I still don’t get these two:
Do they go together? Why is having silence funny?
It’s a John Cage joke. Perfect for comedy.
Most people will just politely chuckle if they catch an implication that sex with “me” is just quick and silent. A few will laugh rauccously at the John Cage reference. If I do it right the louder laughs will make the quieter laughs get louder.
My two cents.
That’s been done many times before. Maybe try for the second sentence “I am now qualified to ask the deeply deterministic questions in life such as ‘you want fries with that?’”
Reason being is because you established your proficiency in philosophy, and the rest of your joke starts to sound like you’re applying that proficiency and setting up the audience for a possible success story, which you instantly destroy. In your original version, the joke goes by too quickly and there’s no buildup for the audience to get invested in.
That’s also an old saw and doesn’t make you sound as twisted. Again, it needs a little more buildup before the punchline, something that implies a struggle in your life to cope with your sexual preferences. Something like “I’m bisexual. I realized that from a young age and it was difficult to admit to my parents and friends that I’m attracted to both women and women.”
Not sure “okay” works here. It’s not a strong enough descriptor, and it doesn’t sound that different from “happy.” Maybe “indifferent”?
Instead of “it’s my penis,” how about “I have a huge penis.” Repetition of “huge” adds to the punchline.
The first part is OK if you can strengthen “They do!” Draw it out, put on a gloaty face, raise your eyebrows, smile really big, like you’re accepting an Oscar and you feel you deserve it.
I’m scratching my head on the second part. Is the 4:33 supposed to be some kind of pop reference?
Do this in two parts. “Who here is an open relationship?” “That you know of?”
“Food stamps” is kind of dated. Maybe start with “One to run and grab me a beer”, then follow up with “One to maintain my GoFundMe page.”
Iffy on this. Forgetting to pick up your wife is not so shocking. Maybe instead of “work” you use some kind of really degrading job title, like “after she finishes her job collecting roadkill.”
This sounds more sad and tragic than twisted and obnoxious. Since you mention forgetfulness, follow up on that. “And I have learned from her that something something something…”
This kind of breaks the flow. You only do one racial joke, so indicating you have more than one will make you look ineffective unless you actually deliver the goods. It also sounds like you want your audience to answer, but you’re putting them in an awkward situation. After a few seconds of awkward silence, you announce something like “OK, let’s try THIS direction,” then go to the first racial joke. If it doesn’t go over so well, follow up with “OK, let’s try the OTHER direction” and use another racial joke.
How about “Then the other day I saw a young millenial hipster standing there instead. Gentrification at work!”
That’s OK, but it doesn’t really match the rest of your material. Your other jokes describe you as being a clueless sociopath, but this joke is not of that subset.
Knowed Out, you seem good at this.
4 minutes and 33 seconds is “quick”???
I would not disagree, but what’s kind of strange is almost all of their suggestions, are more like how I originally had things, and intentionally changed. I should say something about what led to the changes, it’s an interesting discussion, but I have to work now…
So for a complete noob this is really above my paygrade but to expand on what I just said–I seem to have a real aversity to spelling out the joke, to making it obvious. I find a common theme in the changes I make is to change jokes to “slow burn, give them a second to get it” type jokes. Partly I think this is because that’s the kind of humor I enjoy. Also, it’s just kind of how I am–when I write stuff that’s not jokes (i.e. always) I’m allusive and indirect. (I always find the most pleasing challenge is to find an exact balance between suggestion and concreteness.) So these edits I’ve done on jokes are also in line with that tendency. Also… this says maybe too much about me but if I were to spell out the joke, I am afraid my complete contempt for the joke and the audience who wants it spelled out would come through too much!
What do I mean by spell out the joke? Take the “open relationship” one. Yes, originally I had a big pause before clarifying “that you know of.” I know that would be pretty standard and should work. But something in me just militates against that. It’s like I’m telling them, here’s the joke, and here’s what the joke is. Instead I want to lay it out almost completely straight, with maybe the slightest of gestures or a facial movement to give a signal of sorts but mostly, yeah, just laying it out as a simple question. Then let it sit there for a second. Then they realize I just told a joke then they realize what the joke is and hilarity ensues (or something).
I do like I said intend to be experimental with this, try different approaches and see what works how. I’m here just articulating how my instincts about all this seem to be working.
Yeah, nevermind the hundred other people who have tried to help him.
OP, like I said before, you have good seeds there. But right now they seem like setup lines and not punchlines. If I heard “I prefer being okay to being happy. Because when you are happy, there’s so much you haven’t thought through.”, I would be waiting for what’s next; what is the “so much you haven’t thought through”?
Again, you’re very brave to be doing this in the first place, but if you don’t want to be met with 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, you need to dig a little deeper and craft a 2-3 sentence joke that has a setup, a lift, and a payoff.
ETA: I wrote this before your previous post, just FYI
I’m familiar with setup and payoff–what is “lift” in this context?
It’s probably not an official term in comedy writing, but it’s what I call that split second right before the punchline is delivered, where you know you’re about to kill it, the audience knows it’s coming, and still they laugh because it’s such a good punchline and it’s so perfectly delivered. It’s almost like a collective inhale, and if you wait too long they’ll run out of breath. But if it’s timed just right and the material is strong, they’ll all exhale at the same time in the form of laughter, and you’ll be golden.
Of course, if you are going for a Steven Wright thing full of non-sequiturs, that’s something completely different. But it seems to me like you’re sort of trapped between those two worlds right now. I also don’t remember where you said this would be taking place; it obviously depends on the audience, whether they’re the type to get a John Cage reference or not, for example.
It’s just a standard open mic night, audience of random people. I have no idea why I’m insisting on the john cage reference. Like two people will get it. I just kind of think there’s enough of a hint at a “sexual inadequacy” joke to make it at least a chuckle for many, then the couple that catch the reference will add to that.
I don’t know, I’m weird. I kind of just want to see what happens y’know?
I’ve been attending these open mics for over a year, about once a month, is part of the background here. (I’m one of my friends’ required five audience members.) With the john cage joke–part of it is, I feel like on stage people get away sometimes, with saying something that feels like it’s supposed to be a joke, and has some clear sort of joke-basis in it, even if the audience doesn’t a hundred percent get it. They still feel like they’ve witnessed a funny thing. I don’t know. That’s kind of where I imagine this one to be in joke-space.
I think a comedian can only get away with this once or twice in a set. Gotta time it right and put it in between the right stuff.
I hear ya. It sounds like Steve Martin’s old stuff. I highly recommend reading his book Born Standing Up, especially if you can squeeze it in before your performance.
John Cage famously (or perhaps somewhat famously, I guess) wrote a musical piece entitled 4’33" which was four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. (Or, more accurately, 4’33" of no instruments playing. The ambient sounds of the performance space is at least part of the point of the piece, if not the whole point.) It was first performed in the early 50s. Here’s the Wikipedia article on it.
It’s one of those smarty pants nerd jokes that you feel somewhat clever for catching and elicit a chuckle.
And it does sneak into pop culture, if it isn’t a part of it. Here’s 4’33" performed by a cat, as a promo for Late Night with Stephen Colbert.
No. Just - no.
OK, I understand you want to go deeper than usual without looking like you’re doing so, but the audience wants to have fun, and you seem like you’re going into “funny only to me” territory. Andy Kaufman could pull that off, and had no qualms with the audience walking out on him. But there can only be one Andy Kaufman.
I would think you’d want to hear some kind of reaction from the audience so you can feed off the energy. If your jokes are too subtle and the audience is silent and looking confused, the manager is going to do the throat cutting gesture.
Also, I understand delivery is an essential part of the performance. Maybe the jokes will sound funnier when you deliver them on stage, but at the moment I’m not seeing it. There’s some comedians who can pull off reading from the phone book and making it funny. But again, Kaufman. He made it not funny, and that was the joke.
Going off of this, I see a lot of suggestions are telling you to turn the jokes from one-liner after one-liner to more of a story-based set…but that’s completely against what you want to do.
A lot of the suggestions are good ones, but they’re fundamentally changing your act. Personally, I like your original list better than most of the suggestions (other than my own of course :D) because most of the suggestions boil down to “Instead of saying it like a one-liner, why not provide context and create a longer setup”. That’s not what your jokes are. Feel free to implement a lot of changes, but stick to your original plan…it’s a good one.
On the Ph.D. in Philosophy bit…
Now that’s funny!
I recall a thread from some years back, where our own RickJay spoke about his experience learning and doing standup:
Standup Comedy Is Hard, I Am Learning
Rick shares what he learned, as do other Dopers with relevant experience. Many good tips there; Frylock, I’d suggest that you check it out.
I’m kinda digging this:
I have a PhD in Philosophy. Would you like fries with that?