Let's Get Naked

I enjoy making people laugh. I think all of us do. A lot of people tell me that they enjoy my humorous writings. I had a friend who took some classes at an improv theatre, and they helped make him funnier. So, I figure, I should be able to improve my funniness. As I'm prone to do, I did some research and bought a few books about how to be funny.

The first one arrived, and it was a shocker. First of all, it says the essence of humor is insight. The funny people are the ones that have the ability to see the world a bit differently than the rest of the people on the planet. They see the ordinary things in unusual ways. And there is a formula by which an insight becomes something funny. "That's good," I think to myself, "because I think I already see things differently, so I can learn to better turn those insights into funny stuff."

Now the shocking part: if you really want to develop as a comic, even if it's just writing more humorously, you have to master stand-up comedy. Stand-up is the essence of comedy -- turning insights into laughs, and getting immediate feedback from the audience. Anyone who does any kind of humorous work has experience in stand-up. If you master stand-up, you can do any kind of comedy. "Okay," I think to myself, "that sounds a little scary." Well, that's not all. The book is about developing your comedic muscle, so the exercise on day one is to book yourself for an "open mic" for a month from now, even if you don't know jack about stand-up today.

I'm at the point in my life where I get a kick out of doing things that scare me to death, and live through them. Doing stand-up would be one of those. I've never really thought about it before, but now that I've been considering the possibility for the past week, it's got to be one of the rawest forms of nakedness there is -- standing all alone on a stage, with just a mic, and an audience daring you to make them laugh. I'm in!

But if I'm going to get naked like this, I want others to join me. Any takers? We can get together every few days to go through the steps together. One of the first things that the course requires is finding a "comedy buddy" because you can't develop material by yourself. You need to bounce ideas off of other people and get feedback on your thoughts. So, even if you don't have the guts to get on the stage, you can be a comedy buddy, and help the rest of us develop our 3 minute stand-up routines. In a month or two, we'll put on what may be Saipan's first Stand-Up night. If you want to get going now, order the book, The Comedy Bible, by Judy Carter.

So, who's going to join me? Boni? Brad? Jeff ? Angelo? Mark? Russ? Anyone else? This is an open invitation.