Tag: Humor

A TedEd Video About How To Write Comedy

So this video starts out saying,

“Did you ever notice how many jokes start with “Did you ever notice?” And what’s the deal with “What’s the deal?” There’s a lot of funny to be found simply by noticing the ordinary, everyday things you don’t ordinarily notice every day.”

And I was like “Whoa! How did they know that this joke I’m working on right now starts out with ‘what’s the deal with dolphins?’ What are the chances?! This person must know a thing or two about comedy.”

Other things I noticed about this video:

  • it shares a lot of advice about asking questions, being specific, archetypes, surprise, mind mapping, observation vs. imagination, character, story, rule of 3, punch lines, and k words, but I feel like it leaves out the most important thing: get on stage
  • the bunny helps me follow along

The video is written and narrated by Cheri Steinkellner, an Emmy-award-winning comedy writer.

Mike Lawrence Comedy Advice

Here’s a fantastic, pretty brief list of advice from New York City comedian Mike Lawrence on starting out in New York.

I’ve seen Mike Lawrence performing all over New York. He still comes to open mics once in a while to try out new stuff even though he’s a working comic who writes for Inside Amy Schumer, which I think is cool. He takes it seriously.

Here’s a great Modern Comedian video about him, too.

 

Bottle Openers

Last year, my sister went to the Wimbledon tennis tournament. You know what that is? It’s a tennis tournament. And she brought me back a keychain bottle opener that says “Wimbledon” on it. Which essentially says, “I’m a douche who is prepared to party” which is redundant.

And last year when I graduated college, my mom got me an antique bottle opener, which was cool except I couldn’t use it because I didn’t have any antique bottles to open.

Now, my mom is moving away from my hometown. So, to commemorate the place where I spent the first 18 years of my life, she got me…a bottle opener! I don’t know what it is about me that makes my family think I really need to open bottles. They must think I just have thousands of unopened bottles stashed away in my apartment or something…

But this one is not just any bottle opener, because it has the name and the exact geographical coordinates of my hometown on it!

Which strikes me as the ultimate drunk survival kit. Because you can use it to open up all the beer you could ever want and it also says, “If found drunk and passed out, please return this person to 41.7947 degrees North and 88.0169 degrees West. Someone there will recognize him and will know what to do…even if they haven’t seen him since high school.”

If someone found me in that state, it would be like, “Wow! How’d you get all the way to New York City, fella?! These coordinates are in Illinois! This is gonna be one hell of an Uber ride.”

Jim Norton Quote On Comedy & Art

I found this quote from Norton a little while ago and I think it’s definitely an interesting thought. On one hand I agree, but on the other hand I don’t want to be whiny and all, “COMEDY IS AN ART TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!!!” Because you can’t take it too seriously. It’s comedy!

“Why is comedy the only form of the arts where people think they have to agree with or approve the content? You don’t walk through a museum with a towel and throw it over paintings you don’t like.”

This quote is from Jim Norton’s special American Degenerate. Jim Norton is great because he’s one of the main voices on this subject. He’s also one of the only more political comics who I find really funny.

StandUpTalk Is Great

I found this website and it’s very lovely. It’s got interviews, videos, and news about comedy…and what more could you ask for? A lot, but that’s because you’re not being grateful. Grateful should be spelled greatful not grateful. It just sounds like it means “full of grates.” That doesn’t sound too pleasant.

Anyways, here’s a good little article about Brent Morin to give you a taste of their lovely work at StandUpTalk, which I believe is run out of The Comedy Store in LA. Looking…looking…I think that’s true.

Regardless, they have some great stuff if you’re a comedy fan. Going on the Things I Like.

Graphic Art, Not Cartoons: An Interview With Kaitlyn Kieronski

It was a rainy, freezy day this past week when I met up with Kaitlyn Kieronski, a fellow alum of the always lovely Avery Coonley School and a current senior at NYU. We rendezvoused at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the West Village (a venue that offers much more than it’s name suggests) to warm up with a cup of coffee and chat about graphic art – one part of Kaitlyn’s very complicated, self-designed major.

We talked about Walt Disney, voice acting, Cartoon Network, Seinfeld, Pokemon, a brief history of Pixar, Japanese computer games, and a lot of other fun, fantastic, and amazing stuff.

Continue reading “Graphic Art, Not Cartoons: An Interview With Kaitlyn Kieronski” →

Jon Huck Loses His Pants – This Is Not Happening

I mentioned Ari Shaffir’s show This Is Not Happening a while back, but I never showed it in its true glory. It’s basically a story-telling show where comics get up and share stories centered on a particular theme.

I stumbled across this video of Jon Huck, a comedian I hadn’t heard of before, and it’s one of the funniest stories I’ve heard. It’s long, but it’s worth the wait. It just shows how awesome the show is, because you’ve got great, well-known comedians like Kyle Kinane, Joe Rogan, and Iliza Shlesinger who appear on the show, but you also have a lot of comics who most people haven’t heard of – and every single one of them are just fantastic stories.

I had to share this one because Huck makes a backhanded shoutout to Naperville, Illinois (my hometown neighbors!) and also because it’s a story about Oktoberfest and the half German in me came out and was like, “yeah!!!” You can follow Jon Huck on Twitter here.

Watch all the great stories here on YouTube.

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.”

“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!!!”