Comedy Warm-Up Tasks: Part 4 of 5


That's right, it's time for part four of my handout, given a bit of explanation for each. That's what happens when you make a handout denser than a white dwarf star. 

See the other articles in this series, the first one, the second one, and the third one, for context. Or jump in with no context. You possess volition!

Here are the last nine activities on that handout, each one sentence long, with a bit of explanation afterwards:

Fast Boredom: Talk as quickly as possible about a very boring topic.

Ideally, if you can discuss the benefits of aluminum at twice the speed of Ben Shapiro, then you have more than done your job. However, in the capacity of a warm-up, speaking faster than one might usually speak is probably good enough.

Complete Weirdness: “You know what is weird about …?” Discuss.

Ideally, this could be a topic that is not inherently weird. Puppies aren't normally thought of as weird, though chameleons might be. It's more interesting to pursue the weird in the mundane. What lurks under that veneer of civilization in the so-called middle-class values and tastes? This exercise could explore that.

Saving Physical Grace: How do you benefit from the imperfections of your own body?

Perhaps man boobs help suicidal people survive the jump. Perhaps crow's feet make your evil don't-bother-me gaze more effective. Hey, the broken stuff on you could be useful somehow. How? You have to figure that out.

Complete Annoyance: “I get very annoyed when…” Discuss.

Annoyance is a good place to draw from for topics where one is moved to denounce injustice. I would pick a topic not known for annoyance, but if in the warm-up the student says "buzzing fly" or "smoker outside the restaurant," then fine. Still, I'd rather hear about how ball-point pens are annoying or how Gandhi was annoying -- any person, place, or thing we do not usually associate with annoyance.

Minority: Everyone belongs to a minority. Which one do you belong to?

That minority group does not have to be an ethnic one. It could be any owner of a teal two-door Chevrolet Cavalier. When I owned one, I notice so many others who owned one. Perhaps we share common values of frugality and troubled sense of style.

Sing about a topic never before sung about.

The topic could be suggested by others, by a topic of interest to the person doing this, or randomly from an online noun generator. There are songs about everything.

What Stuff on Video seems strange or annoying?

This is a typical topic for comics. TV, YouTube, Netflix, and variations thereof reveal all kinds of topics worth exploiting.

What Everyday Object bothers you?

Another anger topic. Worth thinking about. I don't like doors that say "push" or "pull" yet could go both ways. Nonpartisan doors are dividing us by choosing sides they don't need choosing.

Embarrassing Moment: Describe an embarrassing moment in your life.

A classic topic for finding humor. I have a few dozen of these, some of which I remember, and some of which had to be explained to me through eyewitness testimony. For the sake of my own reputation, I won't put these on the blog. Not yet.

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