Word: stand-up
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Your first stand-up tour in five years kicks off next month. What should audiences expect? I'm trying to tweak the show so that it's not simply an hour of stand-up. And I'm trying to add some more elements to it, which I'm working on now - doing something to justify a $30-ticket price. I trust I'll be able to rise to the occasion and put on a good show so people hopefully feel like, "Well, that was fun. I'm glad I drove out here...
...read that you've been doing stand-up since you were a teenager. The very first time I ever went onstage was the week before my 18th birthday. It was literally the worst thing you could ever imagine happening. I mean, if you saw it in a movie, you wouldn't believe it. It was just the greatest set ever; I mean I was f___ing killing. And I even said, "The red light's on - I gotta go," and people were like, "NOOO! STAY!" So I finished and stepped off the stage and thought, Wow! I'm a genius...
...recent Wednesday night had pretty much had its fill of sex jokes, gay jokes, rants about New York cabdrivers and time-filling banter with the couple in the front row who had just gotten married a week ago. Then, a few minutes after midnight, James Smith, a lanky Australian stand-up who has appeared on HBO's Flight of the Conchords, bounded onto the stage for a 15-minute set to do something a little different. He talked politics...
...delved into the economic crisis, pinpointing the bitter irony of banks' having to declare bankruptcy ("How do you f___ up your only job?"). And he waded fearlessly into perhaps the most treacherous satiric waters of all: the new resident of the White House. (See TIME's history of stand-up comedy...
...left the comics with little to hang their punch lines on. The best Jay Leno could do during the campaign was to poke fun at Obama's mediocre bowling skills. That went into the gutter fast. (Read an excerpt from Richard Zoglin's book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America...