Tag: personal

Contagious Laughter

Have you ever been with a bunch of friends when one of them starts to laugh? And then she keeps laughing and laughing…and laughing. Until someone else begins to laugh at how ridiculous she is…and then suddenly everyone is starting to laugh uncontrollably?

Well that’s what happened in Tanzania in 1962, but it wasn’t just a group of friends. It was entire towns. And it didn’t stop for several months. I’m serious.

You might have heard about the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic (yes, epidemic) before, but you might not know that outbreaks of “mass hysteria” still happen there today. In fact, Radiolab did a story on contagious laughter that detailed another more recent outbreak, where one girl was actually hospitalized and repeatedly administered Valium until she finally stopped laughing when she woke up.

I first heard about contagious laughter when I was doing humor research on puns and I was like “No wayy – that’s impossible.” But, It’ real! Check it out.

I think it’s a fascinating concept and it kind of explains why stand up comedy works. If you ever ask a comic to tell you a joke one-on-one, he probably won’t do it. Why? Well, no one says, “Oh, you’re a dentist?! Pull out someone’s tooth right here at this dinner party!” Also, it’s just different performing to one person than it is performing to a crowd. Have you ever had a creepy girlfriend or boyfriend who sang love ballads to you one-on-one? It’s awkward! It’s like singing a love ballad, but with humor. Which sounds funny, but in person not so much.

Besides that, it’s just too risky. Telling a joke one-on-one, anything can happen. But I’ll tell you what usually happens: nothing. People just stand there and don’t say anything. Or worse, they say, “That was funny.” Rarely do they actually laugh, even if it’s your best joke that kills every time on stage.

Why? Well, there’s no other people around to laugh at the thing together! I think contagious laughter definitely comes into play when you’re doing a set for a crowd. And, the very best crowds are the ones who are laughing uncontrollably…one might say “bordering on mass hysteria.” Maybe I just need to play some venues in Tanzania and then I’ll be really funny.

The Figure At The Door

I was inspired by This American Life’s Halloween episode And the Call was Coming from the Basement, a show that featured all “scary but true” stories, to write about a scary true story that happened to me. This is a story about being home alone with my siblings when I was maybe around 12 years old. My sister was around 14 and my brother, 10. At least, this is how I remember it. 

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Why I’m Never Going To Be On SNL

Pretty much everybody I know who knows that I do stand up comedy has at one point said something to me like:

“Wow, wouldn’t it be something if I saw you on SNL one day?!”

Or, “Maybe if you work hard enough, you could be on SNL! Wouldn’t that be cool?!”

Or, “Hey buddy! You on SNL yet?! Ha!”

And I’m like, “Haha! Yeah! Whatever!”

Because everyone outside of the comedy world thinks that SNL is The Pinnacle of All Comedy. Which is totally fine to think; don’t get me wrong, I think SNL is fantastic! But it’s a very specific style of humor with a very specific format. And I don’t think that either the style or format is really right for me.

What I’m thinking in my head when somebody says one of those things to me is: “This person clearly doesn’t understand my comedic sensibility! Even if Lorne Michaels begged me to be on the show…I’d have to think twice about it!”

What I’m saying is that SNL probably wouldn’t ever want me anyways. It’s just not the gig for me. And that’s fine; I’d want to do other styles and formats of comedy that I would enjoy more anyways.

But, if I’m never going to be on SNL, I realized that I’m guaranteed to be a failure in the eyes of pretty much everyone that I know. Which is totally refreshing, and 100% takes the pressure off. I can do whatever I want! It’s SNL or bust. And I am choosing bust.

It’s like if you were to go into a test knowing that you weren’t even going to answer any of the questions. And then after you fail the test, your teacher and your parents and the school are all like, “Why’d you fail the test, Stu? You’re not very smart.”

And you’re like, “Trust me: I’m smart! The test is stupid.”

Thievery, Heckling, and Rape Jokes (Oh My?)

I hate that I titled this post how I did, but hey. People connect to dumb things in pop culture like that. Right? It’s a reference to lions, tigers, and bears IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET THAT!

Patton Oswalt is a comic known especially well for his twitter rants. He’s really good in long form. He’s also good at long-form talking about comedy.

Read this. Oswalt published the piece on his personal website, where you can find a bunch of other great similar content. It’s a famous comic’s inside views on some of the biggest topics in comedy. That’s interesting, right? It is. This is the type of material that really gets me excited to do comedy: being able to see somebody break down the art in such detail. Someone who is on the inside. Joke stealing on its own is such a weird idea that non-comedians just don’t see it the same way. Example…

When I started doing comedy – back in 1988 – I did a joke one night, at an unpaid open mike, that killed.  It killed.  I wasn’t used to having anything in my set, in those first few months of shows, get any response from an audience other than a hard blink and an impatient sigh.

There’s a dopamine rush, for a comedian, when you cobble a thought out of thin air, when you arrange words not as a sentence but suddenly, as a joke.  A for-real, plucked-from-your-skull joke.  Something you created which, when you reach the part you want the audience to laugh at?  And then…holy shit!  They actually laugh?  That’s the spike in the vein that sets the compass for your life.

Well, I’d gotten a taste.  I wanted more.

The only problem was, it wasn’t my joke.

I’ve been there. I know what he’s talking about. I’ve tried a joke and thought, “That joke was too good. I didn’t think of that on my own.” It’s subconscious. But that’s not how people who villainize joke-stealing comics think of joke stealing. Not every joke-stealing comic is a Carlos Mencia or Fat Jew. Most of the time it’s an accident.

See what I mean? See more things from Oswalt’s view. Read the piece.

 

How People Respond to the Question “How Would You Best Describe Me?”

So, I decided to ask a bunch of people what they thought of me. Why? Well, It’s a really awkward question for people to answer and it’s fun to watch people deal with that. And I thought it could be funny. And I’m pretty much the worst at describing anything, especially myself. Why not let the masses do it for me?

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