Comedian Stories Podcast
Joke writing is only a part of my comedy career. It’s the telling them that is where I make the most $. My new podcast “Comedian Stories: Tales From The Road in Under 5 Minutes” is short stories of what I’ve done in the past 24+ years to make a living. . .the good, the bad, the celebrities. . .everything. check it out at this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/comedian-stories/id1446046198
Comedians, don’t fall in love
Comedians don’t fall in love
with your jokes that is! We get the wording of a joke down, and it makes US laugh. . . but sometimes, okay many times, the audiences think differently! Maybe the way we said it in our head was funny, or maybe we are off by a word or two, or maybe you’re the only one on the planet who thinks it’s funny. Sometimes we’ll never know.
comedians can fall in love with a cute dog
But what I do know
Is that you need to be open to the fact that it isn’t working. . . try a different angle, run it past comedian friends, let it sit for a while before doing it again, try it several times in a row in front of different types of audiences. But after you’ve tried it a bunch of times on stage, without the result you want, maybe, just maybe you need to let the joke or the funny premise go.
There are so many things
that go into making something funny. You may never know why something works or doesn’t work, but don’t fall in love with the joke or the wording of the joke, or you’ll miss other funny opportunities AND weaken your humor overall.
This is your quick reminder blog. . . not to fall in love with your jokes. Thank you.
Enjoy your weekend!
Jan
need an emcee – check out Jan’s emcee website here
Comedy and the Olympics. . . the humor I see.
Laughing at the Olympics?
You bet. . .there’s some funny things about the winter Olympic games, and you can practice your comedy muscle by looking for these comedy gems. I LOVE the Olympics, so I’ve been glued to the set. . . which means I get to look for raw comedy material. Here are my first impression of things you can work into jokes about the Winter Olympics.
First off, your body parts are
worth gold. I’m not talking about “ladies of the evening” body parts (you know who you are!), but check out some of the wins. It’s not always the fastest person, but rather the one with the longest toes! Speed skaters and biathlon people win by a toe or sometimes foot (literally). Bummer for the second place person with the size 4 shoe!
And we are treated to some funny (i.e. weird)
sports like the biathelon. This is where you ski and shoot. Where else would you ever use this skill? Hunting in Alaska? And how did it start you ask? Well according to Wikipedia, it was a military thing.
winter olympics are over. Now looking forward to summer olypics
Not into skiing with a rifle? Then check out
curling, which needs no introduction IF YOU LIVE IN THE UPPER MIDWEST! The rest of us need an introduction – please. It’s called Curling but they push the puck in a straight line. Go figure. And Curling may be obscure, but they actually had some scandal – the Russian guy lost his medal for failing a drug test! Really? Have you seen this Olympic sport? What kind of drugs do you have to take to curl? Maybe caffeine to stay awake during the game, and maybe even to play it. Shocking scandal!
Just as shocking though was the
Czech Republic’s Ester Ledecka winning the women’s Super G. Everyone was shocked. . .including Ester! She was a snowboarder who just tried this little ole Super G thing about a month earlier. When asked how she did it, she responded “in both sports, you go down the hill, right?” The camera man had to tell her she won. She actually broke up the celebration of the Australian skier who figured she’d already won the gold. Ester won by 1/100th of a second. . . once again the toes come in! And she borrowed her skis from Mikaela Shiffrin. Then beat her with them.
Borrowing is something I never
thought of for the games. The first Olympic games many moons ago should have done some borrowing. . . namely they should have borrowed clothes! They did those games naked. Oh to be a comedian back then. . . a lot of things to have fun with. I’m betting no one wanted to ice skate on the “short” program!
And of course ice skating terms
lend themselves to humor. Check out “Hydrant Lift,” “Twizzle” and “SalChow.” I thought they kept saying “SalCow” which makes about as make sense as SalChow. And Hydrant lift sounds like something your dog does on his walk.
Even if you hate winter sports, the Olympics are worth watching. Perhaps the real gold is in the jokes!
Have a great weekend!
Jan
Comedy Writing Gigs part 3
Hilarious jokes are all set – you’ve got some samples of jokes you’ve written and some real live people – radio, TV, comedians, etc. . who will vouch for you that you’re, or at least the jokes you write, are funny! So where do you now go to actually write...
Watching Comedy
Comedy burnout? Does that really happen? Kind of! When I started out, I think I was performing in a comedy club or sitting in the audience of a comedy show just about every night for the first 2 years. And then I quit my job and kept on a steady stream of...
B. Research Techniques
What Have You Laughed About Recently?
In thinking about this comedy blog, I asked myself, “what have I laughed about recently?” Luckily as a comedian, I’m always looking for humor, and so I had a big list of funny things from just the past 7 days. Life goes by way too fast which means it’s...
Humor in Pain
Funny jokes come out of pain. . . if you can stay present and see the humor. When we’re sick, we don’t feel like laughing, but that’s precisely the time we need to pay attention to finding the humor – because you’re looking at life from a different...
Take The Road Less Traveled
As for funny things, that's not only the name of a popular book, but it's a philosophy for finding humor. One of the shows I performed at this week was for 600 women at a church. The crowd was so big that they turned the men's room into a ladies room. . ....
C. Humor Delivery
Dialing For Dollars
In my line of work, there's a lot of cold calling. Sure I get work through agents and bureaus, but the majority of my work i get through "dialing for dollars." And while you may not need to make cold calls to bring in an income, you still will need to...
Judging Jokes
There aren’t many hard and fast rules in comedy, but one comedy rule you can’t get around is that comedy is subjective. . . everyone has a different idea of what’s funny and what’s not. For example, a friend of mine just had a liver transplant. He’s okay,...
Remembering Your Funny Jokes
So you’ve worked and worked on some killer material. Great! But you’ve got to REMEMBER the joke in order to, well, get people to laugh. I have a couple of memory techniques that I use. Say it out loud FAST. Run through your jokes fast, so that you can get...
Improv Comedy
Okay, I’m not too keen on Improv comedy. Maybe because I spend too much time writing jokes, or maybe it was my experience with an Improv comedy troupe years ago. I was doing a show at a comedy club, and the Improv troupe who was going on ahead of me took...
D. Appropriate Humor
A Comedian on Being Genuine
Joke material and funny stuff these days is all around us. . .especially if you’re a comedian and you write political humor. Between “alternative facts” and bringing your own cheering section to a briefing, the current president is opening himself up to a...
Clean Comedy Pays Off
I’ve known that my clean humor is a huge bonus! It’s allowed me to work more of a variety of entertainment venues, and it’s allowed me to work at well-paying corporate and association conferences and conventions without having to be a big star. If you’re...
Using Stock Jokes
Two guys walk into a bar. . And find that this is not funny. Okay, should you use stock jokes, or as we comedians call them HACK jokes? I’ve talked about joke formulas like “he’s so big” or “top reasons why. . .” and I think that’s okay. You get...
Joking with Small Groups
9 People??? This week had I had the opportunity to be in front of a small group. . . 9 people. That’s NINE – single digit. . .no, I didn’t miss a zero. Before this, the smallest I’d spoken to was 12. . . a little bit of a drop from the 4400 people I was...
Funny Jokes
Political Humor
I chatted on this comedy blog infrequently in the past couple of months. . .okay not at all. I’ve been in the middle of some comedy projects that are exciting but taking more focus than I can handle. So for funny this week, I thought with all the politics...
LETTING GO!!
Letting Go . . .Of joke ideas that aren’t working that is. And this is a hard one because, as we comics say when we come up with an idea for a joke we just know “there’s something there.” I’ve been working on a joke about “tribute bands” – you know bands...
Joking With Names
Sometimes the humor is not in researching the subject thoroughly, but rather in stepping back and looking at the big picture – their name. Companies name themselves and their products all sorts of whacky things, for all sorts of whacky reasons. Watch any...
Comedy and the Olympics. . . the humor I see.
humor in the winter olympic games
G. Topical Jokes
Comedy Writing gigs part 2 is up next
Welcome to part 2 of comedy writing opportunities. In my last blog I mentioned that you should network at comedy clubs. Yes, Comedy clubs are great networking avenues, but I also suggest networking to others who are in need of comedy material every,...
Wedding Toast Jokes For Laughs
In previous blogs I’ve talked about using topical jokes to bring in some current humor, and I’ve got a great example of it. I’ve started writing topical jokes for a wedding toast website for the best man:...
Joking & Disasters
Okay, so the east coast now experienced what the west coast has been exposed to for years – EARTHQUAKES!!! I’m originally from VA now living in CA, so I had to laugh at all the “check ins”. . “are you okay???” that people were doing. I’ve woken up in my...