First rule when producing your own comedy show, make sure your neighbors aren’t dicks!
Topics on the day include fat people who love bad Italian food, starting stand up in the worst comedy city in America, an outdoor comedy venue that might just get you evicted and whether or not you have to live out of your car to be a professional comic. I just farted in your beer.
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
Hey Brian you know that just because Conan is on at the same time as Letterman doesn’t mean you can’t watch them both, thanks to the joy of nbc.com Full Episode section you can watch Conan whenever you want. That’s how I watch the show, by ahem… “pretending” my computer is in the US. Conan O’Brien is shown on CNBC over here in a 30 minute highlight form, CNBC stupidly confining their highlights to the guests because that’s all people watch Conan for.
With Conan, I watch for the opening monologue just as much as the guests. Conan has issues, and I love it.
My grandma told me she watched and didn’t really care for his brand of humor, and that it didn’t make sense. I have to believe that’s why Leno got bland when he started there — there’s a huge old people population that considers the Tonight Show a Bob Hope-like extension of Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune and all these truly funny jokes fly over their heads. It’s hard to make sense of it — I enjoy old classic movies or Abbott and Costello routines just as much as newer indie films or Mr. Show-style humor, but they’re having a hard time (or are unwilling) to embrace new stuff. Is it just being old that makes people like that?
And while we’re on the topic of backyard shows — has anyone considered doing a backyard show at a friend’s farm or something similar? My friend’s band would play house shows in the suburbs and the cops kept coming, but once they started having shows out in a friend’s field at their farmhouse, they could play as loud as they wanted, bigger name acts started showing up, no neighbors complained about noise or drunkenness, and more people started coming. All positives, and I can’t imagine a comedy show would be louder. Unless the comic starts doing spin kicks in the air or something.
I don’t remember Johnny Carson ever being as bland as Leno was. Carson was funny Leno would just rip on people during his monologue and then have them on the show the week after and kiss their ass. Carson was at least provocative.
My perspective may be different because I’m 40 and have been doing stand-up less than 5 years (and have a teaching job that gives me weekends and summers off – nyah nyah), but I think the point at which you give up your job for comedy should be obvious. When you’re getting enough comedy work that you CAN’T keep a day job, or don’t need one, there you go. But just because you quit your job doesn’t mean comedy work is going to fall out of the sky just because you have more time to update your myspace blog, etc. If I were younger and didn’t care how I paid the rent, I would find a Sun-Wed job doing anything.
Funny enough, I featured this past weekend with Tom Mabe (shameless plug), and a young dude showed up for a guest spot who literally quit his job and decided to drive around doing as much comedy as possible and live out of his car. What bugged me, though, is that while he was a fairly upbeat person and not a snotty “artiste” type as far as I could tell, he incorporated his whole hobo agenda into has act and used it as an angle to sell merch.
He was likable enough, but a couple things struck me as odd:
1. For a guy who claimed to be making the ultimate sacrifice and living without a net, he didn’t smell, and his clothes were clean.
2. He had an attractive girl with him.
3. His merch was a well-produced tee and CD or DVD that was decently packaged. It had a heavy weight paper casing the color of a grocery bag and seemed calculated to look “budget” but clearly cost some money to produce.
Anyway, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but just out of curiosity, his last name is Newfang and (I think) he is from LA. Anyone know him?
Holy shit, Brian Newfang? I know him well. He started in my home club, just as I was leaving to go to NY. Nice enough kid, pretty funny. He mentioned that he wanted to pursue comedy after college, but I assumed that meant moving to a big city, not hawking merch that he wraps in a shanty town. If you see him again tell him I said hey.
Yes, that’s him. He did a good job on stage, and he was a nice guy. I just thought the whole homeless comic thing + lack of jaded-ness was an odd combination. But hey, he’s young
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I think a backyard show would be awsome…I live in condo. So the only home show I can do is for my wife and Dog. Only one finds me hilarious. Once I get more stage time I would love to host my own show. I have written all this material and been to 3 open pics that give mr 5 min. I am going to run out of friends willing to show up to bringer shows. Frustrating.
On onother note I love the part of show where Brant mentions his pre show pooping. Every show I done I feel like pucking anf sick. I am glad I am not alone in pre show sickness.
Last night was one of the best shows ever… We packed the Ice House Annex, the people had fun, the comics rocked, and we got invited back for a future date. It’s all good, except that I’m too tired to pick up my coffee cup this morning.
Brian – the night you came out we had a pretty good crowd with about 55 people there… last night we had about 85… so it was a healthy size room…
I did something interesting for the comics last night… I hired a professional photographer. He got there a couple of hours before the show and setup all the lights to get good headshots on the stage, and then did action shots throughout the evening… We got some really good pictures to use for their bio’s… which is the topic this week, right?
Anyway the photographer cost me $250 for the night and I think it was worth it to have images to promote yourself.
— Dennis
OK… tonight rocked to… I didn’t produce the show, but I emcee’ed in the Comedy Store Bellyroom and it was great… there were a lot of technical problems with the video gear, so I got tons of stage time while they tried to resolve them… Excellent!
I forgot to mention the ACME charity show on Sunday… it blew… the room’s nice, the guy who booked me for it was really nice, but it was the night of the Tony Awards and a Laker game, so not gays or straights… the audience was six comedians and three civilians…
Just between us… I still had fun…
— Dennis
OK… last post for tonight… I have a room again…
It’s a restaurant at Hollywood and Highland on the street where the tourists come to see the stars on the sidewalk (Marilyn Monroe is right outside the door), so lots of civilian traffic. They have a great sound system and a stage where they normally have bands… They’d never done comedy before, so I walked in and asked if I could tell jokes in their room.
We put on such a great show last Saturday night that I’m now running their room every second Saturday going forward (the second and fourth Saturday of each month)…
I’m back baby!
I wish I lived in LA where there are so many clubs.
Hey Dominic… Greyhound services the Los Angeles area… and if you need a job, the San Fernando valley is the world headquarters for porn production… You might even meet a recruiter at the bus stop trolling for runaways…
I’m just sayin’…
—D
Dennis: I’m overdue to visit my brother in LA and hope to do that before the end of the year. If some stage time is possible, how much advance notice do you need?
Brian: If I schedule a night in Vegas on the way to or from LA, and stage time is possible, how much advance notice do you need? And – was the first installment of the blog I sent acceptable or would you like another? I would have done this by email, but I figured doing it on the forum would light a fire under your ass
Hey Dan… email me whenever you’re going to be in town, and if I’ve got a stage during your visit, then you’ve got a place to play.
— Dennis
Further proof of my personal motto: “You never know how far you can go, until you’ve gone too far.”
I was emceeing to a full room in a big club. During my opening set I started riffing with some gay men in the front row and I did a fisting joke. They laughed, but since it was the very beginning of the night and the audience was still sober and not quite ready for it, there was some tension… the next time I came out I apologized for going right into the fisting thing, because I know you’ve got to ease into it… and I gave them a two-beat pause and a look… the room fell apart and we were all friends from then on. No guts, no funny.
— Dennis the filter-free comic
” I apologized for going right into the fisting thing, because I know you’ve got to ease into it”
LOL. Deliberate double-entendre or accidental Freudian Slip there, Dennis?
Any fool knows you’ve always got to ease into fisting!
I have a writing question…the answer may well be “You gotta find what works for you” but I’ll ask anyhow.
It happens to me all the time where I will say some thing, and I know there’s a bit in there, but I wouldn’t know how to flesh it out. Example: I told one of my customers I caught his dog watching beastiality porn, then I think I might be on to something. I think there are a couple angles to take to get a solid joke out of his idea, but no idea what to do next. I’ll get a funny notion, and don’t know what to do next. What do you do?
” I told one of my customers I caught his dog watching beastiality porn”
Just my 2 cents. The above is a fascinating premise Leonardo, but did this actually happen,or is it a flight of fancy ?
Dog Porn is a hilarious concept, but you can only flesh it out by being more precise on why your customer’s pets watching animal porn at your workplace effects you so much to make you want to talk about it.
” I told one of my customers I caught his dog watching beastiality porn”
I have to admit it’s addicting… It’s gotten to the point I can’t even drive past the pound without stopping for a paw job from some bitch.
tags…
“Yeah, fetch that stick baby… I’ll throw you a bone… I thought I’d hit rock-bottom when my wife cought me with a bowl of kibble and a Puppy Fancy magazine… but then there was the whole S&M scene at the Iditarod [sound of a snapping whip]… mush you bitch, MUSH!!!”
Just my thoughts on the joke…
— Dennis the pitcher
The great thing about watching Dog porn is how you can always tell when it’s performers are faking orgasm
(because they forget to wag their tail..)
.
I really told my customer that, this crap often springs out of my mouth before I realize what I’m saying. My problem is I know I have a kernel of something, but then I dead-end. This happens ALL THE TIME to me. (My customers have been with me for many years and tolerate me) Would I be better off working with someone else? I’m more interested in writing than performing, but I have no idea what I’m doing.
To me, what’s funny about it is that a dog would have a fetish of watching a dog have sex with a human. OK, that’s funny, now what?
… side note… Facebook just let you select your user name, so now I can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/standup
Dennis: Nice idea put ill put the grayhound idea on side. I think my career in porn would be like comedy. I would make people laugh for 5 minutes and then go home with no money.
Leomardo: dog porn = funny….work at that bit. Would love to hear end result.
Hey guys… Part of the LA experience… I just won $1,000 on a game show…
—-D
Well done Dennis!
Only hope the $1000 game show prize you won wasn’t against the $500,000 box on Deal Or No Deal…
I was given one true-or-false question on the Game Show Network, and guessed correctly.
If anybody was watching GSN last night they would have seen me answer the question live…
— D
Here’s the fisting joke, incontext:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuU97lD4ano
— Dennis
I’ve got a new goal in life… become a cult leader… I need a ½ dozen women to live in a compound, sign over all their worldly possessions and accept that oral lovin’ is a sacrament. The main reason is just so I can easily do bringer shows…. “Everybody get in the mini-van, we’re headed to the Comedy Store again”…
I’m not sure I understand the hubbub, but if people are trying to oust Letterman because he told a joke about the wrong daughter, that’s fucked up and I think hurts Palin, who I happen to like. If she is offered a chance to appear I hope she accepts, it would help her image. I know she’s no rocket scientist but we share some values.