An Insider’s Guide to A Year In Comedy

The Holidays

Well, it’s the holidays, and it’s a hard time of the year to do comedy. It’s the time when all the best-of and who’s-next lists come out, and you might not be on those lists. It’s also when shows go on hiatus or just die off, as the hosts say, well, don’t we have something better to do on a Tuesday? You say to yourself, well, I went to that show ten times last year in hopes of being booked on it and that was time wasted. It’s also the time of year when you have to justify to your parents what you’re still doing in LA.

Springtime

And then it’s Spring, when all the festivals write to say you didn’t qualify to fly yourself to a small city and do unpaid shows, but it’s only because they had SO many comics apply for SO few spots. And who decided you didn’t make the cut? A guy who sleeps on his friend’s couch and lives on burritos.

Some festivals you’ve been applying to for so long that other people have started comedy, done that festival, and quit comedy again, all while you’re still sending in your thirty bucks. You realize that one festival has taken three hundred dollars from you, and you could have just flown yourself to New York to do unpaid sets. You’re on a show with a guy whose whole set is about how he likes smoking pot and how dating is hard, and he’s done every comedy festival you haven’t done. It’s a hard time of year to be a comic then.

Summertime

After that is Summer, when you might hit the road and do some gigs, really remind yourself what it is to do comedy for real people, not those sycophants and ass kissers back home, except for every show you get to, everyone’s at the tractor pull or the air show or they’re just wandering the streets on a clear, warm summer night, holding hands and sharing a bag of kettle corn, like regular people, instead of spending the night trapped inside a sweaty comedy club listening to some LA asshole who can’t even get into festivals. And that’s a hard time of the year to do comedy.

Fall

After that it’s Fall, when your friends who write for television are up for Important Awards, and they look so great in their red carpet outfits. The new shows start and you’re not on any of ’em, I mean sure, you take some comfort in the fact that the pilot you didn’t get cast for didn’t get picked up, but it’s time to get out to the new comedy shows to kiss up to the new bookers, who two years ago were open mikers you wouldn’t deign to speak to but now you’re their Instagram friends, until they stop booking those shows and you quietly unfollow them. It’s a hard time of year to be comic, then.

And then, of course- it’s the holidays.

Gothic Aesthetic: Through The Seasons

I was asked to make a short video of my goth aesthetic for an audition (suggestion: “Like Carrie in Sex and the City!”) and it’s just stupid enough to put here. It’s kind of like hanging out with me, with a Robyn Hitchcock soundtrack that I do not own.  I did not book it, because why would I, but here’s the video!

How About Making Yourself Online Dateable?

Online dating is part of the modern single person’s landscape. Everyone’s doing it, and most of us are doing it wrong!

There are certainly good things about dating on OKCupid, Match.com and Tinder- if you’re new to an area, if you want to meet people out of your regular social circle, or if, in the case of eharmony.com, you want to meet divorced Christian dads in the suburbs- but these formats have their own particular do’s and dont’s.

Here’s a list of common mistakes the online bachelor can avoid (to not kill chances of a possible date):

  • A Woman in Your Profile Pic- When I see a dude on a dating site with his arm around a pretty lady, I don’t think “Hey, she’s really pretty, I’d better step up my game”, I think “well, what did he do to piss her off?”
  • A Blurred or Cropped Out Woman in Profile Pic – Hey, I feel for you guys. Unlike women, who celebrate every dinner, haircut, and outfit with a photo session, guys only get pictures taken when they’re on a date with someone or when they are on a bass boat. Please try and get a decent selfie, or ask a friend “Hey bro, can you do me a favor? I need a picture of myself.”
  • Abs Pictures- Sure, he stopped eating bread and he does five thousand crunches a day, but when’s the last time he read something longer than the list of ingredients on a protein shake? A tendency to post pictures of one’s torso sometimes speaks to a desire to show it to many people.
  • Generic First Message. There are real studies saying it doesn’t matter what your first message is, and the best method is to scattershot HEY HOW ARE YOU to a hundred women a week, but I have personally never responded to a HEY HOW ARE YOU message, and can’t imagine I would do so unless it was sent by Johnny Depp.
  • LONG Opening Message, mentioning EVERY interest and hobby I have and their thoughts about it. This starts to feel stalkery. Wait, how did you know I’m eating a bagel? Are you watching me right now?
  • Talking Solely About My Appearance: it doesn’t seem like there’s a desire to find out about my personality, right?
  • Pen Pals- Once we’ve established contact, and written a couple messages back and forth, ask me out. I’m here for men pals, not pen pals! Also, if you live five hundred miles away, don’t message me- this is not a sexy chat service and I’m not coming to visit you in Pig’s Snout, Arkansas. Ever. Unless you are Edward Scissorhands or Captain Jack Sparrow. Then, anything is possible.

In the interest of fairness, here is a list of men’s online dating complaints that women can learn from:

  • The LIST: Women have a long list of what they DON’T want in a guy. “No fakes, no players!” What, you want someone who’s not a drug addict AND who has a job? Picky, picky!
  • NO Profile: Women that do not have profile info. I know you might be a private person, but no information at all makes it hard to start a conversation. “So…I see you have eyes! I do, too!”
  • Over-Accentuating the Curves –-If a woman’s photo accentuates her body, one assumption is that she is not interested in a serious relationship, and another is that she might be a paid escort.
  • And lastly, Misrepresentation- when women in person are fatter/older/less attractive than their photo.

Again, I understand this complaint. Who among us has not overrated our own looks? When we are picking out our best pictures of ourselves, sometimes we don’t recognize that because the picture is ten years old, we are posting pics of someone else who we used to be. I once had a long correspondence with a man who had deep brown eyes and long, wild hair whom I called “sexy werewolf”, and when I met him, he was just a regular, non-sexy werewolf with one great photo.

Clearly, nobody has mastered the online dating experience.

The truth is that I sometimes meet guys online that I find interesting, but when they make one of these errors, I delete them. I think of these as “dealbreakers” and an indication of deeper problems, and maybe they are, but sometimes I’m just dealing with men who hadn’t spent any time dating online. These are actually the people you want to meet: men who seek out and enjoy serious relationships, and stay off the market while they’re in them. The guys who stay online for years and years, perfecting their online presence and their patter, only pausing to occasionally list what bands they’d most like to see at Coachella, are confirmed bachelors who would sooner kiss a beartrap than give a girl more than a month of their attention.

What I learned is that: the only thing that online dating really makes you good at is online dating- especially in the case of free sites, whose goal is not to pair compatible couples up, it’s to keep everyone in the mix, looking at their ads and clicking, and generating revenue, so, the only real method to online dating is to relax, honestly be yourself, and accept some mistakes in the process of meeting real people!

– See more at: http://www.lovetv.co/how-about-making-yourself-online-datable/2/#sthash.ArBrhccH.dpuf

Dazzling Red Carpet: 14 Prep Tips For Actresses!

It’s 10 AM, time to get ready for the party in 14 easy steps!

1: Blanch skin in boiling water, shave all body hair.

2: Steam vagina with lavender, open pores with small diamond-head drill

3: Get pedicure where fish eat your feet. Leave feet in until you can wear a size 6.

4: After weeks of fasting, refresh and relax by sucking on Acai flavored ice cube

5: Slip arms into leather straps, lower self into a vat of rejuvenating placenta. Whose placenta? Not my problem

6: Whole body is airbrushed the color of the long-extinct light brown M&M

7: Hair ombré dyed, conditioned, washed, cut, blown out, flatironed, teased, finally shaved off and replaced with wig

8: Time to contour! Highlight what you like and lowlight what you don’t until you resemble topographic map of Chile

9: Show makeup artist picture of Kim Kardashian and ask her to paint on middle of face, frame the rest with hair. Have animal fur glued to eyelashes.

10: Wrap body tightly in duct tape and Saran Wrap, tape boobs and ass together for out of this world cleavage

11: Fancy art manicure! Tell manicurist “I want something about the whitewashing of minority stories in Hollywood.”

12: Sewing self into gown, add special matching pouch for catheter bag so don’t have to take it off until midnight

13: PERFECT! Get strapped onto gurney and wheeled into walk-in freezer to preserve look until the Uber gets here!

14: After the event, read all the tweets ripping you apart for being fat and ugly and not trying hard enough!

Color-Correcting Makeup Tips

MAKEUP TIPS!

In order to hide:
Redness- green
Sallowness- purple
Dark undereye circles- coral
Insecurity- gold
Secret crush- orange
Drug addiction- grey
Sadness- glitter

Seriously.  Nobody will think you’re sad if you have glitter all over your face.