The ABC’s of Stand Up, Part 2

Impersonations
Ugh. I saw this headliner once. The last part of his act he did impersonations. His first impersonation was a dead on Homer Simpson. Everything else he did, I swear to God, I thought he was deliberately trying to sabotage his own career. He couldn’t do any impersonations! He could only do the one and he thought that was enough to waste 20 minutes of the crowd’s time. And they were bad, too. Like Jack Nicholson and Bill Cosby re-enacting Pulp Fiction scenes bad. The Evil Knievel of hack premises got on a soviet made joke-motorcycle and tried to jump and land in Laughter Town but ended up falling into Failure Gorge. And then he repeated the stunt until he alienated every last audience member. Even if you can do voices, just please, please for my sake, be funny.

Jokes
I’m not going to sit here and type up how to write a joke because A) I don’t really know how do that and B) No, so I’m going to use this slot to logically explain why Dane Cook is not a comedian. Comedians tell jokes. Jokes are funny. Dane Cook is funny****, but Dane Cook does not tell jokes. He is a performer. He is a yammering jack-in-the-box with as much insight and creative intelligence as a fart in the wind. Case in point: watch a stand up special of his. You may or may not get a chuckle. Now, try listening to it on tape. Nothing. Wanna know why? It’s because there’s no substance behind his flailing limbs and shit eating grin. If you can write something and it’s funny without you performing it, it’s a joke. That’s all I got.

****to those who are too young to legally buy alcohol

Killing
The exact opposite of dying. This is when you do super well and everyone loves you. You murder the crowd. There’s this thing where if you do really well you’ll get a knick name of a serial killer like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy. If you’re even better than that you get a handle like Stalin or Pol Pot. Then it moves on to infectious diseases like Bill “Malaria” Hicks or The Black Plague Chris Rock. It keeps going on an on and before you know it you take the mantle of Death (former Deaths include: Margret Cho; Andrew Dice Clay; and Bozo the Clown).

Laughter
Ah, the laughter. The sweet nectar of ambrosia that validates our existence. Just be sure they’re laughing with you, not at you. And if you can’t manage that…fuck it. Have them laugh at you. One of the weirdest things I’ve discovered doing stand up is that you can play in front of a crowd who will be “crypt full of deaf mutes” silent but they will still like you. Not only like you but think you did an excellent job. Well thanks for giving me live feedback, Harpo. I could have done the same thing and received the same reaction if I performed in front of my stuffed animal collection, and I always kill in front of them.

Master of Ceremonies
MC for short. The host of the show. It’s the MC’s job to do an opening few minutes and introduce the acts. It’s shitty work because you are the transitioning agent for the audience. They’re going from sitting around complaining about their outrageously priced, horrible food to being a captivated, attentive little angel seat fillers. I’ve been told a few times that it’s not the MC’s job to be funny. It’s their job to dive on a grenade so the other comics, the ones people are here to see, can shine. It’s a lot like being a camp counselor except not nearly as bad.

"Don't be so quick to write off the role of MC. The MC is the audience's first impression. It's also the MC's job to make sure the show runs smoothly. I know it's everyone's goal to get past MC to feature because it's easier...more time to play...no pesky announcements, but MC skills are invaluable. Besides if you can go up cold and make 'em laugh, imagine how that'll translate when the crowd is warmed up for you. Not a sermon, just a thought.--Jared"

Thanks, Jared Stern

Nobodies
99% of people who regularly go up in front of strangers and try to make them laugh are nobodies. Just because you haven’t seen them on Comedy Central doesn’t mean they’re unfunny. It just means they haven’t made the right friends or sucked the right dicks to get that far. Or they in fact are unfunny. Whichever. But just like the Free Masons, there are varying degrees of how much you un-suck.

Open Mic
It’s the first step on a long, long, demoralizing, soul crushing, never-ending road to stardom. We all start here. Open mics are fantastic because you get to see some of the best and most of the worst of what the stand up world has to offer. On the good side we have: comics who have been at it for a while and are trying out new stuff. They are typically hysterical. Alright cool. And on the bad side (whoo boy) we have: the alcoholic, disgruntled white guy who runs a terrible open mic inside an even more terrible Italian restaurant telling you for the 8th time how he was the first white guy on Def Comedy Jam even though that episode never aired; the crazy homeless man wearing jorts, shin guards and rubber gloves running around making everyone so uncomfortable that the owner of the place won’t touch him because we all think he’s covered in AIDS needles, and almost never an audience. Welcome to the sewers of comedy. We all float down here.

Prop Comedy
This used to be really gay but somehow it’s evolved into certain aspects of the alternative comedy scene where people will do funny power point presentations or slide cards or something. It’s almost a theatre production. The problem is that it’s really hard to start off doing the alternative thing. Most open mics that are in the dingy basement of some bar called Spy Longue don’t have a multimedia projector to plug your macbook into; just a mic, some lumpy seats and thousands of invisible rats.

Quitting
This can be nearly as hard as starting stand up. Once you start comedy you kind of revolve your personality around it. You are _____ the Comedian. It’s what separates you from all your boring, uninspired friends who were too chicken shit to take a dare with their lives and try to eek out a living being creative. Comedy itself is hard, often thankless work but the ones who stay in it the longest usually prosper, even if their decades of zero comedic growth indicate that they should have quit a long time ago.