:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 ::

One of the classes I'm taking this quarter is "Stand Up Comedy." I tried getting out of the class but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I'm forced to stay in. I know I requested a writing class but considering I'm not a copywriter, it's odd that they're making me take this. Yeah, I'm paying $3500 a quarter for this. Shut up.

Anyway, one exercise we did in our first week was to subject ourselves to observation. We sat in front of the entire class and for two and a half minutes, everyone else wrote down stuff about that person, be it clothing, mannerisms, even things they discovered in previous classes. Everyone found out today what people wrote about them and here, in no particular order, are some of the things that people wrote about me:

- A nice smile

- Cut your hair!

- Easy going

- Enigma

- Facial hair is patchy

- Fancies himself an athlete (hey!)

- Geek

- Hair is long

- Hairy

- Likes rock music

- Long hair - torn as to whether it suits him or not

- Looks like he's about to jump out of his seat and assault someone (me?)

- Nervous

- Nice guy

- Pops knuckles

- Scary eyes (huh?)

- Smart

- Thinks the "E" makes him original

- Thoughtful

- Time to start thinking about new shoes

- Very sweet

- Very vocal laugh

- Yucky goatee

I left out some stuff that's not exactly PG rated but overall, I thought it was pretty funny. Keep in mind only a few people knew for longer than a year and some of these people don't know me at all.

Actually, what's funny is everyone's apprehension towards this class, including mine. Personally I'd rather dry-shave my nutsack and then dunk them in rubbing alcohol... but that's just me... For now the only thing we're working on is learning to write funny material but our "final" is doing a minimum 5-minute monologue in front of the whole school. Shoot me now, please.

Today's assignment was to write a 5-minute monologue in the style of a late night host (Letterman, Conan, etc.) and perform that in front of the class. I think I did ok and by "ok" I mean "no one threw anything at me." My material was ok but good gawd was I nervous. It showed too, since I was stuttering almost every joke and my body language was fidgety. It was painful. Writing it was a lot more fun.

I've never liked speaking in front of people and to this day, I still don't like doing presentations in front of class, though my habit of breaking out in a cold sweat and mumbling in the fetal position if it doesn't go well have stopped. But this... this is something completely different. It's not I don't think I can't be funny. I know I'm funny (...looking! HAHA! See what I did there? Anyway...) but sometimes my humor references and my method of delivery do tend to send jokes flying over people's heads. It doesn't bother me and if anything, I like the fact that some people don't get my jokes. However, that's an almost certain death knell in front of a crowd.

Shoot me now, please.

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 10:47 PM [+] :: | 0 comments
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