Act 1 — Learn to see funny · Week 5 of 52
Truth
What does everybody recognise but nobody says out loud?
Say something true enough that the room exhales before it laughs.
The five moves
Same rhythm, every week.
1 — Study
Observationalists: Seinfeld, Wong, Gaffigan, Rock's arguments.
Watch on purpose. Specific comedians, specific reason.
2 — Deconstruct
20 jokes: what unspoken shared experience is being named?
Isolate one mechanism. Name it before you use it.
3 — Write
25 premises that begin with 'Everybody does this and nobody admits it.'
10–25 premises minimum. Quantity buys quality.
4 — Perform
Say three of them in company and count the recognition noise.
Somewhere live. The classroom is useful; the audience is the laboratory.
5 — Review
Recognition laugh or polite laugh? Learn the difference by sound.
Watch the tape. Log what the room did, not what you felt.
The Comedy Genome
Tag what made you laugh.
Tag every joke you studied this week. After a few months the pattern stops being an opinion and becomes your comedy DNA.
Your twin asks
Eleven questions, every week.
- What made you laugh this week?
- What did the audience laugh at?
- Where did you lose them?
- Which jokes feel most like you?
- What are you afraid to say?
- What's the funniest version of this?
- What would Pryor do with this?
- What would Carlin attack?
- What would Hedberg remove?
- What would Rock repeat?
- What would Bamford make uncomfortably specific?