Brian turned 30 this week, and if you thought he was bitchy before, strap in.
Topics on the day include peaking at age 9, trying to find the funny, dealing comedy in a shitty economy, British comedy for American audiences, and making old topics fresh again. I have never linguistically explored a vagina.
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
thanks for that brian, but just to clarify i wasnt in the finals, hell i was’nt even in the semi-finals, but to just perform on an actual stage was cool. as i previously said im working on putting a recording up on my site but it’s a new recorder so it might take a little while longer than expected. however if you want to see the set in question i put a transcript up on my sit along with a picture of the comics with me. so if youve ever wondered what my big dumb face looks like feel free to look. feel free to comment.
and kudo’s to nick for goin up on stage for the first time.
Thanks Patrick and Bmo; I’m honestly still buzzing from it. I know what was good and what I need to work on. I’m so glad I’ve finally done it. It’s one of those things I’d have hated to never have done in my life.
Hey B-mO – happy 30th birthday.
Please don’t get hung up about being a 30 year old comedian and not feeling like you’ve not made it.
Just check out the fantastic American comedian Rich Hall, age 54:
Rich Hall (born 10 June 1954 in Alexandria, Virginia)[1] is an American comedian and writer. He was a writer and performer on the sketch comedy TV series Fridays, Not Necessarily the News, and Saturday Night Live. He has appeared several times on the American talk shows Late Show with David Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on the British comedy panel show QI.
In 1986, he had his own Showtime channel special, Vanishing America, which was turned into a book with the same title.
He hosted a talk show during The Comedy Channel’s 1990-1991 season, entitled Rich Hall’s Onion World.
Rich Hall invented the term “sniglet” (if not the concept) and collected and published several volumes of them:
He is widely considered to be the inspiration for Moe Szyslak from The Simpsons. Matt Groening has stated as much in interviews.[2]
He lives in London, England with his wife Karen, and daughter Dixie Rae[1]
What I’m trying to say is Rich Hall (and his comedy character Otis Lee Crenshaw) are doing pretty damn well on the alt-comedy circuit.
(be it both in the Uk and being in their 50’s too.)
Thanks for the help on my question. I was able to get a separate room, now the challenge is filling it which I painfully realized last night!
I have a question for everyone. I’ve started to get some video of me performing and I was wondering how you go about putting together a demo DVD. What should be in it and shouldn’t be in it? How long should it be? What are people who see these looking for?
I’m just curious to what the other BTB contributors have done in putting together a demo reel. Any help would be great!
Don’t worry Brian, I turn 30 this April and just started comedy so you’re still light years ahead of me old man!
nick. do you have a blog? you have a link up, and i keep trying to reach it, but it keeps linking me back to the wordpress homepage.
A demo tape should be as long as the time you’re auditioning for. If you want a feature spot, it should be 25-35 minutes; headliner, at least 45. I actually don’t have a clue how long a tape should be if you wanna get time as an MC (a lot of times, the place will just have a house MC).
Just make it look professional. I got a guy to make one for me with a sweet intro and a DVD menu where you could choose to watch certain individual bits or the show in its entirety. I’m also recording commentary for it so that the tape will hopefully stand out. I’d recommend sending the DVD to booking agencies, like Funny Business or a similar one.
Several episodes back Brian said we should post our own efforts. We’ll here was a 7-minute showcase I did last week… Please feel free to rip me a new one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJmqHiPB3lo
— Dennis
Why yes I do Mike! It’s on skepticism and politics; geek alert! I had the wrong address there!
ok, well i finally got the audio up from my gig at montclaire…i only had to change my blog provider for the third fucking time in a month. but it’s for the best in the long run. the audio’s a little fuzzy but not unlistenable. so please take a listen and tell me what you think. the link is above
oh man. if everyones putting stuff up, this makes me feel inclined to put my stuff as well. the only recording i have of a set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpPaUT9f2cU
Patrick, you’re not missing much at all. Really the individual college competitions are better than the finals at Monmouth, since these people don’t know how to put on a show. It’s in an 800 seat theater, and about 150 people show up. So, it’s nice performing the the Carlsbad Caverns.
I’m in the Rowan Battle of the Comedians, and if I get to go to the finals and do get to go to Monmouth, come on out if it’s not too far away. We’ll have lunch or something. If you want to come on down to Glassboro, and watch the Rowan Battle it’s October 7th at 9pm. Email me, I’ll give you some directions and all that.
Regardless of the shitty show, there are some very talented college comics out there that moved on to the finals last year. And there are some “comics” out there that really need to stop performing right now. It’s a weird range since some colleges don’t promote their show at all, so if there are 3 people that show up, and three slots for that college, then those three move on.
But I’m down here at Rowan in Glassboro, if you’re in the area, come on down.
But don’t worry about this NJ Comedy Fest bullshit. It means *nothing* in every sense of the word, and I think I’m only going to try to compete this year for revenge. But, I shouldn’t air that publicly.
And having listened to the audio, I thought the opening line was very funny.
‘Is it weird that I have sexual fantasies about the eSurance girl?”
Mike (NR):
I really liked the line about drill seargants counting to four, surprised it didn’t get a better reaction. Nice clip.
Dennis: My first reaction before I heard your first line was “That’s the guy who hit the heckler with the guitar!” My second was “I would pay money to see more…well, I would use my credit card anyways…”
Mike: i really liked your set and thought it was really funny. my only criticism is that you seemed to lose your place at one time. but whatever thats happened to every one. over all great job.
and thanks ChalzK for the kind words. overall i really enjoyed the competiton, but i think the thing i liked most was bullshiting with the other comics backstage. and also if im near rowan during your comp i’ll try to find yah.
dennis: i just got around to watching your youtube clip and i have to tell you that was one of the funniest clips ive seen in a very long time. that was some great crowd work and i really loved your jokes about your son and masturbating. good stuff.
Happy B-day. I turned 40 on the 2nd, so eat me.
Dan has an excellent point.
welcome back bmo, missed ya last week. happy birthday and such.
Patrick, I can see from your pic why you are AKA Smiley… LOL!!!
(aw yeah, that LOL is there for a reason… LOL)
yes thank you for that…now if you’ll excuse me my rage requires me to kick a puppy
Thanks for kind words about my clip.
How about some of the others posting some of their work?
— Dennis
Here’s another set from last year when I was 70lbs heavier…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUEUslnfAiM
Who else is gonna post stuff?
— Dennis
I will once I splice together a couple sets I did this past summer. That’ll be another month, though.
Well, I’ve signed up again. Playing on the 14th October in the same room. I think the crowds change but I still think I’ll change and talk about different stuff.
Excited all over again now!
That’s a good idea, but make sure you develop and perfect 5 minutes before really trying to expand. Every comic I talk to stresses the importance of hammering down 3-5 great minutes before really expanding your repotoire. It’s the comedy equivalent to walking before you can run.
But, on the total contrary to what I just said, it’s always fun and important to work on new material. After you get the first 3-5 awesome minutes of guaranteed laughs, of course.
In the “more info than you need” category, I’ve got a bitch of a kidney stone and am all doped up. So as funny as it would be to do a show in this state, we’ll be on hiatus for yet another week. Damn, I’m getting lazy now that I’m 30.
Dude… I’m so sorry to hear that… I’ve had kidney stones and the seriously SUCK… You have my sympathy…
Podcasting on drugs would be hilarious….
Yeah that’s my aim Joel, by changing I’m probably only talking about very little to get a good base. Plus, some of the stuff I talked about will be out of date. I want to get the best five I can, one set at a time.
Man this has been a good month for me comedy wise. I’ve done more open mics than i can remember, ive been on fire with my writing, i performed at the NJ College Competition, and i just got through the audition process of my schools talent show. pretty damn good. on the downside my schoolwork has been going straight to hell. i’ll either have to find a balance or stop performing for a little while.
…Or quit school!
I could but I really dont want to do that whole starving artist thing. worst case scnario I’ll have to stop for a month or so. but i hink i can turn it around
shit…chris rock just knocked it out of the park. an interesting format, almost seemless editing from new york, london, and south africa. the only way you’d notice it changed is from the change of clothes. and his material was good old fashioned Rock. Politics, race relations, sex, all classic. wow.
I just saw Kill the Messenger last night. It was pretty decent, certainly not his best work. Even out of just an average special, though, I got about 3 or 4 huge laughs out of it. I can’t WAIT for Louis CK’s special on the 4th!
NEWS FLASH:
“Behind the Bricks requested comedian favourite Dom Irrea has been arrested for drink driving. The Italian-American comic was pulled over at 1am in LA and is being held at North Hollywood police station on $5,000 bail.”
I really like Dom too. Hope he pulls through all of this OK. Just a pity is wasn’t Carrot Top or Carlos Mencia instead…
.
Hey, did anybody else catch the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival in Brooklyn this past weekend? It was 10 bucks a night, and had people like Jim Gaffigan, Arj Barker, Janeane Garofalo, the Sklar brothers, Todd Barry, Jon Benjamin, Morgan Murphy, Kristen Schaal, Aziz Ansari, etc… and a ton of people I didn’t know who were awesome in their own right, especially Hannibal Buress, Dave Hill, and Ron Lynch. I hadn’t heard any of the material before, and everyone who took the stage was at the top of their game. To summarize, it kicked ass.
Anyway, I don’t have video of one of my sets (only been doing open mikes for a year), but I do have a fake trailer! My brothers and I made this a few months ago, but it’s about Indiana Jones finding a rare Mormon artifact.
We used a lot of movies to cut into the trailer, see if you can spot them all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJIncEKEoE
Just saw the Louis CK special. It was mind-blowingly funny. He did a bunch of the stuff that I heard when I saw him in December, but what do you expect? Of COURSE he’s gonna do stuff from then, that’s why he had the tour in the first place. But I was d-y-i-n-g to hear those jokes again. And it was completely worth it. One of the best stand-up specials I’ve seen in years.
Oh, here’s a newer set of mine. it’s only 4:41 long but I was able to get a decent number of jokes in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov4GLWSwDP4
Joel that was brilliant. I loved that video.
just curious, because I just got talked to by the club manager for writing too many dick jokes. How do you deal with having more time on stage than you thought? Like I went in to the club with 3 minutes of jokes that were relatively clean. But like not many comics had shown up for the open mic, so I ended up getting five. I had some other jokes, but they were unfinished, so I ended up doing some more risqué material. So the question is this, if you get more time than you expected to on stage, do you do a short set, or work out material on stage?
great set joel. man i am jealous you saw chewed up already. unfourtanetly i wont be able to see it for aleast two weeks, untill i go home where i have showtime. i cant wait, and C.K just gave a great interview to punchline magazine. i was really intrigued by it.
That was an awesome video; anybody know exactly why he and his wife split up? I mean, based on his stand-up it doesn’t seem hard to imagine, but ever since I found out, I’ve been speculating as to why.
Sorry, by “video” I meant “special,” I watched it on DVD.
well if we were to use his “lazy handjob” bit as a refrence point i think it’s safe to say that CK’s marriage didnt exactly have sparks in the sack
Somebody asked how to fill time if you end up with more minutes then you expect. I’d riff with the audience until I got the red light, and then jump to the closer… What’s your name? are you married? what do you do?… that kind of stuff… it’s all just “in the moment”, but if you practice a bit it’s really easy to interact with the audience and gives them a sense of immediacy.
As you can tell by my spot, I love audience interaction… I learned in a class that the most important thing is the relationship with the audience… it doesn’t matter what you’ve prepared, you’ve got to do the show in front of you… getting good at riffing means whenever you’ve got extra time, or if your jokes just aren’t hitting, you’ve got somewhere else to go…
Just my $.02
— Dennis