Standup Commentary
three jokes about comedy, plus some stories about those jokes, AND MORE! (probably!)
dear friends, family, fans, fellow folks,
i’m grateful that you’re here!
thank you for making this choice with your time and mind.
and now, for three brief scenes about comedy, plus some commentary in the footnotes! 1
A) Art is OBJECTIVE:
"that comedian is not funny."
"you mean you don't like them."
"no they are objectively not funny. also only the foods i like taste good." 2
B) Believe in yourself! Or don’t, and that means you’re UNBELIEVABLE!:
"i don't know if i have what it takes to be a standup comedian"
"well, you've got the self-doubt down cold!" 3
C) Comedy for the COMMENT-Y:
"what do you know about politics? you're a comedian."
"what do you know about comedy? you're not a comedian." 4
and that’s all the comedy jokes for today!
before we go for the day, here are some questions i have for YOU:
1) how are you? how have you been? what’s new and good?
2) do you have any thoughts or feelings on anything discussed here that you’d like to share? i welcome them!
3) are there any specific topics or ideas that you’d like to see my thoughts on in the future?
4) is there anything you’d like advice on?
5) did you read the footnotes? if so, would you prefer that commentary and content like that be up here in the body of the message/post? or do you prefer it the way i’ve presented it here?
6) i’m thinking of asking questions each week. how do you feel about that? do you LOVE being asked questions? thank you for receiving!
and that’s all for now!
thanks for being here! much love to you and yours and all!
and finally, here’s a photo i took of a buddhist vending machine:
feel free not to read the footnotes if you don’t want to. except for this one. you are no longer free not to read this footnote.
it’s funny to me that there are people whose vocabularies lack the phrase “it’s funny TO ME.”
imagine believing that your experience is objective and universal! isn’t that funny? no? then that’s what i’m talking about!
if a comedian is not your cup of tea, imagine telling the world that they are wrong to be enjoying that particular (hilari)-tea.
do you really need to doubt yourself to be a comedian? i’m not sure.
i think it might be good for a comedian to have some balance of doubt and confidence.
when i started doing comedy, i had very little doubt in my ability to do comedy. and i ALSO had very little ability to do comedy.
in order to get started, i needed that delusional self-confidence. and in order to improve, i needed to learn how much room i had for improvement. thankfully, audiences showed me that.
so, if you want to do comedy, i recommend starting with confidence. you provide that, and the audience might supply the doubt, and then you’ve got it all!
PS there’s research that shows that smiling when we’re unhappy helps us feel better. a kind of fake it til you make it deal. and maybe that’s what went on when i started doing comedy. i was like, “look, i present to you the FORM of a comedian!” and the audience was like “what about the FUNCTION, tho?” and i was like “form AND function, in THIS economy?” and the audience was like, “ok that’s a little less fake and a little more make,” and i was like “thank you.” and then we kept talking for 20+ years, and it’s still happening right now. the twist ending: YOU have been the audience THIS WHOLE TIME!
once, maybe 10-12 years ago, i did a comedy show where i told some jokes about gay marriage, which wasn’t legal nationwide yet. i thought it should be, and that’s what some of the jokes were about.
after the show, a woman came up to me. she seemed upset. she said something like “this is a comedy show; you’re not supposed to tell me what you think and feel.”
i felt a little threatened. like, had i been doing comedy wrong this whole time?
i don’t remember what i replied exactly, but i hope it was something like “oh i think you have that backwards; i believe it is YOU who are not supposed to tell me what you think and feel,” and then dropped the microphone that i wasn’t holding anymore because the show was over and we were in the lobby.
my response was probably more like, “yes i am?”
and do you know who that woman turned out to be? someone i never saw again, as far as i know. hooray!
this situation is VERY funny to me now. very much my cup of comedy.
thank you for listening to what i think and feel! LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO!
That lady needs a lot of time to think through HER thoughts and feelings.
Maybe she thought that comedy was just knock-knock jokes.
Also, will you please post yourself singing one of your songs on your Facebook page? I would love that. 😊
Asking a question a week is fun, what about a poll? Like what's your favorite type of pickle? Dill, spicy, sweet or pickles are yucky could be answer options.
I read the footnotes (clearly), but sometimes it's challenging to jump back and forth between the content and the footnotes. If I wait to read the footnotes until the end, then sometimes I forget what the footnote referred to. But I can see why you do it this way because sometimes the footnotes are long, give away the joke or go on a tangent.