Seth Meyers came out with a new stand-up special on Netflix, Lobby Baby, which released earlier this month. All in all, this special was generally pretty average. This is the first I’m seeing of Seth Meyers’ actual stand up and it wasn’t spectacular, but I wouldn’t call it disappointing either. Let’s get into it.

The first issue that I take with this special is that he has no real comedic voice. His style heavily resembles that of Mike Birbiglia and at times, John Mulaney, and rarely sounds like something the audience has never heard before. Other comedians in their first go at Netflix specials (See: Daniel Sloss, Aparna Nancherla, James Acaster, Beth Stelling) have distinct comedic voices that an audience can really connect with and enjoy. Having a well-defined voice adds to the uniqueness of your perspective in comedy. It makes it seem like you have something original to say. This is an issue that I also had with Michael Che’s first Netflix special, Michael Che Matters, in that it never sounded like either of these people had a reason to be doing comedy. They can tell jokes, but they could be anybody’s jokes. Nothing is separating them from any other comedian, and I would’ve rather them have their own comedic voices.

With that being said, I think that his funniest jokes were the ones where he wasn’t imitating anyone else. They were smart and thought-out and didn’t sound like they had been perfected by a writing staff. I recognized a few points where an older audience that knew him only from SNL would laugh, but surprisingly, none of it felt like Late Night, which was a big plus.

He circled back to jokes twice, and it closed the show nicely, but the ending, in my opinion, was too close to the first mention of that callback material. This happens a lot, and it’s where the comedian doesn’t let the original joke sit with the audience long enough for it to be funny in a callback. The audience doesn’t get attached to the joke because it’s within a timeframe that would make it seem like the bits could be connected. Some people may like how closely they coincide, and that’s all up to personal preference. Still, I think it insults the audience’s intelligence if you assume they won’t be able to remember something earlier in the set. I digress.

There was a good play on the release of his special through Netflix, which I think adds and detracts from the show. He prefaces the bit with a warning (another specific thing that I hate; your audience will know what you’re talking about once you start so just get on with it) that he’s going to talk about politics and gestures to a button that will be included in the Netlfix release to ‘Skip Politics’. Now, I like that it was physically interactive and brought that specific audience in on a joke, but there are a couple problems. Firstly, the bit went on way too long to be funny by the end, and I found myself wanting to hit the button to skip ten seconds ahead instead. Secondly, when Netflix eventually gives up the rights to this show, or somebody reposts the bit, the joke will become moot. Jokes with timers like this have the same effect as songs that reference the year they’re made in; sure, it will be fun for the remainder of its time, but over time it becomes something that just shows the piece’s age and doesn’t add significance.

Lastly, I think there were many opportunities for additional, more original, or even just better jokes to be included in this special. There were many times I found myself thinking that other jokes would fit into his set and flow naturally with the course of his material. Some of his punchlines were good, but many topics were overdone by either other comics or other forms of popular media. It’s great to stay relevant and talk about hot topics, but there comes the point where they become overdone. Unfortunately, Meyers’ special came out after that point.

Lobby Baby is a good example of the “classic” stand-up comic with the jokes about domestic life, politics, and getting older, and despite its lack of captivating originality, it was still an enjoyable watch. I probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, as I don’t quite know what to brand Meyers’ humor, and I don’t think I’ll be watching it again, but I wouldn’t advise anyone against seeing it. If you’re just looking for something to throw on in the background while you do something else, this special would be a great fit.

 

Watch Seth Meyers’ first stand up special on Netflix here:

Seth Meyers Lobby Baby

I think now is a good time in my blog to talk about Bill Wurtz.

I’ve been a fan and an avid follower of his content for a couple years now, and with every video he puts out, I like him more and more. Yes, this is another post about a comedy YouTuber; but Bill Wurtz is a different type of comedian. He makes jokes purely out of the absurd.

Bill Wurtz makes content that is confusing and hilarious at the same time. He balances these two aspects perfectly. His older videos were short songs, 5 to 30 seconds long, that would answer a random question, or they simply are random words strung together to form a loose concept. His newer videos are a lot less frequent, and that’s because they’re longer songs—about 2 to 3 minutes long—and he puts more work into them.

For each of his newer videos, Bill Wurtz creates animations and turns them into a quasi-music video with the lyrics appearing sporadically around the screen. I understand that this may be hard to visualize out of context, so I’ve linked his YouTube channel below for you to check it out.

The lyrics to these songs aren’t always coherent, but they always tie back into the chorus of the song somehow. Wurtz’s brain is scattered throughout the video, that much is obvious, but he still has thousands upon thousands of people returning to his channel. He has gained an astounding 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube from these insanely unrelated songs.

The last category of videos on his channel is documentaries. Bill Wurtz has made two uncharacteristically long videos that detail the history of Japan and the history of the world in general. These two videos are, respectively, 9 and 19 minutes long. He animates this rapid-fire knowledge the whole time and adds short breaks to sing a few words of history. These two are easily my favorite videos of his because of how much work he put into them. Other videos are short and sweet, but these show hours of dedicated work and result in a video unique only to Bill Wurtz.

And YouTube videos aren’t the only things that Bill Wurtz puts out either. He makes sure to tweet something as equally absurd as his videos every day.

Some notable tweets include, “i don’t know what a plaintiff is but it sounds delicious. mmm, roast plaintiff,” and, “in school, desks learn for free,” and, “got invited out of a party.” These might sound crazy, but if you consider his YouTube videos, they’re pretty on par with his abstract thoughts. Some of his video titles include, “tomato anxiety,” and, “soap tips,” and, “just opened the letter i wrote to myself and it says i’m a stupid idiot.”

A peek into the mind of Bill Wurtz is incredibly thought-provoking. Honestly, I still don’t know what half of the things he says mean. The more you think about his content, the less it starts to make sense, and I still don’t know yet if that’s a good or bad thing.

 

Visit Bill Wurtz’s YouTube channel here:

Bill Wurtz YouTube

Watch Bill Wurtz accept the Shorty Award for “Weird” here:

Visit Bill Wurtz’s Twitter here:

 

I think it’s time to talk about my favorite comedian of all time: Bo Burnham. I first saw Bo on his YouTube channel when I was really young. He was just a kid singing in his room at his piano about the things other people wouldn’t dare to say. My older brother loved watching his videos, and looking up to him, I naturally started watching them too. I knew the words to one of his first songs, “I’m Bo Yo,” when I was 8 because of how much I heard it around my house.

Needless to say, Bo Burnham has grown a lot since his days of simple YouTube videos. He’s released multiple comedy specials, been acting in movies and T.V. shows, has written a book of poems titled Egghead, and has even written, directed, and released his own film, Eighth Grade. It is without a doubt that at 28 years old, Bo has garnered more attention across all mediums of entertainment for himself than most other “experienced” comedians.

All of this attention can be really good for a comedy career, too. More people watching your content means a bigger fanbase, which means more revenue and more space to explore your artistic limits. All of this attention, though, comes at a cost. With the spotlight on you for almost your entire life, a performer in any capacity is under constant pressure to produce content frequently. A big fanbase can be something that launches a comedian into success, while simultaneously making them fearful of ever letting them down.

Bo has had to deal with this since he was 16.

In a lot of most recent work, Make Happy, he recognizes the influence that his fans have on him, and most of his bits have to do with performance. Though it is the most heavily saturated special with jokes of this nature, they can be found in all of his work, from his earliest special.

A great deal of Bo Burnham’s fame stems from his unique brand of comedy. When he tours the country with his comedy, he doesn’t just do stand-up routines or sets, they’re performances. He tells jokes and stories and plays music and sings and puts on a worthwhile show for his audience. But Bo explicitly tells the audience that it’s all a show multiple times throughout each of his three released specials.

In his earliest work, WORDS, WORDS, WORDS, Burnham has an entire song about this, titled “Art is Dead.” Toward the end of the special, he sings, “I must be demented / To think that I’m worthy of all this attention / Of all of this money you worked really hard for / I slept in late while you worked at the drug store.” In this song, he showcases his recognition of his own place in comedy. He sees the overwhelming amount of attention he has received because of the art that he produces. Burnham doesn’t think that he’s worthy of his fans’ praise because his act is just that: an act. He isn’t telling true stories on the stage, he isn’t speaking honestly, and to the audience, it’s just his style, but to Bo, it feels like a facade.

In his next special, what., the show only touches lightly on this concept of the reality of art until the end of the show. At the end, he performs a song where there are three different personalities talking to him about his recent success: a friend of someone who knew him in high school that thinks he’s “an arrogant prick”, a manager who tries to rebrand Bo as something he’s not, and an old schoolmate who pretends to have been close with him.

These three characters each talk for a bit in their own style and voice, giving Bo their unnecessary opinions on his life before the end of the song. This is where respective to the order mentioned above, they say, “We think you’ve changed bro,” “We know best,” and “You suck.” This repeats a couple times until they shorten their speech again simply to, “We think,” “We know,” “You.” Burnham insinuates here that because of the act that he puts on for an audience, nobody truly knows who he is. He has made a conscious effort to keep from revealing his authentic self to the audience in his comedy. In doing so, he has made people who think they have a hold on his personality, realize that they truly don’t.

Running with the theme of introspection at the end of a show, at the end of his most recent comedy special, Make Happy, Bo Burnham performs another song about performance. This one is a half-song, half-Kanye-Esque-rant. In this, he equates his situation in comedy with getting a burrito at Chipotle and having it be too full. This burrito is at the point where the tortilla can’t fit all of the ingredients inside of it. He writes, “I wouldn’t have gotten half of the shit if I knew it wasn’t gonna fit in the burrito! Alright?… Man, I wouldn’t have got half of it”. What Burnham says is that he wouldn’t have asked to be this famous, or maybe even have entered the world of comedy in the first place if he knew what it would entail. If it were going to be such a significant stressor in his life, then he wouldn’t have striven for a career in comedy.

He says later in the song that he loves, hates, needs, and fears his audience. Bo is torn between his desire to perform and the detrimental toll that it takes on his mental state. He tells this to the audience, but it is again veiled by the thin parody of Kanye West, so it still appears as comedy and not a cautionary message about the effects of putting celebrities on a pedestal.

Throughout his three specials and these three songs, in particular, Bo Burnham consistently discusses the adverse effects of performing on performers. It may be something that can be avoided by quitting altogether, but for many like Bo, that’s not an option. It’s hard to give up something that you know, and something that you’re good at. At the height of their careers, many other comedians have continued to generate content and specials. I don’t know of many people in any profession that quit at their peak. But, that’s what Bo has done, at least for the time being.

He hasn’t released a new special or even talked about touring again in over three years now. Part of me knows that I want him to be making more content. Still, another part of me knows that he needs to grow creatively before he returns too suddenly to comedy. And Bo has taken this time off to gain experience in other facets of media. He has talked in interviews about his movie as a way for him to collaborate with others and take a break from the subject of his art being himself.

Bo Burnham’s career is something that aspiring comedians should look up to and take notes on. It’s incredible, all of the work that he has put into his work and his comedy. He has poured much of his heart and mind into everything he’s done, and he deserves all of the acknowledgment he’s gotten and more. I just hope that he’s happy.

Watch Bo Burnham’s Make Happy on Netflix here:

Bo Burnham Make Happy

Watch Bo Burnham’s what. on YouTube here:

Listen to WORDS, WORDS, WORDS on Spotify here:

What’s up guys and welcome back to my blog. Today we’re going to be doing the blog post challenge. This is really easy you guys, all you have to do is have a blog, type a bunch of words onto a screen and then hit publish. Like and comment down below if you’re actually trying this challenge and make sure to subscribe. Thanks!

If you couldn’t tell, I’m a fan of YouTube. YouTube was once a platform for viral videos and the latest trends in pop culture and the worst music that you could fathom. Now it’s so much more than that. Now, it’s a retirement community for ex-viners.

Vine was a very popular social media app that launched many of today’s “influencers” into stardom by 6-second videos. When Vine was shut down in 2016, many people who had grown a substantial following on the app decided to make the switch to YouTube, thinking it would be just the same, only longer.

Many vines were either unsuccessful in growing a following or simply put out shitty content. (See Lele Pons and the Paul brothers.) Others, however, embraced the new format and created their own brand again from scratch. People like David Dobrik, Christine Sydelko, Cody Ko, and this blog’s focus, Drew Gooden.

Drew Gooden was most well known for his vine, “Road work ahead? Uh… yeah I sure hope it does!” which garnered a lot of fame on the app and in memorial compilations on YouTube itself. Drew has taken his specific type of comedy and inserted it into one of my favorite forms of YouTube videos: commentary videos.

Commentary or reactionary videos, whichever you prefer, seem to be a dime a dozen these days on youtube. Every other video is someone watching or seeing something and having something to say about it. That’s not to say that all of them are bad, but you certainly have to weed out the ones who don’t care about their content.

Drew Gooden is one of my favorite commentary YouTubers because he doesn’t feel the need to be funny in every moment of his videos. He sprinkles in jokes where they fit and effectively keeps the whole video funny that way. Jokes aren’t crammed where they don’t belong in his videos and this thinking makes sure that no joke falls flat.

And even just his commentary is entertaining to watch, without any added comedy. He always notices things about the content he reacts to that I would have never thought about or pulls out the most minuscule detail of a video and brings it to the forefront of the video. The reception of this commentary is overwhelmingly positive, too. Lately, Drew has posted video essays on different topics, with one comparing two T.V. shows garnering over 1.5 million views. Though it might not make you short of breath from laughter, it is still captivating to watch because it makes you feel like you’re right there reacting to the content with him.

YouTube has become somewhat of a race to see who can react the fastest to the biggest scandal on the Internet right now. If you aren’t cranking out content once or twice weekly,  you’re losing views and subscribers and money.  This is another thing that I admire about Drew’s demeanor is that he cares about the videos he puts out. He doesn’t just feed his subscribers meaningless garbage, he takes time to think out the parts of his videos and connect them in a way that satisfies his audience. You’ll see that in every video he makes a design on Microsoft Paint that relates to the video and sometimes he’ll even make the brand deals he does coincide with what he comments on.

Drew has a video where he talks about teen stars of the app Musical.ly – now called Tik Tok – being in episodes of different YouTube series on a channel called Brat. He calls out the creators of the channel and directors of the shows for their indifference regarding the quality of the show. Content is supposed to be of a quality that everyone can appreciate, even it’s for a specific targeted audience, and that’s something that Drew Gooden truly believes in.

Another thing that I think Drew does really well is that he keeps on top of relevant topics while not stepping on the toes of other YouTubers. A lot of ex-Viner YouTubers that I really enjoy watching (See: Danny Gonzalez, Tom Harlock, Cody Ko) have divulged into making videos about the exact same thing as each other. I know it isn’t intentional, and they might have something different to say about each topic, but after a while, it’s tiring to watch.

I feel that when you make videos about what you want to talk about, the videos become more unique to your channel and more interesting to watch. This is exactly what Drew does on his channel. In the video that I’ve recently mentioned, he talks about Musical.ly in a way that I haven’t seen anyone else do. While everyone else is stuck on the fact that the content on the app itself, quite plainly, sucks, Drew extends the conversation to something related while still keeping on a current topic.

Running gags on his channel are also something that Drew Gooden does expertly. He calls his subscribers Little Stinkers, refers to the audience with “guy” instead of “guys” and claims to have created “The first and only channel on YouTube”. All of these jokes and more make the audience, especially frequent subscribers, feel a part of the punchline. It personalizes the YouTube experience and makes for overall better content.

Thank you so much for reading guys, make sure that you’ve liked and subscribed and clicked that bell so that you never miss a video! Comment down below what your favorite part of the blog was or tell me if you liked it so then maybe I’ll post more like it! Love you guys!

 

Visit Drew Gooden’s YouTube channel here:

Drew Gooden

Watch Drew Gooden’s video on Musical.ly here:

The Standups is a recent Netflix original that has been increasingly popular; so much so that it’s recently garnered a second season. It is a spin on the classic hour-long comedy special that seems to be commonplace on Netflix. In this series, different comedians perform their 30-minute sets back to back and they’re filmed as separate episodes of each series. Often these people are lesser-known comics just starting out in the comedy world, but in the first season, they started with a bang: Nate Bargatze.

 

Nate Bargatze has been performing stand-up comedy for a long time and he is another one of my personal favorite comedians. In this series, he’s only given 30 minutes of time to showcase his style and skill, which is plenty of time for him.

Bargatze’s candor and seemingly apathetic delivery make his style of comedy unique. He comes off as a southern bumpkin to some and rides on that with the stories he tells about his life. He’s similar to the past comedian I wrote about, Mike Birbiglia, in that their sets mostly revolve around actual events that have happened to them.

In this series, Nate Bargatze tells about his experiences at Walmart, his pointless fights with his wife, and an unforgettable trip to North Carolina. He is a regular, middle-class American just like his audience, and his relatability is a big emphasis of his comedy.

 

Another great comic in the first season of this series is Beth Stelling. She’s a midwesterner who has an interesting perspective in this world filled with rules about everything. Her first jokes about airport security set up the rest of her set to be as vulgar, but the rest is pretty mild in comparison. It’s as if Stelling tests the audience to see if they can handle her personality before they invest in the rest of her jokes.

And if you do decide to invest, you’re in for a treat! Beth Stelling is one of the few comedians from this series that I’ve taken the time out to look into further. She doesn’t disappoint outside of the Netflix original either.

Her comedy is new and refreshing. Even if the topic is something that you’ve heard before, she tackles it in a different way, which is a nice break from the monotony of common old comedians.

 

Now, I say that Beth Stelling is one of the only comedians I’ve bothered to look up further, and that’s because I feel that the others have lacked majorly in some way. I think that two comedians in the first season have the exact same problem with their material.

Fortune Feimster and Dan Soder are two more comedians in this 6-comedian series. Dan has been a commenter on Guy Code and Girl Code on MTV and I think his commentary has been humorous for a while. Fortune Feimster, however, I have never heard of before. Regardless of my knowledge, I think they both made the mistake of putting and keeping their comedy in a small box.

Dan Soder is a self-titled pothead. He talks about it or rather doesn’t stop talking about it, throughout his 30-minute set. It seems as though there isn’t much more to Soder besides; 1. He is male and 2. He smokes weed.

This makes his comedy hard to relate to for people like myself who aren’t a part of either of the aforementioned groups. That’s not to say that it’s completely unfunny, it’s just hard to be a part of the joke when you can’t say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been in a situation like that,” or “That is absurd.”

Because these two types of comedy seem to hit the mark the most with audiences. And as for Soder, even when he hits the first point, it’s not really a full joke, just the observation part of it, and it certainly doesn’t leave a spectator with a sore gut.

Fortune Feimster seems to struggle similarly with her comedy. If she wasn’t talking about the fact that she is lesbian in her set, then she was talking about her weight; and if she wasn’t doing the latter, she was doing the former. And that’s not to say that it’s a problem to talk about either of these things in your comedy. Tig Notaro and Jim Gaffigan talk about these respective topics in their own stand-up specials and they do so in a way that makes the audience join in on the comedy.

This is where Feimster’s comedy falls short. It’s the same exclusionary effect that Soder’s comedy has; you don’t get it and even when you do, the joke isn’t finished. It certainly leaves more to be desired in a comedy set.

 

All in all, The Standups was a fantastic idea for a series, and the seasons just seem to be getting better. And who knows, maybe you’ll have the complete opposite reaction to these comedians as I did. What do I know?

 

Watch The Standups on Netflix here:

The Standups Netflix Original

 

Often times during a stand-up routine, heckling the crowd will be a part of the show. For well-known, older comedians especially, it’s a chance to get to know the people that have been fans for a while, as well as revisit their improv days. For an audience member in the front row, this can be pretty nerve-wracking, but most know what they’re in for.

Mike Birbiglia is one of the biggest, and one of my favorite, names in comedy today. And he’s no rookie. He has been performing stand-up since the very early 2000s, and writing since even before that. He’s been through all of the phases a comic can go through to get to where he is today; he’s been in an improv group, been a server at a comedy club, written and performed his own routines, toured them, put them on Netflix, and he even wrote and directed his own movie. About comedy.

Someone of this caliber of work has to have joked with a few audiences in his time and I know that he’s generally a funny person. So when I was watching his latest work on Netflix, Thank God For Jokes, I couldn’t help but give in to laughter when I watched him heckle the audience.  

Not to spoil the set, but in this special, Birbiglia talks about getting pulled over and arrested for a driving on a suspended license when he was just starting out in the comedy world. He takes this opportunity to ask his audience if they had ever been arrested and he finds one participant willing to offer his story.

So he goes over to the man and asks, “What did you get arrested for?” to which the audience member responds, “I got arrested by a woman cop… and put in a headlock”. Now, this is a confusing response for anybody who’s asking, but especially for someone whose source of income somewhat depends on this conversation. Birbiglia, though, wastes no time in responding with, “I don’t like how you said woman cop”. The audience then erupts into laughter and applause and Birbiglia, himself, has to laugh. He follows, “It was very obnoxious,” when he regains his composure, hitting the audience’s funny bone once again.

Mike Birbiglia continues on to talk some more with this storyteller and gets many more laughs from his fans. Even though the situation started out rocky, he made the best out of it, and rolled it into a joke.

The relatability of his offhand jokes is something that reigns high above others’ in comedy today. Birbiglia knows his audience. It’s shown through his own comedy, interviews, and social media. He has presented himself to the world as a leftist in American politics and someone who fights against injustice in the world. He’s an outspoken person and those who didn’t like it have turned away from his work.

But those who do stay are the ones that the jokes are focused toward. They are the people who keep coming back to his shows. They are the ones who laugh with him when he talks to the audience. They are the ones who laugh when Birbiglia makes a joke out of a situation gone awry.

 

Watch Mike Birbiglia’s Thank God for Jokes on Netflix here:

Mike Birbiglia Thank God for Jokes

Get tickets to Mike Birbiglia’s new Broadway Show:

Mike Birbiglia The New One

Watch more by Mike Birbiglia on Netflix:

What I Should Have Said Was Nothing

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend

Don’t Think Twice

 

So you’ve just decided to click on my blog. No matter whatever (or whoever) has brought you here, you’re sure to be in for a treat. This is my first blog ever so it might not be up to par with all of these other blogs, but it’ll surely be something.

I contemplated what I wanted to write about for a long time and I think I’ve decided on something that I really love: comedy.

For as long as I can remember I’ve loved watching comedy, and I’ve been influenced by so many comedians in my lifetime. I watch their stand-up specials, their movies, their videos. I recite their jokes word for word to my siblings, making us a part of them too.

Comedy has a profound impact on the world as well. Humor is something that people turn to when they don’t know what else to do. It’s a pick-up for everyone across the globe.

Jokes are a universal language.  They can be communicated and understood by everyone which is what makes them so enjoyable.

As for myself, although I believe I’m generally a funny person, I am not a comedian, and I do not aspire to be one. Still, I’ve come to love comedy, and the idea of uniting a whole group of people with just a sentence or two is astonishing.

So in this blog, I’ll be watching, reviewing, and perhaps—but probably not—attempting to write my own comedy. I’ll go through what I think is good comedy, and what I think is not, focusing not only on what doesn’t work but also why it doesn’t. I also plan on going into detail about some of my favorite comedians and why they’ve earned the title. We’ll struggle through my writing comedy together and see if I can hold a match to the comedy legends I love.

I hope that you’ll stick with me through this journey that is my blog. And as Bill Wurtz said so eloquently in his acceptance speech at the 2014 Short Awards, “Thank you.”