For many years I got my performing “fix” by juggling and being funny on stage, and only wrote and played music for myself at home. In 2010 I shared various songs with some other musicians, and they encouraged me to focus more on funny/clever songs. In 2011 I set myself the goal of writing full show’s worth of comedy material, with the focus on funny songs. Since then I’ve been performing as much as possible in Berlin, mostly at standup comedy shows and open stages.
Which means I’ve also videoed myself numerous times. Below are all the videos I’ve uploaded so far (in no particular order), and I’ve also included a list of all the songs that may make it into my full shows, but that I’ve not yet recorded or released. I’ll add new videos to this blog post when or if I make them.
I Like You – a pop song about love and relationships written from the perspective of 14 year old me:
Leprosy (Yesterday) – a cover of Yesterday by The Beatles:
Rebound Dating – based on true events (video of first ever performance):
Hey Luke, Hey You – I’m very bad at remembering people’s names. Here’s a song about some of my strategies to deal with that problem (video of first ever performance):
Spooked – I wrote this song back in 1999, and now perform it once a year around Halloween:
Bitterly Autobiographical (The Crazy Girl) – advice to my younger self to avoid heartache and pain:
Standup Comedy Jokes My Girlfriend Doesn’t Like – song about open stage stand up comedy shows in Berlin, written from the perspective of my girlfriend, also co-written by my girlfriend:
More songs:
The Twin Song – about the benefits of being an identical twin.
6.022 x 10 to the 23rd – the intersection of science, religion and bodily fluids.
I love you so much (I’d go back in time (and kill Hitler) for you) – a love song for my German girlfriend.
I am Luke’s Wallet – a song written from the point of view of the things I carry in my pockets, about the fact that I’m writing a song about the things I carry in my pockets.
This Song (is called This Song (is called This Song)) – a song about the very song I sing.
The topics were cats and cars. My comic depends on knowing Transformers characters, but I’m not sure that’s a problem for anything published on this geeky little backwater of the internet. While I’m not sure my comic is funny, at least most people will get the joke.
And learning from last week’s attempt (which probably didn’t need the middle panel, the one which kinda spoiled the joke in advance), I decided to not include an extra panel at the end, about a “fur ball” containing bits of cars, and Megatron getting angry about it. Opening with the Bumblebee pun, and having the Decepticat’s name as Snowflake, is funny enough. The start of the unused panel:
Yet again the drawing took only a few minutes, but scanning and other shit made the whole thing take about 45 minutes. If I had art skills, I’d spend more time on it, but after about 10 minutes on drawing I hit the my limit of making any picture better.
For confused readers, you need to keep up with Strip Search, the web comic artist reality talent show. Every week two of the artists face each other in a head to head challenge. They each have to draw a comic strip in 90 minutes, based on the combination of two randomly drawn words, with the loser going home and the winner staying in the contest to win the big prize. Viewers at home are encouraged to do the challenge themselves.
Here are some other home elimination challenge entries I like:
Disappointingly, almost every other comic is a variation on two or three basic jokes:
1. A cat is driving a car… and cat’s cant drive cars!
2. Someone else is driving a car… and they had an accident involving one or more cats!
3. A car that looks like a cat is funny!
This wouldn’t be a problem if I found these jokes inherently funny. Unfortunately for Tavis (spoilers!), Mike and Jerry didn’t find the idea of traffic accidents involving cats inherently funny either.
Juliane filmed (almost) every point of the 3 club combat Fight Night at the Nederlands Jongleer Festival 2013. Here’s a quick edit of the elimination rounds and the third place battle.
There were 8 rounds of melee/group combat to decide who made it int the elimination rounds, and the order of selection decided the seeding. 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6 and 4 vs 5. Each of the elimination rounds were to 3 points (not every point is shown due to changing batteries or framing).
The second video is the battle for supremacy in the Fight Night Final at the Nederlands Jongleer Festival 2013. This features every attack, both successful and unsuccessful, until one fighter got 5 points.
I would have used the original soundtrack, but the DJ played some bagpipe music that was so loud and offensive, I couldn’t make anyone listen to that again. Instead I replaced the soundtrack with the the same music from the Kill Bill soundtrack that played in the opening point “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by Santa Esmeralda.