We made it to Singapore despite the typhoon in Manila. So tonight catch me and GB Labrador at Comedy Masala!

Location
HOME CLUB, 20 Upper Circular Road, THE RIVERWALK

Show starts at 9pm. It’s gonna be packed!

WARNING: Contains adult language. Well I kinda cursed in the beginning but it was just for comedic effect, I really didn’t mean what I said.

It was fun for everyone except maybe for the Igorot kids who won’t get to see a dime from the fundraiser since this was not about them – it’s about the Ifugao kids. There’s a difference, believe me, even if you don’t see it. Thanks to the Hong Kong comedians of TOC. We hope to do more shows in the near future. In fact, we will.

That’s me (L-R) hanging out with Ryan Hynek, James Lee, Richie Fernandez, and Mahesh Mansigani in the green minded room.

See, I wasn’t kidding. This really was a fundraiser for them Ifugao kids.

I’ll be back soon!

At first, I wasn’t quite sure how the Singaporean crowd would respond to my brand of comedy. But then I thought, “Hey at least they understand English”, unlike my one month bearded performance in Doha were hardly any of my audience understood English. I was pleasantly surprised when the crowd gave me big laughs. It was the 5th night of Comedy Masala which Umar Rana hosts. He’s the funniest Pakistani stand up comedian I’ve ever seen. But then again, I’ve never seen a Pakistani comedian. Seriously, he did a great job hosting. From what I observed, the audience over there need a lot of interaction. So I had to adjust my set to work the crowd a bit instead of just going straight into material the whole time. There was also a tv network that covered the show. I believe it was Razor TV. One of the comedians, Gary Ow, told me he’ll send me the link once it’s up.

Met some producers after the show and they’re interested in doing a show so who knows, I might be back real soon together with the Comedy Cartel.

You can’t help it, at some point in your stand up career, there will be a drunk guy who thinks he’s being funny and will try to heckle you with some stupid question. How do you handle it? Well, you have to put him in his place without being mean and alienating the rest of the audience. Most of the time, the audience is on your side, especially if the heckler is just plain stupid and is disrupting the show for everyone. So here’s a clip of one of my recent gigs where a heckler, who was probably thinking he was being good natured, asked me if I were gay. In his defense, the dude was actually a nice guy and I approached him after my set and he said I was funny and his friends credited me with a good come back. I hope this gives you some insight on how to handle the hecklers in your show. Good luck!

In my 13 years (and counting) of performing as a stand up comedian, I’ve learned that a lot of the skills I use on stage can carry over to other types of performances besides comedy, namely, public speaking, presentations, hosting, pole dancing, miming, puppetry, gay acapella, and selling yourself to Oprah. But specific to stand up performance, there are 7 simple yet effective techniques that I’ve learned that give me a better chance of having a killer set. Why 7? Well because 13 is too much and it’s bad luck. So here they are:

1. Commit.
Commit to the act. If you’re playing a serial killer in your bit, commit to it. Kill the cat. There’s nothing unfunnier than an act out that’s done half-assed.

2. Relax.
Like sexual predators, your audience can smell fear. If you can relax onstage, the more your audience will be relaxed. If they see you being comfortable, they will laugh more at your jokes.

3. Slow down or speed up.
Usually in small rooms, you can do rapid fire bits. The audience will easily keep up with you. Bigger rooms (and outdoors) require you to slow down your act a bit and annunciate every word you say. Maybe it’s the acoustics or maybe sound travels slower in a bigger venue.

4. Throw it away.
If a joke doesn’t work, throw it away. What I mean is to just perform the bit real quick that it doesn’t matter, kinda like a throwaway line. You blurt out the punch line then move on to the next joke before it hits them. Some of my weaker jokes become pretty strong when I do them as throwaway lines. It’s strange but true.

5. Don’t care.
Sometimes, it’s just best that you don’t give a damn. You just know that your material is funny and you don’t care if the audience gets it or not. It’s their problem. When you have this attitude, the audience mysteriously feels that they should laugh or it means they’re not in on the joke. Though sometimes this technique can also backfire. So you have to balance this attitude.

6. Acknowledge what’s going on.
If you’re bombing, just acknowledge it and show them that it’s no big deal. Doing this will relieve the tension in the room and allow the laughs to start coming in. If the waitstaff breaks a glass, say something about it. If the venue is a hole-in-the-wall, just say so but don’t expect the owners to be happy about it.

7. Visualize.
Before the show, visualize yourself killing. Oh, you thought I was going to say imagine your audience naked? That only works if you’re not doing a nudist camp. Athletes do it and it really works.

Here’s a short snippet of one of my sets at Votre Bar in Q.C. upstairs from East St. Louis near ABS-CBN. We do this every Thursday night around 9:30pm. Watch the Comedy Cartel perform live making you laugh your ass off.

Watch this most awesome show this Friday, June 4th at the RCBC Carlos P. Romulo Theater. Tickets to Laugh Out Loud are available at Ticketworld! 8919999 or log on to ticketworld.com.ph! I hope to see you guys there!

Watch my Bedouin experience as I explore the secrets of Doha, Qatar in this episode of On-Foot on the Living Asia Channel.