Daniel Steinberg is a frum comedian in Columbus Ohio.
I got bitten by the stand-up comedy bug as a teenager; I always enjoyed comedians and making people laugh and the summer after high school I saw a classified ad for an open-mike night where they give amateur comedians five minutes of stage time to try out new material. I was still too young to drive so my father chauffeured me to my big debut.
Something that takes easy-to-relate-to situations or experiences like those digital speed-limit signs you see on the road that tell you how fast you’re going and then picks apart some idiosyncrasy about it like the fact that every car has one on its dashboard: it’s called a speedometer; if I want to know how fast I’m driving I’ll look down. A joke will fail if you don’t commit to it. Performing a joke without confidence and conviction will inevitably result in it landing dead in the water even if it happens to be well written. Also jokes that seem incongruous for the performer — like a skinny comedian talking about dieting—or jokes that are clearly untrue because they make audiences feel like they’re being “had ” they won’t buy into the premise.
I have a joke about how parenting little kids is like being a janitor on account of all the messes they make. That’s why when parents split up whoever gets the kids is called “getting custody” from the word “custodian.” That technique the tying together of two seemingly disparate subjects — custody and custodian — is a go-to trick I learned from a famous comedian. I use it a lot when crafting new jokes.
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