Humor

The Humor unit is a place for us to explore what makes us laugh and how we can gain inspiration from the things which entertain us and create a skit or performance that will make someone else laugh.

For this unit, we analyzed pieces of comedy such as the book Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Each of us we tasked to analyze two other comedians which we could gain inspiration from in order to create our own sketches. I analyzed YouTube animator, Domics, and stand up comedian, John Mulaney. Both of whom take inspiration from their own life and observations and create satirical jokes which they tell in the forms of narratives. Both take advantage of anecdotes in order to criticize the world and entertain their audience. What makes them funny is how relatable their stories are and also how they are able to find critiques of the everyday things that others do not realize.

Here is my full analysis:

Untitled-document

For my performance, I did a sort of combination between a standup and comedic narrative. I followed the story of my life, but filled it with some smaller anecdotes with some satire. I performed it live and incorporated some slides with visuals in order to entertain my audience and give them something to look at other than myself.

Here is my script:

They say “in comedy there is both truth and pain.” And so, I went through all of my insecurities, found all of my failures and looked back at all of my unfortunately unforgettable awkward moments in order to pinpoint the grandest joke ever…

MY LIFE

Now my life is probably the most mediocre, uninteresting, unexciting, un-college essay worthy life one could possibly observe.

Trust me, I love my life… sometimes.

I don’t have an underdog story, but I’m also no fortunate enough to have $100,000 to bribe USC with. Hence, why I got rejected. But that’s ok, not like I could afford it anyways because you get nothing if you’re not dying or rich.

Anyways, I was born in a “normal” family with a mom, a dad, and an older sister. I was never bored. I would play countless hours of Wii, UNO, GO Fish, and mancala…

All by myself

Yeah, think about that for a second. Let me tell you, UNO and Go fish are very difficult to play solo. You begin to favor one hand over the other and you’re always a winner and a loser. It’s like you’re constantly earning a participation trophy like how all kids do nowadays.

Because there are no losers… and apparently no winners either…

I think the saddest part about my life is not that I was alone, but that my parents set me up to be. Look at my name

LOREN

It’s a nice and unique way to spell it. And then you switch the R and the N and it becomes a beautiful description of the person I am.

LONER

Along with my loneliness, my parents also gave me an extremely poor memory. I’m sure we’ve all forgotten things here and there, but imagine having forgotten your house keys 4 times. Welcome to my life! One of those times my dad grabbed the shed keys instead of our house keys. Being the frugal Asian he is, rather than calling someone and paying them to help us get in, my dad thought it would be more beneficial to stick my arm up the mail slot in our door so I can reach the doorknob. Because what other reason is there to have a child than to take advantage of their small stature and make them do the dirty work?

But alas… it didn’t work. Our next idea was to use our drill and try to remove the door. Thank god we had the shed key instead of the house key so we could access the drill. However, being the intelligent man my father is, he grabbed the bocce ball set instead. Sure, let’s just throw the balls at the door and break it why don’t we? We eventually got in at like midnight, but it will definitely be an unforgettable memory… for a few months that is.

There was also this one time where I just forgot my existence.

And no, I don’t mean I forgot my purpose in life like what all of the protagonists in the movie sing about. I mean like I actually forgot I existed.

It was around Valentines day, the loneliest day for all of us loners. My parents were discussing whether there would be 2 or 3 of us for dinner on that romantic evening. I chimed in saying

Oh if there’s 3 people there will be 4

My stupid self

I counted my parents, my sister, and her boyfriend. My parents looked at me with concerned faces and said

Wait, where are you going to be?

My Parentals

And the first thing that came into my mind was (mind my language)

Oh shit I forgot I existed to

So it goes.

It’s hard to believe that I forgot myself when I don’t even know who I am to begin with.

Am I Chinese?

Am I Filipino?

Am I American… whatever that may mean.

I often say that I’m a rotten banana. Yellow-ish brown on the outside and white on the inside with a few dark spots here and there. The only thing Asian in me other than my skin and sometimes looks, though I’ve somehow been called Mexican and Native American, is that I enjoy math and can’t drive.

You know, I think even my parents get confused too. There are times where my friends come over and my parents just say “make yourself at home, we’re Asian.” Or we’ll be eating rice and they’ll say “we’re so Asian.” As if saying those words will somehow placebo them into becoming Asian. But then they always comment on how “Asian” I am and make it seem like I’m not already one? I guess it’s just their way of accepting that I want to go into the arts.

On April Fools Day, we were able to perform our humor sketch in front of our peers. Here is a video of my standup performance.

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode