Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Party Favours...

So this bit was alright. Nothing great. Got the idea for it at a party the night before my show and spent the entire time at there paranoid I’d forget it by the time I got home. The only notable aspect of this is when I go into a NatGeo commentators voice to describe the party-goers. Took that from the Improv game “Changing Channels” in which I’ve gotten stuck with “Animal Planet” as an audience suggestion a fair amount of times now.

I love going to parties. It is like a National Geographic Safari Special for free.
Imitating Nat Geo commentator: Here we see the commonly found “Awkwardus Dancerus”. His wild flapping gesticulation is aimed at attracting the female of the species. When these maneuvers fail he always goes into panic-control mode with the tried and tested “bhangra move”.

Then there are the flocks of socialites. You know who they are. They migrate from party to party and they all have names like “Tootoo, Peeki and Coocoo”. Who are they anyway? You see them in every Social Pages. “Here are Tootoo, Peeki and Coocoo hanging out with Antonio, the hot Italian chef from the Italian Embassy”. Are we so desperate that we can only hang out with the foreigners working class?

My favorites are the old men in the corner though. They always stand along the walls, drinks in their hands. They watch every girl go by with that look in their eye that says, “Ten years ago I could have had her.” But if you cut to ten years before they were standing there going “Ten years from now I’ll have her.”

The main problem with this bit is that I don’t take it far enough I feel. There is so much more that can be done on the topic but ever since I decided on doing a bit on the Party-scene I’ve been running blank after these initial jokes. Oh well. Gotta keep thinking. The part that got the biggest laugh though was the stuff about the Socialites.

Let's G.O to a G.T.

So this is one of my fave bits. I did this on my second time out. Opened with it and everyone loved it. Got the laughs at all the right places and everything. For the unitiated, "G.T." or "Get Together" has been a Karachi phenomenon for the last two or so years. It is basically a pathetic attempt at making a bunch of friends hanging out together sound cooler. First time I heard the term I did a double-take and it still drives me up the wall when people use it. So here it is:

“G.T.” Have you heard of this? Short for “Get Together”. Are we now so busy that we have to abbreviate “Get Together” so that we can free up that extra half-second of time for…what…scratching ourselves. This linguistic laziness is bound to get out of hand. Soon we will be abbreviating everything. You meet someone at work and it wont be “Hey, how you doing” and “Fine thanks, yourself?” It’ll be “HHYD?” “FTY!” And then the de-evolution will continue until we are communicating like cave-people. Go up to a girl and *snort and thump chest*.

The end bit I actually snort and thump my chest of course. Doesn’t really translate too well into print, but this is exactly how I wrote it out to memorize it so it’s kind of nice to put this out there. I’m still really proud of this bit, more so than most anything else I’ve written to date.

Isn’t that always the case? The first thing you publish, paint or perform will always be better than anything you ever do again. Frustrating.

It goes well...

So I've been lucky so far. Had a chance to do two small five-minute Stand-up bits as part of an opening monologue before the Black Fish shows I've hosted.

The first time went okay. Did some stuff about how I'm skinny and how skinny people don't get any respect and got some good laughs from the audience. But that material wasn't risky as such as I've been doing the same jokes for the last few years with friends and I know they worked.

The second time out was all new material. Three proper bits, that I had carefully crafted and worked on and delivered in front of the mirror repeatedly. The first proper Stand-up stuff I have ever done. Topical and observational. I almost threw up before going on. Got up to the mike, really nervous. Got the usual greetings out of the way. Then just launched into it. And the stuff killed. The audience loved it. Got huge laughs at all the right times. Best of all Black Fish laughed. I turned around at one point to see Yasser, Ishma, Cyrus, Faris and Olson, all in hysterics. I was stunned. Didn't expect the stuff to go so well. Honestly. It was a huge confidence booster. Especially when a kid in the front row at one point actually yelled out, "That's so true!"
There is no greater and kinder praise for an Observational Comedian.

Had some down-time between Improv shows recently so been working up new material. All told have around half-an-hour written up. 10 minutes of which have been tested and approved. The rest I'll try out this Saturday at the charity gig we are playing.

The nervous rumbling in my stomach has already started.

Apologies in advance...

I've got blog.

Initially thought I'd use this as a means of archiving my Stand-up material as I keep working on it in case my hard-drive crashes for the billionth time and my inexplicable refusal to create backups wipes out even more hard work. Now that it is set up though, I might also use this to chronicle my journey towards becoming a Stand-up comedian and the things I am learning about the craft.

Basically, I am too damned hip to carry pen and paper around to jot down any ideas and notes, plus this plays into my exhibitionist streak perfectly.

Just be grateful I'm not standing on street corners exposing myself.