Comedy Obsessed

This episode brings together a motley crew of ideas to help you revise your jokes.  Speed bumps breaking up your momentum?  Audience getting lost trying to follow your lead?  Compromising your character?  Feeling like a fraudulent hack?  Maybe this will help.  Maybe it will just make you more self-conscious.

This episode discusses the relationship you have with your own memory and the art that your brain produces.  Got any tips for recalling your own thoughts?

This episode discusses mood setting and tone in stand-up comedy.  This isn’t the only way to do it, but I’ve found that it works pretty well for me compared to other approaches.  Feel free to completely ignore me and do your own thing.

This episode points out the trouble with interpreting art and trying to communicate about it with other people. We take a trip into the constantly humming and buzzing nervous mind of the apparently calm and collected stand-up comedian on stage.  How do you make a one-way conversation not a one-way conversation without disrupting the party?

This episode questions where substance comes from in comedy.  How important are the words?  If it’s not just words being spoken into a microphone, what else is going on?  What is the goal of your comedy?  Wait…comedy has goals?

This episode calls on Lady Gaga to help you question all of your life choices and push you to say the things only you are capable of saying.  Be a little selfish.  It’s more honest.  Stand out a little bit.  Vital art grows out of a fire.  People aren’t interested in what makes you generic, even if more honest, unique art might scare them a little.

This episode discusses why I think going after comedians for their miscues on stage is counterproductive and discourages the risk-taking required for creativity.

This episode discusses my personal experience making slow progress over time as a joke writer, my process for developing jokes, and how to harness restless creative energy and anxiety to produce better art.

This episode discusses the difference between personality and performance, between art and the artist, and how to maintain a healthy relationship between your approach to creative work and to everyday life.

This episode discusses building trust between comedians and audiences, benign violation theory, and the neurological relationship between the genres of horror and comedy.