• Big Smog Home
• Big Smog Blog
• 
• 
• Bookmark this site

It may be difficult to fathom, but when forced on a stage, I'm not as spleen-splittingly hilarious as I come across in print. I know this because I have just 'bombed' while testing some 'material' at a stand-up comedy workshop. 'Bombed' and 'material' are just two of the words I've learned today from comedian Jami Gong as he has led a group of 12 through a four-hour session on the craft in his basement club, TakeOut Comedy. I've also learned the words 'killed' (didn't do it), 'bits' (no relation to genitalia), and 'get off the stage'.

Okay, the last one I only heard in my head.

I'm sitting in my back row seat, being comforted by my editor, Paul, for what was, without dispute, a dog-limpingly lame attempt at stand-up. Sure, I got a few laughs. The crowd liked it when I made fun of my hick hometown: "I'm from a place where there are three core activities: rugby, strangling animals, and group sex. Sadly, for all of them, the sheep suffer." (Thank you, Monty Python.) But despite the sympathy chuckles, my self-imposed display of discomfort is an exercise in schadenfreude. Instead of laughing when I rail about poseurs, I receive expectant blank stares as the audience waits for a punchline I haven't had the foresight to write. After my set, instead of concurring with my sharp and witty insights about said poseurs, Gong asks me what exactly I was trying to say. Turns out he couldn't understand my accent.

God bless the nurturing comforts of print. Yes, you little black and white splotches, you are my babies. Never leave me.

Editor Paul is next and the bastard has the discourtesy to upstage me. "I came here today because of Jami’s encouragement, so I just wanna thank him,” Paul begins, as they audience looks on enraptured. “He told me that doing stand-up comedy was ‘a high like no other’ – but then, he said the same about crack, and now I’m giving handjobs to taxi drivers three nights a week to fund my habit." Cue genuine hoots of laughter. Hoots! I'll remember this moment, Paul – it's the last time this column will be in before deadline.

The purpose of this free workshop is to help raise the standard of stand-up in Hong Kong and to nurture a new group of comedians to fill TakeOut Comedy’s roster. Gong started TakeOut in Chinatown, New York, back in 2004. After its success there, he struck upon the notion of transfering the idea to Hong Kong and thus, in February 2007, established what is billed as Asia’s first permanent comedy club.

During a very serious lecture about the ins and outs of performing stand-up – "We're not storytelling," says Gong before unwittingly contradicting himself, "We're short, funny storytelling" – we learn that comedians should be adjusting their material right up until the moment they start their sets, that it's vital to have a cracking opening and a stellar finish, and that clean is better than blue. That is to say that dick jokes aren't as smart or sustainable as PG-13 material. Family-friendly jokes make you accessible to a wider audience, says Gong. "The blue comics – they don't get very far," he suggests. Very quickly, my favourite comics spring to mind: Eddie Murphy, Billy Connolly, Dave Chappelle, Bill Hicks, Jimmy Carr, Ricky Gervais. Like those guys never made a buck out of a dick joke.

So, after watching videos of Tim Allen and Jerry Seinfeld, and a Q&A session with successful local comics Vivek Mahbubani and Michael Dorsher, the students are given the opportunity to embarrass themselves in front of each other on stage. One brave soul attempts a routine about farts and nose-picking, strangely to a rather muted response. A tall German warns Californians they should be careful with their Austrian governor, because the last time his country elected an Austrian it didn't work out too well. An even taller American jokes that he's not a gweilo, he's a “gwei-high”. A self-consciously nerdy young man tells us of how he gets taunted for his looks. "One guy said to me, 'You've got a flat nose – do you need something to prop it up?', and I said, 'Go away, dick'." A confident Canadian woman impersonates her mother's French accent by doing an Arabic accent. It works.

But the highlight is the last performer, a latecomer called Danny who has an energetic stage presence that isn't quite matched by his ability to speak English. He tells of his confusion between the words "menstruation" and "masturbation" – struggling to conjure up the correct word for the latter, he clenches a fist and pumps it up and down, turns to Gong and says, "You know – with the hand?". He concludes his set by saying, "Today, the great thing I learned is to separate the menstruation and the menstrupation". The crowd is in fits. But then, who doesn't love a dick joke?

The next stand-up comedy workshop is on Saturday, February 21, 2pm-6pm, at TakeOut Comedy, 34 Elgin St, Central. Register for the free workshop: jami@takeoutcomedy.com, 6220 4436.