Welcome to the Lounge: Stand-up Comedy Edition (also tarantulas are real and out there and horrifying)

Welcome back to the lounge. Have a seat. I'll be over on this stage I built out of cardboard boxes, to perform stand-up for you.

I've been thinking about the concept of stand-up comedy. I don't think I could ever do it but I feel like I could make one lone soul laugh at a bar after they had too many vodka crans and they're only laughing because they pity me.

I only really know about stand-up because I follow a lot of pages on Facebook dedicated to stand-up comedy. I found that there's a recurring theme with stand up comics, a certain formula to making people laugh.

A big part of it is the transitions. Frequently the stand up comics on Facebook I watch will start on one topic and move to the other in a smooth fashion. Speaking of Facebook...

That was my genius comedy coming to light. This is the part where I pause and grin a mischievous grin as the people in the audience of the Apollo Theater rejoice at my impressive skills, and then I get shared onto Facebook pages where people comment about how I'm trash and nothing is funny anymore. Then they'll comment about how I'm fat and that women aren't funny as if the dude-bro commenting hasn't shared an ICanHazCheesburger meme for the fourth time this week about how women belong in the kitchen despite his kitchen being a microwave on top of a mini fridge filled with an expired carton of milk and a to go box from Panda Express that he got on Thursday despite Panda Express having a half life of approximately 15 minutes.

Another aspect of comedy is tone. A lot of comedians speak absolutely deadpan no matter what they say which heightens the joke it seems. A friend told me once that a part of how funny I am is that I always speak in the same tone of voice even when I'm telling jokes. And you bet I've been holding onto that thought for the past like six months. It's also frowned upon to burst into a fit of giggles mid routine at how funny you are, which is EXACTLY what I did when I read the earlier part of this blog to Matthew before we went mountain biking.

Hey, fun fact, did you know that tarantulas still exist in the wild and are all not safely caged in PetSmarts and zoos like they should be? Because now I know and wow the world is so much scarier than it is was literally an hour ago when me and Matthew started mountain biking and there was a literal fuzzy spider on the ground. Mid-trail I lost Matthew and I had a 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' moment expect it was 'The Woman Who Loved George Harrison' and instead of a bear it was me playing baseball with a giant spider.

Another key to stand up is the misdirect. You lead people in one direction with a joke and then slap them with something else that may not necessarily be funny, but is different, so that's funny write? You build them up to laugh at the word cephalopod after a clever, long spun joke, only to hit them with your car. MISDIRECT.

There's people out there who dedicate their lives to comedy, who study it in the same way I studied engineering, and maybe it's altogether blasphemous for me to even perform this analysis. But perhaps that's the funniest part, it leads everyone to be able to get a laugh out even if it is at my own personal ineptitude and ultimate misfortune at me being the way I am. Oh well.

I have never promised for this blog to actually be good and at this point, therefore I can guarantee I fulfilled that promise of pure mediocrity. Hope you enjoyed your stay in the Lounge.