Let's see what you've got here in your joke notebook... This one's good... That one's okay... Mm hm... Ooh! I especially like this one: "Did you hear that Karl Rove legally changed his name? Yup, his driver's license no longer reads 'Turd Blossom.' ... Now when a policeman pulls him over, the cop addresses him as 'Mister Assclown Election Loser.' "
You're well on your way, good sir! Now let's talk about what I've been working on.
(At this point, I would like to ask the ushers to remove all professional comedians and comedy writers from my theater. You are not welcome here for this piece. You will just steal my methods and you will put them to your own commercial use. Professional comedians are thieves. So repair to your favorite bar and clap yourselves on the back and go star in each other's movies that we can all yawn our way through. I'm the nicest guy in the world or the biggest prick you'll ever meet. It depends on how many cold showers I have to take while going broke while covering New Yorkers' own material. Leave. I'm not kidding. Do not read this. Stop now. This is something I want to share with my audience. It's something fun that we amateurs can do together.)
There are going to be some spoilers in here that will clue you in to some of my methods. Read this or not, depending on whether you want to hear those spoilers.
Alright: You remember that I have roughly described humor as being contrast. Humor is the reconciling of seemingly incompatible things. Humor is essentially magic. It's like a card trick.
George, do you recall that I was working with the premise of the Lottery Lady and how she didn't know how to play Powerball, and I said, "You wait to see if you won. That's how you play"? I'd like to change that premise to a different one.
We have at the gas station our coffee station. There we have the commercial-grade coffee makers and what we call "air pots." Air pots are the large Thermoses with the silver handle on top that you push to make the coffee come out. In the same vicinity as the coffee makers are the sugar packets and the wooden coffee stirrers and all that.
To the immediate left of the air pots is a college-dorm-room-sized refrigerator with a glass door, sitting right on the counter. If you're pourin' yourself coffee, you're lookin' right at it. Inside this cooler are various quarts of milk and coffee creamers. The astute person might reasonably conclude that these dairy products are for the coffee.
Have you guessed that I am a bit overqualified for my gas station job? I like working there because I get to do so much writing in my head while I'm stocking shelves. It's an easy job; that's why I like it. But I will say that I get bored sometimes. There is a plastic display case on the checkout counter. This case is about two feet tall. In this display case we have for sale various glorious, glorious pieces of six-dollar jewelry. Earrings! Brooches! Belly button whore rings! Tongue studs for the better performing of fellatio I guess! (It would seem to me that if you knew what you were doing, you wouldn't need such a thing. ... Ahem.)
When I'm bored, I will stand at the checkout counter and step to my right and situate myself behind this case. I will rest my arms on the top of this display case and I will rest my chin on my arms. From this repose, I may survey the best that humanity has to offer: There's the fat woodchuck with the flannel lounge pants and the five teeth, shuffling and lurching his way through the store in search of the facilities, smearing fecal coliform bacteria all over everything as he contemplates what he might buy if he were planning to buy something. (Everything's free. That's how the world works.) Then there's the precious woman from New York who high-steps it into the store to inquire whether we might, perchance, carry the "Times."
And there's always someone making coffee.
Most people can figure out pretty quickly that the milk they see in the glass-doored cooler is for the coffee. They help themselves to it and all is well. The world continues apace, wherever it's going. But now and again I'll see a trouble customer. She'll pour her coffee and add her sugar and then her brain stops functioning. I can see it happen: Even from my vantage point at her back, I can visualize the confused expression on her face. She'll look at the cooler and then look at the coffee maker and then look up to the sky and then down at the trashcan, spinning 'round and 'round, in search of the creamer.
And she'll turn to me, point a finger at the cooler, and say, "Is this milk for the coffee?"
Just once I want to speak what goes through my mind: "No, lady, you pour that on your tits."
Okay. That's the funny part. Or at least we're moving in the direction of funny. The reason why it's funny is this: Her question communicates one known and one unknown. She is communicating to me that she knows that milk goes into coffee. But she is inquiring whether this particular milk is for use with the coffee. (As opposed to the milk located elsewhere in the store for retail sale.) That's the unknown in her question.
The sleight of hand --and what makes the joke funny-- is that my reply has converted the known into something else. I have denied her knowledge that milk is for coffee at all. I have converted the question into one of whether one uses milk for coffee at all or for some other purpose. So my reply to her, when spoken to my audience here in this theater, is funny.
But it's not funny enough. And this is where adding lighting comes in.
I regard the comedian as a photographer. Any photographer will tell you that the scene he sees is not the same scene that will be recorded in the camera. Something is lost in the process. The end product is not what the photographer sees. When he views the original scene of the waterfall or the beautiful mountain range, his brain is incorporating other information into the scene. Maybe he smells wildflowers. Maybe he hears the roar of the waterfall. Obviously, this information will not be recorded on the film. In order to approximate for his audience this same experience, he must frame the shot properly, and maybe add auxiliary lighting, or otherwise amplify or contrive certain aspects of the photograph.
The comedian will do the same thing, and this is where the artistic license comes in.
I lied. The coffee woman didn't actually say, "Is this milk for the coffee?" She said, "Do I use this milk for the coffee?" I chose to change her question to the former because it accentuates the known. It accentuates that she knows that milk is for use with coffee. And shorter is always better, all else being equal.
Remember my reply: "No, lady, you pour that on your tits." It's funny, but it's got the wrong timing. Timing is hard to teach. Timing is a matter of "what the audience needs now." Timing is something you feel. Timing is everything. Timing unlocks the magic trick and makes it all funny. The importance of timing cannot be overemphasized. Each and every punchline you will ever write will be tweaked for timing.
I have taken similar license with the reply that ran through my head. I am going to change my reply, "No, lady, you pour that on your tits," to "No, that's for pouring on your tits."
So here's our exchange thus far:
"Is this milk for the coffee?"
"No, that's for pouring on your tits."
But there's still something wrong. It's got some kind of timing problem. When you've got the timing right, it'll sing. It's like adjusting some kind of motor or something. Let's change it:
"Is this milk for the coffee?"
"No, uh, that's for pouring on your tits."
We're getting there. But there's still a timing issue. There are certain placeholder words you can use for timing purposes. "Uh" is one of them, and there are others. Let's try it again:
"Is this milk for the coffee?"
"No, uh, actually that's for pouring on your tits."
There. I think we've got it. The inclusion of those extra five syllables made all the difference in the world. Do not hesitate to take comedic license with things. You will usually need to change the timing.
So now we have our funny thing. We've got the two-sentence exchange between customer and clerk. It's the joke. We've added lighting in order to heighten the contrast between known and unknown, and we've changed the timing.
The next task is to develop the set-up. We need to somehow package this joke for inclusion into our "routine," or the body of material that we will deliver during our performance. We have the "firework," so to speak, but now we need to stuff that firework into a launch vehicle that propels it into the air so that it can be seen as part of the fireworks show.
That's our next task.
So take one of your funny things, try playing around with the timing, and try to think of some kind of launch vehicle for your joke.
More later.