Creating a separate thread to avoid cluttering the Joke Thread with my ramblings. It's probably not really meant for discussion of jokes, so it could get to the dangerous territory of offtopic pretty quickly. Wouldn't want that.

Anyway, reworked the jokes into a mostly coherent story/routine, would be awesome to hear what you think

We should all thank God for writing the Bible. Without it, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the god damned Twilight would be the three bestselling books of the fantasy genre. Fucking embarrassing! Seriously, though, when I read the story of our savior, Jesus Christ, I feel a great wave of inspiration. I can write the next great fantasy bestseller too! No, seriously, rarely do you find such an old book that’s still relevant in today’s times. I always carry it with me. Suppose I’m sitting on the marble throne and find myself running out of toilet paper?

Changing the subject a little bit, Exorcism is the best medicine for the soul. However, if you suffer from epilepsy or any number of fucked up mental diseases, be sure to consult a pharmacist or a doctor before you submit to one. Maybe you’re not possessed, just fucked up. Find yourself stranded in the Middle-Ages? Exorcism is the least of your problems, then. Miserable bastard… If you do find yourself in the Middle-Ages, be sure not to get yourself accused of witchcraft. It’s not so bad, though. At least, before burning someone at the stake, the Inquisition always made certain. “Hey, Geoffrey, do we have enough logs?” Wouldn’t be proper if the fire burnt out before the witch is toast, now, would it?

It’s easy to make fun of other people, but I wonder what I would do if I, as a boy, found myself in Berlin at the end of World War II. I imagine I would have some hard choices to make, because the Nazis were scouring the capital for some able-bodied youngsters to help defend the city and the Priests were chasing them for… tending to the altar. If I got caught by both at the same time, I would, without a doubt, scream, “Heil Hitler” and get a gun, because while it’s almost certain that death awaits, it’s still preferable to the possibility of having to kneel in front of a priest. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against priests. God’s servants spread the message of love in various ways: Crusaders swing swords, Missionaries deliver charity, Priests fondle altar boys. After all, religion teaches us to love those, who slap us in the face. So what is the altar boy supposed to do if the Priest slaps him in the face with his celibate torpedo of love? Turn the other cheek, of course! The servant of God must be revered!

I thank God in my prayers that I didn’t ever have to prove my reverence to the priest! Speaking of prayers, after I pray, asking God to solve all of my problems in life, I always itch to jump up and achieve something stupendous! Nah, making a sandwich sounds more useful. After all, God is taking care of it right now!

If you think that this doesn't merit a new thread, feel free to merge, of course.

 

Preforming stand up comedy while sitting at the computer. What will we think of next?

I didn't laugh. Might just be my sense of humor though.

 

Performing? No. Checking the material for bad parts (I gather it's easier to find bad parts than good ones in my current stuff)? Yes. That's what you do when you don't have the opportunity to go on stage often and work out what works, and what doesn't. I would prefer it if I could go on an open mic tonight and test it all out (probably bombing in the process) on stage, but I can't. What am I supposed to do?

 

This was terrible and generic. If I'd wanted abysmal comedy I could have just Googled "Kim Kardashian, Divorce."

 

Thank you for taking the time to read it, Giovanni. By generic, do you mean not specific or personal enough, just unoriginal, or something else?

 

Okay, I think the most relevant thing here is that a lot of these jokes are dated, like the riff on Christianity. Implying the Bible is fantasy has been done to death a very long time ago. But also, there's a technical flaw in your development of the joke. I - and the audience will also - sensed that you were going for subtlety in implying that Bible is just a fantasy story by mentioning Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but it's dead obvious. Audience psychology will mean the audience recognizes your attempt to be clever, find it lame, and shut you out. It will make it even harder to keep going because they're subconsciously predisposed to dislike anything you say unless you pull off a miracle recovery.

You need to infuse some originality and cleverness. Maybe work on the idea that the Christ mythology is a plagiarism of older religions, with Jesus's narrative being a nigh-exact copy of Ra and other such figures. How about this?

"Anyone remember the film Zeitgeist a while ago? You know, conspiracy theories, Federal Reserve Bank, that kind of thing? I learned something interesting from that film. Let's see: how many of you, when you think of Jesus, think of a person? You know, with personality, someone you can think of as real? Maybe you've seen him in South Park or shows like that. He's probably a nice, very charismatic guy? All around decent guy?"

People in the audience will probably give a general murmur of assent.

"Turns out he's a plagiarism." Then explain the Christ narrative borrowing from other theologies.

Maybe leading up to this: "Imagine that, folks. Copyright could have stopped all of this fucking nonsense."

You can take it further by saying: "Sure copyright came a few thousand years too late, but, you know, better late than never. Makes me wonder though - what would happen if a new religion sprung up and tried to plagiarize ol' Jesus? It'd just be way too obvious, so you need to be original. Creative. Here's my idea for the next big deity, alright. He's gonna be a cyborg zombie version of Abe Lincoln. He'll be like ten feet tall and have a cock that's literally made of iron, so it never wilts. His top hat will wear a top hat, and his main miracles will be to compose fucking legendary poetry at will. His Anti-Christ parallel will be an astronaut John Wilkes Booth, whose poetry turns people to sin and is his ultimate rival.

But he'll need a name.

Manuel Chris? Who wants to join the Church of Manny Chris!!! Whooo!"

Yeah, maybe not that exactly, I don't have the best original mind either. But I think it shows you the process and elements you want to put together - conversational tone (but it doesn't actually ask for audience input), minor ways of involving the crowd (do you think of Jesus as a person), and unexpected correlation between Jesus and copyright. It also gives you, and I think this is important, a springboard to organically move into another stage of the routine - leading into your personal ideal of a deity who's completely ridiculous. And then it tries to hit hat overarching climactic moment with who wants to join the Church of Abe-Lincoln knock-off Manny Chris where the audience is totally won over, which I rarely see happen to even the best comics.

 

I see what you mean, Andromalius. Thank you a lot. I had the idea about Christianity copying other religions for convenience's sake, but discarded it without thinking about it enough. Thanks for the idea. Will try to run off with it and see what happens, if you don't mind.

 

Your jokes come too quickly, and remind me of Frankie Boyle. He just does bad taste jokes, with no real connection between them, for his entire show (from what I've seen). And that's fine, if the jokes are all between friends down at the pub or something, but not really what you want from entertainment.

This was decent - it flowed. Also, it is one running joke, that doesn't outright state anything until the end. 'Tending the altar' is an allusion, and 'kneel in front of a priest' could only really mean one thing, but you can assume otherwise for the sake of the joke.


The best pointer I can give you is to make the whole thing continuous:

"So when I was younger, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I talked to my grandad, but he didn't really give me the best advice. See, he lived in Nazi Germany, and he had some hard choices to make... altar boys!
Of course, I had to take what he said with a pinch of salt, because he wasn't very bright, <some one liner about senility/stupidity might fit in here>, and likely would have just signed up anyway - he hated Jews. And gypsies. and women. He still hates women actually - <possible segue into typical marriage jokes>."

If you can make your jokes into a story, then you become different to a joke book. If I wanted a list of jokes, then I could go to my nearest bookstore and find a joke book. If you watch THIS Dara O'Briain video, you'll see what I mean. He doesn't do a list of jokes, he actually has links between each funny moment, no matter no tenuous.


EDIT
Like Andro did - he made the joke into a routine. The single line became a few paragraphs.

 

I read it and didn't even crack a smile let alone laugh. Not funny at all. Then again humour is more about the delivery than the content. Bad delivery can ruin even the best jokes, good delivery can make mediocre jokes hilarious.

 

Mostly unfunny.

You plan to perform in Lithuanian, right? Would be interesting to read the original and compare. (Ar rašei iškart angliškai?)

Are you sure there is a niche for religious jokes at all, here?

On that thought, we don't really have a niche for stand up comedy itself, I guess... But that's your problem, really... Have fun.



And I guess a week is slightly old, so I'm sorry for that.

 

Maybe it's the lack of being able to see your comedic timing in person... but that was bad.

I hope you have the speakers up to drown out the sound of crickets chirping.

 

I'm personally not a fan of anti-Christian comedy (ruined by the overdramatic and/or stupid), but even if I was, I don't think I would be riveted by this. The aggressive jokes really aren't that appealing, and instead of pulling me along they push me out. You're trying to make light humour here, not start a crusade.

I also think the priest joke is misplaced. I don't think I'd be overstating it to say that every joke about priests I've ever heard has sucked, whether it's because it's too corny, too anti-gay/christian, too repetitive (to the point of almost being worse than lightbulb jokes), or too mean. If it's a group of people who often go out to see comedians, then they'll all roll their eyes at that.

Although I did like the bit about being a boy in Germany. You could probably expand on that a bit, making sure to fit at least one horrible stereotype in, and set the scene there a bit better.

What others said about presentation is really right though. Almost every good performance I can remember was done so because of good timing, facial expression, tone, body posture, whatever. Perhaps you could make this into a showstopper as-is, but how I imagine it coming from someone's mouth, it might get a few laughs and maybe some claps at the end.

 

This thread makes my soul hurt. Not simply because its sit-down stand-up comedy, but because the the format is bland. Text does convey some sense of emotion, but not nearly enough to be worth basing comedy routines on.

You'd have better luck doing stand-up on fucking google talk. :|

 

Also fuck you for being called Dante. Only I should have that right.