You're using simile and exaggeration and consciously tasteless material.
But it's very forced and self concious.
What are the funny things you actually want to say? What amuses you?
Avoiding set up-punch structure Page 2
Hi Sootyj,
Obviously I'm aware that it is tasteless- otherwise I'd have a severe problem.
As for forced I don't know man, that just popped into my head spontaneously.
I'll be honest with you- what I now find amusing is quite different to what I excel at- which would be double entendres.
Recently I have got more into Stewart Lee and this video of his answered a lot of my questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ
I also bought his book and he talks a bit about how he discovered the inner workings of comedy and threw it aside.
I need to practice mor povs and what ifs I think.
The weird thing is what makes me laugh is not jokes at all. And I don't know what these guys are doing to make me laugh!
ya know that old saying that dissecting comedy is like dissecting a frog- it dies in the making.
I want to dissect Stewart Lee and Dylan Morans frogs but their frogs are a lot more slippery to pin down.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/440683-explaining-a-joke-is-like-dissecting-a-frog-you-understand
When you say you don't laugh at jokes, its akin to saying you don't believe in cats
You just wonder what those 4 legged things are that go meow
They're there, right now you're pointing out unusual word play or exaggerating for offence
Well I think my humour is maybe too mechanical and based on misdirection. Like the old take my wife..please' format, which comedians haven't really used since lenny bruce.I think that one-liners don't seem to be able to create howls of laughter.
Most of my jokes are reinterpretations of a premise.like There's a lot of people complaining about roma these days.I don't mind them. Who I really hate, who I think have been scamming people out of money for years- DOLMIO! And then I'd hold and hope for laughter but no all I'd see in the audience would be a mixture of pity and disgust.
But even hypothetically if it was ok, I'd still need to have maybe 5 tags on that to get good laughs.I was thinking maybe by writing an essay on something than searching for set ups inside it. Actually while I'm here- I might ask you, what do you think about reverse engineering jokes- they seem to lead to better jokes but again it also means a lot of disconnected gags.
I think you're trying to disect an egg with a sledge hammer.
Take for example the Roma joke it's all out there, so there's guessing for your audience to do.
Now here's how I'd write it.
I don't try and trust people who turn up at my door and try and sell me stuff. Why are they invading my privacy, who do they think they are? Dominos Pizza delivery drivers, it's my own fault for ordering the pizzas in the first place. But they kidnap children and hide them in the insulated boxes on their mopeds. At least that's what I tell the police.
So it's the same basic story, but it seems a normal narrative, broken up by surprise asides and with a twist ending the narrator is a murderous paedophile
Well SootyJ,
I just did another stand up course and showcase.
This one was different in that it was story based.
Finally I've experienced the versatility- and the unforced nature of the genre.
The shaggydog story seems to really take the audience on a much deeper journey, one they'll stay on regardless of the punchlines being good.And the povs really were tonnes of fun to do too. I kind of like to hide behind a character- for example if I'm pretending to be I don't know Charles Manson on stage- I feel like I'm not the one being accepted or rejected- which makes me less clingy- which makes the audience probably respect me more. I'm starting to think I might be able to do this cult thing after all...