Month: December 2008

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The Alabama Road Trip

I’m a huge Rutgers Football fan, so my buddy Chris and I road-tripped down to “lovely” Birmingham, Alabama for the bowl game. Here are the highlights:

Bowl game

  • At the Pep Rally, they had a Papa John’s representative speak. This led to the single greatest non-sports heckle of the 21st century. As the rep gets up, Chris: “Boooooo! Papa Johns, Booooooo! (pause) You suck! Boooooo! (pause) Support your local pizza places!”
  • Accidentally walking into a packed gay bar on a Sunday night, and finding out there were actually 5 gay bars in Birmingham.
  • Having one of the nice gentleman in that bar refer to the civil war as “the war of northern aggression” in full seriousness.
  • That same gentleman admitting he voted for McCain/Palin although he’s gay – that’s like a slave voting Robert E. Lee for president – if they had been allowed to vote.
  • Next time you’re bored, here’s a fun game: Try to see how many different (hotel) objects you can use to open a bottle of beer. The iron was our favorite, although the TV remote came in a close second.
  • Three strippers were supposed to show up to the Rutgers Pre-Game Bar to dance on tables. Shockingly, strippers are not the most reliable of people and only one showed up. So the nice local girl working the front door got up on the bar and started dancing with the stripper. 
  • I specifically checked that the local strip club was open til 3am on a Sunday before 9 of us, including 2 girls, caught cabs there at 12:30am. As we pulled up, everyone was leaving and the place was closing. That is the single worst business decision of 2008. Worse than all that mortgage lending.
  • Chris drove 2200 miles in 70 hours. Both trips started at 7PM and ended the next morning. The 16 hour return drive back was referred to as “The Trail of Tears” or the “Nunna daul Isunyi” in Cherokee.  

Suffice it to say I’m glad to be back in NYC. Have a Happy New Year!

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Why I Won’t Be a Professional Snowboarder

I’m pretty good at snowboarding. In fact, at this current moment, I’m much better at snowboarding than I am at stand up comedy. Last year, when I was frustrated with my day job, I thought about becoming a snowboarding instructor. I even looked into the certification process.

Ben getting some air

The snowboarding instructor idea is now dead. For my Christmas vacation, I spent 6 days snowboarding. The last 3 days of the trip, I didn’t want to get out of bed or get on the slopes. Especially the last day, when I got upset that the weather got better and we were going to go to the lifts. I learned that my maximum tolerance of snowboarding is 3 days.

Which brings us to Big Ben’s Big Law #62: Don’t consider turning a hobby into a career if you can’t do it for 10 straight days.

I’ve done comedy for 10 straight days and not been tired of it (tired of the lack of response at the open mics, yes, but not tired of comedy) so there’s hope…

Have additional questions on this or other topics? Click here to learn about my mentoring services.

Other Comedy Tips:

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The Comedy Business: Types of Shows for Beginners

People are always curious how a comedian gets onto any given show, especially a newer comedian. The three main types of ways for getting on stage as a new comedian are:

Bringer shows

What is it: Each comedian has to bring X number of people (between 2 and 15 at most places) who are willing to pay a cover charge, order at least 2 drinks and listen to a lot of different comedians, a good amount of whom are not that funny. There are usually a couple of professionals in this kind of show to ensure that the audience gets at least some laughs.

Pros: You get a real live audience, and since part of the audience knows you, they’re more likely to laugh at your jokes, which may help the people who don’t know you to start laughing as well, that whole laughter is contagious thing.

Cons: You run out of people to invite to shows really quick, the audience can be too supportive to the point that you don’t learn what’s truly funny, and you end up stressing about all your people showing up instead of concentrating on your act.

Barking for a Spot

What is it: You stand outside of the club, usually on a busy foot traffic corner, trying to stop people, hand out fliers and convince them to come watch stand up. You usually stand outside or “bark” for 1-3 hours in exchange for 5-10 minutes of stage time.

Pros: You don’t have to stress about bringing people, most clubs will pay a couple of bucks for each person you successfully convince to come to the show, the audience doesn’t know you so the laughter is genuine, and you learn cold calling skills, which can be useful at winning over a tough crowd (and lots of other situations).

Cons: You have to stand outside for 2-3 hours, you get rejected 99% of the time (although learning not to take rejection personally is good), and if the club has more than one show that night, you’re outside the entire time except for when you perform, so you can’t learn from / listen to other comedians.

Open Mic: 

What is it: You pay $5 for five minutes of stage time. Some places say you just need to buy a drink instead, and most cities outside of New York / LA / Chicago don’t charge you money to get on stage. Actual stage time ranges from 3 minutes to 8 minutes depending on club.)

Pros: Anyone can get stage time and if you plan it out, you can do 2-3 mics a night (in NYC at least).

Cons: Anyone can get stage time. You know those guys that weren’t funny at the bringer show? Well they’re better than many of the people at the open mics (this varies from city to city though). Also, in NYC the only people that come to watch open mics are other comedians, who are not very helpful when you’re trying to learn what a real audience will find funny.

Wanna try stand-up comedy yourself? Consider taking my NYC Comedy Class or booking a private one-on-one comedy coaching session (in person or via Zoom)

More Stand-Up Comedy Tips:

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Three Mics One Night

No this isn’t exactly a parody of two girls one cup. Tuesday night, I met up with a fellow comedian, Joseph James, and we got the brilliant idea to do three open mics in the span of four hours. At first we thought we were doing it as a form of self flagellation, but it was actually the most fun I’ve ever had doing open mics. For anyone interested in seeing how jokes evolve over time, this is the sped up version. I feel my New Years joke in particular really evolved from the first time to the third.

Me at Mic One

 

Me at Mic Two

Me at Mic 3

 

Joseph at Mic One

 

Joseph at Mic 2

Joseph at Mic 3

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Featured Fresh Pal on Fresh Pow

So I occasionally read through the three times a day Help A Reporter Out emails to see if there’s any questions I can answer and be quoted for in books, articles or online. Yesterday, my girlfriend (yes I have one — long story short, I lost a game of rock paper scissor) sent me a link about a snowboarding interviews. Well I love snowboarding so I replied to the query. I received a questionnaire from Fresh Pow and now I’m featured on their front page. The permalink is here.

The company creates custom made stickers for decorating your snowboards and skis, among other things. I’d totally order a custom sticker that had a picture of myself and a said BigBenComedy.com on it… anyone feel like designing a 3″x10″ or a 4″x6″ sticker for me?


Photo of me snowboarding, I’m sorta legit

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