Goals in comedy

Everyone has their reasons for trying to do stand-up, from passion to greed. You should skip the next two paragraphs if you're even barely familiar with the comedy scene, because it's practically a template.

I'd always loved comedy. As a child I used to listen to my dad's albums of Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, and Woody Allen.  There was an AM radio show that came on really late Saturday nights that I'd record onto a cassette and listen to, over and over.  I'd memorize jokes from the "Truly Tasteless Jokes" books. While not really the "class clown", I definitely wanted to be the funny one in just about any group, more by saying things than through actions, (although after watching Forest Gump in the theater I did a pretty mean recreation of his running style in the parking lot). However, the idea of performing didn't really occur to me, just "being" funny was enough.

During college I had a dream that I was doing standup, and I remembered one of the jokes.  I told my roommate about the dream and the joke.  He actually like the joke and said I should actually try doing standup.  I started to note some of the things I'd say in conversation and think "that's pretty good", and keep it in the memory vault. Fear/anxiety and a general laziness kept comedy on the back burner. Then I saw a friend of a friend perform at the Lincoln Lodge having completed some standup classes.  Seeing raw amateurs opening for seasoned veterans made me realize that it's not as scary as I'd thought it would be. That's when I started earnestly trying to write jokes instead of just remembering funny things I'd said. I Googled the open mic scene, found some websites and forums, and started doing some open mics. 

So, my ultimate goals: I want to occasionally perform in front of an audience of non-comics who came to see comedy. I don't feel a need/want to headline, record an album, or even make a career out of this.  Now, that sentence could very well invalidate everything I'm trying to do. But I'll get to that in another post.

There are a few mini-goals that I need/want to accomplish.  The most imminent mini-goal is to have 6-7 minutes of material that I feel is really worth doing. What I mean is that an audience would laugh, maybe even remember some of it, but mostly come away not regretting that they just saw it. I'll be getting to those minutes, and how I feel that their "worth" doing, in future posts too.