Dealing with Stand-Up

So as some of you may know, i am going ahead with a stand-up act for our humor presentation at the end of the term. I know all of us have been doing a lot of looking at these comedians, but i am looking extra special hard. I am trying to figure out what makes them funny, obviously, but in a way that i can attempt to make myself funny as well. The hardest part that i can see is the whole creation of a character. I consider myself a pretty funny guy, but it is easier to be funny in everyday conversation over doing it on stage. In person if a joke doesn't go over well, you move on, hopefully someone else says something, you try again or you can switch the conversation to literally anything else. In stand-up, you have a limited time to get these things said and done, so if even one joke goes wrong, you are spending the next time trying to win the audience back, and then telling the next joke, and everything falls apart.

Well, i don't really know what just happened with that last paragraph, i am really tired, sorry. i will try to do this again later after i have taken a nap.

Humor and Stuff

I don't want to insult the class or anything, but does anyone else feel like the semester is kind of dragging at this point? I mean, we all came into this class knowing that the best way to make something less funny is to talk about why it was funny. But the mechanical pace that all classes must use has made reading and watching these supposedly humorous pieces a chore. The readings for today's class weren't funny to me, so i tried to look into the text to find out why, but that just made less and less funny. By the end, i was in a worse mood then when i started to read something that is widely regarded as comedy. I guess i have at least learned in this class that this is the opposite reaction i am supposed to have. As i delve into my stand up comedian presentation, i am actually worried that i will find david spade less funny than before i started. What do you guys think?

Atmosphere of Laughter

I was just ruminating on some things while i tried to figure out what to blog about for the start of the week, and i stumbled across something that i have thought a lot about this semester. I just really don't know how much of a stand-up comedian's reception is based on the comedian themselves or the audience/atmosphere of the room. If you look behind the comedians during their performance, you can tell that some of them really have detailed, or very specific backgrounds. But at some point, the general feel of the audience depends on so many things that have nothing to do with the guy/chick on stage. If the audience is feeling just a little off one night, the first joke doesn't go over well, and then everything could collapse from there. Or, you could have a guy sitting in the back with 10 of his friends, cracking jokes for the past over the last hour and the whole comedy club is in a relaxed mood as the laughter has seeped onto their tables, and they are just ready to bust a gut at anything anyone on stage says.

So what do you guys think?

Mandate

Not as in the 48% of people think i should lead therefore i have a mandate to do what i want, but in the two men hanging out now has a new name, Man-dating.

This is something i could write about forever, because it is.... well, if i could tell you why it was in a sentence, that wouldn't exactly be forever. I imagine this is going to take awhile for me to edit while i try to get all of my thoughts in order, so let me know if there are some major screw-ups in the blog. Here are all the reason's why i hate the term bromance, mandate, and broner (when a guy does something awesome, and its like a girl giving you a boner), but don't really hate any of the movies about this man love

At it's heart, it is making fun of guys for being in love with their friends. This in and off itself has two offshoots of anger. Firstly, it is homophobic. It is just the slight indication, covered up with a joke, that the two guys are gay. That for two guys to spend that much time together, there has to be something sexual going on, and that is weird, or laughable, or in the worst cases, wrong. Homophobia and i are not friends, to say the least, and these jokes all have that lean. Secondly, what is wrong with two people loving each other? Jesus thought it was awesome, family is centered around it. But now, in the last few years, this Bromance has taken over, and it's no longer normal to have a best friend. Buddy movies have existed since movies were around, Mercutio and Romeo were as tight as it gets. The Greeks even had a freakin' word for brotherly love, and then people decided that was so cool, they named a city after it. So these two points flow together in that, homophobia used to be way bigger than it is today, but now that homosexuality has gotten it's head above water, all best friends might be gay. Awesome.

I erased the paragraph you are reading right now like 5 times, because it was just vitriol spewed, not coherent points made. But the problem with my argument is that i love these bromantic movies. Pineapple Express, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry and all the apatow movies. Even 40 year old virgin, a movie ostensibly a romantic comedy about an older guy finding love is really just about 4 guys hanging out, being drunk/high and wacky hijinks that ensue, the female lead's lines pale in comparison to lines given to each of the 4 guys. AND THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL TIME. ah, crap, i dont know. post your thoughts.

Slapstick- But not the awesome hockey movie

I was reading a classmates blog recently, and i ran into this quote.

"It takes a lot of confidences to do that over and over again. Granted, the Three Stooges are supposed to be characterized as stupid, but with stigmas like today, that stupidity would carry on to the real life person as well. (Ex: Daniel Radcliffe = Harry Potter, more likely Harry Potter = Daniel Radcliffe and he will never be able to escape it!!!!!)"

If i took it out of context too much, the point she was trying to make was type-casting happens now, so how could anyone transcend slapstick to work on other things. But what grabbed me was the thought of a modern day slapstick movie. Now i know that slapstick i still very much a part of hollywood, but not even close to what we see in W.C. Fields, whose work could be considered drawing room humor compared to the Three Stooges.

But i shot down my own argument anyway. Graphics and sound do next to nothing for slap-stick. If you want to watch the three stooges, you just do, you don't need something you can "relate" to in a modern setting. And we now have tv shows like America's Funniest Home videos, viva la bam, etc. to satiate our desire to watch someone get hit in the head with a ladder by accident. But the most damning argument against a modern slapstick movie i could come up with is, "who would play the parts?" Buster Keaton was an amazing blend of athleticism/grace/style/ingenuity that needed to be practiced an insane amount. Slapstick was fresh off the heals of vaudeville, where people honed these skills and the best could translate to the big screen. Now, where do we find people even semi-trained to be bother actors and acrobats?

What do you think, is it possible, even plausible, for chaplinesque slap-stick to make a return to the silver screen?

Pun

This is my least favorite pun of all time:

i was wondering why the baseball kept getting bigger, and then it hit me.

Idiocracy

The movie was great, there is no getting around it. I laughed time and again at the way they attacked such a simple premise. This idea feels like vignette. Get the point across, knock it out of the park, wrap it up in about 10 min. (a great example of a movie like this is called me and the big guy, (). but they managed to string a whole feature length film out of the one joke. Frito and the gang just kept finding new ways to make the same joke in a new way, and kept it funny. But as i thought about it, i realized, what if you don't like the joke? what if you don't buy the premise, or think it wholly lacking in comedic value? Then there is nothing in it for you, and the movie became torture. I know the old adage, you can't please all the people all the time, but most movies manage to find a bit of middle ground. So here is where i turn to you, fair readers, and ask a bit of a question. What other movies/shows/broadway hits were like this? I can think of Arrested Development off the top of my head, but i am sure there are more that i just am not thinking about right now.

Pun Time:

Two silk worms started a race because they were arguing over who could move faster, it ended in a tie

So, 8 posts ain't awful, right?

Ok, so maybe i flamed out a bit with this whole blogging humor class thing, but that's just what i wanted you to think. It's because i believe the best possible way to evaluate humor is over time. BOOM! see what i did there? Alright, so i guess i am going to have to make more of an effort to stay on top of the whole letting people know my thoughts on class thing. Also, this is kind of an announcement that i will be doing a stand-up routine for the end of the year project. I would love to get a couple of people in the class to hear it early to give me some feedback, so if you are interested just leave a comment. Thanks

Old Friends

Mardi Gras this weekend, and i am not in much of a state to post. Even though it is sunday night, i have not yet fully recovered. I thought i would just do a quick post about something i noticed this weekend that pertained to humor. My friend Jason, who i have known since kindergarten, came down to visit me from UW-Madison this weekend. We spent the whole time laughing about stupid stuff, making fun of commercials and the contestants on "Press Your Luck" and just having a great time. It made me think of how much does familiarity matter to humor? My thought is that it allows the participants to be more focused on jokes, because they already know their audience, so therefore better, but that you can get tired of hearing the same kind of jokes over and over again. sorry for the short post, maybe i'll edit it when i don't feel like i was tied in a bag and smacked with sticks.

Pun, this one is pertinent!

Why is the internet going so slow?

There is a blog jam!

Comedy or Philosophy Lecture?

I am a huge fan of George Carlin, and also, maybe unrelated, Socialism. Carlin made a name for himself as an edgy comic who was upset with the way America worked in some areas, and tailored his jokes to point out the flaws in the system, and to "attack the man." However, in the "Fat Americans" section of his HBO special we watched in class, what started out as a comedy act turned into a philosophical lecture right out of the notes of Herbert Marcuse. I have read Marcuse, i love his way of thinking and the arguments he used to reach his philosophical points. He used Aesthetic philosophy to point out the flaws in the American system, much like Carlin. And the two were just about as funny. Granted, Marcuse was known for his one liners against arch-nemesis Ronal Reagan, but he was a philosopher who could be funny. It appeared as though Carlin wanted to be a comedian would could be philosophical, but the effort fell flat on its face, comedy-wise. The tirade may have been 100% correct, and i agreed with much of what he said, but it wasn't comedy. After watching it, another student and i traded words of agreement on the subject as we left class, and judging by the crickets around the room (and even in the theater on the DVD) we were not alone. I can't really think of another comedian who does things like this except for Lewis Black. However, at the core of Black's comedy is that we can laugh about how worked up he gets, and he still throws punch lines in his jokes. Carlin seemed like an experienced person who was genuinely upset, but more along the lines of the uncle who has a few too many at the family Christmas party, not a man who people pay to watch preform comedy. Anyway, those are my two cents, what about you, did you find the piece funny?

Another pun, because i am not feeling very little kid like this week.

Two guys are fumigating a house:
Guy One: "I hate fighting termites"
Guy Two: "Yeah, they are such a bunch of gnaw-it-alls"

A Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift, a man ahead of his time. What in the world was that? The thing i thought was interesting was that i never laughed out-loud the entire time i read the piece, yet still came away thinking it was funny. In satire that i am familiar with, i am constantly laughing, be it "The Colbert Report" or "Kissing Suzy Kolber" (a sports blog). This piece was meant to draw attention to a situation that is up there with the most awful treatment of any humans ever. The way the english treated the irish (the potato famine did not eliminate all the food in ireland, they still had other crops, but all they were allowed to eat were the potatoes, so they were dying of famine while the english owners sold the other crops to the highest bidder) bordered on genocide, but without the dignity of actually killing the irish, just letting them die.

I really don't know what to make of the piece, i thought it was mildly commical, well written, but i don't know if it did its job of actually convincing people that this kind of thing needed to stop. It seemed like those who agreed with Swift's ideas and knew about and hated the way the irish were treated would have gotten a good laugh, but i don't know how the ones whose ideas Swift were attacking would have reacted. It seemed to me they would have gotten indignant early on, and then just cast it away. I know that whenever i read satire that is directed at one of my beliefs, i am more insulted then encouraged to change my views. So, i don't think i agree with the thought that satire can be used to transcend humor and alter social conscience. Maybe that's just me, and my hatred of being mocked that i don't find anything beyond humor in satire. What about you guys, how do you feel about it?

JLKJOTW has been suspended until i can remember some other good ones, so in it's place ill drop a pun.

Guy 1: "So you hit the fortune teller just because he was smiling?"
Guy 2: "Yeah, i always wanted to strike a happy medium"

Laughing At Failing

So, this time i am going to try to tackle something that is prtty widespread, and see if there is anything i might have missed along the way. Why is it not only funny to watch other people fail, but when i fail spectacularly, i am even laughing.

First example was last wednesday, my night class had a quiz. I am thinking, ok, a quiz, i go to all the classes, i know kind of what's going on, so i'll study with my buddy Rob for an hour and a half (an eternity in my world) and get it done. What we had there, was a failure to communicate. This "quiz" was really a "test" that counted for 15% of my grade, and took an hour and a half to finish. Oooopppsies. We were pouring over books, trying to read at superhuman speeds, thinking of ways we could get out of taking it, whether or not we could drop the class and still graduate. You name it, we thought of it. So we get to the test, a slide ID test, mind you, of things i have only seen once in my life. I am failing at a superhuman pace. So what do i do? i start telling jokes on the test. I called one of the pre-columbian pieces of art "a fantasia looking hippo trying to give me a high-five" (thats the goofy looking dude you see at the top).

So here i am, taking a very important test, trying to get off not knowing something by telling jokes, by laughing so throughly, that i cant even attempt to take myself seriously.

This morning, i lost a intramural soccer game 12-0. I don't even feel bad, because after their 5th goal, and we had 0 shots on goal, it just became really funny. I was playing goalie, getting scored on left and right, and i can't even muster up enough self-respect to call out defensive assignments to my defenders who would prefer not to be anywhere near the ball.

So why do i laugh at myself and my situation in these instances. I have lost basketball games to eleven 11-9 and been livid with the world, but when i lose 11-2, i don't care at all. Is it a defensive reaction? do i do it because i can see the ridiculousness, even though it is happening to me? What are your guys thoughts, it would be interesting to hear your opinions.

JLKJOTW

How can you tell if there is an elephant in the fridge?

Footsteps in the Butter

Eddie Izzard

It was interesting watching this routine again in the context of this class. My dad has always thought Eddie was hilarious, so i have seen the special before, but by not just listening along and laughing, rather looking into his style and the construction of jokes.

The part that really got me in class on Wednesday was the Englebert Humperdink (i really don't want to look up how to spell that, sorry). The whole story of the change of name was great, but when he talked about how he died in a car crash, and then didn't let anyone know whether or not it was true, that just killed me. But wait, why? This man was a popular singer, not someone that anyone thinks about that often any more, and for some reason, there are an entire theater full of people laughing because they don't know whether or not he is dead. I doubt most of the people there could have told you with certainty when they walked in whether or not he was dead.

So the facial gestures of Eddie Izzard had an arena full of people nervously laughing about a man who might be dying or dead, who these people really don't care about, and without making a freakin' sounds for almost 2 min. That kind of virtuoso performance is why he remains one of the top comedians around today.

John's Little Kid Joke of the Week:

Why can't you tell if there is an elephant in the cherry tree?

He is wearing red sneakers

Laughing in the Bar

This friday night i was hanging around Humphrey's (well, i am hanging around Humphrey's every friday night, but stay with me here), and was talking with some girls that were sitting next to my friend and me at the bar. It was relatively slow, being as it was early in the night, so the bartender was talking with us as well. Over the course of the next half an hour, everyone there was just busting a gut, when i took a step back later to think about it, it was almost unreal, i haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It all started when we were talking about how one of the girls is a nanny, and how girls are across the board far better nannies then guys. I said, "of course they are, if they ask me to feed their kids something healthy, all i can think of is lean pockets." Over the next half hour, people were making jokes about gushers (the candy), we did at least 15 more min. on hot pockets, and we even poked fun at the dollar shot, and how its insane we pay a dollar for raspberry Kool-Aid.

I am not sure why all of this was so funny, the material wasn't much better then when my friends and i were sitting around making jokes about an "S" themed costume party, and all of the different stupid costumes we would use if we were to go (it helped the sting that we weren't invited). And then tried to make every other word start with an S for 45 min. It was a good time, we laughed, but we weren't busting up like i did when i was at the bar.

Reflecting now, i think there were several factors that led to the higher level of hilarity. 1st, we were all drinking at the bar, but it was early yet, so none of us were drunk, just feelin' a little good. 2nd, we were around people we didn't know all that well, so we were enjoying the new company. 3rd, the bartender, a pretty solid role to play in bar conversations, was there with us so it gave us a feel of belonging. 4th, the girls were cute, so it encouraged our jokes, and our laughing at theirs.

I fell like that isn't even all of it, but it was very interesting when i thought of the event in light of this class.

John's Little Kid Joke of the Week

How can you tell if you are sleeping in the same bed as an elephant?

Monogramed PJ's

Well, That was Fun

Just finished up the reading, and let me tell you, my arms are tired. Wait, that doesn't really work there, does it? Anyway, this was some heady stuff, breaking down the thing that pretty much comes to people as easy as breathing. And who knew that it had anything to do with my pancreas?

My two favorites were Hobbs, and Bergson, with Bergson being by far the most interesting for me. Hobbs use of the Superiority theory really made sense in my head, putting a hearty guffaw together with his understanding of power being the ultimate goal just clicked. To belittle someone by mockery truly does put you on a higher level, and bringing in the mockery of the society does keep the fringe elements in line, but in that last part we are getting more in with Bergson.

Speaking of ole' Henri, his observation that humor is of the intellegence, and, in a way, the opposite of emotion, made me put down my reheated Day-Old Bread from Jimmy John's, and the following exchange took place:
It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music in a room, where dancing is going on, for the dancers at
once to appear ridiculous. ~Henri
Nailed it! Well done sir! ~John
It fits so well with the other theories, Freud's example of the man at the gallows comes to mind, and how many times have I heard about some comedian who overdosed, and his friends say that he was just hiding his emotions behind the jokes? So, already I am on Henri's side, even though he had to win back a lot of points after I read about his ridiculous "elan vital" idea, man that sounds dumb. Then, the guy goes on to predict the laugh track!
"You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others. Laughter appears in need of an
echo."
I know it is uncool to appreciate the laugh track, but sometimes when I am watching "Two and a Half Men" alone (and lets be serious, who would watch it with me?) it's nice to know that a prerecorded group of diverse laughs also think Charlie Sheen's antics are just such a darned crackup.

Finally, Henri sneaks up and drops one more little nugget just when you thought he was done. The use of laughter as a "social gesture" which keeps the fringe elements, or eccentrics, from gaining the respect, and therefore the following of any members of society seems not only to make theoretical sense, but pretty much nails what I have seen in life right on the head. Laughter then develops as a way for a society to protect itself from those who do not share the same values, morals and goals.

Ok, thats enough for me, but as I said in class, I love little kid jokes, so I am going to create a segment right here where I share some of those with you guys, and it's my blog, so you can't stop me.

John's Little Kid Joke of the Week:

How can you tell if there is a duck in your shower?
You look, duh.
How can you tell if there is an Elephant in your shower?
You ask the duck