This is a hysterical music video I just came across that I had to share. A little crude, but you can’t argue with facts:
Too Dirty?
“Great job, but you gotta clean it up. Cmon. I can’t have you talking about coming in girls on stage.” Some places will let you know what kind of material you have to avoid before hand, others will end your set early if you say something you weren’t even aware was dirty.
As you may have guessed that’s what happened last night. I found out while taking a leak in the bathroom that this particular place doesn’t like you to do many jokes about female anatomy or if you’re gonna do them, you gotta go as metaphorical as possible.
Question: Will changing “coming in a girl without a condom… the first night I meet her” to “Not using protection for a one night stand” or “Going raw when you first meet someone” take the laugh out of this bit? Or is even that still too dirty?
A Rant About Facebook Profile Photos
There’s a website called “Help a Reporter” and I came across this request today:
“If you’re on Facebook, who’s in your photo and why? Do you just depict yourself or maybe a display of your kids. Maybe it’s you and your significant other. Who’s in the photo and why? And do you have any feelings on the choices other people make? Seeing just someone’s kids in their photo makes you think … ? Ditto for email addresses like thesmithfamily@aol.com. Share your thoughts. Thank you.”
My response:
Hi there,
I have 3 kinds of Facebook profile photos:
- Me doing something funny or crazy (making fun of the Rocky statue, snowboarding tricks, etc) with nobody else in the photo
- When I’m interviewing for jobs, I put up a very standard photo of myself, in a suit or other situation where I look presentable
- Me looking like the pimp that I am, with each arm around an attractive woman
My pet peeves of profile photos:
- Huge group photos – congratulations, you have friends. That I can barely make out your face leads me to believe you’re the ugliest one in the photo. By far. Otherwise, why would you hide in the crowd on your own profile page?
- Photo of you with your significant other (unless it’s hysterical). Do you really need to advertise how whipped you are? It’s bad enough you don’t say “I” or “me” anymore and that everything is “we”, but you can’t even have your own identify on Facebook? If you have her in your photo, but she doesn’t have you, you’re probably gonna get dumped. If you both have it, I just threw up a little in my mouth.
- Random cartoon / celebrity / political movement photo. You’re about as original as Rocky V.
- Photo of you with a baby that’s not your kid. This can be effective if you’re trying to scare guys away, otherwise who cares about the random child you played with for 4 seconds at Aunt Sallie’s house 5 months ago? He’s probably adopted anyway.
Let me know your pet peeves in the comments section… You can also email geekfactory@gmail.com with the subject “FACEBOOK PHOTO” by 6PM on October 18th if you want to have a chance to be included in their article.
Practice and Being Loose
I did two sets yesterday. The first was at Helium: it looks better on film than it felt in person.
Note to self: until you’ve heard yourself say the material 300 times, make sure to practice your full set outloud twice before you get up on stage. While you don’t want to sound overly rehearsed, you don’t want to forget any major setups or punchlines either.
Helium was also weird in that everyone was in the back of the room. There were 40-50 people there, but not a soul in the first 3 rows. It felt weird hearing laughs but not seeing anyone or even an outline of people. I’d love to hear some tips on how to adjust in such a situation.
The second set was at Raven Lounge, my Philly comedy home at this point. While it was a pretty sparse crowd, I was interacting with the audience really well and addressed all the interuptions that came up. I think it was my best crowd/situational work to date, which isn’t saying too much, but you gotta start somewhere.
[Note: YouTube has a 10 minute clip limit, so I’ve had to cut up my Raven act into 3 parts. The place is really dark, so there’s no video, just audio. I added an image so it could be stored on YouTube.]
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The Day The Music Died
“That’s not a full plate. This won’t count towards the challenge unless you have a full entree and a side. Don’t forget desert.” Meet Rob: fellow contestant, arbitrator and judge.
“Ugh, we still have two more dining halls to go. This was a terrible idea.” I replied as if anything short of a heart attack would prevent me from finishing this exercise in self flaggelation.
Rutgers University has five dining halls. Rob, Chris and I decided to eat a full meal at all five. Back to back to back to back to back. In alphabetical order. Gotta love state schools and no Friday classes. While I have not been able to go into the kitchen to prove it, Rutgers puts laxitives in its dining hall food. Four years of eating dining hall food is all the scientific evidence I need.
Imagine a campus that used to serve barracks for the army. Take the kind of dining hall that would be there, add five quarts of beauracracy to it, mix thoroughly, bake for an hour, then add salt. Voilla: Tillet Dining Hall! The the worst, last and most painful dining hall on our journey.
There’s nothing like sampling the same rubbery chicken meal in 3 different dining halls, except living in a bathroom for 6 hours after finishing such a kamikaze tour. As we felt our stomaches rumble with every bump the bus took back to the dorms, I announced: “Today is the day the music died.”
———-
Antics from my college days have little to do with comedy except to how I don’t learn from my mistakes. Yesterday I spent the afternoon sampling four different cheese steak places in Philly. Back to back to back to back. It was the second day the music died.
For those that don’t want to suffer the aftermath, Geno’s was better than Pat’s which was better than the random mall steak place by Independance Hall, which was surprisingly better than Jim’s. So in conclusion, don’t gorge yourself and stay away from Jim’s, they have a weird texture to their steak meat.
