In my post about stand-up comedy as a career, I mentioned that comics typically devote years to the scene before they begin to earn even a poverty-level income. That’s the tried-and-true process for how to break into stand-up comedy, and the only way to shortcut it is to already be famous from something else.1 And [...]
Let’s not sugar-coat this: stand-up comedy is a financially idiotic way to make a living, and almost always professional suicide as a career. Becoming a comedian means putting in years of unpaid labor, investing hundreds or even thousands of hours into comedy before the average comic even begins to approach a livable wage. The Dream: [...]
Last night’s Halloween show at Seattle’s Comedy Underground wasn’t my best set, or even an especially good set, but it was the most productive stagetime I’ve ever had in my year-plus of doing stand-up comedy. A couple hours before the open mic, I learned from the host — coincidentally, my friend Andrew J. Rivers — [...]
A joke’s structure consists of a setup and a punchline, with the punchline using the element of surprise to pack its punch. You get one surprise per punchline, per audience; except on very rare occasions, there are no takebacks or do-overs. If you blow your surprise, it’s gone. After a failed joke, new comics will [...]
Spending some time away from a joke or a bit is often exactly what it needs in order to improve. Just as bread needs to rise or scotch needs to age, jokes often need to spend some time off on their own, outside our heads, while we go on with experiencing life. Time changes our [...]
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