Blogging from home

I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about my video, and I appreciate all of it. The main critique that people have is that I jump around too much from topic to topic. I think this is actually the result of a pacing problem that I have in between bits. I think my bits are generally paced alright, but I am so afraid of losing momentum that I trample over my own laughs to get to the next joke, and I think that probably hurts the response I get overall. Also, I am dropping the inappropriate drunk bit, at least in this format. I used to use it as my closer, just because it was the biggest laugh I got on my first time ever performing, but it has failed to deliver a good laugh since then. I moved it to the middle of my set to take some of the pressure off the joke, but it still isn’t working, so I’m cutting it. It might work better as a sketch, or the beginning of a sketch at least.

While we’re talking shop about my set list, I am glad that I have a couple of jokes that blend together pretty well, cause easy transitions from joke to joke make it so much easier to deal with my pacing situation. I especially like my first two, which are both tattoo jokes that I enjoy. I especially like my first one, because it’s quick and it gives that audience a good idea of what they are going to get. I think the second one would have benefited from a mic.

Anyway, I am trying to write a sketch a week because I would love to get hired to write comedy for a living, and I need to practice a lot. So I will probably be working some of my ideas out on here, or just mentioning the ones I have written and how much I like them so far. I wrote two last week, one political satire and one more standard silly-character piece. I prefer the second one, but I think that’s because I am so much more comfortable writing non-political humor.

Actually, I think political humor is one of the most over-rated forms of comedy. This is not to suggest that I dislike political humor, but rather that I think really bad political humor gets way too much credit. So I want to make sure mine is appropriately funny in order to justify it, or else it just feels preachy. Anyway, enough about political humor, I could write a book about it, but I won’t. I’ll just check back in in a few days to talk about my jokes some more.

I WILL UPDATE, SO HELP ME GOD

Alright, y’all, it’s time to stop being a slacker about this blog. I am back into comedy, so I need to be back into this blog as well. I just performed again for the first time in a long time. I opened for a comic named Dan Nainan, who was a very polished if somewhat standard comic. His hook is that he is half Indian and half Japanese, but a lot of his stuff was pretty standard race fare. He was really nice after the show, though, and you could tell he really loved what he was doing, so it was really nice to get to open for him.

I have a video of my set on Youtube, and you can see it here. I didn’t get a mike, which sucks balls, and as a result I lost a little of the subtlety that I think I get when I don’t have to YELL my jokes to the audience. I did 2 new jokes, the second tattoo bit and the smoking games bit, and both of them went pretty well. I think I should add something about the Chinese symbol for love in my tattoo joke, those are pretty lame as well. The joke about La Jetee (Wikipedia for spelling!) was just for Matt, my trusty camera-man/partner in crime. It got a pretty nice laugh, though. I like how I can sound like a movie snob just because my MCM friend told me about 1 French short film.

Anyway, my set went pretty well, and I hope to show this video to the owner of the Comedy Studio in Cambridge so I can get some stage time in February. I would love to get into the Boston scene as soon as possible, because I know there is a ton of great comedy going on there, and I want to dip my toe in before I leave to go to DC/Chicago/NYC/Austin next year.

I have a new bit idea that I will incorporate in the middle of my set if I get more time than 5 minutes. It’s about a new game I made up called “7 degrees to Neve Campbell” where you have to connect any actor to Neve Campbell in 7 degrees or fewer. The catch is, the last degree has to be through Kevin Bacon in Wild Things. I think it’s really going to take off.

I am such an idiot.