Tag: comedian

How To Get More Compliments On Your Set

Eli Sairs is a great comedian in NYC and I see him at The Creek and the Cave all the time. He wrote this funny piece for the The Interrobang about how you can get people to compliment you after you have a monster set. I like it.

 

As he says, “New York comic runs a free comedy show called Wildcats with and every second Friday of the month at 8 pm at The Creek and The Cave (10-93 Jackson Ave, Queens). The Wildcats are a street gang that surprises audiences by invading a respectable event or charity and using it as a playground for their offensive comedy anarchy, like a punk rock 3 Stooges.”

Hannibal Buress, His Fame, And His Netflix Special

Hannibal Buress!

One of my favorite comedians. His special came out (yesterday? two days ago? yes, two days ago) on Netflix and I watched the first 20 minutes or so last night before I fell asleep. How quickly I fell asleep was unrelated to the goodness of the special. However, I feel like I’ve seen him do better. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, I remembered him describing this as his “sweatiest” special, so you know he’s working hard. There was one bit I remember about how one time no one would let him into a particular hotel because he didn’t have his ID…something like “yes I’ve gone on TV with the alias Hannibal Buress just so I could check into this hotel.” I really liked that one. And hey, I haven’t seen the whole thing, so maybe the rest is absolutely fantastic and I’m being unfair.

This Splitsider interview came out a couple of days ago to promote the special. It’s about Buress and dealing with fame. It’s pretty fun.

Now here’s the trailer for the special. If my dumb blog post didn’t get you excited enough to head over to Netflix this will, probably. I’m not sure. Probably.

“I’m Gonna Go Kill Myself!”

If comedians have a bad set, they’re always like, “I’m gonna go kill myself!”

And then everyone is like, “HAAAAA! THAT’S THE FUNNIEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD!!!!!!!!!”

Which I think is dumb. To me, it’s not funny to just say you’re gonna kill yourself. That’s not a well-written joke. I just feel like it should feel more hacky to other comedians by now. Like, if you want to have a mental disorder, then get more creative with it, right?

How about something like, “Man, there were so few laughs in this set that I’m gonna have PTSD!!! I know that’s a real thing that people actually have but I don’t care!!!”

Or, “This set was so bad, when I go home and my wife wants to have sex with me I won’t be able to get hard!”

Or, “After this I’m gonna go home and have me some bulimia so I can puke up all that shit I just ate on stage!!!”

Fellow Female Comedians on Amy Schumer’s Alleged Joke Theft

Here’s an article that talks about a bunch of reactions to Schumer’s accusations and kind of puts a lot of the hype all in one place for you to digest. I also listened to the Joe Rogan Podcast the other day with Hannibal Buress on as a guest. They’re both friends with Amy and think she wouldn’t steal a joke. Rogan thinks there is, however a serious “creativity problem” on the part of someone who is involved with her writing for TV, or else this many issues wouldn’t come up. TV writers are under a lot of stress to come up with new material on the daily. That would explain some things. Just one opinion out there.

John Roy’s Completely Free Stand Up Comedy Course

I’ve heard of this thing a million times from people and never taken a look until now because, well, it slipped to the cracks! But it’s just as awesome as everyone says!

John Roy is a veteran comedian based in LA who has created a whole 12-week, completely free comedy course. Roy mentions in the first week that,

“The majority consensus among fellow comedians are that [comedy courses] are of dubious value. They may help a little with some fundamentals or with building courage and comfort on stage, but they will neither replace the time you will have to spend in Open Mics nor are they worth the hundreds of dollars they normally cost.”

Roy goes about it with this knowledge in mind. There’s no learning stand up without doing stand up. You jump into it right away.

He’s also great at being efficient. His weekly courses and assignments aren’t very long; they put the work on you to go out and write, perform, and watch comedy yourself rather than to learn it from someone else.

In the same vein, I will be succinct. If you want to try comedy and you don’t want to spend money on a “real” course, do this one. It is infinitely better than a “real” course, which are all designed to get money out of your pocket, not to teach you anything. (Trust me, as someone who started out by taking one and interned at a comedy school n college. Almost no one sticks with comedy after trying a course. Even though it feels like you accomplished something, you have not until you go out there and do it full-time.)

Here it is!

It has been added to my Things I Like page, which, by the way, if you’re tryna be a comic, is a great resource.

You can find out more about John Roy on his site.

Sean Patton Is Great

This past Monday I went to Whiplash at UCB in Chelsea for the first time. It was an amazing show and all the comics killed. Sean Patton headlined the show, and I’m not sure that I’ve seen him perform before. He’s a totally different act than what I’m used to seeing and it was pretty refreshing. And Patton especially murdered.

Anyways, I’ve been sharing a lot of articles and such lately so I figured it was time to get some more videos going. Here’s a fun one.

 

Why Do So Many Pretty Female Comedians Pretend They’re Ugly

This is an Atlantic piece from 2012, which, as you might know, was about four years ago. It’s interesting to see how this piece has a lot of relevance today and might have even garnered more attention today. In fact, it reminds me of another very similar Atlantic piece, Plight of the Funny Female, which came out this fall and I think even comments on some of the same research. I wrote an article about that one, which you can find here.

I think this one is subtly different, but it’s equally as interesting. Throughout the history of comedy, women have been putting themselves down in various ways. Physically making themselves appear less pretty is just one of them. One thing I will point out, that I don’t think the article addressed is that, pretty obviously, men comics put themselves down too. So many times I’ve heard a female comic get up on stage and say, “Wow there are a lot of good-looking guys here!” (referring to other comics) and then a guy will get up and say something like, “I look like a rapist! Haaaa! I’m gross!”

My point isn’t to de-emphasize how women comics have unfortunately had to put themselves down over the years in an attempt to seem funnier. It’s just to show that self-deprecation is a common tool in comedy that women have used to break their way into a formerly male-dominated profession. If people don’t identify with you, you can always make fun of yourself. It’s fascinating how easily people will get on board when you’re pointing your finger at yourself and going, “Look at me, I’m an idiot!” Sometimes it’s even a little unnerving.

Brooklyn’s Newest Open Mike

This is a humor piece written by NYC Comedian Lucas Gardner and published in the New York Times. It’s a funny thing I like that pokes fun at the hoops you have to jump through to get stage time as an open mic comic in New York. Garner has written a lot of funny stuff. If you like this, check out his personal site.