Cumtown Make America Innate Again Commercial
Standup comedy is both a relatively young art form and one that takes a surprising amount of arts and crafts and try to perfect. Having performed standup myself for coming up on two years at present (albeit less oftentimes than I'd like in year two, due to my change in employment and responsibilities in that time), I've learned a lot about just what is required for a good standup set, both from my own successes and failures, my own written report of and with other comedians, both what the really nifty ones exercise and what the newcomers to open up mics don't do. And in one case in a while, I learn something from a comedian who'south been at it for years but remains simply hopeless.
That's where Tom Myers comes in.
Tom Myers is a Baltimore-based comedian who, according to his bio, is 35 years old and has been performing standup since 2001. From all discernible evidence, Tom Myers has non in seventeen years gotten one iota amend at standup comedy, and indeed seems to be a sort of hollow human being, filling himself with the mannerisms of other comedians and with generic perspectives on trite material. Myers is a graduate of Goucher College, which is most known to me as the nearly likely inspiration for Kirk Van Houten's alma mater, Gudger College. Another matter Myers and Van Houten have in mutual is that they both take creative ambitions they should accept abandoned long ago.
I first learned about Myers through theCum Town podcast, a conversational, improvised comedy podcast probably known more by its reputation for crime and making people mad online than anything else. The podcast combines conversation about the hosts' personal lives and contempo news events with in-character riffs and $.25 that tend toward the absurd, juvenile, and/or darkly ironic. Lead host Nick Mullen usually comes up with the ideas for riffs and is also a gifted enough phonation player to pull off a variety of impressions. He'southward almost always joined past co-hosts Stavros Halkias and Adam Friedland, the id and superego of the podcast, respectively. (Halkias is a drawing grapheme of a human whose principal concerns seem to be food, sex activity, and excretion, and who spends large portions of the podcast laughing at the chat; Friedland tends to be more milquetoast, more informed, and generally serves as the target of the other ii's derision.) Information technology'southward frequently very stupid in its humor, with the hosts' ignorance occasionally being the joke itself, considers no target out of bounds for parody, and has roughly the sensibility of three eighth-grade boys who are extremely open about their personal lives (I mean, it's chosenCum Town). Simply it can also be screamingly funny; each episode has some improvised bits and riffs that are by and large of the fairly silly mashup variety merely tin be hilarious in their absurdity, and the recurring characters (both fictional and real ones in the hosts' lives) assistance give what might exist charitably described equally a deliberately lazy show a legitimate sense of world-building and inside jokes. Tom Myers is one of these characters.
Mullen and Halkias are from Baltimore, which is how they know Myers; the two of them and Friedland met doing comedy in the D.C. surface area before moving to Brooklyn. Myers was a frequent subject of earlyCum Town episodes and notwithstanding recurs periodically. Maybe the almost famous Tom Myers standup set forCum Town fans is his appearance onThe Ed Schrader Show, which as far equally I tin can tell is a public-access Baltimore-area show with intentionally poor production values, in the vein ofThe Eric Andre Show or something by Tim and Eric. Myers' banal, pointless comedy is a horrible fit for this, and in detail, his "bong hit transplant" line has become a punchline amongst a certain set. It might non even exist the highlight of his advent, though. Meet for yourself– y'all only need to sentinel to about the 5-minute mark:
Most notable from this set, "bong hit transplant" bated, is that plainly Tom is interested in the opportunity to perform oral sexual practice on a so-threescore-year-sometime Hillary Clinton, and also doesn't know what a pun is. I too don't believe he's tried pot; I think his relationship to drugs is roughly that of how Ryan Howard describes Michael Scott's: "I don't think Michael has ever done drugs. … I don't think anyone has ever offered him any."
Myers' standup tin can be astoundingly hilarious, albeit for all the wrong reasons– it's actually illustrative of everythingnot to do equally a comic, and his sets occasionally attain transcendent levels of ineptitude, the kind that would be impossible to attain on purpose. In that sense, he's more or less the Tommy Wiseau of standup.
After watching besides many of Myers' performances for my own mental health, and considering what does and doesn't work in them– or, more accurately, what doesn't work and why– I've come up up with a formula that I retrieve describes the important elements of standup reasonably enough for our purposes. To my mind, at that place are 5 major elements to constructing a expert standup performance, to taking an idea and making it into a joke that works when performed on stage for a crowd of people:
- Initial idea. At its core, you accept to accept a funny idea or observation.
- Relevance.Why are you talking about this topic at all, correct now?
- Point of view.Why is it of import that we hearyour thoughts on the subject?
- Arts and crafts. If you have these other elements, then you have to write it into a joke. And then y'all have to rewrite it again, and once again, and again, and again, until it's every bit funny as possible, until no word is wasted.
- Stage Performance.This is where getting relentless open-mic experience helps. Even a practiced joke tin fall flat if information technology's not delivered correctly, with the correct cadences and pauses, with the power both to connect with your audience and to adjust your performance to the audience and to how they're reacting to your joke.
Tom Myers has ideas. That'southward it. They have no relevance– his field of study matter is consistently outdated and frivolous, similar information technology came directly from a hack'south guide to The Hot Comedy Topics of 1998. They have no signal of view– his jokes are utterly generic and obvious and could only come from a perspective of someone with no perspective of their own. He puts no craft into the jokes– almost every joke implies the thought behind it with the very setup, then Tom simply repeats the idea as the punchline. Myers writes like his goal is to appear onThe Tonight Show with Jay Leno circa the tardily 1990s, with his combination of stale ideas, centre-of-the-route takes, and his credible desire to write the most bland, crowd-pleasing jokes possible. And his functioning is a combination of tics and mannerisms clearly copied from other comics (most oft Bill Hicks; amid other things, his outfit on The Ed Schrader Evidence is pure Hicks) and an absolute inability to recognize how the audience is responding to him.
TheEd Schrader set was a decade agone; I decided to come across if Myers had improved in the interim by analyzing a more than contempo ready, from the 2017 Charm Urban center Comedy Festival. Much of the cloth on hither too appears on Myers' latest album,Make America Innate Again.(That very title suggests so much about Myers, as its meaning is equally inexplicable every bit his continued standup career.)
I must besides creditBabalugats hither for engaging me when I beginning posted on Myers in the comments, every bit our further conversations led me to interruption down this set initially (and with assistance from him); I do now in item, so we can empathize why this utterly fails to piece of work as comedy.
- Myers introduces himself:"It's swell to be here tonight in front of a group of people who failed to go Metallica tickets."
- A fine enough idea to warm upwardly the oversupply, if a fleck pedestrian, and a bit also wordy. (I looked it up: Metallica did indeed play a testify in Baltimore that night, something I wasn't entirely convinced of.) His laugh afterwards is unnerving, forced– the showman who's practiced a laugh simply doesn't know when to apply it or how to put whatever warmth behind it.
- I'll tell you lot a little about me. I'thou 34 years erstwhile, and my girlfriend looks at my penis the same manner a kid looks at snow waiting to hear if school's gonna exist closed: Anything less than six inches, and there'due south bitter disappointment…
- Okay, Tom's comparison between penis size and snowfall depth is decent enough (if a frivolous topic for a joke), but his arts and crafts completely ruins the joke."My girlfriend looks at my penis" makes the joke so specific it makes no sense. Is Tom'southward girlfriend expecting his penis to change sizes each time she sees information technology? This is a joke where– in a strange reversal of most of Tom's material– he goes specific when he should go general. Besides, too wordy. "Women look at penises like kids look at snow on a school twenty-four hours: Anything less than six inches is merely disappointing." Better. Still not a good joke, simply better.
- I learned something interesting about W Virginia, that is, West Virginia bankrupt away from Virginia during the Civil War. Encounter, Virginia was in the Confederacy, and there was some people in Virginia who wanted to break away from the Confederacy and get back to the Marriage, then they formed West Virginia. So, the skilful people of West Virginia didn't want to exist known as a agglomeration of backwoods, redneck, inbred racists. … Oh, the fucking irony!
- Beingness as generous as possible, the concept here isn't bad: there's probably proficient textile to exist mined out of the irony of how West Virginia is perceived at present vs. its noble intentions in the Civil State of war. Tom Myers is non the man to mine, smelt, forge, or wield that material. Rather than explore the idea, he but lets the thought serve as the punchline itself, thus completely causing it to fail in terms of relevance and point of view.
- And then in that location's craft. Tom takes far too long to get to the thrust of the joke, delivering setup information carelessly and redundantly. And not only that, when he's made the bespeak enough for the audition to get information technology– annotation the audition fellow member laughing after "racists"– he keeps going, only simply to continue through to the same point he doesn't realize the audience has already gotten, killing his momentum (and revealing just how unresponsive Tom is to his audience). Tom'southward mugging later on hurts also, further emphasizing that the joke, in his view, is not about the inaccurate perceptions of Westward Virginians, but the accurate perceptions of West Virginians.
- I drove through Alabama not besides long ago, I passed this sign: "Welcome to The Birthplace of Helen Keller", Wouldn't you know it, in that location was nothing to see down there.
- This is a decent joke for someone attempting their starting time open mic. They go no points for relevance or bespeak of view, and the punchline is unnecessarily wordy, but the basic foundation of the joke as a joke is solid enough for a commencement-timer that I'd encourage them to continue at standup. Tom Myers has been doing comedy for over 15 years, and this is also a good joke by Tom Myers standards.
- I did a show in Kansas recently… I went into this venue in Kansas, right over the bar, it had this bumper sticker: "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun." Whoa. Very intense. I want to come up with a bumper sticker in response to that that says "More young women have been shot in the confront by guns than past Pecker Clinton." … And I'thousand a Democrat, and I'thousand making that joke, all correct?
- The idea of the joke here kind of works on its own terms (once again, a huge win for Myers); the only trouble is, information technology'southward no longer 1998 or 1980. I'll turn it over to aBabalugats comment for a moment: "Is there a worse opening to a joke than, 'I wanna come with a bumper sticker…' Similar you're not even doing bumper sticker humor, you aspire to exist the sort of comic capable of doing bumper sticker sense of humour."
- That kind of blandness most outdated topics gets to what I hateful when I say he's trying to go on The Tonight Show of xx years ago, right down to his "And I'm a Democrat and I'g making that joke!" It'due south all seemingly prepared to exist every bit palatable and crowd-pleasing as possible to Middle America. (Too, equally far every bit craft goes, the joke is both funnier and makes more sense with that appended line if the punchline is "Bill Clinton has shot more than women in the face than my gun.")
- Then Myers does this caput-toss and cackle that'due southclearly imitated from Pecker Hicks, except Hicks wouldn't have done it after a hacky wannabe-Tonight Evidence with Jay Leno-level blowjob joke, he would have done it after proverb Clinton sucked Satan's erect to get the presidency and paid him back by bombing the Heart East like all the other presidents. And also later doing a routine well-nigh Jay Leno selling out where he mimes machine-gunning himself in the face for thirty seconds straight (too featuring satanic sodomy)."More immature women have been shot in the face past guns than past Bill Clinton" is Myers' thought of having similar edge in his humor. In 2017.
- I read an inteview with the billionaire financier Warren Buffett. In this interview, he admits that he drinks five cans of Coca-Cola a day. Five cans of Coca-Cola a day! If he e'er eats an unabridged package of Mentos his head's going to skyrocket higher than his fucking cyberspace worth!
- This is some other sterling example of Myers' material having zero reason to exist. I hateful, who cares about whatsoever of this? Did he just want to make the "skyrocket higher than his cyberspace worth" pun? More to the signal, you're going to call your comedy anthologyMake America Innate Once more, however y'all won't make this joke nigh Donald Trump's Diet Coke habit? (Ah, so it is about the pun– after all, Myers is a Democrat, as nosotros merely learned, and wouldn't possibly be caught implying that Donald Trump has a genuinely high internet worth. It'southward also about the excuse to say "fucking." Edgy!)
- "Donald Trump drinks five Diet Cokes a twenty-four hours. This means that offering him a Mentos is technically an assassination attempt." Boom, already better.
- Admittedly, I thought the first fourth dimension I heard this that Myers was confusing Mentos for Pop Rocks, but I have since learned that Mentos / Coke volcanoes are a real thing. With that said… again, who cares about any of this?
- Did you read nearly the fourth dimension Kanye West broke up a fight between 2 photographers? The two photographers stopped chirapsia up each other, and promptly proceeded to kick the shit out of Kanye West.
- Absolutely no point of view ("Don't we all discover Kanye Westward lame?"), to the signal where the discipline matter of the joke could be "any glory yous remember your audience finds sufficiently irritating." (With Tom, it'south never whathe finds irritating, because he is cipher but an affiliation of exterior traits.) The joke is so bad and obvious that the audience doesn't realize the punchline is supposed to be the punchline.
- Kanye Due west stopped ane of his concerts right in the heart– did you see this? He stopped 1 of his concerts because his wife, Kim Kardashian, was robbed at gunpoint… and who says violence is never the answer to the earth'south problems?
- His second riff on the idea is every bit useless and unoriginal– with the bonus that the punchline contains needless words after the thought has already been delivered (this should stop at "answer").
- I read that the adult video site YouPorn is going to start making adult movies for the visually impaired. Sounds kinda cocky-defeating, doesn't it? Seeing every bit how watching developed movies made you visually dumb in the first place?
- This joke contains ii more standout Myers traits: a)The atrocious writing that butchers any half-interesting thought he has (he can't land the joke because his writing doesn't let the audience make the "masturbating will make you go blind" connection until well subsequently the joke is finished), and b)Mistaking a one-half-interesting thought for a joke.
- Yous ever watch those developed movies? At the bottom, they ever take this option: "Share this to Facebook." Who does that? Who watches i of those videos of people doing the most dehumanizing things to one some other, and so thinks, "This'll top those photos of my niece'due south last birthday party?"
- His follow upwards doesn't add anything to the initial premise, either– some other example of having an thought (Why does porn have a "share to Facebook" pick?) and doing nothing with it. Even just doing the "This'll peak my niece'due south last birthday political party" bit in character as someone who would call back that, rather than every bit a "Who does that?" bit, would add and then much.
- More Babalugats thoughts from our chat: He points out how strange and off-putting it is to call them "adult videos" instead of porn. (Similar to how Myers uses "Democrat" instead of "liberal," which would hit better now– "That subtle out of touchness" as Babalugats puts it.) Additionally, Myers again fails to go specific when he needs to; "the worst, dehumanizing stuff" doesn't land at all– it's exactly a place he needs to draw a specific act for the joke to work.
- We have a lot of funny people with a sense of humor in my family… My uncle is one of those guys. He can make you lot express mirth by reading a acquit-out menu. Of class, he has Tourette's…
- "We have a lot of funny people with a humor in my family unit." Then could you delight go one of them onto the stage? Someone who doesn't still retrieve a Tourette's joke is funny in 2017?
- Everyone accept any relatives who ever have to unplug every unmarried electric apparatus earlier they get out the house? My aunt does that! She does that non only at home, merely at her place of piece of work. And they fired her for doing that– unplugging all the electrical appliances. To exist fair, though, she does work at a hospice.
- Tom's weird family quirk does non extend toward me and I've never heard of it. Tough to make the joke universal in that case. And even if it ismore universal andI'mthe weird 1, this is however a long walk for a weak punchline.
- You've hung in in that location for this long…
- The way Tom laughs at his ain jokes and cackles after his "You've hung in there for this long…" makes me think he might be an actual sociopath, albeit far too ineffective of one to always be of any harm.
- Babalugats: "You've hung in there for this long" is another matter that he'south seen comedians exercise, simply doesn't empathise how or why they practice information technology. … It's a way of building a connection and a closeness with the audition, and makes his stuff feel more than free-class as he'due south reacting to something that merely happened in the room. Just with Myers, his audience has non stuck with him, and are politely waiting for him to finish.
- My mother's not a phase mother by whatsoever definition of the term… I told my female parent about the first fourth dimension I was doing Las Vegas, and no bullshit, my female parent said this: "Now, Tom, while you're in Las Vegas, I don't want you to get into any place that has gambling." Mom, it's Las Vegas. They have slot machines at Gold Corral, all right? You adventure plenty when you go in there to eat.
- I can't bring myself to get into a detailed critique of this long, dull, dragging joke– is the punchline that there'south gambling in Las Vegas, or that Golden Corral sucks?– although with the mention of Golden Corral I'yard at present wondering simply how many brand names Myers has dropped during this set.
- I tell you what, Mom, nosotros were raised Catholic, get ahead and book me in a Cosmic seminary for the elapsing of my stay there, all right? Likewise, if I tell them I used to be an chantry male child, it's the but place in Las Vegas I tin can get a handjob for free. That's a joke, plain… there'due south no such thing every bit a free handjob in Las Vegas… Every time I masturbated, I had to tip myself.
- In that location'due south an actual kernel of a decent joke in there– the "free handjob" punchline, and the "no such thing" twist– except the fabric overall isso trite, and and so on meridian of that he keeps the joke going after the funniest office has passed, with a weird, unfunny tag.
- People ask me where I get my sense of humor, I tell them my father. My father was always big on telling jokes growing up. The joke my dad used to tell us kids a lot growing upwards was "Kids, I dearest you lot."
- This makes me feel bad for Tom's father, both in how Tom paints him as an unloving begetter, and that Tom credits him for his sense of humor.
- I got them back, though. Last month was their wedding ceremony, and I chosen my parents and woke them up at 3 in the forenoon to wish them happy nuptials ceremony… and information technology was fitting, because I wished them a happy wedding ceremony in the same manner that they reacted when I told them I wanted to study theater in college… I concluded their dreams.
- Tom, yous're 35; you're well past the age information technology's acceptable to acquit around this kind of bitterness toward your parents. (At last discussion, Tom still lives with them; I wonder how they feel nigh this joke.) Reading it once more now, I realize that he's not merely carrying around bitterness, only that the very premise of his joke requires him to human activity on that bitterness in a spiteful way. And why not? The rest of his fabric is stuck in the culture of his teenage years; why shouldn't his personal fabric and emotional state be as well?
- Babalugatshas the apt summary I'm certain all the readership volition capeesh: "His stuff on his family is 100% Rupert Pupkin material."
- Again, craft: He says "anniversary" three times and e'er precedes it with "wedding," as though nosotros'd forget which kind of anniversary information technology was. His disability to trim his jokes and give-and-take them for maximum result is almost profound.
- But doing shows like this is fun, but once I become done doing these shows, I become to go domicile to my cat. I love my cat. I really practise. He'southward, uh– my cat'southward my best buddy, he really is. Yous know why? Because a true cat acts simply similar a man. Oh, aye. Heed: I know as soon as I get dwelling house, my true cat, just like a man, is gonna be sacked out on my couch in front of my idiot box going "Hey, what'south up. You lot know my food dish is empty? My goddamn nutrient dish is empty? And have y'all seen the country of my litter box? I know you don't make clean your bathroom, I know, because I tried to apply that equally an alternative, but seriously. Refill my food dish, clean upwards my litter box, and I'm gonna sit here and watch idiot box. And no, I'1000 non changing the channel, either. Well, I don't have thumbs, I tin can't, so. No, I'm non watching Animal Planet, dork. I'm watching my favorite movie of all time,Old Yeller."
- Is Tom gay? I don't retrieve then– or I don't think he's aware of it, because he'southward not enlightened of anything– only describing his cat as "but like a man" and being happy to come up dwelling to his true cat at to the lowest degree raises the question in someone so self-unaware. (In another version of the bit, he really imitates his true cat calling him not a "dork" but a "human," whichreally raises some questions.) He is, possibly, simply attempting some crude version of masculinity: After all, the comparison of his cat to a human being only works if you buy into the calorie-free-beer-commercial version of a homo, andBabalugats also notes elsewhere the strange undercurrent of misogyny to much of Tom's material.
- The big thought behind his closer, of course? Cats hate dogs. An observation every bit original, timely, and relevant every bit every other in a Tom Myers gear up. I'd feel distressing for the profound loneliness of a 35-year-old man having nothing to await forward to except the company of his cat, except that he's a well-documented asshole to other comics, especially anyone critical of his work, even if they're well-meaning.
Myers fascinates me in the way Tommy Wiseau fascinates me, as someone steadfastly devoted to an artistic goal while having no chapters for the arts and crafts, self-awareness, or insight into the human condition necessary to reach said artistic goal. However, Myers doesn't have a masterwork similarThe Room to indicate to, something that sums up all his psychology, complete lack of technical prowess, and outlook on human nature. He just has a long, unending string of standup performance that is absolutely devoid of substance, viewpoint, or relevance, the only recognizable elements slavish imitations of other, better standups' mannerisms. His bailiwick matter was trite when people were making similar jokes around the office water cooler in the 1990s. I chose the title for this article considering, similar Tom Ripley, this Tom has naught at his cadre, is a mere imitator of others, and has even less talent for understanding the hows and whys of man behavior that at to the lowest degree let Mr. Ripley get away with it for as long as he does.
While I near never tire of discussingThe Room, I can merely take so much Tom Myers at a time. The highs are high, merely the valleys are dire indeed. Tommy Wiseau revealed fascinating, misguided depths to himself through The Room. Through his standup, Tom Myers reveals that, relieve maybe a foreign, unexplained (but not inexplicable) anger and resentment, there's not much of a person at that place at all.
You tin can follow Tom Myers on Twitter or subscribe to his YouTube aqueduct if yous feel the need to plunge further into the abyss. (If you'd similar to read more discussion, Babalugats and I have a running chat about Myers that inspired this article; it starts here.) If that's too much, just bask what I am sure is an unauthorized commercial forMake America Innate Once more. (And please let me know if you always figure out what that title is supposed to mean.)
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Source: https://www.the-solute.com/the-untalented-mr-ripley-the-craft-of-standup-comedy-and-the-non-comedy-of-tom-myers/
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