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I only post on rare occasions here now. Subscribe to my Rubesletter (it's at mattruby.substack.com) to get jokes, videos, essays, etc. in your inbox every week.

Also, check out my latest special "Feels Like Matt Ruby" free on YouTube (or stream the album version on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc.).

Top 10 Vooza videos of 2015

Here are the top 10 Vooza videos of 2015, ranked by number of views at Vooza.



More at Vooza.com.

I guest it up on "It's Not You, It's Us" podcast

"This week on It's Not You, It's Us our guest is Matt Ruby! We learn what it means to be 'thirsty,' why it may be to your advantage to have a poor sense of smell, & discuss why we may attract what we are attracted to. Also, Matt helps us break down some break up guidelines and we find out there may be another reason to see your gynecologist, plus an all new Love Machine segment with Andy. Get to it..."

What if you took the jokes out?

In Aziz Ansari gets candid about love: “elusive and sadly ephemeral”, Aziz talks about the difference between jokes that just get a laugh and ones that elicit an "I'm glad someone said said it" response.

With my stand-up now, I’ve realized there are two types of jokes. One type is me talking about miscellaneous topics and getting laughs. That would be how I feel my first two stand-up specials come off. The second type is, you get a laugh, but you also get the feeling that the audience is saying, “Thank you for saying that!” I find the second type way more satisfying. I found it in Buried Alive, where after the show, so many people around my age said, “I’m glad you said that, I don’t feel ready to get married, I’m scared of my friends having babies, and yes, it is hard to meet someone you really like.”

With this new material about texting and stuff, this has been even more pronounced. So many people have come up to me and talked about how they and their friends have been going through this same shit. I almost write stuff with two goals now: to have it be really, really funny, but also have ideas that resonate with people. When people come up to me and say, “Holy shit, man, I can’t believe you said that, that’s exactly what I’m going through, and I hate that shit too.” That’s way more meaningful than, “Funny shit, dude!”

Reminds me of something Bill Maher said about George Carlin:

It is what I try to emulate. I try to do a show where if you took the jokes out it would still be an interesting speech. And that's where that comes from.

Good question to ask yourself: Would anyone still care what you're talking about if you took the jokes out?

Facebook scam girl thinks I have nice pics

Talking about stakes and being a chameleon vs. being one-dimensional

I've talked a lot about stakes here before...

Stakes
Judd Apatow on adding stakes
Marc Maron on stakes and emotional risk
Storytelling tips from The Moth

...and here's me discussing 'em in an interview. Also covers why I think being a chameleon makes things tougher.



It's from Capture Your Flag's Erik Michielsen latest interview with me. Third year in a row we've done a Q&A like this. Here's the full playlist from this year's interview at YouTube. And here's Year 2 and Year 1.

When hunting for the truth, the first thing you have to kill is your own ego

In second half of this clip, I talk about inward vs. outward material and the difference between "here's why you're a jerk," "here's why we're all jerks," and "here's why I'm a jerk."



It's from Capture Your Flag's Erik Michielsen latest interview with me. Third year in a row we've done a Q&A like this. Here's the full playlist from this year's interview at YouTube. And here's Year 2 and Year 1.

The advice Patton Oswalt gave Joe DeRosa that changed his whole perspective on writing jokes

In this You Made It Weird with Joe DeRosa, Joe explains some advice he got from Patton Oswalt (48min in to podcast) after running a bit by him in the green room at Caroline's a while back. The bit was about how much Joe hates people on reality shows. Joe paraphrases Patton's response:

I don't see what the purpose of the bit is...All your doing is just saying that to the audience. You know you think that. You know they think that. What's the point?...What I think you need to do in bits is – and what I try to do is – have a moment of discovery. I try to have that moment in the bit where I go, "I used to think this but now I realize it's that."

Derosa then comments:

Which if you watch Patton, he does that a lot. "When I was 35, I used to think..." and he hits the funny from that side and then he goes, "Now I'm 42 and let me tell you people, I was wrong!"...From that moment on, I realized that I don't want to be the guy who gets up and just barks at the audience...I have a lot of bits where I try to turn it on myself and ask why do I feel that way? Oh, it's because here's my flaw that makes me see the situation like this.

Here's a Patton bit about moving away from the world of drugs/alcohol.



This idea reminds me of Eddie Brill's advice to comics: "It's never 'you suck.' It's 'we suck.'" If you're discovering something, it puts you in the same boat as the audience as opposed to talking down to 'em.

I'm everyone on Facebook

Hey! I'm everyone on Facebook. I'm grateful for how amazing this year was. I use a photo of my child as my profile picture. My identity is wrapped up 100% in this other human being and that is totally healthy. Kimye!!!! Gun control!!!!! Jay Z talking to an old lady on the subway!!!! Exclamation points!!!!!!

Here's what I'm listening to on Spotify. I have GOOD TASTE. Did you see that proposal where the guy hired a marching band? I cried! I bet that marriage will last FOREVER because the best way to show you truly love someone is to use them as a prop in your bid to make a video go viral since your improv group didn't really go anywhere. Watch this documentary on animal dictators. We NEED to do something about that issue I just forgot about. I don't understand economics but here's a link to a Paul Krugman editorial.

LOOK AT ME. At a wedding I went to. At a vacation I went on. At dinner. With my girls doing karaoke last night! I heart karaoke because it's like being a performer and people pay attention to you but you don't have to work hard or be talented. Afterward, we all commented on each other's photos: "You look gorgeous." "No, YOU look gorgeous." I just changed my status to IN A RELATIONSHIP. I hope people who rejected me in the past see that and feel bad. I am THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. There is an icon of a heart next to my name now. That is the same as love.

I am OFFENDED by what someone said. Delta airlines lost my bag. I have OPINIONS about the news. This is my good side. Baby photo! Go local sports team! Beyoncé. The Elders of Zion are meeting at the Denver Airport. I just invited you to an event. Breaking Bad!! I find privacy settings confusing. I am a human being desperate for connection. Instagram wants to sell my photos to Al Qaeda.

I am SO grateful to you. I have edited out all the bad stuff from my life and presented the rest here. I am a Disney version of myself. Tag me! LIKE me! LIKE THIS! I'm worthwhile! Validate me, internet! VALIDATE ME! I am TRYING. Happy New Year!!!!!!

COME TO MY SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. I forgot to mention: Someone famous DIED recently. I am SAD about this and this is my way of making it ALL ABOUT ME.

P.P.S. Whoops, forgot this too: Please vote for me in this online voting contest for a publication/corporation that is using me as a shill to increase its page views/social media exposure. Also, don't forget to donate to my Kickstarter project where I ask you to support my "art" that no actual consumer is willing to pay for. Thanks! You guyz rock!!!!

Video: Turning the crowd against a heckler

So the comedy gods gave me a texter/heckler (teckler?) the other night at HOT SOUP at Ella Lounge. She thought I was ugly. I had some fun with that. Then the rest of the crowd shouted at her to leave. Here it is on tape.



BTW, next HOT SOUP will be Wed, Dec 26 at Ella Lounge at 8:30pm. Details.

A collection of Judd Apatow podcasts, articles, and quotes

It's Judd Apatow podcast season! Apatow seems to hibernate from media until he's got a new flick (this time: This is 40) and then hits the interwaves to plug it and drop comedy knowledge. Good for us since he's a fascinating guy to listen to discuss comedy. For example, I keep thinking about a (paraphrased) line he used in a recent interview: "All great drama has some comedy and all great comedy has some drama."

A rundown of some of his recent appearances:

Adan Carolla Show: Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow's podcast appearances on Earwolf
Fresh Air Weekend: Judd Apatow
Fitzdog Radio: Judd Apatow
Nerdist: Judd Apatow

Making jokes work
He also called this Chicago Tribune piece "a very good article that shows how Leslie and I work together." It's interesting because it feels like he brings lessons learned from honing a standup set to editing a movie.

They had test-screened cuts of the movie the previous evening at a San Fernando Valley multiplex, running two different versions in separate theaters and recording the audiences' reactions throughout. Now White was cueing up versions A and B of a scene in which Annie Mumolo, who co-wrote the Apatow-produced “Bridesmaids” and here plays the best friend of Leslie Mann's lead character, Debbie, describes the after-effects of losing all feeling in a certain lower region of her body.

In one version Mumolo cites two examples of her numbness before a punch line that involves a shower head. In the other version, she offers more and more examples before reaching the payoff. As the editor played back the scenes synced up to the test-screening laugh tracks, it was clear that the audience responded more enthusiastically to version B, the one that took more time to set up the gag.

“We can actually look at the joke when we showed it this week and when we showed it two weeks ago (at an earlier screening) and see if we've either made it work better or actually hurt the joke by surrounding it with different variations of lines and stuff like that,” White said.

Sounds like a familiar process. “I know where to give a pause and let the audience’s laughter die down and not bury the next line,” he once said. Once a standup, always a standup.

There's no sound for drama
That doesn't mean it's all just about getting the funny stuff though. The drama matters more. But it's also trickier for a basic reason: Good drama doesn't make an audience erupt aloud the way comedy does. He explains in this interview:

“We feel the movie's working when it's getting laughs, but that's actually not true,” said Apatow, who turned 45 Thursday. “The audience is actually following the drama, and sometimes we have to think hard and go: ‘It's OK that they're not laughing here because this is a heartfelt moment or a devastating moment.' It's still not my strongest suit understanding all of that. I always say I wish there was a noise people made that let me know that drama was working.”

Don't obsess over likability
He also explained that the audience doesn't need to like a character.

With Mann and Apatow both using the word “crazy” to describe Pete and Debbie's behavior at times, the movie is willing to make its leads unsympathetic in the quest for some greater truth, if not humor.

“I like when people don't try so hard to obsess over likability,” Apatow said. “I wanted it to be balanced. I wanted Pete and Debbie to have an equal amount of good qualities and bad qualities. But it was helpful working with Lena Dunham on ‘Girls' (the HBO series that Apatow executive-produces) while I was working on this, because she doesn't care at all if you like her character. It just doesn't even occur to her that that's part of what you factor in. And so just talking about the script with her — and she's such a great cheerleader of this film — put me in a good frame of mind to not polish things up.”

Talked about something similar here recently, but from a standup perspective: Trying too hard to please the audience. I don't think it's just a "greater truth" that results from this approach. Sometimes when someone doesn't care if they're sympathetic/likable, that just makes them that much more appealing. At least you know you're not being pandered to.

The gods of comedy
As for the neuroses that comes with making funny stuff, he feels the good and bad come together.

There’s a fine line between what’s healthy about being a comedian and what’s really sick and demented about it. And usually both of those things are happening at exactly the same time. When I’m doing good work, there’s a part of me that feels like it’s a positive contribution to society. I’m making people laugh and helping them think about their lives in a positive and life-affirming way. But at the same time, there’s a sick, wounded part of me that’s looking for acceptance, and just wants to know that there’s somebody out there who likes me. I serve both gods simultaneously.

The rest
But wait, there's more! There's a good rundown of his history at Brobible's 45 Unforgettable Moments from Judd Apatow’s Career. And he guest edited Vanity Fair's comedy issue (he did something similar with the book I Found This Funny a while back). And I've written about him previously in these Sandpaper Suit posts:

Judd Apatow on adding stakes
Judd Apatow's "most personal moment" on Freaks and Geeks
The three funniest "in theater" movies Judd Apatow's seen

My Joke of the Week in Time Out NY

Joke of the week!



Thanks to the great Mindy Tucker for the swell photo. I told her to use her "soulful eyes" filter.

Easy vs. hard

Easy: Being cool.
Hard: Being nice.

Easy: Having "something to say."
Hard: Working at your craft.

Easy: Trivia.
Hard: Wisdom.

Easy: Fashion.
Hard: Style.

Easy: Curating.
Hard: Inventing.

Easy: Cynical.
Hard: Romantic.

Easy: 0s and 1s.
Hard: Analog.

Easy: Autotune.
Hard: Billie Holliday.

Easy: Snap to grid.
Hard: Drawn by hand.

Easy: Exciting!
Hard: Interesting.

Easy: Breaking the rules.
Hard: Knowing how to do it right (and then choosing when to do it wrong).

Easy: Texting.
Hard: Talking.

Easy: Internet bandwidth.
Hard: Emotional bandwidth.

Easy: "I have a disorder."
Hard: "It's my fault."

Easy: The part that fits in.
Hard: The part that's like no one else.

Easy: Stream of consciousness.
Hard: Spending time on it.

Easy: Being anonymous.
Hard: Putting your name on it.

Easy: Clever.
Hard: Soulful.

Easy: Making people think.
Hard: Making 'em feel.

Easy: Talking about it.
Hard: Doing it.

Easy: Lists.
Hard: Life.

Schtick or Treat (year 5) photos are up

Schtick or Treat photos are up! Great job, as always, by Mindy Tucker.

The Financial Times on Vooza

Heh. Vooza, the video comic strip we're making, got The Financial Times to run a headline that says, "It’s like Spotify meets Grindr except for rental cars..." Plus there's a nearly full frontal photo of Nate Fernald (along with Meg Cupernall and Steve O'Brien). Ya can read it online here.

How jokes are like magic tricks

The Honor System is a really interesting look at Teller and the thief who tried to steal this trick from him:



The article mentions how Jim Steinmeyer, one of the greatest inventors of magic, compares jokes and tricks in his book Hiding the Elephant.

In it, he writes that the best tricks are a "collection of tiny lies, in words and deeds, that are stacked and arranged ingeniously." Like jokes, tricks should have little plots with a twist at the end that's both implausible and yet logical. You shouldn't see the punchline coming, but when you do see it, it makes sense. The secret to a great trick isn't really its method; the method behind most tricks is ugly and disappointing, something blunt and mechanical...The value of a trick lies mostly in how much it stokes that battle between your head and your heart, and how badly it makes you want for your heart to win.

I like the "implausible yet logical" concept. I often think of a great joke as being the hard-to-find combination of truthful yet surprising.

It was also interesting to hear Teller discuss how hard it is to hone a trick:

The real point of magic, Teller said during those lectures, is "telling a beautiful lie. It lets you see what the world would be like if cause and effect weren't bound by physics." It's the collision between what you know and what you see that provides magic's greatest spark.

So Teller rigged a thread in his home library, and he put Abbott's ancient instructions on a music stand — pages that had been miraculously saved from a trash fire years before — and he went to work on making the impossible seem real. Eventually, he decided that the ball shouldn't float but roll. That would look simpler, but it would be harder. He practiced some more at a mirrored dance studio in Toronto, and at a cabin deep in the woods, and on the empty stage in Penn & Teller's theater. After every show for eighteen months, he would spend at least an hour, by himself, trying to make the Red Ball obey. ("Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect," Teller says.)

"I have to screw around," he told those four audiences, "to sniff the scent of an idea and track it down like a wild boar in the forest.

"It's still the hardest-to-execute piece of magic I've ever tried. In six months or a year, it will start to settle into my bones. In ten years, it'll be perfect.

Telling a beautiful lie, eh? Reminds me of a tweet I wrote a while back: Comedy is the most beautiful way to complain.

Btw, Nate Bargatze talked a lot about how his dad was a magician during his great WTF interview. Here's a clip of Nate's dad performing. Funny guy!



Related:
Teller and the magic of surprise
The brotherhood of magic and comedy

New video: Amish Cop Hasidic Cop

Two New York City detectives, one Amish and one Hasidic, lose their partners and are forced to work together to catch a bank robber. Make haste!

WRITTEN BY AND STARRING
Detective Singer - Matt Ruby
Detective Fisher - Mark Normand

ADDITIONAL CAST
Police chief - Dan Soder
Robbery Victim - Victoria Harrington
Gorilla - Robert Dean
Costume shop employee - Erik Bergstrom
Cop #1 - Nick Maritato
Cop #2 - Sean Donnelly

Director - Matt Lawrence
Editor - John Schlirf
Cameraman - Robertino Zambrano

Charlie Kaufman's first speech ever

Really enjoyed this talk: Charlie Kaufman: Screenwriters Lecture.

Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope. It’s done so for me and I have to keep rediscovering it. It has profound importance in my life. Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.

This is from E. E. Cummings: ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.’ The world needs you. It doesn’t need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties – these books exist, and they’re tempting – but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and being kind...

I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.

If you're a fan of Kaufman's, def check out the whole thing.

Using a spark file to solve the problem with hunches

Author Steven Johnson on the importance of keeping a spark file:

Most good ideas (whether they're ideas for narrative structure, a particular twist in the argument, or a broader topic) come into our minds as hunches: small fragments of a larger idea, hints and intimations. Many of these ideas sit around for months or years before they coalesce into something useful, often by colliding with another hunch. (I wrote a chapter about this phenomenon in my last book, Where Good Ideas Come From.)

The problem with hunches is that it's incredibly easy to forget them, precisely because they're not fully-baked ideas. You're reading an article, and a little spark of an idea pops into your head, but by the time you've finished the article, you're checking your email, or responding to some urgent request from your colleague, and the next thing you know, you've forgotten the hunch for good. And even the ones that you do manage to retain often don't turn out to be useful to you for months or years, which gives you countless opportunities to lose track of them.

This is why for the past eight years or so I've been maintaining a single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I'm going to write, even whole books. I now keep it as a Google document so I can update it from wherever I happen to be. There's no organizing principle to it, no taxonomy--just a chronological list of semi-random ideas that I've managed to capture before I forgot them. I call it the spark file.

Now, the spark file itself is not all that unusual: that's why Moleskins or Evernote are so useful to so many people. But the key habit that I've tried to cultivate is this: every three or four months, I go back and re-read the entire spark file. And it's not an inconsequential document: it's almost fifty pages of hunches at this point, the length of several book chapters. But what happens when I re-read the document that I end up seeing new connections that hadn't occurred to me the first (or fifth) time around: the idea I had in 2008 that made almost no sense in 2008, but that turns out to be incredibly useful in 2012, because something has changed in the external world, or because some other idea has supplied the missing piece that turns the hunch into something actionable. Sure, I end up reading over many hunches that never went anywhere, but there are almost always little sparks that I'd forgotten that suddenly seem more promising. And it's always encouraging to see the hunches that turned into fully-realized projects or even entire books.

I keep ideas in notebooks and a notetaking app but probably don't go and review the old stuff as much as I should. There's often good stuff buried in the weeds at the junkyard.

Wired UK and Financial Times interview me?

So I gave interviews to Wired UK and the Financial Times. Or did I? It's all pretty confusing at this point.