Category: Comedy

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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.

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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”.

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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

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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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Comedy Critique 37: Feb 25

This was an open mic with 2 audience members.

 

0m18s I don’t actually hate jews. And I am a jew. I was just playing with tension. 

0m31s I need to deliver this differently… I’m still figuring out the how… and maybe I should use the word “scared” instead of “concerned” when starting this joke, even if they’re not. 

2m55s I rushed the delivery. 

3m54s It doesn’t get any more wordy than “That is not how we educate our childrens youth about what not to do.” Something like “There’s a better way to set an example for kids” would be easier on the brain. 

6m15s For some reason I’ve been getting tongue twisted recently with “I think she was overestimating”, I have no idea why. 

7m17s Things go wrong in threes… 

7m44s I was only talking about comedy technique because the only 2 audience members were new comics who just hadn’t heard my material yet, I’d never go into it if there was a real audience there. 

9m58s I have a second video that goes on for another 20 seconds but it’s not worth making this post longer for it. 

Overall: This was good stage time. The newer stuff needs more practice.

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