Building a Set from Scratch

So, as a new comic, I've been working through a lot of material. Some of it good, some of it bad, and some of it really bad. I understand, however, that a big part of working through a joke is just running through it over and over. Testing it in front of crowds, tweaking it, taking parts out, switching up the order, etc. I've been hestitant to repeat jokes too often, out of courtesy to the few consistent friends who come to show after show, but also because it would bore the hell out of me. I don't want to tell the exact same jokes week after week. On top of that, I'm not working toward just the perfect five minute set, I'm eventually working toward, in theory, a killer 45 minute full set. Not to say that it will happen any time soon, but you may as well shoot for the stars in the hopes that you'll at least hit the moon.

Here's what I've been doing so far to achieve that. 

1) Never tell the same joke twice in the same way. I'll, of course, tell my best jokes more than once, but I try to understand what was funny about it and why. I slim it down over and over, taking out anything that doesn't build to the punchline. I also try to imagine what other punchlines could work, and see if I can work that in somehow to get additional laughs. 

2) Change the surroundings of a joke. I try to write transitions whenever possible, and I don't expect a transition to be hilarious, just effective. If it gets more than a chuckle than that's just a bonus. However, When you pair up jokes in different orders, then you get two potentially new jokes out of it: the transition into and out of the joke. Sometimes, just the juxtaposition results in new jokes that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. 

3) Loosen up the timing. Oftentimes, I just am not pausing enough. Even if I go up with a joke that's practically unchanged from the time before, I try to change the rythm and add pauses where they weren't before. It often works just enough to get an intermediary chuckle during the buildup to the punchline.

Does anyone have any other ideas to try?

My First Showcase

Last night I performed in the comedy showcase for Club Deluxe. It was the first time I've ever been chosen to go on stage. Up until last night, it had been only open mics, and the only qualification for getting on stage was showing up. Of course, Club Deluxe may not be the talent gatekeeper for all of San Francisco, but it was a small step in a good direction, and it felt pretty damn good.

The show was decent, not my best, but decent. I had been sick as hell the two days before and my fever had broken literally the night before the show. Whether that was an excuse for my timing being off is questionable, but it was surely a contributing factor. Another factor may have been that I had a huge group of friends arrive, which was both reassuring and slightly frightening. 

I don't know what it was, but the jokes just felt a little off. The pauses weren't long enough. The punchlines weren't punchy enough. The set just didn't come off quite as I had imagined. There were a lot of chuckles, but not a lot of big laughs. Don't get me wrong, it could have gone worse, and I was certainly better than at least half the other people that got up there, but all I can do is learn through obsessively replaying the video and then do better next time. 

There was one drunk, obnoxious girl in the audience who spoke throughout the entire showcase at normal volume or above, and she had been made fun of by multiple comics but just hadn't learned her lesson because she talked throughout my first joke. You'll see me take a quick dig at her right before my second bit, and I'm still debating whether it was the right move. In any case, share your thoughts about the performance if you have any. 

Slow the Hell Down

So I don't know if you've noticed from my videos, but I need to slow my delivery the hell down. I've gotten a million times better than when I started, but I still need to just take a breather and chill the hell out when I'm up there, and I need to do it in two ways. 

First and foremost, I need to give people time to laugh. If there's one lesson I'm learing over and over, it's that people won't laugh out loud if you're already halfway into your next joke. It's almost as a courtesy; they want to hear what you have to say next. On top of that, if you really lean into a pause, it not only gives people the chance to laugh, it also cues them to start laughing. 

Secondly, I need to slow down my rate of speech. I've always had a problem with this, and it's only amplified on stage. If it's not keeping people from understanding me, it's definitely keeping people from following a story. The faster I talk, the more people focus on the overall concept and less on the details. But the damn joke is in the details! 

I've been given all sorts of techniques for how to do this, but the problem is not just actually speaking slower. I've done public speaking for quite some time, and when I'm in front of a podium my words come out measured and clear. However, I'm not expecting a response until the end of my speech, and it's not likely that people simply won't applause. 

On the other hand, when I'm on stage doing comedy, naked and hiding behind a mic stand, I'm expected to make people laugh, loud and often. If you go more than 30 seconds without getting a laugh you start to wonder if people are still with you. If you're at a minute with no laughs, you better hope you've got a hell of a reward at the end of the long road you're taking your audience down. This sort of pressure can make me rush through jokes, and if I don't get a laugh, I start getting a little nervous which will make me go faster.

To get better at balancing this, I'm practicing my bit more before going on stage, and I practice pausing where I expect people to laugh. I can practically hear the laugh track in my head, and I keep that rythm on stage. Even if people don't take my cue, I look like I'm just having fun, and am totally confident in myself, whether they laugh or not. Projecting that type of image allows me and my audience to enjoy myself more. 

Sports, Blacking Out, Tupperware, Beard, Muni

This was my performance at Club Deluxe on September 1st. It was an open mic competition of sorts, not one that gave away money, but the "winners" would be asked back to be a part of future comedy showcases. They hold a 1 hour showcase every Monday night at 9pm right before the headlining comedian, and then do a true open mic after the headliner.

Sure enough, my performance was good enough to be asked back! I'm actually going back on stage next Monday, the 22nd. Sal Calanni is the headliner, and it's a $5 cover (though I'm pretty sure the showcase comedians don't get paid), but I'm just excited to have an attentive audience who actually has to pay to see me!

You'll see that I repeated the sports joke from the last video I posted, but I tried to slow it down and milk the timing a little better. I only brought material that I had tried out before, but I hadn't done any of these jokes for a month before, so they had some time to marinate. I'm sure I'll do a post soon on people who repeat their jokes too often, but suffice to say that I wasn't going to take a chance on brand new material on this night.

All five jokes seemed to go over really well. It's amazing to see the difference in audience reaction when you have a group of people who are actually listening to you. I really felt good after this performance, and I learned a lot from it. I'm sure I'll post a video of my upcoming performance, and we'll see if I was actually able to do some things better next time. Any thoughts you might have on the delivery or content would be appreciated.

Bill Burr - Self Awareness on Stage

I saw Bill Burr at the Punchline last weekend. It was a truly great show. I had heard about him before, and think I've seen some clips of him on Comedy Central, but his stage persona really came out during his performance. I'm not sure how far (or close) it is to his normal self, but on stage he's a thin, mildly psychotic, conspiratorial stress-ball who looks like he's about to snap. His trademark line, and it worked every time, is "let's bring this back mainstream," and it typically comes out after a line or two about how the banking system is legalized loan sharking or how the world is controlled by only a few families. Not that I disagree with him or anything, but they aren't exactly "golden material" topics. Nonetheless, the awkward silence during which the audience contemplated and tried to digest his reality-tweaking comments were broken with bursts of laughter with his comment, and he would move immediately into lighter subjects.

It's not uncommon for a comedian to have a line they fall back to when they're not getting laughs. Usually, it's something like "didn't like that one so much, did ya?" or some self-referential comment like that. It breaks the audience out of their dislike for their joke, and makes them laugh at the fact that the comedian is "ok" with it. However, it's typically reserved for jokes that don't work. Bill Burr just uses his line almost to pull himself back into it as much as his audience. It's not that he tells a joke that doesn't work, he just goes with his material and sometimes gets lost in the weeds. "Let's bring this back mainstream" eases the audience's tension because because it shows that he's comfortable with his own awkwardness.

No comedian is going to be flawless, and having a way to bring yourself out of a hole is always a good idea. It won't save you if you're bombing, but if you can sense that you're losing the audience with a subject, it's a good way to transition into something completely different. I don't have a collection of phrases like his that I'm in love with, I just use something like "not so much?" More often than not, I just power through the joke and get to the next one. Hell, I'll only be on stage for 5 minutes, he's got to be there for an hour.

Open Mic Comedy in San Francisco

This isn't the first list of San Francisco Open Mic venues out there, but it's up-to-date, which is more than you can say about most of the lists you'll find. Also, this will be San Francisco only. If you want to know about Open Mic elsewhere, then start your own damn blog.

ps. I'm only listing the one's I've been to, or know are legit. Please leave a comment if you know of one that is definitely going on as of Fall '08.

MONDAY

Club Deluxe
Comedy Showcase until 11, open mic afterwards

1511 Haight St (at Ashbury)

(415) 829-7061

Host: Al Gonzales

Sea Biscuit Cafe
Time unknown
3815 Noriega Street (at 45th Ave)
(415) 661-3784

Host: Sal Calanni

TUESDAY

Annie's Social Club

7-9 (SIGN-UP 6:30)
917 Folsom Street (at 5th St)

(415) 974-1585

Hosts: Jeff Cleary & Chad Lehrman

Grant & Green

10pm

1371 Grant Ave (at Green)

(415) 693-9565

Host: Ben Feldman

THURSDAY

BrainWash Cafe & Laundromat

7-Whenever (Sign up at 6:30 )
1122 Folsom (at 7th St)

(415) 861-3663

Host: Tony Sparks

The Usual Suspects Cafe
7pm-8pm
450 Broadway St (at Montgomery)
(415) 641-1717
Host: Danny Dechi

FRIDAY

The Usual Suspects Cafe
7pm-8pm
450 Broadway St (at Montgomery)
(415) 641-1717
Host: Danny Dechi

SATURDAY

Café International

Comedy Showcase 4th Saturday of the month
508 Haight St (@ Fillmore)

(415) 552-7390

Farley's Coffee
Second Saturday of every month, 7:15pm
1315 18th St. (at Texas)
Host: Liz Grant

The Usual Suspects Cafe
7pm-8pm
450 Broadway St (at Montgomery)
(415) 641-1717
Host: Danny Dechi

SUNDAY
Punchline Comedy Club

8pm

444 Battery St (at Clay)

(415) 397-7573

If you live outside of San Francisco, you can try to weed through the lists provided by www.SFStandup.com and www.BayAreaOpenMics.com. If you don't live in San Francisco, then why did you read through this entire post?

iPods, Sports, Tooth Fairy, Pennies

I did this routine on July 24th, 2008. My friend with the camera, unfortunately, had to sit toward the back of the cafe, so half of the video I'm blocked out of view by people standing in line at the cafe. This gives a pretty good sense, if nothing else, of the things you have to put up with at the BrainWash. Often, you can barely hear me over the rumble of the 'audience.'

Although you can hear the laughter of the audience in the back, I actually couldn't hear it up front so couldn't respond to the timing. From what I was seeing on stage, I was bombing. There was an elderly couple right in front of me that I lost right around the time I mentioned Christianity, and they just frowned at me the rest of the time. The lady in the corner to the left of the screen was crazy and laughed obnoxiously loud at seemingly random points throughout the night. She appears to be uninterested in what I had to say.

Since I was getting no love from the front of the room and couldn't hear anyone in the back, I was sure it was going horribly. In retrospect, it was probably my best performance to date, which was too bad because I was psyching myself out with the lack of laughter, and got a little nervous toward the end. But that's open mic. Plow through it first, analyze it later. Let me know what you think!

What the Hell am I Doing?

I got into Stand Up Comedy not because I thought that I was naturally funny or gifted, but rather because I thought I was funnier than 75% of the people I saw on stage at open mic night. Now, I know that "I suck less than those guys" is a bad reason to start doing anything, (although surprisingly not a bad way to run a political campaign), but it turns out I was half-decent and well on my way to becoming tolerable to listen to.

I started the process by just scratching down a short note whenever I thought of something funny, and then coming back to flesh out the joke when I had the time. ***Quick tip, that doesn't work so well because who the hell carries around a pen and paper. Shortly after starting that, I now just draft and save a text message to myself.*** Once I had a decent amount of material, I practiced it a couple times and signed myself up for the open mic at BrainWash Cafe, down in the SoMa district in San Francisco.

I should say a little something about my beloved BrainWash cafe. It's got... well... it's got character, let's say that. It's a laundromat/ cafe/ bar/ cultural hub of the SoMa district. They have an open mic something just about every night of the week, from poetry to music to what they're best known for: open mic stand up comedy, every Thursday from 7pm-11pm. Now, the laundromat is slightly separated from the sitting area, so it's not like you're talking over the dryer, however that doesn't mean it's the ideal place to find an attentive audience. BrainWash is open mic in the dirtiest, truest sense of the word. When I say open mic, I mean open to anyone, and sure enough, anyone does sign up. On top of that, there is a large segment of the audience who are just waiting for their laundry or grabbing a coffee, and they have no problem carrying on their own conversation while you're on stage. By stage, of course, I'm talking about the 2 foot by 2 foot platform raised 6 inches off the ground on which stands a lanky, hobbled together mic stand and all-too-often a wholly unfunny human being.

If you can manage to grab the attention of these patrons, you better be funny or else they'll turn their head right back to where it was, and do a spectacular job at ignoring you. This isn't a place to coddle new talent, it's a place to kick it's ass and make it want to quit. Now, I would like to think that I rocked the house the first time I got up there, but the honest truth was that I completely lost my cool. I've done public speaking for years, often in front of audiences in the hundreds, and maintained a strong speaking persona. The first time I got on that puny little fart of a stage, in front of a dozen people at best, I was nervous, I spoke too fast, and any concept of timing or interaction was thrown through the window. 

The next time was better, and the next time better still. I've been going at it weekly for a few months, and each time on stage is an improvment. I'm getting into the world of the Comedy Showcase, which is the next step after open mics, and I've already been seeing some sucess there. I don't necessarily plan on leaving everything I'm doing now to devote my life to comedy. I'm fortunate to have a job that I enjoy, pays well, and I'm good at. However, I'm also fortunate to live in San Francisco, which provides more than enough opportunity for a young comic to have fun and play around in the the scene. I'm not real sure what I'm doing or when I'll stop, but I'm having fun for now so I'll just leave it at that.

An Introduction Of Sorts

To all who have had the fortune/misfortune to stop by this blog/vlog/questionably worthwhile use of internet real estate,

This new-fangled e-lec-tronic thing-a-ma-blog is merely a self-indulgent sounding board for my hobby, stand up comedy. I'm still relatively new to the game, but would like to keep better track of the progress I'm making, and because I'm what marketers like to box in as part of the "young digerati", I want to share this experience with the uninterested public. I'll be posting my recorded stand-up sets here as they become available, and though I almost always record audio for my sets, I try to only use video when I've really tightened up the material.

Besides the video, you can expect to see a decent trickle of musings, mumblings, and occasional nonsensery. When I do post videos, please comment freely and honestly. I want your feedback (regardless of the fact that your only qualification to pass judgment on me is that you have a keyboard and minimal spelling abilities), even if it's that I "suck nuts" or "don't understand humor." I totally promise to not look up the IP address of the commenter only to track them down and make them tell me what they think to my goddam face.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy!

-Jesse Nichols-