Cody Konior

I’m tired. I stay up late every night doing nothing, and my weekends go so fast seemingly doing stuff for everyone else, so much so that they are more stressful than relaxing. I’m feeling down because a couple of people rated my videos down on funnyordie.com which I don’t understand at all because the audience reacted well and to be honest the standard of videos on funnyordie.com isn’t that high anyway. And I’m super overweight, I haven’t been able to get myself to get back into my exercise regime due in part to that ridiculous lack of sleep from above.

I started putting together a set list for tomorrow night, but with all of these factors, it has failed to materialise into something funny. There are some good ideas, but it’s probably still a week or two away from becoming something I’d be comfortable saying on stage to make people laugh.

So I’ve cancelled my spot for tomorrow night. I really hate to do that, because it IS so unprofessional, and spots are so hard to come by. And I could have re-run old stuff. But I hate that, and I don’t want to do it. I want to do new stuff, I want to make my stuff better, and that’s what I’m going to do. Just this time I’ve run out of time.

Last night I had a special call to fill in at Comedy Lounge just a few hours before the show was set to start.

I quickly watched my video from Wednesday night and realised that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. There was plenty of laughter, and the main problems were me messing up my own lines and sometimes stepping on the laughter too early.

So I decided to try the same thing again, after all what’s the worst that could happen in front of a professional audience?

I did remove a few sections that weren’t that great, and revised a few words here and there, plus filled a minute of the space with material that I knew worked from my first deadpan set. And the results were pretty spectacular, probably my best night at Comedy Lounge so far.

It was a big surprise for me. Firstly, I should have more faith in my material even when it doesn’t hit the first time. Secondly, I started doing deadpan but switched to my normal voice mid-way and it still worked; so I think it’s more to do with the type of material than the way in which I say it.

Also I ended the set poorly, it wasn’t clear I was actually finished. That was my bad. Also the very last joke completely bombed, which was weird because it completely hit the first time.

I have a recording of it all and will put it up tonight. I think it’s worth watching this one first, then watching the difference in the video from Wednesday night. It’s night and day.

Now I have to start preparing for a new show on Tuesday. I already have 30 seconds of it ready. The rest I’ll pick up from my rapidly diminishing backlog of pre-written material, and I’ll be hoping real hard for some inspiration in writing new stuff over the weekend!

I’m the 75th most viewed Australian Comedian of the day on YouTube! Kind of sad if you think about it, but I’ve never done that before, so thanks everyone!

Update: I am now the 65th most viewed Australian Comedian of the day on YouTube! How high can I go? My YouTube link is http://www.youtube.com/user/codykonior.

Update: I am now 54th!

I had put together a set list for tonight but it just didn’t flow like my previous acts and because so much material was related to porn, I felt like it didn’t represent me properly as a comedian or a person. So I scrapped it.

I started working on a second set list based on a retrospective of my life now that I’ve turned 30. I got half way through and I liked it but it sounded more like a biography than something funny to act out on stage. So I scrapped that too.

But somehow I managed to mix the two together into a coherent sequence of thoughts and, by accident, worked out a way to deliver them as deadpan. Up to now I’ve only delivered the odd tag as deadpan, but this is taking the whole set list to the extreme.

While I was practicing last night I broke out into laughter because I imagined people laughing and thought it was that hilarious. That doesn’t happen very often (repetition makes it lose the spark)!

I feel so excited to go try this tonight, whereas before I was really dreading going up. I feel like this humour reflects more of my true personal thoughts and opinions, which is exciting for me because I’m trying hard to make my comedy more authentic to my natural sense of humour (if I have one).

With that said I’m now terrified it’s going to bomb completely, because it’s so different to what I’ve done in the past and people who’ve seen me before might be lost and not be able to cross that gulf with me. Deadpan brings with it (in my head, at least) the risk of being boring. I’m imagining a few people leaving through the set right now.

But I think (and hope so bad) that some people will get it. Here goes everything!