I picked up this little gem from Goodwill the other day. I was grabbed by the straightforward title Stand-Up Comedy: The Book. And then was I sold by the fact that a book with such an audacious title was written by the relatively unknown comedienne, Judy Carter, who’s website judycarter.com refers to her as a humorist and motivational speaker. So how is this woman allowed to write the definitive text on stand-up comedy?

Well, because she provides the definitive test on Funny. Right there on the cover is an invitation to all those looking at this book at Goodwill’s across the nation to take a chance on the book as they will gain definitive proof if they are funny or not within the first few pages.¹

The first question of the test is “Are you Jewish, Black or Italian? If you answer yes proceed directly to chapter 2.” Chapter one was an examination on “what is funny?” What? I’ve met many people in my days, and just because someone is Jewish, it doesn’t make them funny. I’ve met people that are Asian who are hysterical. Yet Judy Carter allows these races to skip over the very first chapter in her book to help them understand what is funny.

Among the massively dated suggestions in the book, written in 1989, was her urge to keep your material personal. As she says “Everyone has a K-mart joke.” I think the validity of this book resides in this statement. Listen to Steve Martin, Woody Allen, George Carlin, or any great comedian from the past forty years. Their jokes transcend their age. A Wild And Crazy Guy is just as laugh out loud² as when it was first conceived back in the seventies.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that no one can tell you that you’re funny, make you funny, or even help you make yourself funny. As Woody Allen said on being funny, “it’s an inborn thing that some have…it’s just in the genes…” No book is going to present the definitive roadmap to being a successful comedian, no matter how much a book will attempt to peddle a shortcut to it. Jerry Seinfeld sums up the road being a successful comedian in two words, "just work." If you love to write, then write. If you love to perform, then perform. If you're funny, you're funny. If not, "well I would suggest insurance sales."

¹While I feel many people are generally good-natured, very few are funny. 98% of all of humanity is not funny. This is why a 10-question test doesn’t give you the authority to perform brain surgery.
²Or LOLz to some.

Labels: Book, Comedy, review, Stand-Up

This weekend as the girlfriend and I were doing our laundry we got locked out of our apartment. It was just one of those things, running back and forth to and from the basement to change loads, sometimes it just happens.

What did we do? The management office was closed because it was the weekend, and the landlord wasn’t answering her cell phone¹. So we stood outside our locked door and shot back and forth ideas. I grabbed a piece if thin cardboard from the trash in the hall and attempted to jimmy open the door, with no luck. Then I remembered, we have a ventilation shaft² that goes from the bottom to the top of the building used for venting steam from the bathrooms of each apartment³. I figured I could just shimmy down it and break into our bathroom window.

Ashley⁴ was against the idea, she was very certain that I was going to hurt myself. I mustered as much machismo as I could by shooting back a drawn out “naaaa.” So I went to the roof and stared down the shaft weighing my options. Thankfully she requested we see if our upstairs neighbor was home so I wouldn’t fall as far.

It turns out our upstairs neighbor was home, so we pleaded and begged for him to let me crawl through his bathroom window and shimmy down to ours. He was reluctant but let me. As I was about to do it, he said, "I hope you've had your Splinter Cell training" and I responded, "Just call me Sam Fisher"

Attempting to stay in the macho mindset I kicked off my sandals and squeezed through the tiny window feet first. I pressed my back against one wall and feet against the other and walked my way down to our floor. I used our neighbor’s handy super-tool thing to pry off our screen and climb through.

I got through this unscathed and felt like a bad ass for a day.


¹Of course.

²See inset for a view looking up from our window

³Keep in mind that this building is 100 years old.

⁴The girlfriend