As a former card-carrying English major, and the kind of person who gets irritated by misplaced apostrophes (“Ladie’s Shoe’s on Sale!”), I have to make an embarrassing confession–I am addicted to ellipses… I think I first saw the power of the magical three dots when I would read Larry King’s newspaper column. Larry would simply string together a handful of not-very-risky opinions (usually, but not exclusively, about celebrities), introduced by some regular guy phrase like “for my money” or “if you ask...
Michael Dane
IT’S WHAT I DO
all about comedy, writing, and words…
getting my brood on
Here’s why I’m worried about my prospects as a writer: great writers, at least as they’ve been portrayed romatically, not only are able to write when their personal lives become unhinged, but actually produce their best work in their darkest days. Me–not so much. I have been moved and awed by the personal revelations written under extraordinary circumstances here–the bravery from people willing to lay their lives bare in print. Yet when I am facing challenging times, that spigot seems to be...
drawing a blank
I’ve typically dismissed horror stories about social networking sites as so much Luddite paranoia, partly because, as a relatively unknown comedian and novice print humorist, it probably wouldn’t hurt my career to have someone stalking me. I need visibility. Hell, I’d give you my social security number if you told me you liked one of my shows. But now, I understand the dark side. I get an email tonight from someone who apparently found me through classmates.com which led him to MySpace....
you can’t teach that
For the first time in a while, I’ll be teaching again this week. Before you start congratulating me for re-entering this most noble of professions, it’s not like I’ll be teaching about the towering figures in modern literature, or advances in higher mathematics, or, really anything with practical value. I teach stand-up comedy. There are some problems with this as a way to make money. First, I’m not sure why anyone would take a stand-up comedy class, since the stand-up ‘boom’ ended...
the comedy trenches
Thought I’d give you a comic’s-eye view of your basic road gig… I’m on a bus headed to Minnesota. On Saturday night I begin my return to standup comedy, with a performance for the Rotary Club of Buffalo, Minnesota. On the surface, none of that exactly screams ‘show business’-not Rotary Club, not Buffalo, not Minnesota. But, it is a gig. I feel a bit like Michael Corleone in The Godfather–no matter how many times I try to leave standup, “it keeps pulling...