Tag: story

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.”

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.

Jokes That Only I Think Are Funny

One of my favorite things is telling jokes that only I think are funny and nobody else thinks are funny. Which is, like, fantastic for stand up – I know.

I just think that there’s something hilarious about somebody thinking something is the funniest thing ever and everybody else just being like, “No, that’s not true. That is NOT funny. At all.”

That happened to me in real life once recently. 

I was on the train listening to a podcast in my headphones and then something funny happened in the podcast and I started laughing out loud. Like, really hard.

And then I looked next to me and I saw that this really old woman who was sitting next to me had just fallen off her seat on the ground.

And then I realized that everyone in the train was looking at me like I was some asshole because they thought I was just laughing my ass off at this old, injured, helpless lady who was sprawled out on the ground of the train.

And that just made me laugh even harder! Because they didn’t get the joke. They didn’t get why I thought it was funny. And at this point I was laughing hysterically, so I couldn’t just be like, “No, people…you don’t understand: my podcast is funny.” So I thought, “Okay, fine. I don’t care. I’m just make this even funnier for me.”

So, I just went with it. I pointed at the lady on the ground and went, “Ha, she’s old! She’s old and she fell! That’s hilarious!”

And then I got up…and I started kicking her. Real hard.

And then I pulled out my switch blade and I went, “STAB! STAB!”

And then I grabbed some of the blood and I was like flicking it on peoples faces all around the train.

And they still did not get the joke. They did not think that was funny. At all.

Except for one guy who was laughing. But then I realized that he had headphones on too, so he was probably just listening to the same podcast.

You people get it though, right? That’s FUNNY. You get it. You’re totally on my side.

The featured image is a mural of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza from the TV show Seinfeld that I found somewhere in Brooklyn. I think it was in Bushwick.

Yelp Is Racist

I was lucky enough to have Christmas in Hawaii this year. But, before I got there, I spent a couple of days in Los Angeles at my sister’s. One of those days she was very occupied with her boyfriend’s birthday plans, so she said, “Take my car and go visit your friend in Santa Barbara.”

So I was like, “Cool.” And I did.

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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.

Louis CK Tells A Story About Russia At The Moth

Remember how awesome story time was? Wasn’t it the coolest? Chilling in the classroom after recess, kicking back and hearing a fable or a yarn performed by your teacher just for you, with all the acting prowess of a Hollywood superstar like Keanu Reeves.

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a place where people would come and tell stories to crowds of people? Like really, really awesome stories. Like, the best stories in the world. The kind of stories you only hear once every few years and they make you think, “Whoa, that was an amazing story.” (How often does your friend actually tell you an interesting story? Let’s be honest: never.)

Well, that fantastical fantasy actually happens at The Moth in New York City. It’s like story time for adults and it’s awesome.

In this video, Louis CK accepts some storytelling award at The Moth and starts his speech by humorously characterizing the storytelling organization as follows:

It’s nice to know you can reliably cry by listening to something.

Well, apparently there are a lot of sad stories told there. CK goes on to share a brief word about how awesome storytelling is before sharing his own story about a visit to Russia. The story is fantastic. It’s a great glimpse into Louis doing material that isn’t all punch lines, but is still hilariously fun.

You can also listen to The Moth on the radio, on iTunes, or on their website.

Shout out to a friend for sharing this great video with me!

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. 

Continue reading “The Figure At The Door” →

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.”

Spooky Creepy Joke for Halloween

I want to start out by saying that this is a pro-environment joke, just FYI. So keep that in mind. It’s important.

One time I was on a road trip with my friend Jerry deep in woods of northern California. We were driving on a small two-lane road late at night and our car broke down.

We pulled over to the side of the road and we didn’t know what to do. There was nothing within sight. No towns within dozens of miles. Complete darkness.

Continue reading “Spooky Creepy Joke for Halloween” →