon Caine has compiled on his website from all his podcasting. He podcasted for a full year (34 episodes) and compiled all the best advice he got from each episode. The best thing is that his guests are people “from the industry,” so they kind of know what they’re talking about. Haven’t had a chance to actually listen to his podcast yet, but the tips are super helpful, and I think the podcast idea is really terrific. Just asking people questions about how comedy works can get you to a much better level of understanding.

Some of the episode topics look fascinating and I’m excited to give the episodes a listen!

 

Comedy Throwback: Who The Comedians Of Today Remind Me Of

Sometimes it’s fun to play stupid games like, “Who is the Richard Pryor of today?” So why not? But, before we get into this, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to argue that any of these modern comedians are on par with the legends I am comparing them to. Nor am I saying they’ve necessarily been influenced by them, either. All I’m saying is that when I watch these comedians today, I can’t help but be reminded of some great old comedians. Maybe they’re just similar comedy souls born at different times.

Not quite sure what that means, but hey it sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Sure it does. Anyways, I tried to pick some comedian pairings that would be interesting without being too much of a stretch. We’ll see if that’s true, I suppose.

Continue reading “Comedy Throwback: Who The Comedians Of Today Remind Me Of” →

Music Open Mics In NYC

I found this little ditty about going to your first music open mic in NYC. I just looked up the meaning of ditty, and it’s “a short little song.” Sorry for my inaccuracy; it’s an article, not a song. I could have just deleted what I wrote and then I wouldn’t have been wrong, but you know what? I like it this way. I feel more transparent. You can see how the cheese is being made.

Shit. It’s sausage isn’t it? I meant sausage. You know what? There’s no reason why I can’t make cheese AND sausage. They go very well together.

Well, this has some tips about going to open mics in NYC and it’s interesting. The ideas about “bombing” and meeting people are very similar to comedy. It also reminds me about how one of my friends always goes to these music open mics in the city and does comedy at them. He says they’re a very different, more engaged crowd and they can be pretty fun. I went to one once and I pulled to go 24th. Everyone got 10 minutes of stage time. Seeing as how I didn’t want to stick around a small bar exclusively filled with musicians for 230 minutes, I decided to leave. But, it makes me want to check out a better music mic, try it out, and see how good they are for comedy. Maybe I’ll write about that.

p.s. I love the picture I found for this post

 

Bill Burr’s Pie Crust Tutorial

This might be the first time I’m posting about Bill Burr, and for what I think is as fantastic a reason as any. I listened to his latest podcast episode yesterday and he mentioned a pie crust video that he uploaded to YouTube that got like 600k views. He said it has gotten more views than some of his comedy specials, which is pretty funny.

The video has got more than 700k, last I checked. It’s pretty funny. Just the idea of a tough guy with a thick Boston accent walking you through how to make pie crust is funny. It’s not every day you hear a baking video where the host goes, “You know what? I bet someone, somewhere is jerking off to this.”

I’ve heard from other famous comedians that he’s actually pretty awesome at cooking and baking. So I’d listen to him.

Glibert Gottfried Quote on P.C.

A comedian friend posted this quote on Facebook. I couldn’t find the source, so who knows if Gottfried actually said it. Either way, I think the quote is pretty funny.

“I think standup comedy these days should come with instructions for people that’s all…if u think it’s funny laugh, if u don’t don’t laugh.” – Gilbert Gottfried

What If Unicorns Were Real And One Was Like Francisco?

What if a unicorn just walked into a wall…and got stuck there. Forever. Do you ever think about that?

Like, I know unicorns aren’t real. But what if they were?

That means that they must have been evading us pretty darn effectively for thousands of years. So if they did exist, they’d have to be extremely brilliant, magical, and elusive creatures that have totally outsmarted us dumb humans.

So what if they did exist and there was one unicorn that was really, really stupid. And one day it just…walked into a wall. And got stuck there. And ruined it for all the other unicorns. Because a person found it and that’s how people found out that unicorns were actually real.

All the other unicorns would be like, “Francisco! What are you doing?! You’re freaking magical! We’ve been avoiding walls for thousands of years, Francisco! All you had to do was NOT walk into a wall. That was literally your only job…You can fly. And you don’t even have wings! How have you not mastered avoiding the wall?”

Well, I think about that a lot.

So, if you ever see a horse with its head against a wall like this:

Screen Shot 2015-12-16 at 4.25.41 PM

You better give that horse a little tug. You better give him a little tug, tug, tuggie-poo. And you better make sure your name isn’t Sir Charles Darwin, because you might have just discovered Kevin.

 

The feature image was found at steynian.wordpress.com.

The Art Of Interviewing: Why It Finally Worked Out For Marc Maron

I’ve listened to enough WTF Podcast episodes to have finally realized, “You know, what? Marc Maron is actually pretty good at this.” A previous coolstuffs I wrote about a Marc Maron article inspired me to go more in depth into what makes him so good at what he does.

Continue reading “The Art Of Interviewing: Why It Finally Worked Out For Marc Maron” →

Reggie Watts’ Why Shit So Crazy Is Great

Do you like funny music? Have you heard of Reggie Watts? He might be my favorite musical comedian because of his ridiculous, fresh approach to comedy.

If you’ve never seen him before, you need to see his Netflix special, Why Shit So Crazy. He uses a looping machine to beatbox entire songs of himself singing and playing on the keyboard. It’s a lot of “whoa, that’s awesome” moments mixed with “what the fuck is he doing, this is hilarious” moments. It isn’t just music that’s special, though. He starts out the set by just rambling on stage pretty incoherently for a while, saying “crazy shit” that doesn’t really make much sense until people start to laugh at it. Was “incoherent” and “doesn’t really make sense” redundant? Well now it certainly is.

One of my favorite parts in the special is where he fumbles around with his microphone for several minutes straight. You can find the video on YouTube currently, although who knows how long those videos will last.