[simonw]

I'm fascinated by stand-up comedy. I took a course a couple of years ago (online thanks to the pandemic) and it was so, so much harder than I expected it to be! By the end of the course I was nowhere near having a "tight five" that I was ready to perform in public.

I've continued to pay attention to it since, and it really is amazing how much skill and preparation it takes to put together anything that even comes close to being a decent performance.

Great stand-up comedians have inevitably spent hours of time refining every sentence that comes out of their mouths, despite their delivery sounding entirely natural and unrehearsed.

[bambax]

Just yesterday night I went to a comedy club in Paris that does standup comedy in English. It was an "improv special" where each comic has to improvise jokes based on random prompts displayed on a screen with a projector.

T.J. Miller, of Silicon Valley fame, does it successfully in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxD6S-nEL_I

But yesterday, most comics bombed badly; out of 8, just one was actually good, and one passable; the others were terrible. But it's an incredibly difficult exercise, so much so that one has to wonder why you would put yourself through this.

It's certainly true that comedy is about writing and rehearsal and being analytical and having a fun look at the world; but it's also about quick wit, especially if one wants to interact with the audience.

[toyg]

/bitch-mode on

They do this in Paris precisely because they bomb - if they were any good, they'd be making money in an actual English-speaking country...

/bitch-mode off

[bombcar]

It's like the restaurants where if you eat some massive 12 egg omelette you don't pay and you get your name on the wall - you go in knowing you'll likely fail; but if you win, you've won big.

[bink]

I used to go see Carlin perform every August in Vegas. He was almost always working on new stuff and carrying a clipboard around with various jokes. It was really interesting to then watch his specials and see how the material developed.

[Melting_Harps]

> I used to go see Carlin perform every August in Vegas. He was almost always working on new stuff and carrying a clipboard around with various jokes. It was really interesting to then watch his specials and see how the material developed.

Was this in his early days, or his darker rant days?

Even in his darker period he was still a crafty orator, using rhyming, cadence and tonality so well.

He discusses this in many interviews over the years and many which were shown in is documentary. What's even crazier to think is that he was kind of a recluse and an introverted person, which is insane considering how much of a wildman he was for most of his career.

[bink]

It was over the course of 10 years or so and I got to see the slow decline, sadly. His final years had really very few jokes (at least in Vegas).

[solarmist]

Interesting. This sounds exactly like what’s been happening with me trying to get down talking about my startup.

[simonw]

I tweeted a thing the other day about how there are surprising parallels between stand-up comedy and coming up with good questions for interviewing job candidates. In both cases there's a lot to be said for thinking VERY hard about the exact wording you are using, and the way in which the material is delivered. https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1556277081691959296

[germinalphrase]

I’ve taught at the high school level for about ten years. The mental process is familiar. I may teach the same lesson several times in a day, but there are constant alterations to pacing/phrasing depending on specific students in the room/time of day/personal assessment of how earlier phrasing landed/etc

[JabavuAdams]

Teaching is a kind of performance. I love that part. I need to get better at the marking/admin.

[mikebridgman]

Where did you take the online course?

[simonw]

It was with Stanford continuing education.