The Importance of Being Earnest ... In Doing 5 Minutes

I was at a Pro-Am not too long ago at a comedy club and saw something I didn’t expect to see – every single amateur went over their allotted 5 minutes of stage time. The parade of overtime on stage didn’t just end at that club. A week later, I saw another comic go over their allotted time and after the set the booker actually said that he was over but it was okay because he was doing well. This blog entry isn’t written from Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man perspective, but in my day, there were repercussions for going over your time.

If being funny is the first rule of stand up, then keeping your time surely must be the second. Not keeping time is the most selfish thing you can do as a performer. If you take 2min more than your given time in a tightly produced show, inevitably, that 2min will be taken away from another performer somewhere down the line up. Guess what that makes you? On the flipside, if you do 2min less time than you’ve been given, at times, that 2min will have to be made up by another performer down the line up. Again, guess what that makes you?

The very first time I went over by a substantial amount of time I was taken aside by the booker and told the truths I just mentioned in the previous paragraph. Then after the show, another comic told me the story of a comic he heard about that did a show in Vegas. Apparently, this comic was crushing the room, so he decided to do more time than he signed up for. Once he finished his set, the casino manager took him aside and told him that an average casino makes x-million amount of dollars per minute, so for every minute that an audience stays in the comedy room laughing is another minute where the audience isn’t losing x-million dollars to the casino. Then the manager said, “that if you go over time again, you will be paying the amount of money the casino just lost.” After hearing that story from that comic, I have heard the same story told by Rosie O’Donnell and Jay Leno. To be honest, I don’t even know how true that story is. Now, I think it’s just an urban myth told as a cautionary tale for newbies who like to go over time.

Aside from being a douche move, going over time consistently when you are new is counter-productive. Like I mentioned earlier, keeping time is the second rule of comedy with the first rule being “be funny.” A new comic shouldn’t look at the 5min and think that it’s a 5min limit. Instead, they should look at it like a 5min challenge. There is a reason why comedy has a term called “Laughs Per Minute.” The challenge is to cram as much laughs as possible in 60 seconds. The challenge is to be as concise as possible in your setup and just as efficient in your punchlines.

So, if you’re an amateur comic, the question isn’t why you’re not being given weekend spots performing 30min sets. The question is how many laughs can you fit in 300 seconds?

Greenlight 2013

Originally written on Feb.26.2012

In reviewing my comedy “career” in 2011, I was little dismayed by the lack of progress I made. In keeping with the promise I made in 2007 which is to quit if I stopped improving, my accomplishments from a year ago barely gave me the pass to continue my “career” in comedy for 2012. So far, 2012 has been a far cry from a year ago. I am off to a roaring start!

In a matter of a couple weeks, I have been offered to showcase for the CBC and to write a column for a magazine!!! These offers couldn’t have been any better. The CBC showcase, proves to me, that my work is being appreciated and certain decision makers are acknowledging my growth as a comic. Granted, the showcase is not a sure thing as I will be going head to head with a handful of Vancouver’s best up and coming talents for the final spot for the show CBC is recording the next day. Like an actor losing out on an Oscar, I’m just happy I was considered.

As for the offer to write, it is for Canadian Immigrant magazine. I was contacted by the one of the writers that interviewed me after the first Flip n Comedy Show. It’s funny because I was just talking to someone at work recently about the ripple effect of things you’ve done and forgotten in the past and how those actions comes back to make a difference in the present. My contact immediately thought of me after they had a discussion and concluded they want someone to write about their immigrant experience from a comedic perspective. Like the showcase, this opportunity with Canadian Immigrant is not guaranteed. I will be submitting a test column in a couple weeks. If they enjoy the piece, I will be given the opportunity to submit other recollections of my younger days getting acclimated to the Canadian experience.

It’s only February and I have already given myself the greenlight to continue into 2013.

Kamikaze – Decoded

Kamikaze Joke Video

In the 2010, Jay-Z released a book entitled Decoded. The book was to serve as a listener’s guide to the lyrics of some of his songs. Jay-Z broke down what he meant in the songs, surgically dissecting what each line meant at times. Decoded is somewhat similar to the Coles Notes or Cliff Notes you used in high school to help you understand what Shakespeare's plays meant – but better. Essentially, Decoded is Jay-Z explaining exactly what he meant with each song in the book and the inspiration behind it.

From time to time, I will write a “Decoded” for certain jokes to show people that for me, the process of writing a joke is more than just coming across something and replicating it on stage. For me, the process of writing jokes has always been a long one where an idea will marinate for months before seeing the light of stage. The jokes can take many different forms and shapes, before settling into the finished product.

My first Decoded is focused on my Kamikaze which quickly became my opener back in 2007. There are countless “bad Asian driver” jokes to the point it has become a hack premise and at a glance, Kamikaze is simply one of those jokes. However, it is much more.

Kamikaze opens expressing my preference for documentary films. Although half a truth, "my preference for docs" becomes the segue that leads into the premise. With the segue, the piece is conversational. Without it, the joke can’t stand on its own and comes off sounding like a street joke –

Q. Why are Kamikaze pilots not as honorable as initially thought?

A. Because they were crashing their planes because of bad driving.

After the punchline, I follow with the tag “So, you guys are into racism.” Originally, I riffed this line after an exceptionally loud reception to the joke took me by surprise. Since then, I’ve consistently added it because the line does get a secondary laugh, but the line also acknowledges the seemingly unspoken agreement between performer and audience that racism is an accepted part of the comedy interaction. Even though I blatantly call the audience racist for laughing, I must also take responsibility for presenting the idea in the first place.

Now, here’s the mindbender – this is a political joke. As a Filipino man who had family killed in the Bataan Death March, this is my “Fuck you!” to the Japanese atrocities of World War 2. By taking the idea that Kamikaze pilots were these brave men that sacrificed their lives for their country and making a mockery out them, I made a political statement. Essentially, I’m planting a seed with the audience in the hope that one day they will see footage of Kamikaze pilots in action and telling whoever they’re with that these pilots weren’t brave, they were just bad pilots.

I have always regarded Mel Brooks as a patron saint of using comedy to undermine the powers of an oppressor. In an interview he did with www.Spiegel.de, Brooks described the power that laughter can have, "By using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myth.” Replace Hitler with Kamikaze, and that was my aim for the joke.

Kamikaze is my attempt to rob these pilots of their bravery, patriotism, and glory.

Clean Enough for Church

My very first visit to a Gurdwara was a decade and a half ago. I thought that my first trip would be for a wedding of some sort, unfortunately, it was for a funeral. Not only do I remember wanting to be there for my friend, but I also have a strong recollection of pestering my brown friends about the etiquette of being in a Sikh temple. I wanted to be respectful to the traditions and practices of the Sikh temple. I was mindful of not taking off the head cover, sitting with my legs cross to make sure my toes never point to the sky, and touching my forehead to the ground just before I gave my donation. I have a sincere respect for other religions, so you can imagine how respectful I would be inside the walls of a church.

Two Saturdays ago, I performed at the Broadway Church. It was a benefit show for the victims of the Sendong Typhoon that recently wrecked a region of the Philippines. Performing when there are kids in the audience was always weird for me because of the mature subject of my material. So, I needed to reach a whole other level of clean to be an effective comic to perform in a church that night.

This benefit was predominantly a music concert highlighting many of the talented Filipino performers we have in the Lower Mainland, as well as some acts who staked their claim in the homeland. I haven’t done many shows that weren’t focused on comedy, so this music-centric gig was unfamiliar territory. So, there I was backstage thinking how I was going to do performing on the ALTAR in front of an audience of 150-200 people sitting in PEWS.

To my great satisfaction, my set lasted 6.25min and it was absent of any cursing and suggestive or blatant references to sex. I thought I rose to the challenge with more than a handful of people congratulating me on a good set afterwards. To be honest, I’m a little surprised to have felt so at ease and confident going in. It was far from perfect, as a couple jokes in the middle of the set kind of slowed down the momentum I built. However, I finished strong with a semi-big laugh at the end.

After the set, I was pretty darn proud of myself. I just finished a strong set that was completely clean. I just helped in a fundraiser that generated thousands of dollars to help people in need. And I did all that without compromising my commitment to be completely respectful within the walls of a church. Simply, this was one of my most satisfying nights of performing.