New Bit: Memento-ing Movies

I think it would be cool to blog new jokes that I'm working on.  Definitely check me out live and see how these jokes play in front of real audiences!

There's an easter egg on the DVD of the movie, Memento, that lets you watch the movie in reverse.  How much better would movies be if you could watch all of them backwards?

* The Godfather would be about mobsters who come back from the dead and attend a wedding.

* Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory would be about a child who owns a chocolate factory, gives it to an adult, and then becomes poor.

* The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would be about a man aging normally living in a world where everyone ages backwards.

* Superman is about a superhero who saves the world, gets the girl, and then gets on a rocket and leaves Earth for his home planet, Krypton.

* Friday the 13th is about a man in a hockey mask who, after using his magic machete to reverse people's gruesome deaths, becomes a boy again and goes to summer camp.

* Rocky would be about a fighter at the top of his game who gets worse and worse and ends up a normal guy.  In other words, The Wrestler. 

Cartoon

Here's a photo comic Craig Carmean snapped of a cartoon comic Kenny Ortega (who's also a tattoo artist, so is great at sketching) drew:

(That's me with a quote from my act.)

MAD About Comedy

I finally uploaded a .pdf of my first major article in MAD Magazine ("If Different Comedians Told the Same Joke," May 2008) to the Press page of my website.  (You can also download the article here.)

I can't tell you how much of an honor and a thrill it is to be a contributing writer for MAD.  As a kid, I used to crouch over a decaying cardboard box at my grandparent's house in Brooklyn, poring over my dad's yellowing collection of old MADs.  Fast forward to the summer of 2005 - when I participated in MAD's six-week internship program - and I was now actually helping write and put together the magazine that informed the childhoods of both my Dad and me (not to mention countless others).  That summer, the summer of my freshmen year at Harvard, I learned not only about the technical aspects of comedy writing (the editors of MAD are all brilliant comedic minds and just watching them come up with ideas is a master class in itself) but that comedy writing was what I wanted to do with my life.  Combine that desire with a desire to perform and express oneself on stage and - presto! - you have a stand-up comedian.

The bottom line: as a kid, MAD influenced and shaped my sense of humor.  As an intern, MAD influenced and shaped my life.