Introducing I Might Be Wrong Komedy Klass

Lesson 1: Hard "k" sounds are funny

People often ask me whether they should take a comedy class. My response is to ask them: “How much do you like comedy?” And also: “How much do you like throwing away money on a scam that will leave you feeling gullible and used?”

Comedy classes can be fun and enriching. But they can also be so scammy that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should kick down the door and bust up the class the way the DEA would take down a drug ring. And then there’s a large grey area in between. My honest answer to whether you should take a comedy class is that you should do it if you’re doing it for fun.¹ Comedy, generally, should only be done for fun. That’s partly because comedy is a “career move” in the same way that getting a face tattoo is a career move — it’s not one — and partly because I find that the people who are good at comedy are the ones who just…like it. They like it for no reason, or for irrational reasons. Comedy is for you if you find some reward from producing it even if you never make a single fucking dime, and trust me: You won’t make a single fucking dime for the first several years.

The good news is that nobody needs to take a comedy class. Many top comedians never did; in fact, most comedians I know took few or no classes. But a comedy class ecosystem exists — mostly in New York and LA — that would have you believe that telling dick jokes is like becoming a trauma surgeon, and you couldn’t possibly do it without logging 10,000 hours and dropping serious money on education. This is bullshit; this is where classes start to get scammy. It is also, by the way, where comedy starts to get very, very upper-middle-class, because only privileged 20-somethings can afford to drop thousands of dollars on classes and spend a few years fucking around on nights and weekends knowing that they’ll just go to law school at age 30 if things don’t work out.

BUT: Classes can give you pointers so that you don’t have to learn them through trial and error. I took no classes at the beginning of my career, and I learned everything the hard way. I have probably stepped on every comedy landmine that exists — I have bombed in unique and exotic ways that I would not have thought possible. I would have benefitted from some advice here and there, such as: “Don’t do five minutes about Radiohead at a Def Jam show, ya dumbfuck.”

And that’s why I’m introducing I Might Be Wrong Komedy Klass. There’s nothing to sign up for: It’s just a feature that I’ll do sometimes. How often? I don’t know — let’s just throw this boat in the water and see if she floats. Importantly, IMBW Komedy Klass will always be free; that will keep this is accessible to people of all stripes and will also mean that I don’t have to try very hard.

Here’s how it’ll work: If you feel like it, please send a comedy…anything…to KomedyKlass@imightbewrong.org. It really could be anything: A standup clip, a piece of writing, a sketch — humor in any form. It could even be improv, though I’m telling you right now: I’ll watch those last. I’ll watch or read the stuff, and then choose one piece to serve as the focal point for a discussion of some comedy concept. I’ll choose the piece based on:

1. Whether you’re a paid subscriber — subscribers before free imbibers, I always say. I may pick a piece from a free non-subscriber but paid subscribers definitely get priority.

2. How well the thing serves as a jumping off point for a discussion of something I want to talk about; and

3. Funny-itude.

This won’t be the thing that happens in many comedy classes where the instructor chooses a piece, and then the class passive-aggressively rips it to shreds. The piece will be used for instruction, but not critique, because no one will want to submit anything if their work is going to be tossed into the viper pit of displaced inadequacies known as The Internet. I will only be positive, and I’ll strictly enforce the “positively only” rule in the comments section — if you want to go into the comments and tell someone that their writing blows goats, you have all my other columns for that. We will make IMBW Komedy Klass the only positive and constructive place on the World Wide Web.

I hope that people want this. It’s hard for me to gauge the level of demand — people have asked me about doing something like this, but those people might just be freaks. I give you my word that I will read or watch your thing,² and I hope I can provide useful advice and be a resource for people who want to try comedy but aren’t ready to drop $500 on Johnny Yuk-Yuk’s Highway To Hilarity Boot Camp. I think this could be fun, and if not: It’s fucking free, people. Never forget that.

So, once again: Please send your stuff to KomedyKlass@imightbewrong.org. I give you my word that nothing bad will happen. And please share this with your funny and/or delusional friends — this is open to everyone. And for those wondering “who the fuck even is this guy?” I’ll answer that very fair question after the “share” button.

I was a standup comedian for 15 years, and I didn’t get famous, but I did get to the point where I was headlining B rooms and sometimes even A rooms if the headliner died an hour before showtime. In 2014, I was hired as part of the original writing staff for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and I was there for six years, eventually getting promoted to Senior Writer. While there, I won several Emmys, Peabody Awards, and Writers Guild Awards, if you care about that kind of thing, which you definitely should not. For the last few years, I’ve written this blog, and I make a decent living doing so. Which is probably the best argument as to why you might choose to give a shit about what I say about comedy: I have proven fairly good at tricking people into giving me money for it.

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1. It should be noted: Comedy classes can be very fun. You get together once a week with some similarly curious and/or bored people and goof around — it’s like school except all the assignments are fun and they can’t flunk you. If you’re looking for an extra-curricular activity, you could do worse.

2. Within reasonable limits — don’t send me a novel. And also consider that a short-ish thing is more likely to get picked as the focal point for the discussion.