Getting the joke (and then some)

Today's post isn't gonna be about much as not a great deal has happened since yesterday, and there is nothing really major on my mind. I haven't got any new bugbears that are getting to me (i'm speaking metaphorically, not of the mythological bugbear that eats children) but I'm trying to make sure I write something in here every day even if it is about nothing in particular.

So I'm just gonna post something in here that I read the other night that made me laugh. It's from a book on stand-up comedy called Getting the Joke by Oliver Double and the chapter this is taken from is all about working the audience. The general gist of the chapter is about the exchange of energy between the comedian and the audience. This particular excerpt is from an interview with a comedian called James Campbell:

James Campbell finds that playing to audiences of children means he has to pay particular attention to energy levels: "With an adult stand-up gig, you try and build it and build it and build it until you've got people literally rolling around in the aisles with tears streaming down their face. You try and do that with a kids' audience, they get hysterical. And the lid just blows off. So you have to keep calming them down every now and again. So you don't get that constant build up. You can do it to a certain extent, towards the end, but I mean some of them will literally wet themselves... There is nothing more horrible than the sound of three hundred children laughing because you've paused. You get that fake laughter, hysterical laughter. They're just laughing because they're supposed to be laughing, and they can't remember why they're supposed to be laughing. It's horrible, it's demonic."

I could just imagine the first time James Campbell did a comedy routine to kids without being aware of this phenomenon. Getting halfway through his routine and the realisation dawning on him that the kids won't stop laughing. He's stopped telling jokes but they're still going and he becomes scared. He tries to shout for them to calm down but they're not listening. They're like those weasels from Who framed Roger Rabbit and they're in danger of laughing themselves to death. The parents rush in to settle their kids down but they can't. He's created a monster and they can't stop it. And even as he walks away and out of the building he can still hear them; their wails of laughter still haunting him.

I'm off to get some work done now. Got my minor project pitching session in a month so I'll probably do a little bit on that and I gotta try and get 2000 words on my dissertation done by the end of January as well, and so far I got zip... But I'm not worried (probably a bit of a stupid thing to say but it's true).

Until tomorrow

Dan