Sandpaper Suit is NYC standup comic Matt Ruby's (now defunct) comedy blog. Keep in touch: Sign up for Matt's weekly Rubesletter. Email mattruby@hey.com.
I thought people wanted to hear outrageous things. My intention wasn't to provoke. It was to get laughs. To me, what's funny is something that's wildly inappropriate. There's kinda a parenthetical statement: "Wouldn't it be fucked up if someone said this?" And that is where I come from.
I got it from watching my dad make mistakes and say things he shouldn't be saying to strangers. And you see people and there's kinda like a hitch: Did he hear what he just said? Does he understand how that sounds?
And then too I had a guy throw a glass at me one time. And that sorta caused a reversal. It will begin to hurt your business. Clubs don't want to have people in who make people super angry.
Also, he talks about the duality of pain and anger and why it's important to be vulnerable onstage (something he admits he's not good at).
If you have two emotions at the same time, pain and anger. In fact, those two are kind of inseparable. Relate to the pain and it will improve your comedy. Not the anger. Because if you're relating to the anger, it's harder for people. It's a bolder thing.
Even if you are talking about the anger, the pain has to be there. That's where the vulnerability comes in. And that's what I've never been good at onstage. To be like "This hurts. This is me. This is what's wrong with me. This is what I did. This is what I brought to it." It's always just "Here's five things that I hate about these people." And that's a losing formula.
Kurt Braunohler Moody McCarthy Jason Saenz Nore Davis Matt Ruby
David Cope is hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
You can also see me at these shows: Fri May 27 - 9:00pm - Village Lantern Tue May 31 - 8:30pm - Swick and Easy Comedy Show @ Sunswick (Astoria) Wed Jun 1 - 9:00pm - And Then What Happened? @ Under St. Marks Theater Sat Jun 4 - 8:00pm - We're All Friends Here @ The Creek (LIC) Sun Jun 5 - 8:00pm - Sunday Night Live @ Broadway Comedy Club More shows
One of the greatest things I ever saw was [Bill Clinton] at Coretta Scott King's funeral. Jimmy Carter, George Bush Senior, Hillary — all these people making speeches, and then Bill Clinton goes on and he says, "Let's all remember that that is a woman lying right there." And he points at her.
It was audacious. "That is a woman who had her dreams and her pain and her passions," and I think he said "lust." He said really personal shit about her and you immediately heard the black people go, "Yes!"
He says, "There's her family — think about what they're going through today, and everything that's happened to them since their daddy got shot. The burden that must have been hers."
Holy shit. I hope to have any of that skill as a comic. He just found this short circuit. You try to have this nature the way water does — finds the lowest place and spreads the fuck out. That's what he did.
Here's the part of that speech he's referring to...
There's also a story he tells about going to a Knicks game with Chris Rock a few months ago:
Carmelo's first game. We went up to that fucking suite where all these people were eating — politicians and mobsters and Chloë Sevigny. There's this spread of food, and I'm like, "Let's fucking eat." Chris goes, "Nah, let's get down to the floor." I'm like, "You're taking this shit for granted, Chris. There's roast beef and a guy with a hat serving it." I wanted it so bad. I was starving and he's like, "Who needs it?" And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I'll probably never get here again."
So we go down, and I'm watching Carmelo, and I hear the song "Louie Louie" and I look up and I see my own face on the Jumbotron. And Chris says, "You know what, man, you've got your own show, and I'm on Broadway, and we're on the floor at Madison Square Garden. How fucking great is this?" And we high-fived and we just felt so good. Both of us, we're in our 40s — this shit could disappear instantly, never to return. And it will.
And one other interesting part: CK says that although Letterman is his favorite, he's been told he's "not okay there anymore" and no one will tell him why. He hasn't done the show in 15 years. Weird.
00:00 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby Intro 01:02 Yannis Pappas 27:24 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 28:44 Jesse Popp 42:15 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 43:17 Dan Soder 78:12 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 79:19 Finish
The next We're All Friends Here is Saturday, June 4. Details.
People usually think of funny/scary the same way. If it's funny, it's funny. If it's scary, it's scary. But Bridesmaids Director Paul Feig talks about how there's a cheap way to get laughs/screams or a "true" way in this A.V. Club interview:
Our editor is full of quotes. Bill Kerr. He has his whole theory called “the angry villagers.” Which is basically if the movie starts out and the jokes aren’t funny or they aren’t laughing, they become angry villagers and they want to burn the whole town down. And we’re always like, “Okay this is an ‘angry villagers’ moment” where, like, two jokes in a row didn’t work and now people are going to start losing trust in us. Because that’s all you have at the end of the day as a filmmaker, is the trust of your audience.
You think the same way when you go see a drama or a horror movie or something and the director is just letting stuff like jump out at you and scare the shit out of you in like, a cheap way, then you’re like, “Okay, I don’t trust this director anymore, so I don’t trust this movie because it’s just going do easy shit to make me jump.” Then you almost don’t want to deal with it anymore if that’s not the experience you went for, but there’s a way to scare people, truly, or just be the little kid who hides in the laundry and scares the shit out of mom. And that’s a cheap way to do it.
Seems like dick jokes, cursing, pop culture references, etc. are standup's version of the little kid in the laundry. You may get laughs with 'em, but it's not the valuable kind.
The ol' 1) ask nicely → 2) take 'em down approach.
Loud talker. CK says, "When you talk, I hear it in my ear and it fucks up my timing and it makes my job hard. So could you not talk during my act please?"
Guy decides to go back at him. Big mistake. CK rips him. Crowd boos the guy. CK: "People that don't know you hate you. That can't feel very good."
Stuckey & Murray George Gordon Phil Hanley Kate Lee Andy Haynes
I am hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
The same caveat applies to the famous advice given to all neophyte writers, “Write what you know.” The implication is autobiography in some form: memoir, fiction in which you are the main character, stories about your family, your background, someone you know well. But the advice is too banal to be useful to a young writer without an obviously compelling story to tell.
What if you are unlucky enough not to have endured the Holocaust, witnessed Apartheid, or been sexually abused by your father? What if you feel that the world you know, although thoroughly unpleasant, is also very dull? Or has been written about so well by another that you have nothing to add?
“Write what you know.”
But what do you know? Is it compelling? I don’t mean to your readers. To you. You will keep company with your writing longer than anyone else. (Unless you’re Tolstoy and your wife copies all your manuscripts by hand seven times over.)
If your subject doesn’t involve emotions, ideas, truths and lies that delight, frighten, soothe and enrage you, how can you expect it to fascinate a stranger? Whether you want to entertain or to provoke, to break hearts or reassure them, what you bring to your writing must consist of your longings and disappointments...
Don’t write what you know.
Don’t write what you love to read.
Don’t write what publishers are looking for.
Don’t write what critics are hailing.
Don’t write what your creative writing teacher claims is the only form of literature that is still dynamic.
Write what horrifies you, write what charms you, write what repels you, write what you love, write, to be aphoristic, what you cannot stop yourself from writing.
Yes, you will have to find “your voice,” and yes, you will have to learn the craft of writing, which is endlessly demanding and so varied that you will probably never feel you are more than a clumsy student. And don’t limit yourself to study only the craft necessary to produce your particular kind of writing. Also learn how the writers you have contempt for do what they do; you may discover something useful for your work.
But all of those necessary skills are servants to your Lord and Master: write what you cannot stop yourself from thinking about, even if it disgusts everyone you know. Readers read to subsume their consciousness, for a profound but limited time, into another’s. Some want reassurance, some want challenge. Some want pleasant lies, some painful realities. You may be unlucky and be fated to have a small audience. That’s too bad. (By the way, it is the fate of almost every writer.)
Over time, if you work hard and write what obsesses you, there will be readers who will want to live in your peculiar universe, and precisely because what you have provided is rare they will be all the more grateful for your creation.
"Write what you cannot stop yourself from thinking about, even if it disgusts everyone you know." Tough to argue with. If it obsesses you, it shows. And vice versa too.
I've heard Howard Stern say something similar too. Something along the lines of: Whatever makes you feel most uncomfortable talking about is the thing you most need to be talking about. Because that's what people want to hear.
And btw, I looked up the definition of subsume: "to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive." So that's what an audience wants to do to your consciousness with theirs. Freaks.
Myq Kaplan (The Tonight Show, Last Comic Standing finalist) Nick Vatterot (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) Adrienne Iapalucci (Last Comic Standing) Tim Dimond (Comcast Comedy Spotlight on Demand) Cameron Esposito (from Chicago) Beth Stelling (from Chicago) Mark Normand
I am hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
You can also see me at these shows: Thu May 12 - 9:00pm - Sugar Laughs Comedy @ Sugar Lounge (Brooklyn) Sat May 14 - 8:00pm - The Royal Oak Comedy Show @ Royal Oak (Brooklyn) Wed May 18 - 8:00pm - The Ministry of Secret Jokes (Philadelphia, PA) More shows
Did a show earlier this week that was less than ideal setup. First show at this venue and the audience was in one long wide row. 20 people or so just lined up horizontally down the bar, like a receiving line or something.
Needless to say, every comic went up and commented about the setup and how weird it was and how they felt uncomfortable, etc. Show was fine but it never got hot.
After, I had an interesting convo with a gal at the show. She's not a comedy savvy person, just someone who showed up to see a show. And to her, it was strange that every comic kept talking about how weird it was. Because to her, it didn't feel weird at all. She was enjoying it. So was the person next to her. She just didn't get why each comic would go up there and talk about it being a shitty setup. If it wasn't for that, she never would have known anything bad was going on.
That was an interesting reminder to me of how much you lead the audience when you're onstage. If you keep talking about how weird it is, it will be weird. You're basically doubling down on the unpleasantness. On the other hand, you can ignore it and just keep going as if it's a great show.
It's a balance. You don't want to seem tone deaf while ignoring a shitty situation. But then again, you're prob not helping much if you dwell on it over and over.
Sims called me up a few months later and interviewed me about how Rock and other comics work on new bits. The result: I'm mentioned in the intro to Sims' new book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. Here's what the book is about...
Based on deep and extensive research, Sims discovered that productive, creative thinkers and doers—from Ludwig van Beethoven to Thomas Edison and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—practice a set of simple but often counterintuitive experimental methods—such as failing quickly to learn fast, trying imperfect ideas, and engaging in highly immersed observation—that free their minds, opening them up to making unexpected connections and perceiving invaluable insights. These methods also unshackle them from the constraints of conventional planning, analytical thinking, and linear problem solving that our educational system overemphasizes at the expense of creativity.
...and here's the part of the intro that talks about Rock and "fellow comedians" like Jerry Seinfeld and, ahem, me. (Insert crude comment of your choice here.)
Chris Rock has become one of the most popular comedians in the world and, while there is no doubt he has great talent, his brilliance also comes from his approach to developing his ideas. the routines he rolls out on his global tours are the output of what he has learned from thousands of little bets, nearly all of which fail.
When beginning to work on a new show, Rock picks venues where he can experiment with new material in very rough fashion. in gearing up for his latest global tour, he made between forty and fifty appearances at a small comedy club, called stress Factory, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, not far from where he lives. in front of audiences of, say, fifty people, he will show up unannounced, carrying a yellow legal note pad with ideas scribbled on it. “it’s like boxing training camp,” Rock told the Orange County Register.
When people in the audience spot him, they start whispering to one another. As the waitstaff and other comedians find places to stand at the sides or back, the room quickly fills with anticipation. He won’t launch into the familiar performance mode his fans describe as “the full preacher effect,” when he uses animated body language, pitchy and sassy vocal intonations, and erupting facial expressions. instead, he will talk with the audience in an informal, conversational style with his notepad on a stool beside him. He watches the audience intently, noticing heads nodding, shifting body language, or attentive pauses, all clues as to where good ideas might reside.
In sets that run around forty-five minutes, most of the jokes fall flat. His early performances can be painful to watch. Jokes will ramble, he’ll lose his train of thought and need to refer to his notes, and some audience members sit with their arms folded, noticeably unimpressed. the audience will laugh about his flops—laughing at him, not with him. Often Rock will pause and say, “This needs to be fleshed out more if it’s gonna make it,” before scribbling some notes. He may think he has come up with the best joke ever, but if it keeps missing with audiences, that becomes his reality. Other times, a joke he thought would be a dud will bring the house down. According to fellow comedian Matt Ruby, “There are five to ten lines during the night that are just ridiculously good. Like lightning bolts. My sense is that he starts with these bolts and then writes around them.”
For a full routine, Rock tries hundreds (if not thousands) of preliminary ideas, out of which only a handful will make the final cut. A successful joke often has six or seven parts. With that level of complexity, it’s understandable that even a comedian as successful as Chris Rock wouldn’t be able to know which joke elements and which combinations will work. This is true for every stand-up comedian, including the top performers we tend to perceive as creative geniuses, like Rock or Jerry Seinfeld. it’s also true for comedy writers. The writers for the humor publication the Onion, known for its hilarious headlines, propose roughly six hundred possibilities for eighteen headlines each week, a 3 percent success rate. “You can sit down and spend hours crafting some joke that you think is perfect, but a lot of the time, that’s just a waste of time,” Ruby explains. this may seem like an obvious problem, but it’s a mistake that rookie comedians make all the time.
By the time Rock reaches a big show — say an HBO special or an appearance on David Letterman — his jokes, opening, transitions, and closing have all been tested and retested rigorously. Developing an hour-long act takes even top comedians from six months to a year. If comedians are serious about success, they get on stage every night they can, especially when developing new material. they typically do so at least five nights per week, sometimes up to seven, and sweat over every element and word. And the cycle repeats, day in, day out.
Most people are surprised that someone who has reached Chris Rock’s level of success still puts himself out there in this way, willing to fail night after night, but Rock deeply understands that ingenious ideas almost never spring into people’s minds fully formed; they emerge through a rigorous experimental discovery process. As Matt Ruby says of Rock’s performances, “I’m not sure there’s any better comedy class than watching someone that good work on material at that stage. More than anything, you see how much hard work it is. He’s grinding out this material.”
Sims recently emailed me with the news that Little Bets had a very successful release week.
To quote Yogi Berra, “We were over-whelming underdogs,” but the book is currently in the top 200 of all books on Amazon (#1 for entrepreneurship on Kindle, #5 hard copy), and has received very good reviews and mentions including in The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and The Economist.
Whoa, it's been three years of talking about sex, drugs, bad parenting, and gunshot wounds. Good times. So let's celebrate with a big anniversary show. Like past ones, we're bringing back three of our fave guests for a return trip to the hot seat. This time we've got:
Yannis Pappas Jesse Popp Dan Soder
If you have liver problems, this is the show for you!
Saturday, May 7 - 8:00pm FREE The Creek and The Cave 10-93 Jackson Avenue Long Island City, NY Facebook invite
In the comments to "The bad of cursing and the good of being conversational," ECN rails against comedians who "just go up there and talk" and praises great comics who avoid sounding conversational. "This rambling trend is a plague upon real, crafted comedy," he writes.
I know where he's coming from. Because I know when I get too conversational, I can feel the air slowly escaping the room. And I hate when others just ramble and use words as if they're free. They're not. The audience pays for them with attention.
But it feels like this is painting with broad strokes. Like there's only two paths...
There's the joke guy. With all the one-liners and quick hit bits. He's good at being clever but there's often a lack of soulfulness and depth there. He gets a chuckle but no one (including him) really cares about what he's saying in any meaningful way.
And there's the personal, conversational, in-flow guy who is organic and brings you into his world with stories and longer bits. He'll sometimes favor narrative over punches because he's trying to tell a story or get across a point of view or be a more fully fleshed out personality onstage. (Or maybe he just can't write that many great punchlines since that's, y'know, hard.)
But isn't there middle ground here? The "in-between" comic with quick jokes who still manages to bring you inside their world. They're talking about their life and what matters to them and getting across who they are as a person — but doing it with tight, quick jokes.
I think Nick Griffin is a great example of this. Exquisitely well-edited jokes. Not a wasted word. But there's also a thread through 'em.
You watch his set and you feel you know him. He's not going into long stories about his divorce or drinking. But he's dropping enough breadcrumbs along the way that when you connect the dots, he seems like an actual, fleshed out human being talking about the things that obsess him. It's dark and sad and a real thing of beauty.
I've been drinking whiskey lately. Like a grownup, ya know? And I've noticed something interesting: Cheap whiskeys are named the exact opposite of the people who drink them.
There's Old Grand-Dad. But let's be honest. If you're drinking Old Grand-Dad, you're probably a young grand-dad. You're 32 and putting a diaper on lil' Garth III.
That guy passed out on the sidewalk outside Mars Bar at 3pm on a Tuesday? He spent the day drinking Kentucky Gentleman. Hey, nothing says gentleman like a top hat, monocle, and a puddle of urine!
Canadian Club? Not a very exclusive club. Mostly you just need to be an alcoholic.
Crown Royal? Odd that it's the whiskey of both royalty and homeless people.
Booker's? Drunk almost exclusively by illiterates.
Southern Comfort? Ideal for those who take comfort in vomiting.
Saturday, May 7 at 8pm will be the third anniversary show of We're All Friends Here at The Creek. Bringing back some of our fave guests to the hot seat: Ted Alexandro, Yannis Pappas, and Jesse Popp. (If you have Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle," play it now.) (Also, why do you have that song?)
00:00 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby Intro 02:06 Zach Broussard 25:54 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby Intro 26:59 George Gordon 44:23 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby Intro 45:23 Harrison Greenbaum 74:50 Finish
Remember the OJ bit on Bring The Pain? "Now I'm not saying he should have killed her...but I understand."
Well OJ called up Chris Rock after it aired and left a voicemail saying, "You dogged me in your last show...but I understand."
Rock discusses it and plays the clip in this video: Chris Rock's Top 5 Funniest Oprah Show Moments (OJ thing starts :55 in). Rock laughs it off but says it was a little scary: "What do you understand? Do you understand where I live?"
Jason Good Nick Turner Scott Moran Selena Coppock Joe Zimmerman Matt Ruby
Cope's hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
And a date to save: May 7. It'll be the third (!) anniversary show for We're All Friends Here at The Creek. Inviting back some of our fave guests.
Gaffigan is a subversive voice, for the reason others consider him so middle of the road: He’s able to talk to everybody, and that puts him in a position to affect more societal change than the trio of “on edge” comedians mentioned above.
Comics “on the edge” tend to have edge or fringe followings. Stanhope is fantastic, but he’s a niche performer. Cross may be offensively poignant, but he’s preaching to the choir. Same goes for Garofalo; as much as she is able to rally the left, she’s not changing any Republican minds.
Now, take Gaffigan: he’s less vitriolic than the aforementioned comics, but he’s certainly found a way to criticize people to their faces—and because of his wide appeal, he’s been able to accomplish this on a larger scale.
In the comments there, Gaffigan's inside voice is brought up by someone named Roped:
what you’re missing here is Gaffigan’s strange voice that talks back to his jokes from the perspective of a confused (possibly female) audience member. This tic makes him more subversive than any of the other comics you’ve mentioned because he is able to play with our responses by responding to this voice. Through this he goes beyond simply stating what he thinks in the way you’ve mentioned. Like, he’s not just going “I HATE OBESITY AND CRITICIZE IT” but he can display both sides of the conversation. It is wizardry.
Good point that. I've heard Gaffigan refer to it as his "inside voice." But to me, it always seemed more of an "outside voice" — him acting out the thoughts of a conservative, easily offended, female audience member.
And that's the beauty of it. It shows he's completely aware of how he's being perceived, which lets him get away with saying on-the-edge stuff. It's like a bumper that minimizes any damage. Plus, it also shows the silliness of those thin-skinned soccer mom types.
And one more thing worth mentioning on the topic: Sometimes Gaffigan is just outright subversive. Take this chunk he does on religion where he tackles the virgin birth, pearly gates, people who talk a lot about Jesus, the burning bush, etc.
I don't think the Jesus stuff is why he's so popular. To keep up his mainstream appeal, this kinda thing needs to be sandwiched between bits on bowling and Hot Pockets. But sometimes it takes some sugar (or bacon) to make a pill go down.
Glasser’s Cameron Mesirow on why she likes to give listeners something to watch too: “I suppose the drive to do something more than just stand there and sing comes from being a bored spectator. I find self-indulgence on stage kind of horrifying."
A good attitude for any performer I think. Put on the kind of act that you'd want to watch. If you don't want to watch someone read jokes out of a notebook, then why would you ever inflict that on others?
Joe DeRosa Jared Logan Jim Tews Brendan Fitzgibbons Rob O'Reilly Andy Haynes
I am hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
I'm pretty bad at being phsyical onstage. Most of the time I just stand there. Some hand motions occasionally. Maybe I'll add in some more physicality to a bit after doing it for a while. But that's about it. While I don't think I'll ever be a Jim Carrey type (or really want to be), I do think it's an area where I've got plenty of room to improve. You get more mileage when you engage people's visual sense too.
It doesn't need to be an over the top, hump-the-stool thing either. Take a look at this Ted Alexandro clip.
I think of Ted as being very laid back/zen onstage and not a physical comedian at all. Yet here you can see all kinds of subtle movements that accentuate his jokes — fixing his hair and looking at his nails in the woman president joke, acting out crunches during the Buddha/Jesus joke, looking like a pigeon during the gym bit, etc. Subtle stuff yet really adds to the mix. It's a good example of how a comic can add physicality to an act without it seeming forced.
Talking animals = yawn most of the time. But Marcus and I were talking about a couple of fun animated talking animal shorts that are great. Mostly because they're so human. He turned me on to this one...
...and I mentioned how it reminded me of this old Nick Park animation:
Friday (4/15) lineup: Barry Rothbart Michael Che Jermaine Fowler Todd Womack Matt Ruby Special guest!?
Mark is hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
Other upcoming shows Monday, April 18 - 8:00pm - Recess @ King's Cross Thursday, April 21 - 8:30pm - Far Fetched @ Tantra Lounge Friday, April 22 - 8:00pm - Hot Soup @ O'Hanlon's Monday, April 25 - 8:00pm - Usurper! @ Colador Cafe Tuesday, April 26 - 9:00pm - Eastville Comedy Club
Steven Wright once described his act as "a view of the world through the eyes of a child, but described in the words of an adult."
I thought of this while watching Norm Macdonald's new (terrific) standup special on Comedy Central. Norm constantly seems to be looking at the world through the eyes of a little kid and pointing out how silly it all is. But what takes it to another level in this special is the topics he's discussing: mortality, heart attacks, addiction, murder, graves, etc. His innocent-seeming approach combined with the heavy topics makes it something else to watch.
He's been hitting the press circuit lately and it's interesting to learn more about his approach. At Weekend Update, he said he was “doing a specific experiment, where I was trying to strip all cleverness from the joke and try and make it as blunt as possible. I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.” Here's an example of that from his new Sports Show.
Not the best joke. But it's funny in its own way that the joke is him just saying the truth. Reminds me of one of my fave bits I've ever seen him do. It was back in the 90s during an interview and he was talking about Joe Camel:
So great. Next time Norm was on the show, Dennis Miller brought it up again and called Norm "a profane child."
NM: Kind of all-important. I’m not original, but I strive toward it as much as possible. I tried really hard on Weekend Update to do something that I considered original, which was, I tried to cut all cleverness out of the joke. I’ve always been very averse to innuendo, especially sexual. I find it cowardly or something. Like on Will & Grace, my mother will laugh at it, then I’m like, “You know what that joke’s about, right? Like, that one guy fucked that guy in the ass.” And then she’s aghast, and I’m like, “That’s what he just said when he talked about the tunnel! So why didn’t he just say it?” It always maddens me that people can laugh at sexual innuendo, then you say what it really means, and they’re like “Ah! I can’t hear that!” So on Update, the only real original thing was trying to take away the cleverness of the punchline and make it as blunt as possible. And then I tried to make the punchline as close to the setup as I could. And I thought that was the perfect thing. If I could make the setup and the punchline identical to each other, I would create a different kind of joke.
And lastly, Bill Simmons just interviewed Norm on his podcast too. Interesting discussion in there of how Wright, Hedberg, and Rodney are three guys he thinks of as having the ideal sync between performance style and writing.
The other week, I did an hourlong set at a community college in Maryland. It was at 11am. In a cafeteria. For a, er, light crowd: 10 people in front paying attention, six more in the back playing Magic the Gathering, and another dozen people — off to the side in a different room — ignoring me and eating their lunch. I thought that was strange enough. But then, about 15 minutes in, the mascot of the school entered. In full regalia. And sat in the front row. This is him:
Yes, he is a parrot that is a pirate. Not a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder. A parrot that is ALSO a pirate. Eye patch and all. Quite a hybrid of ideas.
I asked the audience what the name of the school mascot is. They said a skipjack. I just looked that up. A skipjack is neither a parrot nor a pirate. It is a tuna.
(Look, I'm just telling you the facts. Don't ask me to make sense of any of this. Maybe it is a tuna that is dressed up like a parrot that is dressed up like a pirate? Hmm.)
I tried talking to him (e.g. "What animal does a parrot pirate have on HIS shoulder?") but he had a giant mask on and couldn't speak. He just did this weird slow-nod thing because I think that's all you can do when you're in a giant mascot head.
I then talked about how, in a way, all birds are really pirates when you think about it. They live pretty similar lifestyles, ya know?
It was really fucking strange. He sat in the front row for a half-hour – laughing? I have no idea – and then got up and walked out. As he slowly exited through the back of the room, I said goodbye and he waved back at me. It felt like the fade out of some sort of Donnie Darko/Hunter S. Thompson/Pirates of the Caribbean fever dream.
Sometimes comedy is a pretty decent replacement for psychedelics.
Comedy is a very specific thing. It's a very aggressive, very masculine form. There's not a ton of straight female comedians that have been super successful because it's sorta like, "Hey, I'm the funniest one in the room! Everyone shut up and listen to me for an hour while I fucking tell you!" It's aggressive.
...and the "women aren't as funny as men" thing:
My theory: It's not that women aren't funny, it's that women get seen before they're ready. It takes a couple of years to get fucking good and to figure out what your point of view is. And I feel like the best managers of women just slow their women down. So [Cummings' manager] Barry [Katz], for the first three years I was doing comedy, he wouldn't let me showcase for anything. He wouldn't let me do anything. He said, "Just get good. When you kill 10 times in a row, I'll get you showcases."
Interesting take. Usually I hear women complaining about not getting opportunities because of their gender. But here's Cummings saying that gals get seen too quickly, which sounds like the opposite idea. (And can lead to negative comments from male comics when a gal does get something.)
When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology acknowledged 12 years ago that it had discriminated against female professors in “subtle but pervasive” ways, it became a national model for addressing gender inequity...Now, an evaluation of those efforts shows substantial progress — and unintended consequences. Among other concerns, many female professors say that M.I.T.’s aggressive push to hire more women has created the sense that they are given an unfair advantage. Those who once bemoaned M.I.T.’s lag in recruiting women now worry about what one called “too much effort to recruit women.”
"Coming from stand-up, I think female comics get on stage for a very different reason than male comics do. This is a huge generalization, but I think guys get on stage to get laid, and women get on stage to get heard," Kilmartin explains. "For female comics, it's such a personal thing. I hardly know any female stand-ups who talk about generic stuff: It's always really what happened to you. It is sort of a big switch to go from that to writing for someone else. And I think that that stops a lot of female comics from making that jump over."
It's incredible that the room is so balanced. There are four women, including myself, that work in the writers pool, which is only eight or nine people, maybe ten people tops, that you would call writers on our staff. And four of them are women. Those are insane numbers. But it works really well for sitcoms; I don't know if it would have worked as well at a place like The Onion. Because The Onion is more straight joke writing, where Community is more about telling stories and character dynamics and what do we want to say about these characters and how are they going to grow and evolve. And, not to generalize, but I can tell you this specifically about the Community writers room, it's really nice having women around to talk about that stuff. Because they're interested in being true, for instance, to Annie's feelings about Jeff and how she reacts as a girl who is nineteen years old and very headstrong, but hasn't had a lot of experience yet. So I feel like women really come in handy in that respect.
After working in technology for 17 years now, I can assure you: constantly being the only woman in the room stinks. Since I usually am, one of my career goals is to surround myself with capable women technologists as well as men. It's not easy, but it's important—and not just because I'm lonely, but because I make stuff, and creations reflect their makers. The tech industry is by and large a boys' club, and that's a shame, because homogenous teams turn out one-dimensional products. Diverse teams are better-equipped to make things that shine because they serve a wide range of people.
At Lifehacker I learned something important about creating a productive online community: leaders set the tone by example. It's simple, really. When someone you don't know shows up on the mailing list or in IRC, you break out the welcome wagon, let them know you're happy they're here, show them around the place, help them with their question or problem, and let them know how they can give back to the community. Once you and your community leaders do that a few times, something magical happens: the newbie who you welcomed just a few weeks ago starts welcoming new folks, and the virtuous cycle continues.
So if ya wanna transfer that idea to comedy, it'd seemingly be important for lady comics to welcome newbie females into the fold. And by newbie, I mean new at comedy, not new at being female. (How best to welcome tranny comedians into standup will have to be dealt with in another post.)
And that reminds me of a time I was in Chicago and realized there is an all-female comedy class at Lincoln Lodge. Never heard of anything like that in NYC. Though a step in that direction seems to be Glennis McMurray's new GLOC site.
I admit it—I’ve been bitten by the bug of envy. I’ve looked at another lady and silently raged over her accomplishments. I’ve dogged, catted and birded my way through her wardrobe, hair, mannerisms and material. Somehow I thought doing so would make me feel better, but I always ended up feeling worse in the end. Not to get all after school special on your asses, but what really felt great was starting this blog to recognize the awesome in each and every one of us...
So look to the successes of the ladies around you and let it fuel your own. Because if we can’t bond over a shared comedic sensibility, can we at least get along because we’re all women fighting the good fight together? I think so.
What's the conclusion to all this? Dunno. But yeah, let's all get along. U-N-I-T-etc.
Woooooeeee! We're back and we've got a fun one this week. After finally coping with last months show we eventually got up enough strength to do another one of these puppies. And boy do we have some fun stuff on these jews!
Here we go:
George Gordon (Non Jew) Zach Broussard (Handsome but not gay) Harrison Greenbaum (Handsome)
Eternal questions will be answered and truths will be told!!! This is gonna be a doozy!! See you then. 10pm at Creek after Monsters!
WED 4/6: WE'RE ALL FRIENDS HERE 10pm - Free The Creek and the Cave 10-93 Jackson Ave. in Long Island City
Bill Simmons is joined by Roastmaster General Jeff Ross to discuss the Donald Trump roast, classic and untelevised roasts, Greg Giraldo's death and more.
Really interesting stuff, esp if you care about roasts at all. Cool to hear what a good sport Shaq was about this roast (below).
Ross met him that afternoon and asked if he'd be a good sport. Shaq said, "Nobody ever told me to hold back on the basketball court, I don't want you to hold back on the dais." Now that's the attitude ya wanna see from a roastee.
Here's a good Ross quote about "crossing the line": "There is no line. There's funny and not funny." After that, he compared the Michael Richards incident to the Flava Flav roast:
As soon as you do the same [racial] subjects in the hands of professional comics, it was a slam dunk home run. Hilarious show...These things can bring people together. As much as they can separate people like Michael Richards did, the same subjects, the same words can make people better friends. And that's what being a professional comedian is for.
Drunk comedians talk about when to touch the hips, what girls want, and how to flirt. Featuring Tom Sibley, Kara Klenk, Jared Logan, Laura Prangley, Selena Coppock, and Jason Burke.
Some choice quotes: "If you touch a girl on the hips, I think that's an instant sign you're going to fuck later." "If a guy touches my hip the first time I meet him, I'm not talking to him again." "I don't know what this is for, but I give good head." Who said what? Listen up...
Nate Bargatze Alex Koll Josh DiDinato Erik Bergstrom Emily Heller David Cope Matt Ruby (hosting)
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
More upcoming shows Wed 3/30 - 8pm - Ha Ha @ Ri Ra (Arlington, VA) Thu 3/31 - 11am - Chesapeake College (students only) Wed 4/06 - 10pm - We're All Friends Here @ The Creek (LIC) Mon 4/11 - 7:30pm - Case of the Mondays @ Manchester Pub (NYC)
New topic. Joke. Stop. New topic. Joke. Stop. New topic...
Each time you go to a new topic, it's like going from fifth gear back to first. It's why tagging existing bits helps so much. Or finding a new angle on the same topic. The momentum from each previous joke adds to the next one.
Gaffigan is a master at it. In fact, he discussed that aspect of his approach in this Nerdist interview a while back. The reason he sticks to one topic (e.g. bacon, hot pockets, hotels, etc.) is because he feels like changing topics is a huge mental chore for the audience.
It's an interesting way to think about it. Every time you start in on a new topic, you're asking the audience to press reset and lock in on a new target. That requires effort. And it makes your job that much harder.
For me, having chunks helps with set flow too. Remembering a bunch of one liners or quick jokes is annoying to my brain. I'd much rather have three topics that have a bunch of jokes embedded in 'em. Then it feels more natural and effortless as opposed to a series of stop-start jokes.
It can be tough to take this approach in NYC though. Here, it feels like you constantly need to be generating new material. But in my experience, tagging bits and expanding them is a slow process that comes over time — and from repetition. Heck, I've been doing one joke for almost a year and I just came up with a new tag for it a couple of weeks ago. When you're constantly turning over new material, you don't give bits that kind of chance to grow over time.
Over at Salon, a writer — looking at The Simpsons, Glee, and Community — asks if comedy based on pop culture references is destined to go sour quickly.
To varying degrees, all these shows have given me joy, and no, I don't think self-aware comedy is an inherently less worthy form than any other. But there's a downside: a lack of durability. Some of the most buzz-worthy TV comedies of the last 25 years have proved as sturdy as tissue paper. Even the great ones from the '90s ("The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld") are starting to seem as era-specific as high-top fades and Koosh balls. "I Love Lucy," "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Cheers" and other pre-'90s sitcoms didn't start to seem dated or irrelevant for decades, probably because they kept the pop culture references to a bare minimum; the more recent hit comedies are starting to exude that expired fish stench while they're still on the air. Can a show still call itself a comedy if you have to explain why it's funny?
Comedy writers needn't feel obligated to make every joke and every episode a monument to the eternal verities; sometimes the audience is just looking to unwind after a long day, and a Britney Spears impression or a Charlie Sheen joke is all they want or need, and that's fine. And pop culture references are not an inherently bad thing, of course, and I said that in the piece. And yes, it's true, all entertainment -- all art -- dates eventually. We don't look at a Rembrandt painting or listen to a Miles Davis record and assume they were made last week.
But hopefully there's something about the work that transcends the time in which it was created, otherwise it's ephemeral, disposable. I probably singled out "The Simpsons" because it's considered a pantheon series, a great and presumably lasting work. And during the first half of its run, it did have certain timeless qualities. The pop culture references were dense and sometimes deep, but there also frequent references to mythology, ancient history, biblical scripture, opera, Broadway musicals, painting and literature: Shakespeare, Vincent van Gogh, Gilbert and Sullivan, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, you name it. And the best episodes weren't just a bunch of riffs strung together. There was a coherent, often scathingly funny vision of American life at the core of the series, as well as an intuitive, honest portrait of family and community and human nature; the gags were just wonderful embroidery. But in the last decade, the embroidery has taken over "The Simpsons" -- and just about every other TV comedy of any profile that came after it.
My .02: Almost all comedy sours quickly, even "substantial" comedy. Would Mort Sahl going through the paper and riffing off the news surprise anyone today? Does anyone find Lenny Bruce edgy now? Even Bill Hicks seems dated and he wasn't that long ago. How often does anyone put on a comedy album from the 80s today and crack up?
Sometimes the only comedy that feels truly timeless is absurdist stuff like Steve Martin's 70s output or Steven Wright's one-liners. Maybe Cosby's family material or Chris Rock's bit on relationships also falls under the timeless umbrella. Certain "human condition" topics never go away. But otherwise, it seems like all comedy is a balloon that is slowly leaking relevance. If shelf life is what you care about, comedy is a poor bet.
Do jokes like these and you are regurgitating, not originating. It's like when someone tries to have a conversation about the weather. It feels like a pandering, desperate attempt to find something in common to talk about instead of opening up about what one genuinely cares about. ("What if pop culture is what I genuinely care about?" Well then that's kinda sad.)
That doesn't mean I think there's no place for pop culture references in an act. I certainly have jokes that sprinkle 'em in. But I guess I feel the same way about them as I do puns: If the whole reason for the joke is to make a pun or pop culture reference, that's lame. But if it's a tool that you use along the way as a metaphor or fun wordplay while making another point, that's a whole different animal.
For example, Greg Giraldo drops in lines about Barbra Streisand, Justin Timberlake, and Ben Affleck in this chunk. But the point of the whole thing (i.e. all religions are insane) is much bigger than just slamming celebs. That's the difference between being Kathy Griffin and being Giraldo.
Of course, anything is possible if done artfully. For example, it's tough to find fault with Greg Proops' operatic takedown of Jessica "Six Flags over stupid" Simpson:
00:00 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby Intro 01:17 Michael Che 17:24 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 18:19 Zach Sims 38:24 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 39:32 Erin Judge 73:24 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 73:44 Finish
And here's the latest episode with Nick Maritato, Phoebe Robinson, and Morgan Venticinque.
00:00 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby Intro 01:10 Nick Maritato 26:43 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 28:01 Phoebe Robinson 62:07 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 63:39 Morgan Venticinque 82:55 Mark Normand and Matt Ruby 83:32 Finish
Just watched Punching the Clown over the weekend. Great film. I liked the way the radio station interviews worked as a framing device, how Henry Phillips' performance footage is mixed in to the story (a bit like Louie), and the smart/funny writing throughout.
There's a scene at the end, where he's walking on a beach and explaining why he keeps performing, that really nails the rabbit hole that is performing comedy. Check it out.
After searching her for weapons, Officer Baumann found three bags of heroin in Ms. Mackaliunas' jacket...
Ms. Mackaliunas asked to speak with Sergeant Michael Mayer and told him she had hidden more heroin in her vagina.
A search of Ms. Mackaliunas by a doctor at Community Medical Center turned up 54 bags of heroin, 31 empty bags used to package heroin, 8.5 prescription pills and $51.22.
My first reaction: Loose change! I can't believe she was carrying 22 cents in her vagina.
My second reaction: Wait a minute. Why is she carrying cash at all in her vagina? It's legal to carry cash.
My third reaction: Maybe she was just showing off. 'Cuz this almost sounds like an infomercial for this woman's steamer trunk-sized vagina. "54 bags of heroin...but wait, that's not all!"
Also, I love that she had three bags of heroin left over and she was like, "Well, might as well just put these in my jacket."
Hot Soup Friday's (3/18) Hot Soup lineup: Joe Machi Kevin Barnett Adam Pateman Adrienne Iapalucci Matt Ruby Cope is hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
More upcoming shows Thu 3/17 - 8pm - Mish Mosh @ Birch Coffee Sun 3/20 - 7pm - It Is It @ Piano's Sun 3/20 - 9pm - Beauty Bar Comedy Show Mon 3/21 - 8pm - Recess @ King's Cross Tue 3/22 - 8pm - See You Next Tuesday @ Simply Fondue Wed 3/23 - 9pm - Everyday Dirt @ Royal Oak
I'm tired of podcasts that are just comics sitting down with other comics to talk about comedy. So I'm taking a different approach with my new Sandpaper Suit podcast. I'm going to talk about guys and girls and, y'know, just solve that whole thing.
I will talk with comedians and regular people too. And both genders will have their say. And I will tape in different locations. I'll put out a new one about every two weeks. You will want more than that. I will refuse to give it to you. Boundaries!
Btw, I've been prepping for all this relationship talk by watching The Bachelor. So I want you to know that I'm "here for the right reasons." Also, when I have a feeling, I will "own it."
So here we go. It's the new Sandpaper Suit podcast. The first guest is one of my favorite comedians, Patrice O'Neal. We go there.
Patrice O'Neal discusses cheating, monogamy, commitment, threeways, his relationship with his mom, gender roles, harems, the pros and cons of pimping, how to keep relationships fresh, and more. He says, "When people listen to this shit, I'm going to be an asshole to most people. But I'm not saying anything that's wrong. The truth hurts."
Or you can subscribe to the podcast's RSS Feed. If ya like what you hear, leave a nice comment at iTunes so the rest of the world knows to check it out too. Also, thanks to radio/tech/sound guru Marcus Parks for helping put it together. And stay tuned for the next episode. It will be "the most dramatic" podcast yet.
My girlfriend loves to eat chocolate. She's always eating chocolate, and she likes to joke she's got a chocolate addiction... So, I put her in a car and I drove her downtown, and I pointed out a crack addict, and I said, 'Do you see that, honey? Why can't you be that skinny?'
...that first turned him on to "the second smile":
One night I was at an open mic and I did this joke for the first time, one about my girlfriend being addicted to chocolate. And there’s such a mean twist to it. And the audience reaction was like “ohhhhhh!” It was more than a laugh. It was what [the original head writer for Saturday Night Live] Michael O’Donoghue talks about as the "second smile." Where the audience is laughing but then you cut their throats at the same time. It’s so sharp that they don’t know what the fuck to do. I thought, “That’s it. It’s got to have this mean twist to it.” And then my persona formed around that. I started thinking, “Who do I have to be to pull this off?”...
I think anyone can do it. I think it’s just about the surprise and the revelation. It can be personal or it could be a story. Anything that’s going to suck someone in and then cut their legs out. I don’t think it necessarily has to do with one-liners or non-personal jokes.
The groan/laugh combo is always an interesting one. I forget the bit, but there's one Todd Barry album (From Heaven?) where he tells a joke that receives a mixed reaction from the crowd. He then voices the audience's thought process: "You heard me laughing, didn't you?...You heard me groaning, didn't you?" Sometimes they want it both ways.
Tonight and tomorrow (3/11-3/12) I'm at Red Bar Comedy Club in Chicago. Tickets available here. Also tonight (3/11), there's a fun Hot Soup at O'Hanlons. And Sunday there's a special edition of We're All Friends Here at 10pm at The Creek.
SUN (3/13): WE'RE ALL FRIENDS HERE 10pm - Free The Creek and the Cave 10-93 Jackson Ave. in Long Island City
Lineup: Phoebe Robinson Morgan Venticinque Nick Maritato
Researchers who study homosexuality have discovered that the brains of many lesbians were over-exposed to male hormones during prenatal development, influencing not only their adult sexual orientation, but also masculinizing other behavioral and cognitive traits in which there exist innate sex differences. This is not true of all lesbians, but it is especially true for those who exhibit male-typed profiles. So it is not implausible that some lesbians’ courtship strategies would largely mimic opposite-sex-typed patterns, including a differentiated capacity for humor production that attracts female attention. This would not be a conscious strategy, it must be emphasized, and indeed this is what many critics of evolutionary psychology repeatedly fail to realize. So, for heaven’s sake, don’t mistake this as me saying that lesbian comics go on stage just to score chicks. Gene replication is simply a mechanistic means to an end; if it works, it works. Many evolutionary psychologists, including Miller, believe that our minds are often just epiphenomenal interpreters.
Ah, academics. I wish I could go onstage and start ideas with "it is not implausible that..."
Anyway, interesting theory about why lesbians want to be comics. I think a big part of the story is audiences too and how they respond differently to straight/gay female comics. It takes two to tango and the audience (i.e. society) is half the equation in standup.
This guy also mentions he can only come up with the name of a single gay male stand-up (Ant). But rumor is there are at least several big-name gay male comics out there who just choose to keep it under wraps for Spacey-like reasons.
And he also fails to mention there's a new crop of gay male comics coming up. Guys who talk about being gay but don't rely on the usual stereotypes about homosexuality to get laughs (e.g. Brent Sullivan, Gabe Liedman, etc.). There's a great feature article waiting to happen about that. Get on it New York Magazine.
Anyway, I found the orig story via Mandy Bardsley, who posted this about it on Facebook:
Wow. What scientists (who aren't also historians) say about (homo)sexuality in general is the dumbest shit I've ever read. If only this guy knew that he was repeating some ancient garbage from the turn of the century, like before we found out that women and men both have estrogen and testosterone. I gave the author a list of reading materials.
Ok, so women and men both have estrogen and testosterone. Why does that prove this guy's an idiot? I'm all for a good sexuality-related fight so feel free to post links to any of these relevant reading materials in the comments.
Matteson asked, "Curious if you can think of any stand up bits that could be considered a "rake bit". There must be some. Would take some real balls to power through the middle sections without laughs."
On his WTF (at 34:00 into the podcast), Todd Glass called funny-then not funny-then funny again bits "Kevin Meaney funny." Here's why:
Glass then talks about how David Cross bet him $2,000 when they were on tour together. The bet? That Glass couldn't drag out his Sham-Wow bit, where he lists various uses for a rag, for two and a half minutes. When Glass did it, he says it went great.
They lost me and then they came back...There's a point where they're all thinking, "Yeah, we get the joke. We get it. It's up and down. And you're gonna keep doing it. And we're gonna laugh more. And we're not. We've been through our cycle."
And then if you do it, they go, "Alright." You break them down.
Thu 3/3 - 9pm - CSL @ Kabin Fri 3/4 - 8pm - Hot Soup @ O'Hanlon's Sat 3/5 - 8pm - Comedy Show @ The Cove Sun 3/6 - 9pm - Entertaining Julia @ Town Hall Pub (Chicago) Mon 3/7 - 9pm - Hug City Presents: Free Show @ Racine Plumbing Bar & Grill (Chicago) Tue 3/8 - 9:30pm - Chicago Underground Comedy @ Beat Kitchen (Chicago) Wed 3/9 - 9pm - CYSK @ Timothy O'Toole's (Chicago) Thu 3/10 - 9:30pm - Riot @ Chicago Joes (Chicago) Thu 3/10 - 10pm - Rotten Comedy @ Oakwood Bar and Grill (Chicago) Fri 3/11 - 10pm - Red Bar @ Ontourage (Chicago) Sat 3/12 - 8pm - Red Bar @ Ontourage (Chicago) Sat 3/12 - 10pm - Red Bar @ Ontourage (Chicago) Thu 3/17 - 8pm - Mish Mosh @ Birch Coffee Fri 3/18 - 8pm - Hot Soup @ O'Hanlon's Sat 3/19 - 8pm - We're All Friends Here @ The Creek
Hot Soup Friday's (3/4) Hot Soup lineup:
Neal Brennan (co-creator of Chappelle Show) Jeffrey Joseph Dave McDonough Eli Olsberg David Cope Mark Normand
I'm hosting.
Hot Soup! Every Friday at 8pm FREE SHOW O'Hanlon's (back room) 349 E 14th St between 1st and 2nd Ave. (map) Produced by Matt Ruby, Mark Normand, Andy Haynes, and David Cope
Kung Fu Monkey lists jargon learned while apprenticing in LA writing rooms.
For many, many situations, there was a shorthand to help codify and communicate a problem in the script that was often tantalizingly just out of reach, just at the edge of your writer's "something's ... off" radar.
Never knew there was a name for what's called "The Rake Bit."
"The Rake Bit": Something that's funny, goes on too long so it's not funny, then goes on so long that it becomes INCREDIBLY funny.
Goes under a couple different names, but of writers my age, this seems to be the most prevalent. Based on The Simpsons ep that was a Cape Fear riff. Sideshow Bob climbs out from under a car and steps on a rake. It smacks him. He mutters. He then steps three feet away ... onto another rake. He mutters. ad-near-infinitum.
I have a joke that used to end with "turn the fuck around." I remember the day I decided to drop the fuck from it. When it worked without the fuck, it felt good. To me, it proved the joke was actually funny and didn't need the shock value laugh-add I got from cursing.
Thought about that while listening to this Saturn Scene podcast, which might be my fave interview with PFT ever.
In this two-part conversation we discuss dissecting details, Lennon vs. McCartney, a wharf full of freaks, bad behavior, good reading, and a life-changing relationship.
Here's what PFT says about cursing onstage:
Even if people are laughing at something, I know when I could have done it better. An example is when I start a new bit, when I'm working on a new thing and it's the first time I'm doing it in front of an audience, I will tend to swear more than I ever do onstage because I'm filling in the idea very conversationally and I swear occasionally in life when I'm talking to people. But it's also there's a survival instinct that kicks in from my earliest standup days that cursing gets laughs.
People will laugh at the f-word. It adds a bite to certain things. But I have always felt that it's a crutch. I know that it is. To me, any time I'm using that word onstage and people laugh at it, I think that's the only reason they're laughing. And if that word wasn't there, they wouldn't find this funny. So I have to figure out how do I get a laugh without using that word and have it be just as big a laugh or bigger than if I was swearing.
Cursing (and sex stuff too) gets laughs because it's a "naughty" thing to do. So it triggers a nervous laughter in people. Sure, they laugh when you say dick, shit, fuck, pussy, or cock. But they also laugh if tickled. Both ways are a bit third gradery. Plus, you can't do it at a clean show (or, if you're at that stage, on TV).
Anyway, the rest of the interview is worth checking out too. Lots of astrology mumbo jumbo facts along the way but the interviewer really knows PFT's career and gets him to talk seriously about comedy in an in-depth way I've never heard before.
Here's what he says about being conversational with his material:
Being able to make it conversationally funny – it's dressed up a little bit for the stage – but I try to keep it as much like I would talk about it in life as possible. If you have a funny story that you tell, even if you're just hanging out with your friends, you're trying...It's the way you're sharing something with a friend of yours, you're not trying to impress your friend. You're coming at it from a point of view that's 'Wait until you hear this. This is what happened to me.' You're not approaching your friend like they are an audience. There's an intimacy there where you're saying, 'Hey, you're going to appreciate this.' That's the feeling that I'm trying to get to onstage always that we're all hanging out and I'm telling these stories.
I think the audience gets a different kind of connection from a conversational performance. It's more intimate. They get to leave feeling like they actually know you as a person instead of some mask that spits out jokes.
Chris Rock has become one of the most popular comedians in the world and, while there is no doubt he has great talent, his brilliance also comes from his approach to developing his ideas. the routines he rolls out on his global tours are the output of what he has learned from thousands of little bets, nearly all of which fail.
