I've been reading Franklyn Ajaye's Comic Insights, which features interviews with comics from Louie Anderson to Jonathan Winters. The interviews vary in interest and are frequently too short, but what's most interesting is the variety of approaches comics use in developing and presenting their material. Elayne Boosler writes her entire hour. Louie Anderson never writes anything down. I now officially hate Louie Anderson.

more of the same, except...

I hope Chris Rock can manage to inject his particular brand of levity into this year's Academy Awards Night. The show has long been a bore-fest, teetering between auto-erotica and auto-erotic asphyxiation. Like a lot of late night talk shows, the monologue is the highlight.

Appreciate!

Breaking The Rules

Just watched Sam Kinison's 1987 HBO show, courtesy of Netflix, which is the best thing to happen to movie rental ever. I remember seeing him on Dangerfield's special a couple years before then and laughing so hard at some of the bits that I couldn't hear his next line. Now, almost 20 years later, I still enjoyed the show but didn't "die." Being older has something to do with it, of course, but I think stand-up is a particularly transient art, even if you do very little topical material. Kinison's whole marriage bit seems a bit dated these days, though as a piece of comic writing it's still better than anything anyone's doing now, except maybe Chris Rock. I like the fact that comedy is an in-the-moment kind of art. There's no analysis, no explications, it doesn't matter how it looks on paper - people laugh or they don't.

Now that I have my dose of comedy for the day, it's back to the current screenplay (which had best be funny on paper). I've written about half a dozen of these things but have yet to sell one. Typically a novelist writes two or three novels before selling one. For screenwriters that average number is 7 - yes, seven, so it's time. When I first read that, I thought it was horseshit, but strangely enough this one feels different - better, a lot better.

Oh, and some guy who had a talk show just died or something.

Hail to the Chief

Timmy!

I missed this month's open-mic at Springfield's Funny Bone due to the fact that my face has been a river of snot for the past three days. Next target - Crackers in Indianapolis (Broad Ripple) next Tuesday. It's two hours to Indy from here, so it's going to be a long day.

Poop

Big Boy went over pretty well, though there's always one student, usually female, who shuts down at the first mention of excrement in any form or context. You can always tell which one, too - she will try to fold herself up in her seat and disappear, hoping to go ignored until class is over.

Freshmen are usually surprised to be handed an essay like Big Boy on day one of their college careers, but most of them leave the first meeting enthused and looking forward to the second one, wherein they will do a writing sample.

Next week, mind-numbing grammar and usage.

The Day Job

Classes start today. I have one section of freshman comp and two sections of its sequel, which is basically a writing-about-lit course. I'm taking a slightly different approach with the latter this semester, incorporating more performance with the poetry and drama segments. Because the courses I teach have minimum writing requirements, I have relied mostly on papers, but last semester a few students came up with the idea of doing a skit wherein the characters of Oedipus the King appear on an episode of Jerry Springer. Unfortunately it was a bit too late in the semester, and we didn't pull it off. This time group projects are part of the plan. As for Comp 1, today we'll read David Sedaris' Big Boy, a short essay from the collection Me Talk Pretty One Day about being at an Easter gathering and going to the bathroom to find someone else's (very large) turd in the toilet and fearing others will think it's his. On Thursday they write a short, in-class diagnostic essay. The prompt: "poop."

In thinking back over all the readings I've seen and enjoyed, I remember very few of the funny moments. I remember Henry Taylor doing a funny bit about a rider being thrown from a horse, and I remember laughing more than once at an Al Gurganus reading. Most readers who have been at it for awhile try for at least one moment of levity during a reading - they know the value of getting a chuckle out of the audience. I'm sure I've laughed plenty of times at readings. But it's interesting that I can't recall exactly what it was that made me laugh. I think most people have a good memory for what makes them laugh - whether it's a line from a film or a stand-up routine. Those lines and anecdotes are easily burned into memory. We recite them to each other for years. They become part of a generational language or code (yada yada, I'm a wild and crazy guy, Jane you ignorant slut, and so forth). Why are the funny poems and anecdotes heard at readings less memorable? Perhaps it's a matter of context. Readings are generally sober affairs, so that the slightest break gets a laugh.

Humor/Poetry

Brennen Wysong encourages me not to abandon poetry altogether, and I doubt I will. The shift in focus for the blog reflects the shift in my own writing over the years towards comedy, the kind of comedy that is usually not present in poems, you know, the "blue" stuff. I've gravitated away from poems in recent years and towards non-fiction and screenwriting, and now stand-up. I do have a poetry MS, THE SEX SCENE and Other Poems, making the contest rounds right now which contains poems I am certain will offend some of the readers and judges. Hopefully it will entertain and enthuse others. Here's a short poem, "Coming Soon:"

The Wadfather.

I don't know what the folks at Yale or The Academy will think of that. George Carlin describes himself not as a stand-up comic but as a writer who performs his work. I think that's true in his case and others': Bill Cosby, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor... Comics whose whose work has a discernible voice and vision and is more than just an hour of funny bits. If I need to be onstage in order to publish (make public) my work, so be it. Besides, it looks like a lot more fun than a reading.

My poetics are pretty simple: Loren Goodman's "Famous Americans" is the best thing to happen to the Yale Younger Poets Prize in years, and Billy Collins is the Wayne Dyer of American poetry.

I was actually impressed with Colin Quinn's performance poem on Comedy Central's Last Yawn '04. It was easily better than most of what I've seen on Def Poetry Jam. Like most slam-style poems, it doesn't work as well on paper, but Quinn has his chops - see the text here (there are some typos, mis-hearings - but they're fairly obvious).

Question of the Day: can poetry be "blue" and still be poetry?

"We hope you like our new direction."

I am shifting the focus of this blog to comedy, both writing and performance. There are more than enough poetry blogs. I should be posting regularly again by the end of next week. If you happen to live anywhere near Springfield, IL, I plan on doing my 6 minutes at The Funny Bone's monthly open-mic on 1/12.