
Bill Hicks's Principles of Comedy - ivankirigin
http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/176847959/via
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JacobAldridge
I particularly like #10 - "Play to the top of the room." This forces your
audience into a race for the top, rather than forcing you as a comedian
(business person, lover, whatever) into a race for the bottom (a.k.a 'Nutty
Professor 2').

# 1 - "If you can be yourself on stage nobody else can be you and you have the
law of supply and demand covered." makes a heck of a mantra for life. If you
try to be somebody else, at best you'll only ever come second.

~~~
patio11
#1 works well for when people try to copy your business, too.

People warned me this would happen if I kept blogging about my business, and
it turns out they were right. I think I have two dopplegangers now. Turns out
that if you're concentrating on beating your own previous best performance
beating the performance of knockoffs of your own previous best performance
isn't all that hard.

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edw519
_10\. Play to the top of the intelligence of the room. There aren’t any bad
crowds, just wrong choices._

This is true for everything. I am constantly amazed at how many of my peers
bitch about their customers and users while never doing anything to help them
aspire to be what they can be.

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katamole
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6yCinSlZk>

Great interview for those who haven't seen it.

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asdlfj2sd33
I LOVE Bill Hicks, but I'm flagging this because it is absolutely not HN.

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jamesbritt
"I love my cracker roots."

Yes!

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mynameishere
Here's Bill Hicks being "funny"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdKpR9qNtg>

The guy was a pure, pure, foul and vile juveline. "Fuck" "turd" "cunt"
"toilet". That's his humor.

~~~
drenei
You've backed up your comment with one 2 minute long video - that is a
response to a heckler?

Hicks performed for over 10 years - and covered a lot of ground during that
time. If you see his performances as juvenile or foul, you've missed a lot of
the brilliance, and humour that I have found in him.

For those curious about him though, here's a lazy link to youtube:
[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=bill+hicks&search_sort=video_view_count)

~~~
mynameishere
First link's first joke,

"By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself".

Okay, that's a non-joke that you'd expect from a 13 year old. But he's setting
the context, and maybe the best foot was not forward, so let's keep
listening...

Okay, he keeps at that theme for awhile, repeating himself, and then uses the
phrase "Satan's little helper" which I'm pretty sure he got off the simpsons,
which he presumably was familiar with.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22satan%27s+little+helper%22...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22satan%27s+little+helper%22+simpsons)

(I could be wrong, as the vid isn't dated.) He then repeats himself a few more
times and then says, "There's no joke coming" which I suspect is true. He then
repeats himself a few more times adding the word "fuck" which is a word that
stopped being daring on the stage right around Tennessee Williams' mid-career.

He then reiterates the past theme, as well as correctly stating again that
there is no joke involved.

But then he gets to the first joke, about how the marketing people in the
audience are probably interpreting his anti-marketing bit as in fact being
pro-marketing. Okay, not funny, but at least it's a joke. He then performs
several variations on that theme. End of bit.

.......

It doesn't do much good to critique comedy, but the point is: He's repetitive,
he has an anti-establishment shtick that I find trite and unconvincing, his
jokes are punctuated with gratutious vulgarities which are as informationally
valuable as "hmm", "uh", "umm", "whu?", etc., and I sit there watching...and
not laughing...ever. Which is the final test. It is possible to do blue comedy
right, you know.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H94jAkaTqQ>

~~~
dkarl
_he has an anti-establishment shtick that I find trite and unconvincing_

If you're immersed in a world of pro-establishment suckers, then his comedy
provides some validation and relief. I remember what it's like to be a young
kid and feel like my life is controlled by idiots, but I no longer feel that
way. If you've been hanging around with worldly people who have read a little
bit of history, or a little bit of anything really, then this kind of comedy
just _misses_. I still know there are a lot of idiots in the world, but I no
longer feel oppressed by them, so Bill Hicks seems beside the point.

