How to Develop A Sense of Humor

For those of you not quite illustrious or glimmering with your inner funny side, I've had an idea for a short article on how to improve your sense of humor. Here's some ideas in a rough draft form.

DEVELOPING YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR

I see lots of guys fall into the trap of the B Phase, they can approach, but fail to hook the set. As Gareth says, "You're not trying to get her number or get into her pants, JUST MAKE HER LAUGH."

In the last 22 years of my life, I've never met someone who hates to laugh. Can you imagine what a weirdo that person would be? "Laughing sucks. Funny stuff is stupid." Laughter is a wonderful medicine that can take someone out of the worst of their moods. There's many ways we can communicate the funny. In story, in banter, and in action.

For anyone willing to improve themselves, I would say taking some sort of improv comedy is absolutely incredible. It develops a special skill of pinpoint GPS accuracy funny. One of the guys I took a bootcamp with was super analytical and incredibly dry. When we went for our in-field portion, I didn't want to be around him at all. A few weeks and improv comedy class later, the guy has totally changed and is absolutely hilarious. Now I'm not saying taking improv comedy classes is going to immediately make you a funny person, but if you work at it and consistently practice these skills, there's going to be a significant change in your speech, demeanor, and sense of humor.

Aside from improv comedy there are other ways to improve your sense of humor. As with anything, there's different facets of humor we need to keep in mind. To know all the facets of humor is important, but choose to have mastery in 1 or 2. Being a Jack of All Trades means you're a master of none.

When you practice watching humor, you need to pay attention to these things:
1. Content
2. Type
3. BODY LANGUAGE
4. Tone of Voice (pitch, inflection, variance, timbre)
5. DELIVERY

Think of the last time you watched a funny movie or show. After each joke, you laughed and your brain "soft-wired" the joke. If you heard it again, it would still be funny. After walking out of a movie theater, you and your buddies are beaming with your favorite funny quips and jokes. Take those quips and think, "Why are these funny?" Do they make you imagine a hilarious situation? (Bathroom max occupancy 150), or is it satirical? (I AM YOUR FATHER What? No you're not. Take your meds Grandma.) What about plain silly? (Beware of tentacle llamas). Let each joke resonate with yourself. I've learned a great deal of humor by watching and letting the humor sit in. For those of you with NetFlix, you will find a treasure trove of funny stuff.


WITTY - TONGUE AND CHEEK
Witty humor is intelligent humor. Sometimes it can be dry, and it doesn't always appeal to the nightclub crowd, nor the bar crowd. Here's a few examples.
"Hey (guy), it's nice to see you, but if you're here, who's guarding the bell tower at Notre Dame?"
"Global warming has risen while pirates have been disappearing throughout the years. Therefore, Global warming is caused by a lack of pirates."

WHAT TO WATCH
Mystery Science Theater 3000 - An old show from the 90's. They take absolutely horrible B-movies and add smart-ass witty commentary on top. If you're looking for a good one, I recomment "Hercules against the Moon Men."
The Office - A very popular television show, quite dry in humor, but it's still good stuff. There's a funny episode about Pavlov's dogs in a psychological experiment being transported to the workplace.

SILLY, ABSURD, OFF THE WALL
We all know what this is. Think Looney Tunes and Three Stooges. It's silly stuff, and it's really important to learn because this sort of humor can be extremely useful in the field. I use a bit of silly and absurd humor in my sets and the girls are laughing. Examples are,
"I'll take Ape tit for 400" - Sean Connery on SNL Celebrity Jeopardy
"The sun is my favorite planet." - Will Ferrell on an SNL Skit

WHAT TO WATCH
The Best of Will Ferrell - Saturday Night Live - I like him, he's silly and he's goofy. Check out his other movies like Stepbrothers, which is probably the dirtiest, but funniest movie I've seen in a while.
Monty Python's Flying Circus - If anyone created slapstick funny humor, it's the British, and Monty Python is the birth of it all. From the Lumberjack song to "THIS PARROT IS NO MORE," these are the boys that made silly humor what it is.

OBSERVATIONAL HUMOR
Easy to learn, difficult to master. Observational humor takes ordinary things we see every day and turns them into satirical goofy things. This is extremely useful in the field, but needs a ton of practice. This is a skill great for openers, for instance, there is a picture of a unicorn on the wall, I open with "You know why you're freaking awesome? It's because you're sitting underneath a picture of a unicorn, and unicorns are the SHIT!" It's easy to combine observational humor with other types of humor. Think of observational humor as an impromptu springboard for future jokes and quips. Examples are:
"I want to put a pull sign on a revolving door to see how obedient people are."
"Ponytails, on a pony's ass COOL, back of my friend's dad's head, NOT COOL"

WHAT TO WATCH
Demitri Martin - This comedian is ALL about observational humor. He is the best example I can think of. Watch his TV show, "Important Things with Demitri Martin," or his Comedy Central stand up, "Demitri Martin, Person."

SARCASM, SATIRE, PARODY, PLAY ON WORDS
This is another facet of humor that is incredibly hard to master. It involves all of the other facets of humor in order to make fun of, or make light of basically anything. Classically trained musicians are notorious for having nerdy and horrible parodies of classical music, (What the fugue? or I'll be Bach). Yes, very lame. I encourage you to stay away from this, but you can see it being used in a few times in the following viewing examples

WHAT TO WATCH
Spaceballs - Watch Star Wars before watching Spaceballs. It's just making fun of everything Star Wars
Mystery Science Theather 3000 - As noted before, this uses shit B-Movies and relentlessly makes fun of them through sarcasm and satire. It's super funny and I highly suggest you watch it.

There it is. Let me know if you have questions or need more examples on humor. Keep in mind this is a rough draft and I plan on posting this to the FB group after revisions and editing.

In ABC's Brotherhood,
Guile

Apologies, I'm not saying anything said here is wrong per se, but I am going to say this is not a good way about it.

I'm saying this as someone who has performed on stage before for paid fees. I'm also saying this as someone who is a friend to many comedians -- some of whom you probably know. Some others you would know by their writing: they write for shows currently on TV.

The best way I've ever heard of how to learn to be funny was what a very popular comedian currently on the Vegas strip used to learn comedy. What he did was copy every joke out of a joke book he liked. He wrote out each joke, over and over, until he learned the timing and "feel" of the joke.

Hence, I recommend that if you have a comedian you'd like to emulate, try transcribing their jokes, word for word, over and over, hundreds of times. At that point, you'll understand what kinds of words they prefer, how they set-up their jokes, and what kinds of things they would talk about -- you can predict jokes they'd tell in the future.

Difficult, yes, but that's the price of admission.

Whenever someone "needs" to be funny, that's what I recommend to them. For everyone else, I recommend hiring a good joke writer. That's how Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor and Conan O'Brian everyone else does it so consistently.

I actually used to do that, memorize jokes and practice them over and over again. That works too, and yes, it does suck starting out. Thanks for the input McGillicuddy. I'm sure article readers will use that information while watching the recommended postings. You bring up a good point that it is the price of admission.

Check out this thread that I already replied to: http://www.abcsofattraction.com/community/main-lounge-f22/dating-tips-how-can-i-make-girls-laugh-t5771.html

I don't know but i know some knock knock jokes. now i am sharing a knock knock joke:

KNOCK KNOCK
WHO IS THERE?
ANT
ANT WHO?
HAVE COME TO LIVE HERE.