Post Workshop Babble

Okay, I just got back from the standup comedy workshop. Here's stuff that I learned that I shouldn't really be forgetting soon.

- Standup comedy is not similar to written comedy.

- In written comedy, the reader dictates the pace so even if the reader is a bit slow, the joke adjusts to his rate of comprehension. Standup comedy puts the pace burden on the comic so timing is everything.

- Jokes are look short on paper are often still too long for the stage. Example:

Written: "I was able to convince my girlfriend to go to a threesome. During the action though, I realized I should at least be participating too."

Too long.

I revised it to this: "My girfriend told me how wonderful the threesome last night was. Heh, wait till I join in!"

Better.

- Being onstage is fucking scary, specially when you're facing a russo-korean, a mainland chinese girl, a chino-indian guy, a chino-american guy, and a bunch of white people from town.

- Shitting on your pants because of nervousness never helps.

- Domestic Helper jokes will always get the big "OOOOO", and yes, even if you're Filipino.

- When you go onstage, you better have a set you know by heart. Nobody enters races and assembles their cars on the spot. Doing something like that in standup comedy is tragedy.

- Spacing out because of silence is never a good thing. Doing ummms to maintain pace is shit stupid.

- Imagining a naked audience never helps, specially when you get hardons from such ideas.

- The mic stand does not conceal hardons very well.

- Or the mic for that matter. It's a sort of thing that's frowned upon in many civilized countries (except Japan, where anything weird is acceptable)

- I need to do more of standup comedy. Much more.

The more you learn, the more you realize how much more you need to learn.

I gotta work on my act.