Various Events

Green Dragon went well, I met a really cool group of people and comics, especially this comic named Tim Golden. We talked for a long time about comedy, and then I had a decent set and he followed me and had the set of the night.

Also, I performed this weekend for the Brown Comedy Series. The audience was pretty sparse, but they were pretty responsive to my new material. Only one joke bombed, and it’s gone.

Ooh, I am going to Chicago this week and NYC next week, where I will be seeing SNL Starring Mia Swier! (Well, not starring, but she’s an intern. She’s cool) I’m really excited because Rainn Wilson is hosting.

Finally, and most importantly, I am signing up tonight for the American Eagle college stand-up competition. There’s a performance in a couple of weeks at URI that I hope to compete in. I’ll have more info son.

Green Dragon Open Mic

I am on the train to Boston for the second time in a week in order to go to a comedy show. Last week I went to the Comedy Studio, which I am told is the best venue for up-and-coming comics in Boston. Anyway, the set went really well, one of the better responses of the night, but that’s not a big deal considering that Wednesday is a night for established comics to work on new material, while I was trying to show Rick Jenkins my best stuff. My friends Billy and Louis Came, along with one of Louis’ friends from Emerson, and I think they all enjoyed it. Anyway, after the show I talked to Rick about getting another spot in the future, but he brought up two concerns:

1. I brought a notebook up with me onstage. Fair enough. I didn’t look at it once, it was more of a security blanket, but I can understand his trepidation at putting me on a bigger night, since he listened from backstage and has no idea how reliant I was on my notes.

2. My new bit about Would You Rather apparently bears a resemblance to an old joke of a guy named Abe Smith. This is weird and funny because Abe was a senior at Brown when I was a freshman, and he was a very funny improv person whom Todd Goldstein once told me did stand-up in Boston. So it comes full circle. I assured Rick that I didn’t want to appear to be stealing material, but the joke went over pretty well, and I don’t want to lose it all if I don’t have to (it’s about 1.5 minutes of joke). Regardless, I am totally willing to drop it if necessary, and I told hi as much. Meanwhile, I am only going to do the first half of it, since he seemed to take issue with the second part more.

Anyway, I emailed him today, so we’ll see if he gets back to me about it.

Concerning the set itself, I did two new long bits about girls’ nights out and the aforementioned Would You Rather. I tied them together with Smoking Games, which I really need to edit, but both my new bits went well. I am happy about this because, although I like my short jokes and one-liners, I think I want to go in a more story-telling direction, and these jokes are starting to get there. It’s hard with a 5 minute set to get into a bunch of stories, so I am going to stick to starting with a few 10 second jokes and building into more of a story by the end. I hope this works out.

Anyway, I have an open mic at the Green Dragon tonight. I am in no way guaranteed a spot on the show, but I am showing up like 1 ½ hours early, so hopefully Jessica, the showrunner, will have pity on me and my commute. Wish me luck (even though by the time I post this my set will be over).

Theory:

NASCAR is a sport the way that irregardless is a word.

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.

Performing Again

Alright, time to get back to posting.

First of all, I had my first Boston show this past Monday. I took the commuter rail, the Red Line on the subway, and then walked for over a mile just to get to the bar in Somerville. I stayed at the bar for about 30 minutes before going onstage and dying like never before. I got a couple of half-hearted chuckles on a joke or two, but several jokes were met with complete silence. Fortunately (what a mean thing to say), I wasn’t the only guy to eat shit that night. Every single comedian died, until I decided that it was time for me to leave. At one point, a comedian got onstage and talked about his day, claiming that since he knew he wasn’t going to get laughs, he didn’t want to bother with jokes. All in all, a rough night. I am hoping to go to this place called the Green Dragon on Wednesday to redeem myself. This may be problematic as well.

My video is apparently in the mail, after over a month of e-yelling at this guy on Gmail. If this is the case, I will have it up in the next week for you to view. It might even get me a spot at the Comedy Studio in Cambridge, if I’m lucky.

Try-outs for the Brown Stand-up Comics are this weekend, but I am missing them to visit Andrea. I hope there is some way for me to join them, as I really want to get connected to other comics on campus and maybe even start an open mic for us to work on our material.

I saw the Comedians of Comedy twice last weekend, but that amazing story will have to wait until later. I have class now

P. S. I got a surprisingly spiteful and anonymous response to my post about incorporating the word "fart" into various famous album titles. I don't plan on using that as a stand-up bit at all, I just thought it was funny and decided to post it. I hope to use this blog as an outlet for other funny things I think of that won't translate well to stand-up. I hope that's ok with everyone.

Back in Prov

So I drove up to Providence on Wednesday, in a car without a stereo or air conditioning. I was pretty high on caffeine from my grande ice coffee from Starbucks, and so I wrote a lot of pretty decent ideas on the ride up. Like an idiot, I typed them into my laptop on the interstate so i wouldn't forget them. This is a typical example of how the economic cost-benefit analysis isn't used in real life situations. So I got a few good ideas, and I am really excited for this year, when I get to use all these ideas that will go over well in a college crowd. I just need to keep writing so that I have new material in every show I do.

In awesome-related news, I am going to New York City on the 15th of Sep. to see Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Fred Armisen, Brian Posehn, and Jon Benjamin perform on the Comedians of Comedy tour. Then I will be driving/taking the train back to Providence the next day to see Patton, Brian, and Eugene Mirman perform at Lupo's (for free). I am a comedy nerd/obsessive idiot, but I already had the Providence ticket, and David Cross and Fred Armisen are way too good to miss. I may not be driving, since I need to get my car fixed again,
but the bus is probably cheaper than the gas/tolls I will have to pay by driving.

Alright, have a good beginning of the schoolyear, I will probably update when I know when my next show will be.