10 Good Things: Why “aww” sucks and more

Also: Earthquake, Martin Mull, and Maria Bamford.

💥 Why Keith Robinson hates “aww.”

It’s become common for comedians to turn tragedy into jokes. But Robinson isn’t looking for tears or applause. And nothing annoys him more than pity. When he dropped his cane during the taping (Schumer walked onstage to retrieve it for him), he poked fun at the crowd for making sounds of sympathy.

“I don’t like ‘aww,’” he told me, referring to the audience’s expression of concern. “I just want laughs. ‘Aww’ irks me. ‘Aww’ irks my spirit.”

💥 Zinoman reviews the new Rogan.

Rogan has found a podcast audience that likes conspiracies and picking culture war battles with the left. And he gives it to them. But he also indulges his own obsessions and eccentricities. That’s missing in his conventional comedy. You can sense him busily trying to serve an audience in his stand-up. He’s giving people what has already worked. And he’s hustling doing it. But comedy is trickier than politics. Audiences want more than just what they want.

Embedded in this critique is some gentle coaching for comedians: Dig into your own obsessions and eccentricities instead of trying to serve them what you think they want.

💥 Cameron Moll on problem solving. It’s also true for writing a great bit.

You keep going over the same ground in order to figure out the premises that connect and find the punchlines that emerge.

💥 “In the beginning, I was more asking jokes than telling jokes.” Tips for becoming a professional comedian with Myq Kaplan (from

Caroline Clifford

).

💥 Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing: “If you're guilty of thinking, you're out.”

If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.

Sounds like what it feels like to try to riff out of a new joke that’s bombing.

💥 Earthquake on Hot Breath! Podcast: “It’s not about the number of followers you have, it’s about the number of comedians you can follow.” He also goes into detail about how in order to be a comedian, “you cannot omit the process of becoming a comedian…which is the stage.”

“It’s not about the number of followers you have, it’s about the number of comedians you can follow.”
-Earthquake