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What's So Funny?

Date: Nov 11 2008

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Every party has that funny person who is entertaining a crowd in the corner. Everyone feels like a comedian every now and then when you’re telling a story and all your friends are cracking up. But to actually stand on stage alone try to tell jokes is a very difficult thing because…what if the people don’t laugh?

Though funny things happen all the time, it’s difficult to figure out the secret to being funny. Listen to Jason and Mason discuss a few different approaches.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Jason

Mason

Jason: I was thinking about trying to get a gig as a stand-up comedian because I feel like I’m totally different than all the other stand-up comedians.

Mason: You’d have a weird sort of shtick, you know? It would, I don’t know, be unusual for certain.

Jason: Stand-up artists are always really angry it seems like. I thought maybe I could do something with just being really mellow.

Mason: I don’t know, I think mellow’s been done, that kind of deadpan humor, dry humor. But I think there might be a market for a really happy comedian. No one’s really done that for a long time. You have to go back to the ‘30s or something before you have just an upbeat, happy guy.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. I could use a laugh track just to make it seem even more retro.

Mason: Personally, I’m a black humor guy, like really sadistic stuff where it’s like, I should not be laughing at that because it’s just really not OK, but man, it’s still funny.

Jason: Yeah. I like slapstick. You know that whole…

Mason: ...old school, like Marx Brothers, Three Stooges stuff.

Jason: Totally. I just think it’s so silly, you know? It’s like life is such black humor all the time, you look around you see absurdity everywhere. But you don’t see people slipping on banana peels just left and right.

Mason: You know what you gotta do to see that? You gotta go to improv. Improv groups, you kind of get caught up in that energy of making stuff up on the spot and it gets really slap-sticky.

Quizzes

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Discussion

Jason has been thinking about trying to stand on stage and tell jokes. He says a lot of comedians are very angry, so he might try being mellow. Mason says that a happy comedian would be even more unusual, but his favorite kind of comedy is the dark kind that makes you feel guilty for laughing at it.

But sometimes the world seems like it’s full of dark humor. When everything around you seems absurd, there’s nothing better than some simple slapstick comedy which involves physical jokes.

What’s your favorite kind of comedy? What do you think is the best way to be funny?

Comments

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alez1986

China

hello,two guys.Don’t puzzle.
There are two most pure colors,white reflects all,black absorbs all.
We knowledge is just we know,our horizon is just we see,right?
Buddha say that “Buddha is born in your heart”.
So,are we still willing to see other comedies as comedies?