Don't Be A Fuckhead - Stand Up Comedy

Now that I've got that off my chest let's focus on what a cunt that Perth guy was the other night. Wow. It just goes to show you learn so much watching standup, things like how not to be a fuckhead (don't be one) and tips like don't have a go at the audience, hang shit on the room or tell lots of jokes about your dick and sex with faux self-deprecation clearly acting as a trojan horse for picking up a root live on stage.

I bet this prick has read The Game, the kind of tragically overconfident arse who "charms" underconfident women. "But he's so strong and he likes me!" Dudes feeding off damaged chicks.

The great thing is I can enjoy the retarded behaviour of the young at my age and none of it gets on me. I walk through this world knowing my place, humbly accepting my own brilliance.

You do have to be a little bit in love with yourself or you won't survive, you'll be crushed. If you are a little bit in love with yourself you can love others. Maybe then you can even accept their love. Imagine that shit.

Stand up comedy is a funny little world. All these people getting up onstage to impress a room full of people who may not be there for comedy. It's like you're trying to win a popularity contest no one gives a fuck about. No one  but you will know you kicked arse.

It's not really like that. The comics in the room on the night will know and they will talk about your great work and still other comics will see you at a later date bumbling and fumbling and form a view of you that you will now have to live with. It's pretty horrible when you think about it.

I've done great gigs, shit gigs and gigs that were just nothing. To get good at comedy you need to be in the rooms all the time. I don't mean out the back circle jerking, I mean in rooms watching comedy with at least some paying of the attention. In these rooms you will see a lot of comedy that does nothing for you. This is because comics are so focused on TV and Radio that they sort of carefully remove any meaning from their act until they're a sort of generic "Guy" and you would not be able to pick the fucker out in a group photo. That's what you have to do to get the famous Paid Gigs and it of course sucks a lot of the joy out of the thing for people who got into comedy because they loved the greats who had clearly defined personalities.

In stand up there's no such thing as too much prep and for me that prep is very much about being in rooms. Writing is nice, everything is nice but the hard work of exposing yourself to a lot of standup is where it's at. Seeing the same comics do the same jokes over and over, seeing comedy that you enjoy on a comedy geek level but would never recommend to anyone with a brain. That's hard work. You have to do hard work and it might as well be the hard work of being in comedy rooms, surrounded by your fellow dorks, learning how to not feel so awkward about it.

Oh the awkwardness! You want to get on stage and be a cool guy but you can't stand being around people? You're fucking doomed. You have to be seriously middle class and supported to get away with being the Nerd Who Is Above It All. The smart money is on being in rooms learning some fucking social skills. Frankly, the stand up stage is full of socially lazy people who would rather diagnose themselves with Aspergers than learn to live outside their heads.

There are some amazingly unhealthy sycophantic habits you can pick up hanging around rooms, but don't do that shit, you'll first make yourself miserable then realize why you're miserable and want to die. Just be a person. You don't have to be "on" at all, ever, no you really don't, except when you're performing. Be boring, it's fun. I mean it, its fun to hang out with comics and feel no pressure to be funny.

There are many ways to turn comedy into a grind and as stand up gets slicker and slicker, possibly due to the feedback created by the internet, more and more fucking entitled cunts flood onto the scene, clueless, unaware that everyone is bored with borderline rapey lonely guy humor and watching a self-limiting fuckface fail to jack off into an audience's face is tiring for everybody. So don't be that guy, have fun instead. What tons of people forget is if the audience genuinely likes you it's rather wonderful for everybody. This is not about alternative comedy either, there's no shortage of dudes selling themselves as curmudgeons and it just comes off as middle class power tripping.

I don't like jokes about homeless people but there's all sorts of "offensive" shit that is more clueless than anything else. But don't be clueless, put some thought into what you're saying, you'll enjoy yourself more because the audience will sense the fresh smell of not being a bullshit artist.