Performance Critique 41: March 05

This is the place where I bark at. There was a crowd of 12-14 people, and I wound up convincing a group of 8 people from Philly to come to the show.

 

0m05s I love when a host butchers my last name. Almost as much as other comics must love it when I host and butcher their last name. 

0m19s Anytime you can have the crowd dying before you say anything, you should have a pretty good set. If you don’t, your material managed to lose the crowd. 

0m59s My delivery is more laid back than usual, I have no idea why or how this happened, but I like it. 

1m19s This is a strong way to control the crowd, I’m similar to a talk show host by directing who can speak first. 

1m29s She said “I have a cat”. I should’ve pointed out how she just wanted attention. 

1m45s I think I went a little over board by saying “there’s a decent human being in here” this can turn a crowd against you, but luckily it didn’t this time. 

2m48s I think I need a different deliver about the “neglecting kids” as people find it funny but don’t want to laugh. My delivery needs to make it okay to laugh. I’m not sure what it should sound like though. 

3m09s It seems on the rare occasions that I laugh during my set, everyone laughs. I need to identify parts where I can laugh. 

3m40s The person I addressed was a middle aged woman, which is why I felt the need to comment on the look she gave me. 

3m52s Being aware of what’s going on in the room (the parts you can see anyway) can really add to the jokes. 

4m18s It took me 3 seconds of silence to force the laugh, and another 3 seconds for them to stop laughing. Some comics have commented that it screws up my delivery, the whole waiting for the audience to laugh thing but until I can get instant laughs, I’m okay with forcing it out every once in a while. 

4m39s That was the worst act out I’ve ever done. Before I got on stage, I envisioned miming the process of shit hitting the ceiling fan, but the way I just did it makes it look like I had a quick seizure. 

4m43s I originally had planned to keep ducking out of the way of shit after each of the 3 examples, but for some reason I only flinched about marriage. 

4m54s I should say “bomb on your face” instead of “booby trap on your face” 

5m18s The babysitting kids and why psychos are better than kids lines need to be tightened. 

5m25s I shouldn’t say third date twice. The first line should be “If you get past all that, the next time you meet you’re having sex” 

6m24s The terrible act outs continue. That was supposed to be me slamming a door in the face of a Jehovah’s Witness. I should’ve probably opened the door first, and held onto the door knob a bit more convincingly. 

Overall: Delivery wise, this was one of my best sets. I was relaxed, at east, didn’t rush and interacted with the audience. It’s one of my most conversational performances.

Performance Critique 40: March 01

This is an open mic I go to often and this time one of the comics brought 8 or 10 of his friends. So I ditched most of the new jokes I wanted to try and decided to do more of my good material. 

 

0m54s I decided to try to shorten my dog joke because I wanted to win them over but leave enough time to try other material. 

2m55s Explain the Saw movies without a pause 

3m25s Remove the part about kids. I removed half of it since the last time I tried this joke, but I feel it will be best without it. 

4m14s I just realized how funny this accidental transition was.

4m28s I should have said “and you ARE surprised, then they WERE normal” 

Overall: I was very pleased with how well the backwards dating joke did. I need to work out that last joke about the definition of normal.

Performance Critique 39: Feb27b

This is the same night as the previous critique but with a different, and much better crowd.

 

0m47s The robbery bit definitely needs to go. 

0m57s I lied, I’m sober. But it’s a good excuse if you’re ever accused of mumbling. 

2m08s More excitement about “Puppies for Yuppies” I need to pretend like I’m the narrator for a TV commercial about it. 

2m51s I took an extra long pause because the door swung open and it’s loud outside. I’m starting to get the hang of adjusting punchlines and timing to make sure everyone can hear it. 

5m29s One third of the fifteen people in attendance just got up and started to leave. 

5m47s I later found out they were actually here or a different show and were just hanging out waiting for that one to start. 

Overall: I’m most proud that I’m learning how to wait for the door to close before delivering a punchline so that everyone can hear it. I know I’ve said lots of times that the audience shouldn’t matter to a true professional, but I think I did pretty much the same material with the same delivery two shows in a row (see performance critique 37) and this time I got a much better response. So I have a long way to go until I’m a “true professional”.

New Blog Design

I know a good amount of you read my blog through a RSS reader, but I thought I’d point out that I’ve just redesigned my blog. The biggest change is I’ve organized the best posts by category and have added a blog roll. Any feedback on the design (glitches, more ways to improve, plugins I should add, etc) is always appreciated.

Also, if anyone is technologically savvy out there, I have three questions:

1) Why can’t I get bold text to display as bold? The html code shows the < strong > tags, but no browser is rendering bold text as bold… Any ideas would be appreciated.

2) How do I upload my photo to my name for when I leave comments? I tried to edit users but couldn’t find a photo upload option.

3) My youtube embeds no longer seem to appear in the RSS feed. (But the bold text that doesn’t display above, displays in the RSS.) Any ideas how to fix this?

I’m using WordPress 2.7.1. and had to upload the new version a few times before success, so if you know of specific files or paths that I might want to overwrite yet again, that may fix it.

Thanks,

Ben

Comedy Critique 38: Feb 27a

This is the place where I bark, there was about 12 people, 6 of them were one of the comic’s English as a second language students. 


0m48s The bit about robbery might have to be cut, or I should just save it if I ever get to perform at The Apollo. 

2m17s Good job finally keeping my hand cupped and open for a few seconds after the joke. 

3m19s Either I sucked tonight or the crowd was really dead. Usually I’d blame myself, but my pacing was good and I don’t recall any other comics I watched getting big laughs. 

4m28s I took an extra long pause before my punchline because the door opened and it was noisy outside, you can hear it on the tape. 

4m56s This crowd wasn’t laughing or listening or I was really bad. It felt like I was practicing my stand up at home. 

Overall: I didn’t realize how few laughs I got until watching the video. Now that I think about it, I do remember the emcee doing material after my set, which is always a sign that you really sucked. So I bombed without realizing it. Reminds me of the whole when a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it… except I was the tree and the ears in this case. I guess the overall takeaway is never to trust your reaction when you come off of the stage.

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