Weeknight show with a small (but English speaking! unlike last night…) crowd, and my eyes are still messed up so I’m in glasses
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QEjUoeaadE
0m20s Good pause to get the laugh
1m05s To this point of the set, I’m moving a very nice, slow pace. I should always go at this speed
3m48s It’d be a good call back to say, “You won’t have to know it anymore, cause once you get engaged, you keep the baby”
4m23s Commit more to my act out of trying to rip the package open
5m12s I think PEZ Character names are hysterical, but the audience doesn’t seem to agree… I hate when my new favorite line doesn’t work
Overall: This is the best tonality, pacing and waiting for the audience to catch up that I’ve done in a while. The morning after pill joke didn’t go over as well as I would’ve liked. I need to find a way to get the audience to relax about a (potentially) controversial topic. Calling them out on getting nervous might do the trick.
The 10:30 show on a Monday, another 10-12 person audience
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddFREVILQlI
1m15s Saying something like this is usually the equivalent of throwing in the towel
1m27s But it sorta paid off, as the guy said that they were all foreign, so I changed the joked I was gonna do
2m35s With the changed set list, I actually get a good laugh
3m47s I had fun explaining this one
4m33s First time in months I did the subway joke, I decided this was a more physical joke, and a better chance the foreign audience would get it
5m03s And that idea didn’t work that well
6m17s No idea why I thought that joke would get a laugh when it takes Americans a few seconds to figure it out
7m10s Throw in a “woah” before “mom, they’re not all drunks”
7m27s At least I ended on a laugh
Overall: Doing stand up for people who don’t speak English as a first language will grow some hair on your chest. Once I figured out what was going on (after the first 90 seconds) I had fun with it and it worked out-ish.
I was only able to record audio for my July 24th and 25th shows (1 each night) so I’m skipping straight to July 27. If anyone knows of a youtube equivalent for straight audio files (where I can then embed them into my site), please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll have to skip a bunch of sets where I couldn’t use a camera. (I don’t have the time / computer processor to encode this into a fake video at this point.)
I MCed the show, small crowd of 6-10 people
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiQX7KWgAX4
0m24s The joke is there is no joke
1m38s Don’t ask how long they’ve been married, make a guess, it’s more interesting
1m59s I should’ve gone back to picking on the first couple since their friends are married
2m33s Go stronger in tonality on “Igor likes this”
2m59s Stop asking questions and try making statements and then having the crowd tell me if I’m right, it’ll be more engaging
5m22s Good job trying to hook up the birthday boy, and then stacking on an additional comment
6m21s Kill the “help me please” line
7m50s Say “the next comic” instead of “the first comic”
Overall: I had two good crowd work jokes but the actual jokes didn’t go over that well.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary review copy of this book. I’d like to think it didn’t influence my review, but who knows. (If you’d like me to review something comedy related on my site, contact me.)
Aaron Karo’s third book, “I’m Having More Fun Than You” spends 241 pages arguing that “being single is more fun and fulfilling than being in a relationship, and that getting married in your twenties is akin to signing fun’s death sentence.” And while I’d agree with that sentiment, if you’ve read the previous quote, you’ve practically read the book. “I’m Having More Fun Than You” felt like a standup comedy act that was written out and not fully tightened. I wanted more actual stories and less generalizing of experiences. However, if you like the Todd Barry / George Carlin type books, you’ll probably like this book too.
In fairness, I was entertained enough to finish the book and I laughed out loud at lines like “Some of us worry about dying alone. The rest of us fret about going home alone” and “A best friend is someone you’ve known for more than a decade, but if you had never met him before, and then hung out with him today for the very first time, you’d remark, “Wow. What a dick.”
I also shook my head in full agreement about Karo’s statements like “The true benefits of bachelorhood are just as much about what you don’t have as what you do have – one cannot truly live the dream without both the presence of options and the absence of annoying obligations to a significant other” and “Taking a girl to dinner is just about the most mature thing I’ve ever done. When I’m in the middle of a date I can’t help but think I’m still eighteen and soon everyone is going to expose me as a fraud.” Basically, if you can’t articulate the benefits of being a bachelor, this is the treatise for you. Then again, if you don’t yet know the benefits, you’re probably already married.
Overall: This is an average but entertaining book that makes a good souvenir if you like Karo’s standup and a better gift to give a groom at his bachelor party. If you’re not yet a fan, go see him perform instead of reading this book.
I checked out I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (IHTSBIH) (based off of the NY Times best selling book of the same title) at the LA Stop of Tucker Max’s movie tour. The premiere had an audience of around 800 people and the whole event ran extremely smoothly (from my perspective anyway).
Before getting to my review, a few disclaimers:
Disclaimer 1: I’ve followed Tucker Max before his book was published and am a fan of Tucker as a business man / entrepreneur and of his message that too many people miss in hisstories of debauchery and drinking: do what makes you happy, don’t automatically buy into society’s standards of “success” as most people are miserable working their “prestigious” jobs.
Disclaimer 2: I’ve been following this movie closely for the past year by reading nearly every blog entry on the movie’s site. No matter your opinion of Tucker or the movie, if you have any interest in learning what the movie making process is like, I recommend the blog.
Disclaimer 3: Until just now, I never realized how hard it is to write a coherent movie review that doesn’t give away the whole movie. I hope I didn’t totally screw this up too bad.
Ok, with those out of the way, on to the movie:
In the movie, Tucker is a self centered, fun loving, guy who loves women and takes his two friends, Drew and Dan to a legendary strip club. It’s Dan’s bachelor party and Drew is bitter at all women because he recently walked in on his fiancé with a rapper (the two or three scenes that played on this were great). The trip gets a out of hand and Tucker has to win his friend back.
IHTSBIH is an engaging, above average comedy that had the misfortune of coming out too soon after The Hangover. Tucker has already written about this comparison, and while he’s right that The Hangover is wacky situational humor where IHTSBIH is character driven (I was really engaged by Drew’s relationship with the stripper), the movies still felt too similar to me. I remember laughing harder and more often during the Hangover, but then proceeding to rip The Hangover apart right after it ended due to all the absurd situations it had. With IHTSBIH, I laughed a lot, but not as frequently, and had two gut busting laughs: Drew’s diatribe about pancakewhiches, which I expect to become a YouTube classic, and Drew’s interaction with the stripper in the club. The “epic shit scene” was well done, but not my thing. The movie’s ending is strong as it doesn’t succumb to a standard “they lived happily ever after” and Tucker not actually changing his ways was a great character decision.
While I enjoyed the movie, I read too much of Tucker’s blog posts and had higher than usual expectations so I was not “wowed”. (I recognized this might happen in advance of the screening and tried to scale down my expectations, but I don’t think that fully worked.)
Regardless of my review, I still hope this movie does great at the box office. If that happens, it’ll be evidence that someone can be successful by Hollywood standards while not going through the standard Hollywood movie making system. (Tucker kept full creative control of his project, turned down studios buying his script and avoided paying $20 million for megastar actors due to his belief that the movie was so good it didn’t need “star power”.)
Overall: 3.5 / 5 Stars If you’re looking for a comedy that you’ll enjoy, go see this movie. It’s entertaining and engaging but (unfortunately) not a must see comedy classic like Office Space or The Wedding Crashers. *
And one last disclaimer: If you’re going to see the movie, and haven’t read Tucker’s movie blog, hold off until you see the movie. Otherwise your expectations might climb too high.
*My personal test of a comedy classic: If I’m flipping channels and the movie in question comes on, and I’ve already seen this movie multiple times, will I stop what I’m doing and watch said movie until the end?
