The 3 Truths: Do I Mean the Things I Say on Stage?

The biggest "complaint" I get from friends and family is "Do you really mean what you say up there?"

It's a fair question. So you have some context, take a look at this 4 minute clip from last year's Burbank Comedy Festival. I'll explain what I'm doing, why I did it, and why all your concerns for my emotional well being are both sweet and wrongly analyzed.

Here's a few general notes. It was hot. I do eat salad. A girl did say I wasn't bad looking. No one ever judged my eating an egg mcmuffin. I did once observe that the mcmuffin was just a compact normal breakfast. I did once paint a girl's room. And I don't follow football, but I know that everyone hates the Raiders. Even Raider fans.

So so what was I doing on stage? I was tapping into three types of truths.

Literal Truth.

Emotional Truth.

Cultural Truth.

Let me explain using a boring, basic concept.

We can all agree on this basic truth. But let me explain the three truths.

Literal Truth - 1 + 1 = 2 is a fact. Case closed.

Emotional Truth - 1 + 1 = 2 is a dumb idea for an analogy. Here's an opinion or point of view.

Cultural Truth - 1 + 1 = 2 is a conceptual idea. We may change the value of one culturally. What if 1 is a pack of three cans? Then we really have 6 cans, but we as a culture still call it 1.

You might be confused. But what comedy does is take a truth in those three ways. So yes, some of those things really happened in my tape. But I tapped into the exaggerations to find humor.

I really don't think I could be Miss Bakersfield. There are many beautiful women in Bakersfield. But there were a lot of "hicks" and more so than in LA. So emotionally I felt more attractive.

I'm not a Raiders fan or enemy. But our culture has deemed them the butt of sport jokes, so relating my faith to another hard to believe faith has cultural truth to it.

I do literally think I'm not very attractive in the LA area, but that's for another blog.

So here is my main point...

Comedy is taking the different levels of truth and creating the funny out of that. A literal truth can't always do that. Literal truth can be sad, depressing, boring, etc. But when matched with emotional or cultural truth, there is laughter.

I've had people ask me this. And no. Though I did think having the image of a crying young girl is emotionally and culturally truthful. Because I do get depressed when people ask me if I am depressed after I talk about my weight, singleness, and being trolled on the internet.

One thing the comedian can do that others can't (which is why comedy is hard) is take the frustrations of life and find the funny. Many other people would just complain and say "stop being mean!"

Comedy doesn't offer solutions. If you want solutions go watch a Ted Talk. Here's one on losing weight if you are upset I made fun of being fat or fat people.