Two things I learned today
/I learned two things from the WTF podcast today and I decided to write them down here in the hopes of keeping the lessons with me longer. The first thing was a little spiritual life truth and the second was what seemed to be a direct piece of advice to me about stand up comedy.
The spiritual life truth: The meaning of life is nothing. There is no meaning to this life. The only one who gives this life meaning are people and most people go with a negative meaning. It's just kind of cool to have another angle to look at things. I really like perspective. I'm the only one who gives life meaning. Is my meaning "this sucks"? Or will I choose something different? I guess it depends on the day. Or maybe even the time of day. Right now I choose my meaning of life to see wonderment in this world and share it with my family and people around me.
The second thing I learned was a piece of comic insight that spoke directly to me. The comedian talking had been doing comedy for many years, he had figured out how to make people laugh. He had figured out how to be funny (which every comedian should definitely learn). The only problem was he wasn't being himself, he was being cheesy. He was pretending to be a happy guy when he wasn't. One day he said "fuck it" and came up with a 3 minute rant on how pissed off he was at life. The crowd cheered and gave a standing ovation, they went wild. The problem was he only had 3 minutes. After that he jumped back into his nice guy persona and the crowd gave him 7 minutes of silence. They could see he was lying to them.
This comedian knew he was on to something so he continued to dive further into the darkness that was his truth. This is when a new problem arose. He would just come out and say something like' "So do guys know what it's like when your Mom is in an insane asylum?" The crowd didn't know what to make of him. Was he serious? Or was he just making up weird shit? The comic learned that he could just jump into crazy shit like that. He had to properly set up the jokes so everyone knew where he was coming from. He had to start slow. He had to lube up the audience. Then he found he could take them there.
I remember when I was learning sales in the mortgage industry one of my sales coaches said to me, "You can't just ask a girl out on a date and then immediately pull her panties down and stick your penis in her. You have to wine and dine a girl, then you take her home and pull her pants down and stick your penis in her."
This is the lesson I need to take away for my comedy. I'm a weird guy, and very strange stuff happens to me and I do very strange stuff. Very unbelievable stuff. I can't just expect the audience to be with me from the start. I must take them on a journey. I can't stick my penis in the audience right when I get on stage, I need to wine and dine them before I do that.
The spiritual life truth: The meaning of life is nothing. There is no meaning to this life. The only one who gives this life meaning are people and most people go with a negative meaning. It's just kind of cool to have another angle to look at things. I really like perspective. I'm the only one who gives life meaning. Is my meaning "this sucks"? Or will I choose something different? I guess it depends on the day. Or maybe even the time of day. Right now I choose my meaning of life to see wonderment in this world and share it with my family and people around me.
The second thing I learned was a piece of comic insight that spoke directly to me. The comedian talking had been doing comedy for many years, he had figured out how to make people laugh. He had figured out how to be funny (which every comedian should definitely learn). The only problem was he wasn't being himself, he was being cheesy. He was pretending to be a happy guy when he wasn't. One day he said "fuck it" and came up with a 3 minute rant on how pissed off he was at life. The crowd cheered and gave a standing ovation, they went wild. The problem was he only had 3 minutes. After that he jumped back into his nice guy persona and the crowd gave him 7 minutes of silence. They could see he was lying to them.
This comedian knew he was on to something so he continued to dive further into the darkness that was his truth. This is when a new problem arose. He would just come out and say something like' "So do guys know what it's like when your Mom is in an insane asylum?" The crowd didn't know what to make of him. Was he serious? Or was he just making up weird shit? The comic learned that he could just jump into crazy shit like that. He had to properly set up the jokes so everyone knew where he was coming from. He had to start slow. He had to lube up the audience. Then he found he could take them there.
I remember when I was learning sales in the mortgage industry one of my sales coaches said to me, "You can't just ask a girl out on a date and then immediately pull her panties down and stick your penis in her. You have to wine and dine a girl, then you take her home and pull her pants down and stick your penis in her."
This is the lesson I need to take away for my comedy. I'm a weird guy, and very strange stuff happens to me and I do very strange stuff. Very unbelievable stuff. I can't just expect the audience to be with me from the start. I must take them on a journey. I can't stick my penis in the audience right when I get on stage, I need to wine and dine them before I do that.