(no subject)

[which_chick]

I was watching Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill standup routine when it struck me that I wanted to articulate how standup comedy works. It's pretty neat stuff. A good standup routine has a structure and a definite jazz feel to it. At least half of the fun of watching a standup routine is seeing how the parts come together, how the motifs get repeated and woven and made into something more funny than they are in and of themselves. Standup routines, when they are good, are kind of like jazz storytelling... or would be, if jazz used kazoos more frequently.

So, today, for your edification and mine (insidian knows who Eddie Izzard is and may quite possibly be the only person reading this with a hope in hell of knowing what I'm going off about), I was going to chart out the repeated motifs in Dress to Kill, particularly the delightful riff Ciao, and the time intervals that they happened at, so that you could see the weave of the tapestry without being all distracted by the very funny british transvestite guy. (I am not the only person for whom looking at things inside-out holds some appeal. YarnHarlot recently gave in to requests from the studio audience to show her impressively complex knitted mittens inside out. It is NOT JUST ME.)

But, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that didn't actually get done because... because I was too busy listening to my music. Instead of seeing me dismantle a standup routine, you get to read what the auto-random playlist offered me today. I understand that this is about as thrilling as watching other people eat (9 1/2 Weeks notwithstanding) but life is like that sometimes. In (light and honor) of the ongoing Australian Kazaa trial, I've marked with a star items I did NOT download off the glorious interweb (full disclosure: I used WinMX, not Kazaa) but acquired in other ways, sometimes by *gasp* purchasing the album but more often by ripping it off of a friend or relative who already had the .mp3 or CD handy.

*Kingston Trio -- They're Rioting in Africa
Kinks -- Turning Japanese
*Joanne Shenandoah: She Carries the Sky
Hank Williams, Jr. -- A Country Boy Can Survive
Mozart -- Queen of the night aria from Magic Flute
*Adam Ant -- Goody Two Shoes
*John Waite -- Missing You
Mamas and Papas -- California Dreaming
Eberlie Bros. -- Bye, Bye Love
*Modern English -- I Melt With You
*Clancy Brothers -- Reilly's Daughter
Hank Snow -- On the Wings of Snow White Dove
Rolling Stones -- Let's Spend the Night Together
Ozzy -- Mama, I'm Coming Home
*Kosono -- Odo Yewe
*Men Without Hats -- Safety Dance
*Dropkick Murphys -- Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced
*Garbage -- Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go) -- Thanks, Mark!
Verdi -- La Donna E Mobile (from Rigoletto)
*Tiffany -- I Think We're Alone Now
Poison -- Every Rose Has its Thorn
Harry Belafonte -- Banana Boat Song
Joe Diffie -- John Deere Green
*Technotronic -- Pump up the Jam
Janis Joplin -- Son of a Preacher Man
Aaron Tippin -- A Little Dust on the Bottle
*TwoMix -- Just Wild Beat Communication
Crystals -- And Then He Kissed Me
*Barenaked Ladies -- Another Postcard
Alice Cooper -- Novocaine
*Beatles -- Dear Prudence

Comments

[insidian.livejournal.com]

At least half of the fun of watching a standup routine is seeing how the parts come together, how the motifs get repeated and woven and made into something more funny than they are in and of themselves.

Hm. Very true of Eddie, but not necessarily true of other stand-up comedians. Eddie's humor is a lot more about recurring motifs than, say, Jerry Seinfeld, who will do a bit, then another bit, then another bit and they connect up in the segue, but don't necessarily refer back except to tie it all up.

So if Eddie's routine looks like this:

AABBABBCCDDBAEECEEBFFFFC...etc.

Jerry's would look like this:

AABBCCDDDEFFFGGGA

This 'bit-bit-bit' method makes it a lot easier to do extremely short segments that are required on talk shows or late-night, but Eddie rarely does short routines because his method requires a build-up to get to the pay off. Sort of the difference between telling a knock-knock joke and a rambling humorous essay.

Or, you know, not. I'm pulling this directly from the inner reaches of my ass.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

No, I get what you're saying exactly. Excellent use of what I know as rhyme-scheme terminology, there, too. Full marks.

I was gonna (no, really!) mention that not all standup used the build-a-tapestry structure. (I've been reading the stuff about metaphors for discourse that ozarque's been laying down lately. I think that's what got me stuck on thinking about metaphors-for-discourse in the first place. She's got an immediately-clear way of providing a model. Freaking brilliant stuff. Wish I'd thought of it.) Anyway, I almost brought up the different structures of standup, but this was just supposed to be a toss-off (If you can read anything I've written as sexual innuendo, ever, you would do well to at least try that meaning on. Here, you should be getting a definite feel of mental-wanking, what with the masturbatory inclinations of the phrase 'toss off'.) introductory section of a post, not an in-depth, y'know, bit of real scholarship.

As it happens, I'm not a big fan of the nonstructured canape (little mouthful of this, little mouthful of that, not really enough to satisfy at all -- it's like a fucking cocktail party.) humor like what Seinfeld does. It's not my cup of tea. I like the kind of standup that builds stuff, the kind that generates motifs you WILL see again, so that you have to pay attention, so that you have to invest in the worldview being constructed for you. For some reason -- probably because part of the burden of enjoyment rests upon the consumer -- I find it a more enjoyable experience. I like it more when I have to work for it a bit.

I think I need another cup of coffee... I was being attacked by recalcitrant thats in that last paragraph. Usually I can defend myself from subordinate clauses better than that. (Hah! Did you see? Killed it dead, I did. Okay, it was a demonstrative pronoun there, but it LOOKED LIKE the start of a subordinate clause thingie, didn't it? Bwahahaha!) Definitely more coffee.