How-Can-You-Be-Funny-On-the-Spot-Without-Writing-Jokes

How Can You Be Funny On the Spot Without Pre-Written Jokes?

If you take time to investigate someone who appears to be "naturally" funny, you will find that they developed their ability to be funny through exposure and experience. You can learn to take a shortcut to developing that skill by following these few simple steps.
When Jokes Hurt Personal Relationships

What to do When Jokes Hurt Personal Relationships?

I have a student who talks about her husband having a hard time getting aroused in the bedroom. "Unless he’s watching porn, he can’t get it up." It really bothers her. She wanted a joke to respond to him.

Now as part of her act, after setting it up, she says...

"One time, me and my husband were at Disneyland at one of those ice cream kiosks... The guy said, “Would you like some soft serve.” I said, “No thanks. (points to her husband) I brought my own.”

She debated whether or not to keep the joke, because she was afraid that it would hurt his feelings. That’s an honest dilemma. It is a very personal thing and she's still in a relationship with this man.

So what do you do when your joke hurts personal relationships...

bullying in school

Got Haters? Stay True, Practice and Turn it Into Opportunity

I have a student who emailed me recently about people hating on him.

He's a little awkward on stage. He's working on it, but he comes across as the guy next door or maybe the 'creepy' guy next door.

He's got a lot of the locals including the local club owner who constantly berate him. They put him down, they tease, they pick.

He said, "Jerry, you've got to help me. I just have these guys totally hating on me all the time. What do I do?"

pat corley as phil on Murphy Brown

14 Reasons Stand Up Comedy is Great For Actors

Growing up the child of actors and being an actor myself, studying with the top teachers in New York and L.A., I never knew that right before my very eyes was a solution to the actors age-old problem of unemployment.

It's stand-up comedy. Out of all the actors in the Screen Actor's Guild, at any given time, 2 percent are working.

When I discovered stand-up comedy, I learned that I could work when I wasn't 'working,' hone my ability to be present and in the moment and become fearless!

As an actor, most performing is at auditions or in acting class. And what are those scenes, 3-minutes? Auditions, 1-2 minutes?

When doing stand-up, you have a nightly opportunity to be on stage and be open to every minute inspiration that occurs for stretches of time like 5, 10 or 20 minutes?

google-docs-tutorial-still

Voice Typing: Google Docs Secrets to Improve Your Writing Efficiency

Have you ever lost a writing document on your computer after spending hours revising it? You look and look and for the life of you, you cannot find that document!

Few things are more frustrating, except...

Losing years worth of writing documents when a hard drive crashes.

Or have you ever been out and about and a friend calls and needs a copy of a revision of a document? Or a spreadsheet or a presentation? And you wind up saying something like, "I'll get it out to you as soon as I get back to my computer..."

Or have you ever wanted to collaborate on writing with someone and you get confused about sending each other drafts of each other's work and you get confused about which draft you're on or who wrote what?

Or finally... do you hate typing? Do you wish there was a way you could talk and your own personal stenographer would record it and type up all the pages and send them to you?

Well, what if I told you that I have a tool that will solve all those problems. Better yet, what if I told you that the solution was 100% free?

Stand Up Comedy Clinic

Stop Thinking Like an Employee

One of my comedian friends was recently brutally upset by the fact that he had to pay an admission fee to a comedy competition to be considered for it. He
Stand Up Comedy Clinic

Comedian Lessons | Jokes About Death

Comedian Lesson: When I tell my students that you can write comedy about anything, I mean that. There are ways--I believe--to talk about anything using humor... One of my students recently
Stand Up Comedy Clinic

What is Funny?

What is funny? You really want to know what's funny? How 'bout some dumb-ass blogger trying to write an article entitled "What is Funny?!" Funny is such a subjective term. How is