“A career in humor will require years of practice, dedication, and rejection.” – pg. pg. 19
“You throw a perfectly straight line at the audience and then, right at the end, you curve it. Good jokes do that.” – pg. 27
“Incongruity is the clash of incompatible ideas or perceptions.” – pg. 33
“Good humor is a paradox – the unexpected juxtaposition of the reasonable next to the unreasonable.” – pg. 55
“You must believe in the importance of the material, because the audience will be able to tell if you don’t.” – pg. 165
Another Notes Log:
Terms
- POWs (Play on Words) – Majority of humor. It’s a twist on something familiar that uses double entendres, homonyms, puns, etc.
- Malaprop – Misuse of a word for humor (ex. “Having one wife is called monotony.”)
- Simple Truth – Reexamining every major word in a phrase and rejecting its most common meaning. Reinterpret literally. It makes logic illogical. (ex. “I slept like a log last night. I woke up in the fireplace.”)
- Takeoff – A standard expression with outrageous commentary (ex. “I looked up my family tree and saw three dogs using it.”)
- Reverse – Adds a contradictory tagline (ex. “You know you have a drinking problem when the bartender knows your name. And you’ve never been to that bar before.”)
- Exaggeration – Works as an overstatement or an understatement (ex. “When I’m in bed, I fantasize that I’m someone else.”)
Other Notes:
- Hard sounds, like the letter “k” are funnier than others
- Specific places and products are funny than their generic counterparts (ex. “Skittles” is funnier than “candy”)
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