"Ask The Next Question"

Bam! Boom! Ba-Da-Bing! Ba-Da-Boom!

That's it!

That's the answer!

. . .

Perhaps I should back up.

. . .

Last night I asked the crowd , "Is anyone getting laid."

A woman cheered so I asked her, "who are you sleeping with?"

She said, "an Iranian arms dealer."

So you want to know what I did with this golden gem of a setup handed to me on a silver platter?

Nothing. Not a God dammed thing.

I couldn't think of anything immediately funny so I panicked and dropped it.

Nice job, comic boy.

I'm a fabulous conversationalist (if I do say so myself). But I've always felt my crowd work was weak.

If a woman told me at a cocktail party that she was sleeping with an Iranian arms dealer a hundred questions would jump to mind.

Do you get free guns with that?
So that's it? We're totally out of fuckable American men?
Are terrorists good in bed?

When making social conversation I've very good at hooking into a topic that I think is interesting or amusing. I've been trying to bring this into my act. But there's been something missing and I haven't been able to put my finger on it, until after last night's show.

My formula for crowd work has been.

1. Ask a question.
2. Say something funny.

This has only worked on preselected topics where I have templated responses ready to go. But it doesn't work for general conversation. We've all met that jackass who thinks he's hilarious who makes lame, forced jokes at everything. He's using this formula.

But true, open-ended, anything-can-happen crowd work is much more like cocktail party conversation. The way I make conversation is to get people talking about themselves and then to engage them on the topics they raise. And the formula for that is very simple.

1. Ask a question.
2. Ask the next question.

That's it.

That's the simple key to crowd work I've been trying to figure out.

Ask questions and the funny will tend to itself.

And slowly I learn.