Frozen on stage

So I'm currently in the depressing aftermath of a bad gig.

there are 2 reasons why I bombed this gig and I'm fully aware of them. first was that I froze, my first night as a compare at this bar and I stood in the corner of the room, 90% of the room were not there for comedy, most were just there to drink and be loud. I started my set, and just forgot the words, and the fact I became aware of it instantly lead to me trying to distract myself by looking a smudge on the bar. after a good 10 seconds of silence I found my footing and managed to start to salvage it, until I was heckled.

i had a comeback in my pocket just incase someone started talking but this was full out anger. "weird, I don't remember playing the music or brushing my hair but apparently its the f**king muppet show" after this he interjected every 20 seconds or so, sometimes with a grunt, other times with "you're a f**king c**t mate" and yet when ever I started to talk to him he would go silent, really messing with the flow and meaning I had to start from scratch every single time.

i doubt anyone reads this blog and if they do it means they actually do care about my comedy, i've got 2 gigs coming up in the next 2 weeks, and whilst i'm supremly confident off the stage, the anxiety is overwhelming its something i have to work on but i dont know how



hope you have a good weekend

Josh

2012: the Olympics, end of the world and stand up comedy

It’s been a long time since I’ve done any writing on my blog, and i doubt anyone still reads it, so forgive me if I'm a little rusty, last year was the beginning of my stand-up; I managed to squeeze in 6 whole gigs (I know who’d have thought anyone would have that much spare time!), Become single again and get a job. And after just a few months in the working world I find myself grovelling at the feet of the cruel ex-girlfriend that is education crying “oh god, I was wrong, take me back, I hate it here!” Now back in college and with a local venue to compare at I'm currently in a really good place right now.

One of the main problems with doing stand up in Kent is that it is a pain in the arse to find a venue to play at, the two I can get to regularly are “the orange” and “platform 5 wine bar”, one night last week I plucked up the courage to ask the owners of platform 5 if I could compare their open mic night, and amazingly they’ve let me do it! If I manage to pull of this night I might actually have a consistent source of gigs in the local area, that’ll be huge as I won’t have to travel to London every time I have a new 5 mins.

I'm applying to do stand up comedy at university, call it a mistake if you’d like but I really cannot think of anything I’d like to do more, and I do often wonder why I am shunned meanwhile universities are swarmed with art students? 

I'm not quite sure what to make of the Olympics, personally I have no indication to watch any of it, despite the rarity of the situation it still seems to annoy me, I think it falls back to when I was younger and the Olympics were on instead of cartoons. Somewhere in my psyche, I don’t think I’ve forgiven them for that..

Any who this blog should really pick up steam, it’s a big year, and I’ve got big plans.

Josh

Thats a Stand-up blog, you got there

Ok so the first gig is done, and the video is uploading now.
http://www.youtube.com/user/thefoolamoungmen

so I took some kalms before the gig and I was so nervous what I think happened was my brain tried to have a panic attack and the kalms counteracted so all that ended up happening was I just talked and my brain shut down, thankfully rehearsing what I was originally going to say meant I actually spoke, but I do have a load of other jokes that I just didn’t end up using because I couldn’t think. It’s a confidence thing and stand up is something you get better at over time.

But the gig can’t have been that bad as when I left a bloke from another pub asked if I could come to his open mic-night. I know it’s not really but I consider that my first booking.

This Blog will be I talk about how I did on my gigs and hopefully I can get in a few light reading articles aswell.

Political Correctness

It’s a touchy subject for most comedians and everyone who is famous but I might as well fill people in who don’t quite get it, when a comedian thinks of a joke he doesn’t think of it as “that’s offensive I’ll just say that for cheap laughs” he finds an observation or a play on words and he decides to make a joke about it. the fact it might be offensive is a risk he runs with. My main qualm with the entire situation is people thinking that they for some reason have the right to tell other people what they can’t say. There was a woman who Kicked-off about a Franky Boyle gig. now Franky is a VERY blue comedian but on stage he has a very offensive shtick(character), and this woman with a down’s syndrome child booked front row seats to his gig, now booking front row seats to a gig takes a bit of dedication as they’re normally the first to go, that means this woman clearly must’ve wanted to see Franky, and that she was offended was not very surprising but she then went to the papers with it, and that’s when shit got out of hand. Dozens of people jumped on the bandwagon ripping on Franky for telling “tasteless” jokes.

Now to the point, do people really think they have the right to tell a comedian what jokes he can or cannot tell? If they’re bad jokes people wouldn’t laugh. Do people tell artists that they cannot put up their art because the art is too offensive? There should be a few comedians like Franky. If you don’t like a type of music, you don’t listen to it. If you don’t like a book, you don’t fucking read it. If a comedian tells a joke you don’t like, I suggest you shut the fuck up and find something you do like and let everyone get along with their lives.

Bonus - you are what you eat and these feminist cunts are really starting to get on my nerves

Comedy, the things you should know.

First thing I'm going to warn you about is that when you start learning comedy theory you will start appreciating jokes less as your head becomes programmed to look out for the punch line rather than enjoy it. Programs like the big bang theory and two and a half men will lose all of their humour (because you look for the joke and there isn’t one just canned laughter). Like frogs, comedy dies when dissected.

Now there is no formula for how to write a joke, there are however formula’s that help discern if a joke is funny. I'm going to be touching on a few in this blog at some point but until then you should know humour comes from the release of tension, where in a joke the last few words will alter your perception of the current situation causing a release in tension and people to laugh. Normally a joke will explain a situation and due to a well known cliché that viewpoint will be taken allowing the joke to take another route. For example here’s a joke from Mel Brooks. 

“When I was your age, my parents used to rock me to sleep. The rocks were as big as your head.”

The first sentence is used as the “set up” where it sets up the situation that everyone is familiar with parents rocking a baby to sleep in a crib, however he takes rock in a literal term this change of situation causes humour. Allot of jokes can be put into this category, and if you look at some jokes you can pull apart the "set up" and the "reveal".

Next time I’ll probably do a blog about observational humour, then maybe i'll write a blog about writing jokes.

Videogames, Sitting in the bubble

Videogames to the populace have always been seen like the saw films by people who haven’t seen them, you’d ask someone if they had seen Saw and they’d complain about how horrible it is even though they’d only seen the trailer and have just made a blind guess as to what it’s about and avoid it. This has lead to gamers having the happy little bubble to themselves, until the entire family joined them with release of the Nintendo Wii.

Just to start off here’s a link to an American TV crime drama “Life”:

http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/life-prince-of-persia-sequence/150009

Seem weird? It wasn’t when it was made, it was only a few years ago, but videogames have moved into the spotlight with the Nintendo Wii. To most people who’ve played videogames the controller is as easy to use as a TV remote, but to people who haven’t it looks like you’ve taken a keyboard and warped it into a scary “Tardis-like” fashion. The Nintendo worked out how to fix this problem, give them a TV remote. Since its release videogames have been enjoyable to all and casual gamers have become a big section of the market. As a side effect it has forced something together, videogames and family socialising, causing a new awkward

occurrence where the console will be brought downstairs so your aunt & uncle can have a go at tennis and we have to be umpire, explaining that simply waggling won’t get them anywhere yet watching in silent pain as they move from waggling to arm flailing.

But the thing is as bad as people are starting out, people do get better and eventually the family will get bored of "Wii sports" and "Just Dance". Eventually, families will sit around playing “castle crashers” 4 player co-op, all happily in the wonderful bubble of videogames.

 

Well that’s been the first blog, more of a test run really, it’s more going light observational reading than hard hitting philosophical views and hopefully you’ll enjoy reading.