February 6, 2010

I Need A Montage

Because I have a lot of stuff to do and I want it to pass more eventfully than it will.

February 4, 2010

The Layover, Oakland: 1_26_10

This was fine. Nothing special. Really, skip it.

SF Sketchfest 2010: Purple Onion, SF, 1-29-10

This show went much better than the previous night.

I was even sicker than the night before, but I steamed and neti potted and ate a lot of cold medicine. I was really dreading this based on the prior night and the fact that a lot of people I knew were in the audience for this one.

This set restored my faith in myself. Now, to have it dashed once again at the next show!

Criteria Collection I have decided to create a set of criteria that I will try to fulfill with all of my jokes and bits from here on out. I know it is a little late in the game to get criteria, but one can never stop the learning process. How else will one forget what one learned? 1. Length of bit -  Single characters or impressions will run between 30s-60s; movie parodies will run 1-2 mins; if it can’t be done withing that then a new bit must be written to contain other impressions. Maybe there can be one lengthy bit with a lot of impressions, never more than 5 mins. And that is if it really kills. This comes about because during my Sketchfest show I lost the audience on the long bits. It has always been dicey with longer bits, but now I think that everyone’s consciousness has been hammered by the internet and immediate gratification. 2. Levels – I will attempt to write all material with the intent of a surface level of humor and absurdity, and also a deeper level of social commentary or universal truth. This way, it can just be a shit joke and you can choose to ignore the deep meaning if you want. 3. Material – I will write equal parts edgy hipster material and edgy dad  material. This way I can ping-pong back and forth between the two worlds. I though I had more but this will do for now…

Criteria Collection

I have decided to create a set of criteria that I will try to fulfill with all of my jokes and bits from here on out. I know it is a little late in the game to get criteria, but one can never stop the learning process. How else will one forget what one learned?

1. Length of bit -  Single characters or impressions will run between 30s-60s; movie parodies will run 1-2 mins; if it can’t be done withing that then a new bit must be written to contain other impressions.

Maybe there can be one lengthy bit with a lot of impressions, never more than 5 mins. And that is if it really kills.

This comes about because during my Sketchfest show I lost the audience on the long bits. It has always been dicey with longer bits, but now I think that everyone’s consciousness has been hammered by the internet and immediate gratification.

2. Levels – I will attempt to write all material with the intent of a surface level of humor and absurdity, and also a deeper level of social commentary or universal truth. This way, it can just be a shit joke and you can choose to ignore the deep meaning if you want.

3. Material – I will write equal parts edgy hipster material and edgy dad  material. This way I can ping-pong back and forth between the two worlds.

I though I had more but this will do for now…

February 1, 2010

SF Sketchfest: Eureka Theater, 1_28_10

This was awful. It started off well enough, then about halfway through I lost the audience and never got them back. And since it was a 40 minute show, that was a long time in hell.

After a lot of narcisstic Monday morning quarterbacking I broke it down and figured out why it was so bad: They have short attention spans. No one can keep up with long bits, even less than they used to.

Also Mr Pocket Alien is just not working. Perhaps they could have kept up with SUV Falling, but not after it was following a laughless lengthy bit like Mr Pocket Alien.

Plus then I got shit from the Sketchfest people for going long, and my sound guy said I seemed insane during Mr Pocket Alien.

Ah well: I was sick, I had not been able to run my tech well enough, and I had tweaked every bit to be just different enough for me not to have memorized my lines enough. So fuck me, lesson learned.

After this show I wanted to quit comedy.

January 31, 2010
Putting It Together It’s very difficult putting together a new show. We’ll see what happens.

Putting It Together

It’s very difficult putting together a new show. We’ll see what happens.

The Layover, Oakland: 1_19_10

Here is another mediocre set from the Layover wherein I force myself to rehearse my show lines for upcoming SF Sketchfest show.  I can’t wait until I can freely say nothing or something else stupid.

January 14, 2010

The Layover, Oakland: 1_12_10


After two good weeks I was waiting for the moment when we comics would foul this room. No room run by a comic can ever last as an ‘awesome’ room; the self-destructive  tendencies of any (decent) comic will ensure that the space will at some point nose-dive into a miasma of amateurish shows and surly audiences. Maybe the Layover has reached that point.

As stated last week, I had forgotten how fun comedy was when it is effortless and the people laugh because they like you. As a comic you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it invariably does. This night was the other shoe. The crowd was good for one of the comics, then bad for the rest. Some of the comics were bad, and they killed the momentum, and then I wasn’t at my best.

I had planned on doing these two bits that are dense and need to be refined, and even though I knew it was going to be bad for me I had to stick with my plan. That’s how it gets refined; through punishing live sets in harsh rooms. The only way these gambles work is when there is a perfect storm of happy audience and loose comics, and we had neither this night. I thought it would be moderately painful, and it was.

These people disliked me and didn’t get me. Unlike the other night, these guys were kind of hipster limousine liberals. That is a huge problem with doing comedy in this part of the world: White people have sticks up their asses, and most other ethnicities are still into “Whitey needs to be repentant” mode. Itr’s like they have just discovered righteous indignation and want to milk it to the fullest. The only people who laugh at hardcore, lacerating racial humor are black audiences. I don’t know why, but they are totally receptive to laughing about racial issues and of getting fun poked at them even from a white guy. I guess, or at least I HOPE, it is because they can tell I am not a douchebag and I seem like I am coming from a place of ok-ness. In the 90s it wasn’t like that so much, but now it is more so.

Actually scratch what I just said, it is not true; a lot of different multicultural audiences laugh at a lot of raw stuff from me and other white comics. I just wanted to make a sweeping generalization.

Not like I do a lot of racial humor but it is just hard to do comedy when that kind of attitude pervades. Comedy audiences must be open to anything.

Anyway, these guys were sort of white hipster douches. I hate hipster douches. When will the next thing come to replace them?

By the way, I am going to stop posting my sets in their entirety, Non-Eyes. I know, you’ll not-get in a not-funk if you don’t get to not-see my not-comedy, but it is for the better. A lot of the shit thaat happens is repetitive and boring. If something very interesting happens, I will let you not-know.

January 6, 2010
The Layover, Oakland: 01_05_10 The first set of the new decade went extra swell. Wouldn’t you know I forgot my Flip? Ah well, you will just have to enjoy my vivid retelling of the incident. After many bumpy or outright bad sets, one tends to forget the original cleverness that had one strived for during the writing of material. To me, cleverness is the core of a joke. Layers of nuance, absurdity, concept, words, timing, mugging, performance, etc are added on top, but the grain of laughter is the cleverness. Not to say every joke must be clever, but if their is a higher sense of wit evident beneath the surface I think it is superior. An impression of a spewing can be genius as long as it’s witty. This drunken crowd laughed at everything, with gusto, which was of course my original intention. But it has been a while since I have a) performed in front of a good crowd b) performed in front of an actual crowd. These days shows have been very sparsely attended. (I don’t count a few weeks before, when this little hipster bar was packed to the gills, because I only performed Die Hard In 15 Minutes. That wasn’t hilarious… it was explosive.) The best yardstick for a comic to judge their set is how well they did against the other comics of the night. Yes, that is unhealthy. The yardstick should be ‘How did you feel inside?’ but comics are sick ninnies, they can’t feel good about themselves from the inside. So, using that yardstick, it was a great set. It’s been a while since I can say that. As I left the stage random audience people congratulated me, said ‘great job’ etc. It is weird to hear that and feel that way again, that sense of triumph, after all this time languishing. That feeling of ‘rocking the house’ is something that motivates comics, but it is so fleeting. In my mind’s eye, I remember many big shows with euphoric responses like that (as well as a lot of very painful shows) but it could be that I am simply editing out the middling shows. This drunk Layover crowd was so fun they actually heckled encouragingly. If only it meant anything. Now, back to shitty sets!

The Layover, Oakland: 01_05_10

The first set of the new decade went extra swell. Wouldn’t you know I forgot my Flip? Ah well, you will just have to enjoy my vivid retelling of the incident.

After many bumpy or outright bad sets, one tends to forget the original cleverness that had one strived for during the writing of material. To me, cleverness is the core of a joke. Layers of nuance, absurdity, concept, words, timing, mugging, performance, etc are added on top, but the grain of laughter is the cleverness. Not to say every joke must be clever, but if their is a higher sense of wit evident beneath the surface I think it is superior. An impression of a spewing can be genius as long as it’s witty.

This drunken crowd laughed at everything, with gusto, which was of course my original intention. But it has been a while since I have a) performed in front of a good crowd b) performed in front of an actual crowd. These days shows have been very sparsely attended. (I don’t count a few weeks before, when this little hipster bar was packed to the gills, because I only performed Die Hard In 15 Minutes. That wasn’t hilarious… it was explosive.)

The best yardstick for a comic to judge their set is how well they did against the other comics of the night. Yes, that is unhealthy. The yardstick should be ‘How did you feel inside?’ but comics are sick ninnies, they can’t feel good about themselves from the inside. So, using that yardstick, it was a great set. It’s been a while since I can say that.

As I left the stage random audience people congratulated me, said ‘great job’ etc. It is weird to hear that and feel that way again, that sense of triumph, after all this time languishing. That feeling of ‘rocking the house’ is something that motivates comics, but it is so fleeting. In my mind’s eye, I remember many big shows with euphoric responses like that (as well as a lot of very painful shows) but it could be that I am simply editing out the middling shows.

This drunk Layover crowd was so fun they actually heckled encouragingly. If only it meant anything. Now, back to shitty sets!

December 31, 2009
Old Lame Sigh My only resolution for 2010 might prove to be the most difficult: Have more fun. A man of my advancing years needs to just try to enjoy his remaining time.However, I have several sub-resolutions that are really just “nice to haves”.1. Get killer, ripped abs.2. Stop being bitter. If that is impossible, then become wildly successful and crush at least one of the people on my “list.”3. Make sci-fi epic; post to Youtube. Receive 3 views.4. Eat at Michael Caine’s South Beach brasserie. Hide in closet. Surprise Sir Michael. Become fast friends. Form comedy duo.5. Beat every video game in my collection. Or waste life trying.6. Legally or otherwise, live in a new house.7. Teach Zelda to play guitar.8. Teach Zelda to play Zelda.9. Teach Zelda to siphon off millions of dollars from various overseas bank accounts by using a staggered, lightning-quick series of online micro-transactions that are virtually untraceable. 10. Somehow, win.

Old Lame Sigh

My only resolution for 2010 might prove to be the most difficult: Have more fun. A man of my advancing years needs to just try to enjoy his remaining time.

However, I have several sub-resolutions that are really just “nice to haves”.

1. Get killer, ripped abs.
2. Stop being bitter. If that is impossible, then become wildly successful and crush at least one of the people on my “list.”
3. Make sci-fi epic; post to Youtube. Receive 3 views.
4. Eat at Michael Caine’s South Beach brasserie. Hide in closet. Surprise Sir Michael. Become fast friends. Form comedy duo.
5. Beat every video game in my collection. Or waste life trying.
6. Legally or otherwise, live in a new house.
7. Teach Zelda to play guitar.
8. Teach Zelda to play Zelda.
9. Teach Zelda to siphon off millions of dollars from various overseas bank accounts by using a staggered, lightning-quick series of online micro-transactions that are virtually untraceable.
10. Somehow, win.