Jesse David Fox on the Age of a Persona
I talk a lot on here about a comic’s persona, how they create it, whether or not it differs from their person/self, if so, in what ways, and whether or no...
Tag: Chris Rock
Dick Gregory Fought for Political Stand-Up
I’m a Dick Gregory fan; I saw him at the Kansas City Improv just a few months ago. I avoided interrupting my queue of topics just for his death (or Jerry...
Elahe Izadi on the Benefits and Evils of Technology
When I teach courses on media theory, I like to point out that whenever a new technology appears, there are some that hail it as the thing that will finally spa...
Update: James Davis’ Interview with StarTribune.com
On reading the interview, I made some updates to Intentionality – where I talk about the idea that comics are first and foremost trying to get a laugh on-...
Are Audiences Dying Laughing?
Audience Metaphors There’s a lot going on in the series of interviews masquerading as a documentary, Dying Laughing. However, I’d like to start with one I’ve b...
Narrators: Unreliable and Discordant
The idea that we can influence people with words (rhetoric) depends on the notion that the speaker is who they appear to be and mean what they say. Scholars ca...
How to Write a Joke
Everything starts with the jokes. Until you’ve got material that consistently gets laughs, you’ve got nothing – and you need at least five mi...