Welcome to Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian
Advice and commentary about the art of standup from NYC comedian Matt Ruby.
This is a newsletter about doing standup comedy. It’s inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.1 Well, as inspired as you can be by something you’ve never read. I just like that framework of “things I wish someone had told me when I was starting out.” Experienced comics and comedy nerds will probably also enjoy.
It’s written by me, Matt Ruby. Some credentials: Here’s my comedy site, my latest special, and links to my first and second albums.
“But you’re not big or famous. Why should we listen to you?” Well, who else ya gonna listen to? Also: If I was big/famous, I probably wouldn’t write this because I’d be on a private jet doing shots of Mezcal while yelling at my publicist. Sometimes you gotta drink from the well you find as opposed to the well you want.
I spent years writing a blog about the art of standup called Sandpaper Suit and it was pretty popular among newbie comics back when blogs were a thing. So let’s see if we can’t run it back in a fresh way in this new age of newsletters.
“But I think you’re wrong about…” Cool. Do it your way. I’m giving you my philosophy based on my years of doing standup, comedians/bits I love, and conversations I’ve had. And I’ll quote a lotta great comics and other experts too. You don’t have to agree and I encourage you to pipe up in the comments with any dissents.
How it’s gonna work: Every Monday/Wednesday/Friday, I’ll post another edition. I’m going to deal mostly with evergreen stuff about the actual craft of writing jokes, going onstage, and making a roomful of people laugh (as opposed to algorithm trickery and/or whatever else Zuckerberg and the Chinese government want us to focus on).
If you dig it, please post about it, tell a friend, and/or subscribe. If I don’t get a bunch of subscribers within three months, I’ll probably stop doing it. So it’s up to you to help make this thing fly.
You can always contact me at mattruby@hey.com with comments/feedback.
Onward!
Actually, Rilke sounds a lot like a standup comedian:
Rilke was hardly qualified to give career advice at that point in his life. He was a son who refused to go to his dying father’s bedside, a husband who exploited and abandoned his wife, a father who almost never saw his daughter and who even stole from a special fund for her education to pay for his first-class hotel rooms. He was a seducer of other men’s wives, a pampered intellectual gigolo, and a virtual parody of the soulful artiste who deems himself superior to ordinary people because he is so tenderly sensitive, a delicate blossom easily punished by a passing breeze or sudden frost.