Brian and Barbara are up on stage tonight at the Comedy Factory. I'm headlining so please come pout and support the team! Show starts at 8;30. Hope to see you there ! First- if you have any challenge with the homework E mail me. I'll get back to you and we'll work it out- promise. Also- remember-besides teaching I also perform stand up. If you're having a company Christmas party E mail me -lets talk about getting me there.
CLOSING JOKE. Your last joke is the destination of you and the audience. The closing joke is the material the audience remembers you buy. Our closing joke is like the end of a movie. No matter how good the movie is if the end sucks- the movie is a let down.
1-Look at the emotion of your last minute. What is it?
2- What's your second last joke?
3- The emotion of your last minute and last joke should also be in your last!
4- Your last joke has to be the best joke in the set.

HOME WORK. Create "TAG" five new jokes of your closing joke. Make sure they're all better then your second last joke.
Rehearse your set at least two HALF hour sessions.
Get your set on tape. Listen to it and tag it.
Get your set on a menu card and read it as well as listen to your set as many times as you can.

I'll put some tags of my closer- up!

TAGS: Last Joke " It wasn't a traffic cam it was a Raven! Just the dark messanger of the Under world. Yah my soul was hexed but I never got a ticket!"

So now I'm thinking that I'd rather be hexed then get a ticket. SARCASM!
Lets keep mining that.
1) Have you ever saw what you thought was the flash from a ticket cam and hoped it was a bursting blood vessel?
2)" Please God let it be a stroke and not a ticket. I can afford to lose the right side of my body but not lose another TWO HUNDRED BUCKS!"
3) Remember the days when we got a ticket from an actual person? Yah we swore at the fed when we drove away from the privacy of our vehicle. Now we get the ticket and are sworn at from the privacy of our marriage! Miss direction.
4) We have photo radar red light cams, lazar radar. Who's running the streets? Metallica? SARCASM
5) Pretty soon we're going to get a ticket via text message. Then who do we call? Oprah? Miss direaction/sarcasm

Remember- I perform for Christmas Parties! E mail me. thepath@telusplanet.net

HAVE FUN KIDS!

1) My soap dispenser said "YOU KNOW WHO I AM. I own the Soap Dispenser from HELL and as of yesterday Hell smelt like Spring Lavender. You notice when a voice from no where says " do you know who I am?' we're usually alone in our gaunch in front of a sink? We're never with our thirty friends from a bike gang.
"Do you know who I am?" No! maybe YOU KNOW Satan's Riders?" They're the bike gang from the lake of fire! Yah! not so "do you know who I am now! are you!!!! I was at Giant Tiger yesterday. I bought a Canadian Celebrity Pez Dispenser. I took it out of the package it went " Do you know who I am?" You're Gordon Pinset no one knows who you are." This is all about the unexpected. When you're in your half naked in front of the sink you don't expect to hear do you know who I am. You expect " Man you've gained weight. Are those women's under wear? You're shaving with tooth paste!"
The other day I was going through a red light. All's I was thinking was "Please don't have a traffic cam."
not- "Geeze I might T bone some one." What I thought was a traffic cam turned out to be a Raven! It spread its wings and flew away.
I thought "awesome." It's just a Raven the dark messenger from Hell. I didn't get a ticket. I just have a hex on my soul. Sweet. I'm not out a 150 bucks. I have enough for a new I pod. Load it up with some old school Bee Gee's " No one gets too much love any more. It's higher then a mountain much harder to climb!" Ow-my panties are chafing.
Any way I get through the intersection and realize I'm lost. I ask a guy "do you know where Gordon Pinset Drive is? "No!" He said. "No one knows where Gordon Pinset drive is!"

Here's something you can work on before our class begins on July 12th. We can look at a classic joke to study mechanics, set up, premise, punch line, tagging. We can achieve this two ways. 1) We can take a joke and attack it within the circle and create 50 new jokes and put maybe ten of them in order from good to great so we achieve bigger and bigger laughs.
2) We can Q and A the emotion embedded in the joke and keep doing this with the same joke so we dig deeper and deeper in the premise. We then put these jokes in an escalating order. Lets try one. You know the circle exercise put a joke in the middle and work it. In this blog we're playing with the emotion.
Lets choose the joke. Now the emotion is two fold. We have the energy and emotion of the joke and the emotion the audience feels because of the joke. It's either poison of pleasure. Lets make the feeling positive. Here's the joke we're playing with.

"How many Vietnam Vets does it take to change a light bulb?
you don't know? That's because YOU WEREN'T THERE MAN!!!!"


First this joke is misdirection- bait and switch. It begins with a light bulb premise and ends with the horror of War. What's the emotion? Anger? Regret? Blame? " You weren't there man!" Lets choose an emotion. How about regret. "If we had a second chance." Lets Q and A this. Before we do what was the first thing that came to your mind? your intuition? Mine was: "What has the word Vietnam become associated with? an abysmal political quagmire." We throw it around like the word love. "I love gum."Really? ever lose a house to a pack of Huba Bubba?" That mess in the Garage is our Family's Vietnam. My brother tried to clean it. Now he's a homeless sixty five year old Alcoholic." The premise is deep and dark and ripe with misdirection. Lets Q and A the premise Vietnam remembering to keep the emotion in the answer- REGRET.

What if the Vietnam War took place in Bravaria?
Where are the Viet Kong?
Are you dating yourself if you bring up this War?
Where's the Hub Bub about the missing Vets?

Lets answer these and the difference between this exercise and the regular Q and A is now we're staying in an emotion not just looking for a punch line!

1) Thank God for Laos. If Vietnam was in Bravaria the War's soundtrack would be a polka.
1A) Loosing a War creates better music then winning it. World war 2? "Don't' sit under the Apple Tree. Vietnam? Purple Haze. Vietnam one Europe nothing."
2) You notice they didn't make the Movie King Kong until the Vietnam war was over. We wouldn't want to confuse King Kong with Viet Kong. It's easy to mistake a hundred foot ape with a seventy pound Asian guy hiding in a Tunnel."
3) You know how old someone is by the War they talk about. WW2? 80's Vietnam? 60's Apocalypse? 3 months." 3A) I talk about the War of the Sex's . It makes me ageless and sassy!"
4 The rules of War and never leaving anyone behind are the same as dropping food on the floor. Ten seconds for lettuce 3 hours for Pizza. 20 something if you're a soldier over seventy you better be a Rockerfella!
Dark premises don't have to be negative energy. Try this. Stay in an emotion as you Q and A do the same with the circle exercise.
E MAIL ME: thepath@telusplanet.net

I share two different classes. The first class is an introduction to Stand Up. I teach this class through continuing education. In this class we learn the five principles of Stand Up. We also cover joke writing theme and structure. This class is a lot fun as it should be but it's designed to push the student through their fear and self criticism. At the end of the class each student will have a four minute set they developed from the class and can perform their set in a full comedy club. Phone number to enroll in the next class is 780-428-1111 ( Class limit is 12)
You can E mail me if you have any questions thepath@telusplanet.net

The second class is an advanced class I share at The Comedy Factory. In this class we develop a seven minute professional set that 1) Gets you noticed. 2) Gives you the skills to get on a club roster. 3) creates a mind set to keep developing. In this class we learn at a deeper level about writing mechanics
emotional value, the arch of a set, opening and closing material as well as habits on the road and at home that put you ahead of the pack. In this class you're accountable to each other. Each week the class chooses a class member to perform in front of a live audience. You're expected to do the writing and rehearsing as well as the habit changing exercises each week. ( Class limit is 8) To register for this class E mail Me at thepath@telusplanet.net

I want to thank of all of you for taking this class. I also want all of you to know I really appreciate your effort yesterday. This class is about honesty and emotion. Truth and emotion-story are the core and fuel behind stand up.
All of you are being asked to take a leap of faith to take a risk. This class is asking you to grow. We're not just writing jokes. We're building story using emotion and energy to connect to ourselves how we really feel about an idea to captivating our audience with escalating emotion and story.
Lets take a look at the home work. I asked you to write out humorous moments you've lived and simply ask how you feel about them. That's it. I also asked you to journal three pages each day and when you do write about how you feel about everything and anything to do with your journey in this class. Please write at least twice this week for half an hour. That means asking how you feel and defining the emotions of your funny moments.
Let me show you where this leads. This was one of your stories last night: " I have this neighbor kid pestering me to go bike riding. I ask the parents they say yah. We go riding up and down the front street. Well this twelve year old kid comes out of no where and says " What are you riding with the kid for? what are you a pedophile?"
Alright this is the first part of this story what are the feelings here? fear? anger? Shock? If that's true what's our reaction? One would never be prepared for that statement! Write out and play with this.Write it out. " First off who is this Nazi Hitler Youth You Soron's kid from Lord Of The Rings?" You notice when you're trying to make a difference that's when people crush you? You never hear a kid calling the ice cream man a pedophile at least not until they have the revel in their little rat fingers. What do you call a pedophile with one leg? a unifile? What if we weren't biking? what if I took the kid target shooting? All of a sudden the caldasack bully isn't so nosy as I'm putting away the glock!" And there's no Amber alert when we're doing doughnuts in front of the kid's house!" Keep asking how we feel. " How do you react to something like this? Also when you walk on stage and shared this it would really get an audience's attention. And you would stand out! All of you realize that your honesty is what's going to connect.
In my intro to comedy class I asked you to ask questions about a premise then answer them. When we ask about emotions and feelings the answers and jokes are more powerful. Please do this as you're mining for the emotions about your stories.
1) When you ask question about emotions- answer them. EXAMPLE: Why did the kid's questions shock me? Because I was just trying to be a friend. The questions hurt and bothered me. Why? Because it was mean and it hurt me and the little tyke. What did the bully accomplish? Loneliness.
2) When you get an idea a premise try these exercises. Put together opposites. Put the last thing you would expect at the end of a question or statement. Try using sarcasm/ EXAMPLE " What are you a pedophile? I said 'I heard this on are you smarter then a fifth grader I know this one." "Why are you biking with the kid? Because my Poodle has no balance?" Using opposites is juxtapositioning putting opposites against each other mirroring each other. The last thing you expect creates 'miss direction.
3) Write out a funny moment and break it into separate pieces and ask and answer the emotions and feelings of each piece. Try inserting opposites and the last thing you'd expect.
E MAIL ME thepath@telusplanet.net or face book me "Paul Sveen" HAVE FUN.