Comedy With No Deadline

I have at least two jokes that are relatively complete and very much in the vein of ones that I would love to be known for, along with another one that has the right punchline but needs a lot of work on the setup. Perhaps because of my weekly improvised comedy, I am hesitant to actually perform these before there is significant reason to do so. With no deadline, I have just been editing and tweaking what I have. Most standups seem to require stage time to know what is funny, to gauge a response. For whatever reason, I am pretty sure about whether and to what degree my written jokes are funny without requiring an audience's laughter. Furthermore, as I learned from Steve Martin, even when your material is at its best, the rule of thirds applies. A third of the time, the crowd will be great, a third terrible, and a third okay. In my mind, that releases me from having to worry about how they will react, and instead trust my own writing and ability to perform.

I recently received an update from my friend who was on the casting team for that comedy show. The update that she relayed from the head of casting is that there has been no news whatsoever regarding that show. Was it a failed pitch? Are they just finalizing details before letting us know that it's officially going to happen? Both possibilities appear to be equally likely.

As far as the standup goes, the vague goal that I have in mind is something like the 45 minutes that Steve Martin did at the peak of his standup. Granted, he said in his book that he had four hours of material in total, but given how hard it is to come up with a few minutes, and the fact that performing standup is in my mind more of a stepping stone than an actual goal, 45 minutes is what I am hoping to put together. Steve Martin's act also consisted primarily of a whole lot of small bits and physicalities rather than anything prolonged, and a lot of that was dependent upon the audience buying into the character that he was doing. I recently went to see Tim Heidecker's show, which consisted of 25 minutes of him doing a character that is a bad standup, then basically a small concert with his more genuine music. He too was heavily reliant upon the audience buying into and joining in with his character. People who likely lean very far left in their politics but for the sake of the show would yell out angrily about cancel culture and such. This allowed the audience to become a part of the show. The character was funny, but a significant amount of the reason why it worked so well was because the audience was thoroughly a part of it. In my mind, I much prefer the idea of just doing the show regardless of who or what the audience is, but should I be thinking more in that alternative way? It is certainly something worth a ponder, or possibly two.

Short Hair & Revisiting Jokes

I got a significantly shorter haircut and it rained today. Some of my simpler yet prevailing excuses for not attempting standup comedy at this point is the point are that neither my choice of attire nor my hair were appropriate for the present times. It has been too hot to begin to fathom the notion of sleeves upon my body, much less the addition of a blazer, despite the fact that these open mics have, in my experience thus far, had their climate well under control. And as for the hair, I did not like the thought of such a thing continue to carry inertia after I do a physical bit. In my mind, this would become something requiring potential manual correction, which I imagine would have an undesired impact on my delivery.

Despite his many deliberate pushes toward cancellation, I greatly admire John Mulaney's tendency toward being well-dressed for his performances. I appreciated this about Steve Martin as well. In Steve's case, he wore the three-piece suit because the vest prevented his shirt from becoming noticeably untucked. In my case, I want to be well-dressed enough that it will be that much more surprising when I throw my body around for a slapstick gag. And though Steve Martin began with longer hair, his most successful look adapted to the times with a fairly conservative cut.

I had not thoroughly gone through my fully written joke notes for a month or two because I wanted to see them with fresh eyes, and sure enough, I revisited them today and was very pleased. I made some additional edits, but I think that it is about time to work on memorization. So the process will be memorization, then performing on video with a microphone in hand, then revising as needed until I feel good about doing it on stage.