Saturday, August 17, 2013

The Life & Death Of The Joke

A few days ago, I wrote about a drunk I talked to on the way home from a comedy show for which I'd written a joke. I gave the wrong day, saying it was Monday when it was Sunday. Anyway, I meant to talk about the joke. I submitted sixty or more jokes the week leading up to the show, and I grew frantic when I feared that I might not have gotten even one into the show. Finally the email came informing me that I did in fact have one, but I was not quite mollified.

The week before, as you may recall, I had gotten the same email, but no joke of mine quite got in there. They took what I'd call half of one, and I knew they easily might have cut it entirely, so this time I was ready for a disappointment. I didn't even try to invite someone, so ready was I. As it worked out, they did use one, though it came nearly at the end of the show. I was of course about ready to go out on the ledge.

It was one of those things where I love some things I did so much that I put my faith in them as my ticket into the show, but they all failed. Where they failed, it was a joke I thought relatively little of that prevailed. You see, last week there was a report that Tiger Woods' house in Florida was sinking. Subsidence is a problem there. I contemplated Tiger's relative unpopularity and therein lay the angle I wanted. My joke was, "Tiger Woods' Florida house is sinking into the ground, showing that even buildings want Tiger to go to Hell."

The joke got a fair response. Even the premise got a bit of a laugh. Naturally I played the video dozens of times, carefully listening to the response relative to that of the other jokes. Mine didn't get the biggest laugh by a long shot, but it was a respectable reaction from the crowd. It was a bit of a slow build, modest at first, rising a bit only for most of it to die away and reveal the handful that were just dying laughing.

I have high hopes of besting that reaction with future jokes. Of course I must prove my ability to even get into the show with an intact joke consistently, but the new goal is to not merely get the joke in there but to really kill with it. I am sure that if I am able to do that, I will have a place on their proper writing staff sooner or later. I know that I am good enough to do that, and eventually they will know that as well.

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