It is also why we listen to stand-up more than once and still find it funny: there is always an audience present listening to it for the first time, and you are in a state of entanglement.
Read MoreThe Next Generation
But wait: I know lots of "funny stories." It's what makes me that sweet lettuce, knowing all sorts of them, or at least able to talk about them good. <insert book plug here: ed.>
Read MoreMerry X-Mas from all of us at Vulgar Industries
I began my folklore and stand-up inquiry when I first heard of the African-American toast tradition (Deep Down in the Jungle, natch) and thought "That's what Rudy Ray Moore does, n'est-ce pas?" A lot of changes since then but you always remember your first.
Enjoy, you magnificent bastards.
Chris Rock interview
Mo Rocca interviews Chris Rock: of note is his discussion of preachers and the influence on his stand-up. Preaching as a riffing style is part of it, but the ethnopoetics are also a factor, especially among black comedians. Bruce A. Rosenberg's The Art of the American Folk Preacher was a big influence on my understanding of stand-up, and one day I need to develop the oral-formulaic theory as it relates to the routines. Meanwhile, ethnopoetic transcription is the only way to make the stand-up's words live on the page.
Special thanks to bestie Andrea Kitta (@andreakitta), who not only wrote the definitive book on the anti-vaccination movement but also watches CBS Sunday Morning as if her life depended on it.
Schumer and Rivers
Well this is awesome. Don't ask why I'm hanging out with Glamour Magazine.