A Basketful of Steven Wright One Liners

Will robots ever replace stand up comedians?

"If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments."--Steven Wright

For some reason as I was trying to fall asleep recently I kept thinking up routines for stand up comedy. It brought to mind how I used to lay awake in the middle of the night, my mind spurred on by the humorous material my mind was generating. I was doing stand up for half year at the time so that thinking funny thoughts and scribbling them down--usually in the dark on a pad of paper I kept next to my bed--became a habit. 

EdNote: What seems hilarious at 2:00 a.m. isn't always quite so funny in the morning, and even less so when you can't read your handwriting.

The other day I was asked if I were familiar with the comedian Steven Wright. When I said I wasn't this fellow was shocked. Alas. 

That night I did a little research and learned that Wright is more than just a stand up comic known for his deadpan delivery of one-liners. He's also an actor and an Oscar-winning producer, among other things. What follows are a few of his one-liners after which I have share a link to more than 100 more at Laughter Online University.

It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.

I intend to live forever – so far, so good.

Change is inevitable….except from vending machines.

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

* * * 

He reminds me of someone, but I could be wrong. I'm curious if he used to say "Wright on" when he was younger. 

Steven Wright Quotes: Best Of

Related Links

A Visit with Tony Belmont of the National Comedy Hall of Fame

My Original August 4 Stand Up Routine: Eggplant Humor and More

A Bit of Ennyman Humor from the Archives

Throwback Thursday: My First Attempt At Standup Comedy.

"Just ask me and I'll show you the scars" ~ Bob Dylan

This piece was written and posted in July 2010...

So I did a short stand up routine last night at the Dubh Linn, an Irish Pub here in downtown Duluth. It was "open mic" night, which they do every other Monday I guess. I've been scribbling ideas for comedic material the past month since getting bit by the bug. My goal was to assemble a modest routine and take a stab at it in January. But hey, things don't always go as planned. When I walked into the room, the MC asked if I were going to perform. It seemed like I was the only one there who wasn't, so I caved in. That's how peer pressure works.

Sometimes when you have insomnia your mind travels down rather amusing tributaries. One night, while doing a little mental rambling, I began cultivating humorous anecdotes about my various scars. I figured that if I talked about my scars it would be enough material to fill a routine.

My real aim was just to see what it was like standing on the stage with a bright light in your face. It's a little different than your living room. More like an interrogation scene at a 1950's cop station.

I began with that very painful scar which I received on my heart when my father called me stupid in front of the whole neighborhood. Actually, I introduced this story by talking about the Darwin Awards, which are famously given to people who do really dumb things and eliminate themselves from the gene pool. Well, in listening to an audio book about the fourth annual Darwin Awards, the very first story is about a guy who jumped out of a moving car.

Whoa. Now, you probably think that's stupid. He was killed, and it was certainly a dumb thing to do. But when I did it, and I was twelve at the time, jumping out of a convertible on the way home from a Little League game, when I did it, it sure didn't seem that stupid to me at the time. I just thought I would hop right out and trot up onto the yard and say hello to the girl I liked and I would be very cool. To my surprise, I slammed into the asphalt like a wet noodle being whipped against a table. Except there were these large limestone rocks and gravel there, which made the experience a tad less palatable. It was at this point that my father came running across the yard shouting, "You stupid!" Followed by a less shrill, "You could have been killed."

About forty-five years later, I'm ready to acknowledge that sometimes dads are right. Duh.

It took me quite a while to get over that emotional hurt. Needless to say, I don't think Robin was as impressed as I'd hoped she would be.

As for the rest of my scars, or rather, my routine... Well, according to the limited feedback I received I have to shorten my setups. I could also probably use some punch lines. Some funny material would help a little, too.

We'll keep you posted.

* * * *

Do you have a funny story you'd like to share? What's the stupidest thing you've ever done that you're willing to talk about? If you're reading this, I'm happy that it didn't kill you.

Meantime... life goes on.

A Bit of Humor from the Ennyman Archives

"Sometimes it's good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy." 
~Evan Davis

I was sorting through folders in my backup drive and found one that collected scraps of material from my year of living dangerously... as a stand up comedian. (Actually, seven months) No, not a professional comedian, just the open mic type of thing at the Dubh Linn Irish Pub in downtown Duluth. Plus a gig in Tampa. The Evan Davis quote up above captures part of my motivation for having done such a thing.

Theoretically, this is all delivered deadpan, which is actually a skill in itself:

I used to do this show as a ventriloquist, but my dummy would never talk into the mic.

I then decided to do my ventriloquist routine with an eggplant but we had two problems.

First, he said he didn’t like other people putting words in his mouth. I said, "You don’t even have a mouth." He said, "That’s the second problem."

Actually there’s a third problem. I don’t know how to throw my voice. At least that’s what the grapefruit told me. But I‘m working on it. I ain’t a quitter.

I've been raising eggplants out on our hobby farm and now have a small herd. Sometimes we have problems because they go bad. How bad? Somewhere between stealing pencils and murder. Most of them just lie.

The next bit was about food shopping. I noticed as I read it this weekend for the first time in over five years that it was not funny. Hopefully I never tried to deliver it. 

The third sketch had to do with Boogers. The material was original, but you really can't go there because Dave Barry owns that bit of humor turf.

The fourth bit began with the Darwin Awards as a lead in to the time I jumped out of a moving car. The material is not really that funny, which I learned when I tried to deliver it one evening.

After a couple more weak passages about mathematicians and a strained paragraph about drugs and alcohol, I found this nugget:

I had a boss once who told me “Stop and smell the roses.” 
I said, "What if they’re American Beauties?"

I thought this observation about postmodernism to be fairly accurate:

Here are the basic tenets of Postmodernism as a philosophy: Certainty is bad. Confidence is wrong. Progress is a myth. History is not going anywhere....  Kind of like my comedy career.

* * * *

A lot of comedy, especially the late night television scene, is news driven. What's "newsworthy" is just so ripe for witty comic interpretation.

Here’s a news item I just read… There's more violent crime in Cleveland than all of England. And more murders in a typical large U.S. city than in France, Germany and Belgium combined.

What’s astonishing is that we're able to achieve these amazing results with 2.5 million of our criminal behind bars. I began thinking there has to be a lesson here.

Maybe we need to realize that our jails aren't jails, but are actually schools.

Personally, I thought this one had a nice surprise ending:

Remember the market crash of 1929 and all those Wall Street brokers who jumped out their windows? Guess what? There was really only one who did that. But it must have made an impression because people are still talking about it. 

Little known trivia fact: When he hit the pavement, it was the birth of modern abstract expressionism.

I dunno... I wrote fifty pages of this stuff. It was fun waking in the middle of the night and scribbling out notes or recording things on my digital recorder. For the most part the gags worked best in my imagination. That single bright stagelight and an audience changes everything.

For what it's worth, Dubh Linn still has the open mic thing going. If you've got the gumption, go stick your head in the door and see what you think.

Monday Night at the Dubh Linn

Well, last night was another show at the Dubh Linn. Open mic amateur comedy. Free entertainment, and actually a lot of pretty funny people.

In my humble opinion, I am usually the least funny of any given batch, but felt quite comfortable last night. The crowd was decent (eventually, since we started late) and responsive to everyone.

What follows is a portion of the set I originally wrote for my last gig. I usually write out a bunch of ideas with the intention of using a portion for my intro. Last night, I started right off in left field and never did touch the bases in order, but eventually found my way home. It was fun and we'll do it again sometime.

August 18 Intro Ramblings

Here’s some great news. My son and his wife came home from California a couple weeks ago. I ran out to greet them, shouting, “My son is home, kill the fatted eggplant.” His wife is vegan.

I’ve been asked where the eggplant humor comes from. It’s not demented, if that’s what you mean. It’s what you get when you cross certain strains of ethnic jokes with lawyer jokes. It awakens the dormant genome within the structure of the lawyer joke DNA.

For this reason, my favorite eggplant joke is...

Q. How many eggplants does it take to roof a house?

A: It depends on how thin you slice them.

I raise eggplants on the side. I catch them in the wild using eggplant traps. They’re not easy to have around though and they go bad pretty fast. First they steal pencils, then they steal money from your wallet, and the next thing you know you have an eggplant crackhouse in the back yard.

I’ve not given up on my attempts to domesticate them despite the reports of eggplant violence in parts of Florida and the Southwest.*

It’s good to have Micah home. He is a very talented cook, but on the side he’s been making extra income as a mime. He developed a skit in which he impersonated the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He calls it Random Acts of Silence. A lot of his punch lines seem to fall on deaf ears, he confided to me last week.

I was thinking recently how the real Free Speech Movement and a Bowel Movement had a lot in common. Ever notice how a bowel movement varies in duration based on how constipated one is? Maybe if our nation hadn’t been so constipated, the Sixties would not have given us such a hard time.

The irony is, the Free Speech radicals won, and now poets can stand in public on soapboxes quoting poetry with the F-word in it. This has evidently been deemed a great advance for Western Civilization.

What I don’t understand is why the list of things you CAN’T say today is longer than the original list. If it ain’t Politically Correct… you better scrub out your mouth with soap. In fact, don’t even think it.

Playlist

1. Napoleon Quote
2. Johnny Depp
3. Sign Language
4. Eggplant Humor
5. Romeo & Juliet Rewrite
6. Chinese Condoms

Comedian

I watched the documentary Comedian this past week. As a few friends are aware, I have taken an interest in stand up comedy this past six months. (Actually, I have been doing it for two decades, having performed once at the White Elephant in the early nineties.)

My own personal stake in this is essentially to improve my public speaking skills. A side benefit has been meeting some interesting people, and finding expression for new regions of my creative self.

All that being said, the documentary Comedian follows the parallel careers of two comics, Jerry Seinfeld and an up and comer Orny Adams. Seinfeld is trying to re-enter the stand-up scene after having had a successful name in lights with his TV show. Orny is a nobody trying to become a Somebody and see his name in lights.

Every wannabe comic should see this film. Stand up comedy is definitely not easy. Here’s Seinfeld, arguably one of the funniest guys in show business, and we see him struggling to build a new act, struggling to feel confident again in front of a crowd. The documentary shows his anxiety before shows, his frustrations when skits bomb, and all the building blocks of developing a solid fifty minute performance.

The entertainment business really is a business. Comics, like athletes, writers and musicians, must continually polish their craft. It doesn’t “just happen.” But the battleground where these arts are tested varies. Athletes are “tested” when they compete in the arena of their given sport. One team wins, one loses. The writer’s primary battles are fought in solitude. But the comic is right out there in front of the spotlight. It is the closest you ever get to being naked with your clothes on. That's why they call me Eddie Danger.

Funny Business

What makes humor work? First off, one thing that probably kills it is a serious discourse like this one. Oh well... deal with it.

Whether written or performed, the comic's chief aim is a smile, laugh, or outright guffaw from an audience of one or more by which the humorist understands that he has succeeded in connecting. To a certain extent, making humor is similar to that saintlike behavior of Mother Theresa whose life was given to lightening other peoples' burdens. Humor requires communication, which at a very fundamental level requires two or more persons, unless we're talking to ourselves in the shower.

There sure are a lot of funny people in the world. Steve Martin, Jay Leno, Dave Barry, Woody Allen, Johnny Carson, Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, Bill Cosby... to name a few of the comics who've impressed me. What's amazing is the range you find in styles of humor, from philosophical to zany, from slapstick to stylistic, from mannered to irreverent, from green to blue.

To some extent it's a mystery what makes humor work, though many people have studied it relentlessly, including Freud. Students of comedy will analyze others' routines, and break down the key variables. The element of surprise is one such factor that makes humor work. Steve Martin, that zany and wild guy, was (is) a master of the unexpected. Jonathan Winters' routines were like a wild roller coaster in the dark which threw you in unexpected directions with every turn of the track.

Most humorous material begins with a setup. In one way or another, the listener is led in a direction, but like a magician who uses misdirection, a magical effect is created through false expectations and tension. Timing is also an important variable. Even the best jokes can be badly told. I have been doing it all my life.

Most stand up comics tell stories. And all of them consider it plagiarism to not use their own original material. The beauty of it is right there. With so many comics in action, to see so much creativity being birthed week in and week out is somewhat of a wonder.

To watch comics in action is one thing; to be a comic in action is another. There is always risk. There is always uncertainty. And there's often a little tiny voice inside saying, "Am I nuts or what?" The answer to that last question waits to be seen.

In the meantime, let me tell you about my eggplant routine.

personal pages // creative writing // articles // spiritual light

Is my fan here?

You gotta start somewhere. The bottom is usually a good place to start because it’s all up from here.

OK, let’s see a show of hands if you want to hear eggplant jokes?

My stage name is Eddie Danger. Most likely you will never see it in lights. And it's true I am probably not that funny for most of my waking hours. I have several friends who have an incredibly comic wit and at one time I wanted to write some funny material by sending one of them my sentences to see what kinds of comeback lines they'd produce.

As you walk into Side Splitters Comedy Club in Tampa, there is a large print of Charlie Chaplin, one of America's first famous funny men. I just finished watching the film Chaplin (about his life) and his classic Modern Times. Truly, he was an awesome performer.

I read that Johnny Depp studied Chaplin's films because he'd learned that Chaplin created comedy by using the tension of contradictions. Not only did the actor wear contradictory clothes (large shoes, baggy pants with a small tight coat) he also used his eyes in a contradictory manner. He would communicate the opposite emotion with his eyes from that which was on his face or opposite of what the scene required. Depp used this to great effect in his Pirates of Caribbean blockbuster.

So for my own opening I told a joke, communicating only with my eyes. It seems inevitable to get a response. Then a follow up line about messing up the timing on the punch line. As if there had been a punch line.

I have done it a couple times before and found it effective, but this time I had a recording device in my hand and was going to play a laugh track when I got to the theoretical punch line. It was a new twist on my opening, but instead of hitting the play button, I accidentally hit record. It was an oops moment an messed up the set up for the next line, but actually made for laughs, too, because I did not get flustered, acted as if it was intentional.

Maybe next time I'll get it right.

One thing I noticed is that five minutes goes very fast. Which means you have to do fast setups and keep your little routine moving forward.

A few lines about enlightenment, idealism, the current Democratic candidates, and the introduction of my eggplant wound up the show.

Gotta run. Take care, dream big and have a great day.

Carpe Diem

Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:
It might have been. ~ Whittier

To my family's chagrin and horror, I have taken up an interest in stand up comedy. It's undoubtedly just a phase, but for the time being it has been personally rewarding to step up to the challenge. True, I am no Cosby or Steve Martin or George Carlin, but then again, they're not me either.

The photo here is yours truly, on stage, at Side Splitters Comedy Club in Tampa. I have no illusions about what I am doing, but each time I feel a bit more comfortable. Good warm crowd that seemed engaged.

Maybe you have a secret interest that you want to pursue. Writing poetry or songs, making sculpture, playing a new instrument, riding a motorcycle, taking up a new hobby, taking a trip to somewhere exotic, perform in a play... It all starts with a dream. And you'll never know where it ends till you give up.

It's your life. Make it happen.

On the Road Again

Well, it's pre-dawn darkness here, early Monday morning. My bags are packed and I'm ready to go.... Heading to Las Vegas for a quick lube show at Mandalay Bay and what do ya know, I'm also doin' the Con Agg show at the Convention Center once I get in the flow.

If all goes according to plan, I may also be performing at Pounders tonight, an open mic stand up comedy club. It brings my family shame when I do this, but hey, you only go around once in life. They say I am not cut out for comedy, that I am too serious. Plus, bad timing. My brother concurs. "Ed, you're not funny." O.K., that's throwing down the gauntlet. That's waving a red flag in front of a bull. And maybe they are right, so I have changed my name. If you ever see it in lights, you will know it's me: Eddie Danger. And in all likelihood those who know me best are right, so I'm not quitting my day job.

Meantime, life goes on all around us. Smile and have a great day.

It Happened One Night

"Just ask me and I'll show you the scars" ~ Bob Dylan

So I did a short stand up routine last night at the Dubh Linn, an Irish Pub here in downtown Duluth. It was "open mic" night, which they do every other Monday I guess. I've been scribbling ideas for comedic material the past month since getting bit by the bug. My goal was to assemble a modest routine and take a stab at it in January. But hey, things don't always go as planned. When I walked in the room, the MC asked if I was going to perform. It seemed like I was the only one there who wasn't, so I caved in. That's how peer pressure works.

Sometimes when you have insomnia your mind travels down some amusing tributaries. One night, while doing a little mental rambling, I began cultivating humorous anecdotes about my various scars. I figured that I could just talk about my scars and it would be enough material to fill a routine.

My real aim was just to see what it was like standing on the stage with a bright light in your face. It's a little different than your living room. More like an interrogation scene at the cop station in the fifties.

I began with that very painful scar which I received on my heart when my father called me stupid in front of the whole neighborhood. Actually, I began by talking about the Darwin Awards, which are famously given to people who do really dumb things and eliminate themselves from the gene pool. Well, in listening to an audio book about the fourth annual Darwin Awards, the very first story is about a guy who jumped out of a moving car.

Whoa. Now, you probably think that is stupid. He was killed, and it was certainly a dumb thing to do. But when I did it, and I was twelve at the time, jumping out of a convertible on the way home from a Little League game, when I did it, it sure did not seem that stupid to me at the time. I just thought I would hop right out and up onto the yard and say hello to the girl I liked and it would be very cool. To my surprise, I slammed into the asphalt like a wet noodle being whipped against a table. Except there were these large limestone rocks and gravel there, which made the experience a tad less palatable. It was at this point that my father came running across the yard shouting, "You stupid!" Followed by a less shrill, "You could have been killed."

About forty-five years later, I realized that sometimes dads are right. Duh.

It took me quite a while to get over that hurt. Needless to say, I don't think Robin was impressed as I hoped she would be.

As for the rest of my scars, or rather, my routine.... well, according to the limited feedback I received I have to shorten my setups. I could also probably use some punch lines. Some funny material would help a little, too.

We'll keep you posted.

You Can’t Be Serious

I don’t know how many people know this, but underneath this serious demeanor as a marketing executive there is a stand up comic striving to emerge. About twelve years ago I participated in a stand up comedy competition at the White Elephant here in Duluth. I told my brother that I was going to do stand up comedy and he said, “Why are you doing this? You’re not funny.”

Well, for some reason I was determined and I shared my routine with one of our receptionists, who replied, “You better get a new routine.”

Guess what? I did the gig and it really wasn’t so bad. I came out second of seven, which may not be world fame, but gosh, like… it wasn't shameful.

Now it’s a new century and I have the itch again. Don’t ask why, but here I am developing some new routines. And the same old naysayers are reminding me, “You are not funny.”

My daughter is pleading with me not to do it. I said I would change my name first, and she said please do.

Oh well, there are worse things that can happen. I have no illusions about quitting my day job and doing the comedy circuit. I just like trying new things. I’ve jumped out of an airplane a few times. I can hopefully survive a gig at the stand up comedy boutique. And if the doors are locked when I get home that night, well, I can always sleep in the garage.

Actually, my interest in comedy is having a fairly positive impact on my family. They have all started praying again. They’re praying that I do not try to be a stand up comic.