Nerdwriter takes a look at Louis and Seinfeld...
8/5/16
Music festivals, traffic, Trump, bomb robots, etc.
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The Media
I wish all these goofs complaining about "the media" would realize there are only like 30 real journalists left in this entire nation and "the media" is actually a bunch of millennials who live in Greenpoint who copy/paste tweets, then A/B test 30 different outrageous headlines, and then go to open mics to do jokes about Game of Thrones. They're as incredulous as you are that anyone is paying attention to anything they do and the only reason they have a platform at all is because y'all clicked on a video of people putting rubber bands on a watermelon until it breaks.
Music Festivals
I liked it better before music festivals took over summers and you could actually see a band you love in a decent venue instead of having to take a ferry to stand in a muddy field next to a bunch of mooks on molly and chicks taking flower crown selfies all so you can barely see a schizo shuffle "I like everything that's popular" lineup perform on the CitiSamsungPepsiToyota stage.
Judaism and Yo Mamma
"So you're Jewish?"
"Actually, I'm more of an atheist."
"But is your mom Jewish?"
"Yes."
"Then you're a Jew."
Judaism is like the Hotel California of religion...I can check out anytime I like but I can never leave.
Traffic
Advice to suburban people: Never complain to New Yorkers about being stuck in traffic. We get it, traffic sucks – but it ain't no subway. You're "stuck" in a personal cocoon of safety where you get to control the temperature, music, and make phone calls. We ain't gonna feel bad for you until you got a homeless dude in the backseat and some half-eaten chicken wings lying around and an unidentifiable smell and an announcement every 10 minutes about how unwanted sexual conduct shouldn’t be a part of your commute. Until then, you may as well be riding in a golden chariot as far as we're concerned.
Osama
Crazy how everything is going EXACTLY how Osama hoped it would go. This diabetic goon hiding out in the desert whose only real weapon was videotaped speeches got 18 mooks with boxcutters together and set a trap for us and we fell right into it and invaded and keep doing drone strikes that are terrorism fertilizer and he's gonna get his clash of civilizations that's impossible for us to win and meanwhile we got W. swaying at funerals and singing gospel songs like he ain't been 100% punked out.
Cops
I hate how these cops getting shot by lone-wolf randos is distracting us from the systemic issues in policing.
"The OVERWHELMING amount of cops are good people."
The guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment were good people too. It's the job and having power that creates the problem.
“We can’t tell what happened on that video.”
It doesn’t matter what happened in that one video. It’s about ALL the videos. It’s about the pattern. It’s about the metadata. Things are not working.
“Cops aren’t racist. That MN cop who shot him was hispanic. The Freddy Gray cop in Baltimore was black.”
It's not that all (or most) cops are racist. It's that they are on the front line of enforcing a judicial system that is unfairly skewed against black people.
The war on drugs unfairly targets black communities - see ridic crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing disparity that existed for years. The for-profit prison industry forces us to fill vacancies in perverse criminal hotels and when beds need to be filled you know who gets targeted first. And once someone's a convict, good luck getting back on track. And then police forces like the one in Ferguson get revenue by disproportionately ticketing black people and then minor offenses turn into arrest warrants and then…well, you get it.
Basically, our society forces cops to be the tip of the sword that enforces a corrupt system. Inevitably, things go wrong with that. Every traffic stop or stop-and-frisk increases the odds that there will be a violent encounter. It’s shitty all the way around.
Now, it’d be one thing if cops were willing to admit that things go wrong or that cops can get out of hand. But they never do. We have a code of silence among the people sworn to protect us. They care more about covering up for their buddies than justice.
And everyone can see it. Cameras mean white people are finally realizing what black people have known for years. “My body cam fell off as I was shooting this black man who was selling CDs. Oops!” C’mon. It’s insulting.
That is why people are protesting. Because cops are behaving like gangs or the mafia and not like people who are out there to protect us. As long as all cops automatically cover up for each other, they will get lumped together as conspirators.
Craziest thing is we don’t even have a way to measure how many people get shot by cops. You only improve what you measure. And yet we still need reporters to track down the number of police shootings instead of having the government keep a database. Did you know the government measures the victims of unprovoked shark attacks? Maybe we’ll get some answers if there are some shark-and-frisks.
The guy who shoots cops faces justice. The cops who shoot black men never face justice. They don't get convicted. In our courts, police get away with everything and black men get away with nothing unless they're OJ.
I'm not anti-cop, I'm pro-justice. And right now, the police are the front lines of an unfair criminal justice system and deserve to be called out for it. Sure, I feel bad for the good cops out there. But I care more about justice. And when the good guys repeatedly demonstrate they don’t care about justice, I start to think that maybe they’re not the good guys.
That Bomb Robot
very sad those cops got shot but good lord it's terrifying that we got militarized police departments that dress up like storm troopers and also have the ability to explode people with bomb robots. seriously, we can’t get a robot that tases or uses tear gas or knows kung fu? we got self driving cars so this seems like nice tech to get because it keeps police from being executioners and maybe they’re doing enough of that already and also there is a reason cops and judges are different people. crazy how our society is having less and less faith in police officers while simultaneously giving them increasingly powerful weapons. kinda like saying, "you keep running over people...here's a bigger, faster car!" at the very least, i'd like some guidelines on when it’s ok for cops to disappear people rather than JUST USE YOUR DISCRETION WITH YOUR NIGHTMARE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE ROBOT, MR POLICEMAN.
Vampire Trump
You get it, right? Donald Trump doesn’t actually want to be President. The job would be a nightmare for him. As if he’d wake up every morning and reach a bunch of briefings and reports. C’mon.
He doesn’t care about any of the things he pretends to care about. He doesn’t actually think Obama is from Kenya. He’s not actually going to build a wall. He’s just spouting a bunch of right wing talk radio talking points because he saw a gap between what people loved hearing from talkshow hosts and what they were getting from politicians. There was shelf space on the right.
What he actually wants is for the word “Trump” to be said by as any people as possible. It’s all he’s wanted for his entire life. Each headline or tweet with his name in it feeds him. There is no such thing as bad publicity to him.
He is a ghoul vampire who thinks that every time someone says or reads the word “Trump” his soul will gain another year of immortality.
Rage on all you want. Your hatred feeds the beast. To him, your rage is as good as love. The more you say ANYTHING about him out loud, the more you make him feel alive.
Lobby
INT HOTEL LOBBY
I'm standing there talking to someone I'm trying to impress. A stranger approaches...
"Hey, do I know you?"
"Well, I'm a standup comic."
"I don't think that's it."
"I got this show named Vooza. Maybe you've seen that?"
"Nah, I'm a bartender."
"Oh."
"I think you used to come into the bar I worked at all the time."
"I don't really hang out at bars that much."
"Walter's in Fort Greene."
"Yeah, that's it."
Have a swell weekend.
Want emails like this sent to you? Join my email list.
The Media
I wish all these goofs complaining about "the media" would realize there are only like 30 real journalists left in this entire nation and "the media" is actually a bunch of millennials who live in Greenpoint who copy/paste tweets, then A/B test 30 different outrageous headlines, and then go to open mics to do jokes about Game of Thrones. They're as incredulous as you are that anyone is paying attention to anything they do and the only reason they have a platform at all is because y'all clicked on a video of people putting rubber bands on a watermelon until it breaks.
Music Festivals
I liked it better before music festivals took over summers and you could actually see a band you love in a decent venue instead of having to take a ferry to stand in a muddy field next to a bunch of mooks on molly and chicks taking flower crown selfies all so you can barely see a schizo shuffle "I like everything that's popular" lineup perform on the CitiSamsungPepsiToyota stage.
Judaism and Yo Mamma
"So you're Jewish?"
"Actually, I'm more of an atheist."
"But is your mom Jewish?"
"Yes."
"Then you're a Jew."
Judaism is like the Hotel California of religion...I can check out anytime I like but I can never leave.
Traffic
Advice to suburban people: Never complain to New Yorkers about being stuck in traffic. We get it, traffic sucks – but it ain't no subway. You're "stuck" in a personal cocoon of safety where you get to control the temperature, music, and make phone calls. We ain't gonna feel bad for you until you got a homeless dude in the backseat and some half-eaten chicken wings lying around and an unidentifiable smell and an announcement every 10 minutes about how unwanted sexual conduct shouldn’t be a part of your commute. Until then, you may as well be riding in a golden chariot as far as we're concerned.
Osama
Crazy how everything is going EXACTLY how Osama hoped it would go. This diabetic goon hiding out in the desert whose only real weapon was videotaped speeches got 18 mooks with boxcutters together and set a trap for us and we fell right into it and invaded and keep doing drone strikes that are terrorism fertilizer and he's gonna get his clash of civilizations that's impossible for us to win and meanwhile we got W. swaying at funerals and singing gospel songs like he ain't been 100% punked out.
Cops
I hate how these cops getting shot by lone-wolf randos is distracting us from the systemic issues in policing.
"The OVERWHELMING amount of cops are good people."
The guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment were good people too. It's the job and having power that creates the problem.
“We can’t tell what happened on that video.”
It doesn’t matter what happened in that one video. It’s about ALL the videos. It’s about the pattern. It’s about the metadata. Things are not working.
“Cops aren’t racist. That MN cop who shot him was hispanic. The Freddy Gray cop in Baltimore was black.”
It's not that all (or most) cops are racist. It's that they are on the front line of enforcing a judicial system that is unfairly skewed against black people.
The war on drugs unfairly targets black communities - see ridic crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing disparity that existed for years. The for-profit prison industry forces us to fill vacancies in perverse criminal hotels and when beds need to be filled you know who gets targeted first. And once someone's a convict, good luck getting back on track. And then police forces like the one in Ferguson get revenue by disproportionately ticketing black people and then minor offenses turn into arrest warrants and then…well, you get it.
Basically, our society forces cops to be the tip of the sword that enforces a corrupt system. Inevitably, things go wrong with that. Every traffic stop or stop-and-frisk increases the odds that there will be a violent encounter. It’s shitty all the way around.
Now, it’d be one thing if cops were willing to admit that things go wrong or that cops can get out of hand. But they never do. We have a code of silence among the people sworn to protect us. They care more about covering up for their buddies than justice.
And everyone can see it. Cameras mean white people are finally realizing what black people have known for years. “My body cam fell off as I was shooting this black man who was selling CDs. Oops!” C’mon. It’s insulting.
That is why people are protesting. Because cops are behaving like gangs or the mafia and not like people who are out there to protect us. As long as all cops automatically cover up for each other, they will get lumped together as conspirators.
Craziest thing is we don’t even have a way to measure how many people get shot by cops. You only improve what you measure. And yet we still need reporters to track down the number of police shootings instead of having the government keep a database. Did you know the government measures the victims of unprovoked shark attacks? Maybe we’ll get some answers if there are some shark-and-frisks.
The guy who shoots cops faces justice. The cops who shoot black men never face justice. They don't get convicted. In our courts, police get away with everything and black men get away with nothing unless they're OJ.
I'm not anti-cop, I'm pro-justice. And right now, the police are the front lines of an unfair criminal justice system and deserve to be called out for it. Sure, I feel bad for the good cops out there. But I care more about justice. And when the good guys repeatedly demonstrate they don’t care about justice, I start to think that maybe they’re not the good guys.
That Bomb Robot
very sad those cops got shot but good lord it's terrifying that we got militarized police departments that dress up like storm troopers and also have the ability to explode people with bomb robots. seriously, we can’t get a robot that tases or uses tear gas or knows kung fu? we got self driving cars so this seems like nice tech to get because it keeps police from being executioners and maybe they’re doing enough of that already and also there is a reason cops and judges are different people. crazy how our society is having less and less faith in police officers while simultaneously giving them increasingly powerful weapons. kinda like saying, "you keep running over people...here's a bigger, faster car!" at the very least, i'd like some guidelines on when it’s ok for cops to disappear people rather than JUST USE YOUR DISCRETION WITH YOUR NIGHTMARE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE ROBOT, MR POLICEMAN.
Vampire Trump
You get it, right? Donald Trump doesn’t actually want to be President. The job would be a nightmare for him. As if he’d wake up every morning and reach a bunch of briefings and reports. C’mon.
He doesn’t care about any of the things he pretends to care about. He doesn’t actually think Obama is from Kenya. He’s not actually going to build a wall. He’s just spouting a bunch of right wing talk radio talking points because he saw a gap between what people loved hearing from talkshow hosts and what they were getting from politicians. There was shelf space on the right.
What he actually wants is for the word “Trump” to be said by as any people as possible. It’s all he’s wanted for his entire life. Each headline or tweet with his name in it feeds him. There is no such thing as bad publicity to him.
He is a ghoul vampire who thinks that every time someone says or reads the word “Trump” his soul will gain another year of immortality.
Rage on all you want. Your hatred feeds the beast. To him, your rage is as good as love. The more you say ANYTHING about him out loud, the more you make him feel alive.
Lobby
INT HOTEL LOBBY
I'm standing there talking to someone I'm trying to impress. A stranger approaches...
"Hey, do I know you?"
"Well, I'm a standup comic."
"I don't think that's it."
"I got this show named Vooza. Maybe you've seen that?"
"Nah, I'm a bartender."
"Oh."
"I think you used to come into the bar I worked at all the time."
"I don't really hang out at bars that much."
"Walter's in Fort Greene."
"Yeah, that's it."
Have a swell weekend.
Want emails like this sent to you? Join my email list.
8/2/16
Advice for writing Vooza episodes
FYI, I sent this to folks who write for Vooza.
--
Advice for winning Vooza eps:
* Keep scripts short. Finished video under 2mins is ideal. 90secs feels like
sweet spot but shorter works too. 3-3.5mins is upper range of what’s doable.
* The fewer characters, the better.
* The fewer locations, the better.
* Using existing cast members is ideal but occasional guests are possible.
* Think about how to tell jokes visually via editing/visuals/etc instead of just relying on dialogue
* Videos should relate to startups/tech world. The more we can riff off a real-life scenario that startups face, the better.
* Think about what will be shared. Funny is great but sometimes “I was thinking it but they said it” is just as good for getting people to spread video.
* Parody of popular video formats can be effective (e.g. parodying a famous movie scene or popular online video format – like those recipe videos with only hands in them or Facebook videos with text all over ‘em or Apple product intro videos)
* Mockumentary style videos (with interviewer offscreen) or more traditional sketch can work.
* Too many jokes can be distracting. It’s fine to identify the “game of the scene” and just drilling down on that one concept.
* Inspiration for tone: Portlandia, Key & Peele, Mitchell & Webb,
Christopher Guest movies, etc.
* Happy to provide feedback to simple ideas, rough scripts, paragraph “treatment” of episode, etc. No need to polish up a “perfect version” before showing.
* Top episodes of 2015 fyi: http://vooza.com/top-10-vooza-videos-of-2015/
* Don’t try to do too much. One good joke that really nails it is better than a sprawling episode. Good example: http://vooza.com/videos/hackathon/
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