Monday, June 10, 2013

Stand-Up Comedy Is The Easiest Thing In The World


You hear a lot of people talk about how hard stand-up comedy is. But those are idiot wrong people. Stand-up comedy is not hard. It's easy.

I can break down everything you need to do in order to be GREAT at stand-up in ten simple steps.

All you have to do is: 

1. Spend at least ten years in front of audiences so you understand their needs and wishes.

2. Write universally relatable material that is original, unique, and funny. 

3. Understand intuitively how material fits together in order to come up with the best possible joke given the subject matter at all times.

4. Use the exact perfect word choice in every joke.

5. Deliver this material using the exact correct cadence and pacing to make the joke as funny as possible.

6. String those jokes together into the best possible sequence. 

7. Meticulously rehearse all of those jokes in sequence so you have the timing down to the nanosecond.

8. Be at ease, relaxed, confident, and in perfect control at all times while on stage.

9. Always appear to have just thought of the material off the top of your head just now even though it's the one bazillionth time you've said it.

10. Accept that you will: spend the rest of your life in horrible places trying to entertain people who you don't respect, keep weird hours, destroy your more functional and nourishing relationships in favor of brotherhood with some very questionable humans, miss a huge amount of potentially enjoyable social and family events, and never ever no matter what ever feel like you're as good as you should be, or that you're getting all you can out of this, or that you're getting away with it because EVERYBODY KNOWS YOU'RE A FRAUD.

See? It's easy. You guys could totally do it. You should totally do it you guys.

If you're in Chicago and not doing anything on Wednesday, for instance not watching game one of the Stanley Cup Finals which the Chicago Blackhawks are playing in, you can check out this debacle.