Comedy Intensive for the Joke Apprehensive

I'm teaching a comedy class!!!!

Saturday, May 9th

10:00 AM to 1:00 PM

Studio City, California  (email kysonassist@gmail.com for exact address)

Only $20!  CLICK HERE to buy tickets!  SEATS ARE LIMITED!!

Using techniques, structures, and exercises of comedy, Skyler Payne will show you how to make your joke writing and comedy material come alive.

Some of what you will learn:

  • The difference between funny and comedic
  • 8 Major Laugh Triggers
  • 12 Major Comedy Structures
  • Techniques to create a joke from scratch
  • Ways to beat writers block

People who do or want to do stand up, write for late night, write comedic sketches or scripts, add some comedy to their dramatic scripts or speeches, or just want to be the life of every party they go to* will benefit from this intensive.

*no life-of-party guarantees

You have to realize, the comedian gets the girls.

25 Years Ago, Something Extraordinary Happened...

I would like to do something different for this blog post.  Normally, I tell a light hearted story from my life or a joke or two, but today, I want to share something deeper and more meaningful, something more spiritual and enlightening, something humorous but altogether beautiful and heartfelt.

I want to go back exactly 25 years and share what I would argue is the biggest turning point of my life.

I grew up in a middle income family in a small town in Kentucky with my father being a Catholic  and my mother being a Baptist.  So, I basically grew up a Captist.  (ba dum bump crash)

My mother didn’t go to church regularly but would take me every so often, usually on Easter when I remember being about 5 or 6 and she made me wear a polyester powder blue suit that I thought was way too hot and itchy.  My father was devout and went to Catholic mass almost every Sunday but I never heard much about it in the home, and the few times I went with him, it was a complete snoozefest.  

What I did like was Vacation Bible School.  It was an awesome time of stories and games, like Red Rover, which now I think is outlawed because kids kept getting their extremities dislocated.    

I would go to 2 VBS’s a summer, one was at our church out in the country and another one up the street from my house where my friends and I would ride our bikes.

With my contact with the church, I heard about Jesus and knew that there was a time in everyone’s life that you invited Him into your heart, and He would come in and forgive you of your sins and then you would get to go to Heaven.  This was my 12 year old understanding.

When I was about 13, I asked my mom, “How do you know when your time is that you ask Jesus to come into your heart?”

My mother replied with a sort of mystical and perplexing answer.  “You will hear God call your name.”

What?  Really?  God will call my name?  I have to tell you folks, I wrestled with that answer for about 2 years!  I was seriously listening.  “God, are you calling my name?  God, I don’t hear you.”  The reason I really struggled with it was because I knew that if I didn’t accept Jesus, I wasn’t going to Heaven, I was headed to the everlasting fires of Hell!  “God!  If you don’t call my name, I can’t accept Jesus, and if I can’t accept Jesus, I can’t go to Heaven!  Do you want me to go to Hell?!  Is that what you want?!”

It was serious turmoil and the Heaven-Hell debate was the main thing I stressed over.  Then, one special night, EXACTLY 25 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, I hit a turning point.

I was praying to God before I went to bed (and praying is basically just talking to God as the person He is).  I was fervently talking to God and saying, “God, I want to know you.  I want you in my life.  I want to know what you’re about.  I want to know what you want me to do.  I want you!”  

I prayed that for a really long time, repeating the idea of it in as many different ways as I could.  Finally, exhausted, I said, “Amen”.  As soon as I said amen, a thought struck me like a lightning bolt.  I prayed for a very long time and not once had I thought about it being the difference between going to Heaven or Hell.  I was solely praying and asking to KNOW God, for Him to be a part of my life.  That’s it!  It has to be it!  You can know God personally!  Just like you know your friend or family member, you can know the creator of the universe!

That next Sunday, I went in front of my mom’s church, and said I wanted to know Jesus.  The pastor, Bro. John Brandon, was speaking for the very first time at our church.  He told me that God’s forgiveness through Jesus was a gift and all we had to do to receive that gift was to take it.  I said, yes, I want to take that gift.

I was baptized the following March and the past 25 years have been filled with more stories and adventures with God than I will dare go into now in this blog post.

I learned much later that the Bible actually says what I had learned.  John 17:3 says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”  It spells it right out.  Eternal life = knowing God.  God is life.  If you are in God how can you not live eternally?  If you want to get wet, you have to get into the water!  If you want to live, you have to get into the one who holds life!

 

Something Strange Happened to Me in Hollywood

Have you ever had something happen to you where you weren’t sure what just happened or was happening, but you knew that you had been violated in some way?

Last Friday night I performed improv with my awesome team Chauffeur at iO West in Hollywood.  After a great show, I was in good spirits.  My girlfriend and I decided to take a walk down Hollywood Boulevard.

I’ve done stand up before about Hollywood.  I talk about how the world sees it as this glitzy, glamorous place, but the town, at least, is very much the opposite.  A lyric in a Madonna song goes, “There’s something in the air in Hollywood…”, and I say, “Yeah, that something is the smell of urine.”

Even that night, I commented about how literally dark the boulevard was.  There were street lights, but they were like a single fluorescent light in a library basement.  It’s a pretty dirty and dark place, yet, many people crowded the sidewalk.  A lot of hoodlums, but also a lot of people going to clubs, women in mini-skirts and stiletto heels.  

We had walked a good distance and turned around to go back.  A man passed me on my left and SLAP!!  Out of nowhere something smacked me on my upper arm.  It was loud and painful.  It felt as if someone rolled up a newspaper and whacked me with the force of a major league baseball player.

Everything seemed to go into slow motion.  I was confused because I hadn’t seen the man passing me make any sudden, large movements, but I was almost sure it had to have come from him.  “Excuse me,”  I said in an upset tone as he kept walking and another larger, bald man passed me and said, “I didn’t do it.”  There was a large group of people that were looking our way and a man exclaimed, “What the h—- was that?!”

My mind was quickly scrolling through the possibilities.  There was a definite smacking sound, but would that have been enough for that whole group to have noticed?  Was there something bigger?  Maybe it wasn’t the man after all.  Was debris or something raining from the sky?  Was someone shooting something at us?  Did that guy have some sort of weapon or contraption that slapped very hard, but in a very small space, kind of like that tool that breaks your car window if you drive into a pond?  Who was with this man?  Was the whole group out to do us harm?  Was it a stupid prank?  Was this some sort of misdirection so an accomplice could steal from us?

It was so dark and there were so many people that it was impossible to tell who was friend and who was foe.  I looked at my arm.  It wasn’t bleeding.  I checked my wallet and my girlfriend’s purse.  We hadn’t been robbed.  I know there are people out there who just want to start a fight and it seemed like such an odd and dangerous situation that I took my girlfriend and kept walking, continuing to glance over my shoulder to make sure no one was following us.

It took us at least 15-20 minutes to walk back to my car and my arm was stinging the entire way.  It ended up leaving a small bruise and a bigger distaste and distrust of Hollywood.  Later, my girlfriend said she thinks she saw something ricochet from the ground, but that still doesn’t give me any idea as to what really happened.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?  Do you have any idea what could have happened?  Is there anything we can do to clean up Hollywood?  Please leave a comment with stories and ideas!!

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The Ship of Screams

The following story is true.

Ship of Screams

Ship of Screams

This past weekend my friends and I went to Big Bear to relax and check out some Halloween festivities.  It is a tradition that started 6 years ago.

Every year we look forward to one or two haunted houses that the locals put on, one of them being at someone’s house which we found on Craigslist which made it exponentially terrifying, but that is another story.

This year we were told about the “Ship of Screams” which was a ferry named Miss Liberty on Big Bear Lake which they turned into a haunted house.  It was advertised at my timeshare and was even in the newspaper.  After eating Mexican food at a local cantina, we piled into my car and headed unsuspectingly into a tale of sheer terror… 

I drove to the marina where it was said to be docked, but the marina was behind a closed, locked gate.  Everything was dark.  We drove around the coastline looking for where it may be, finally ending up where we started.  There was a bar beside the marina and we drove to the other side of the bar as we debated who would go in and ask about the haunted ship.

When we got to the other side we noticed a solitary man in the marina on the other side of a fence next to a garage working on what we could only guess was “boat things”.  Grace, a young red head with a fun sense of humor, said, “Let’s ask him,” and called out to the man from the window.  Not completely hearing her the man put down some things he was working on and came closer to the fence.  “Oh, great,” I said, “looks like we’re disturbing him.”

We asked him about the haunted boat and he mentioned that event happened last year.  Now everything was closed and dark.  “You can go down there and look at it yourself if you want.  Do you have a flashlight?  Go over to that gate and I’ll let you in.”

“All right!  This is what it’s all about!” I exclaimed as I backed up my car.  

My timid yet beautiful girlfriend, Angela, was not so thrilled.  “No, I don’t think we should…” she protested several times, I believe with the help of Grace as well.

He hit the button to open up the gate.  We drove in and as the mechanical gate screeched to a close behind us we got a better look at the man.  He was about 6 feet tall, a stout man of about 250-300 pounds, and had a long, scraggly biker goatee.  As if he wasn’t menacing enough, we noticed he was wearing gloves and was holding a drill which he intermittently revved as if it was a nervous habit.  “Zzzzz!  Zzzz!”

“Just go all the way down to the end of the dock.  You’ll see a van.  Park anywhere.”  Zzzzz!  Zzzzz!  “Undo the chain and check it out… just don’t get hurt or it’ll be my hide.  Heh, heh.”  Zzzz!

As I drove down the dark, winding, marina we seemed to hold our breath.  We got to the end and saw the old, parked van.  The girls began to protest again.  I was tuning them out and knew that Jeff, the other guy with us, was probably doing the same.  Jeff is a handsome, raven haired young man who is so skinny, I once remarked when I grabbed the side of his rib cage, "I feel like I'm taking a book off the shelf!"

 At first we didn’t see the boat, but as I turned my car, we could see it about 200 feet in the distance, dark and spooky, only faintly illuminated by my headlights.  

Leading up to it was a long rickety walkway. With a little coaxing, we decided to undo the chain and check it out on the stipulation that I would leave my car lights on.  Creeeeeeeeeeek!  Creeeeeeek!  The walk way and boat were making unsettling noises.  The light from our iPhones reflected in the windows making it hard to see inside.  Even I was getting a little disturbed.  

After another little debate about getting on the boat, we got on and climbed the stairs to the deck on top.  “What if the guy comes back?”  “What if the car lights go out?”  I noticed a spider but didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to give them another reason to chicken out.  

Going down another set of stairs we were in the front of the boat and there were two doors.  One was locked but the other was ajar.  I cautiously peeked my head in and entered.  It was a sort of small basic kitchen, but in the light of a cell phone, any room looks creepy.

There was one solitary closed door.  “Open the door, Jeff,” I said as I held the light.  I have to admit, I was getting a little spooked.  Jeff approached the door… reached for the handle…  Suddenly a voice was heard down the walkway.

“You’ve got the car lights on!  That’s cheating!”  The man was a dark silhouette standing in front of my car.  All of our hearts sunk as he began down the walkway.  Grace thought for sure we were dead.  Angela was silently praying for our safety.  “That door is open because they want me to fix it…”  

All of us went up the stairs and went to the first stairwell to wait for him to come up.  Grace looked over the side.  “You guys, where did he go?  I don’t see him.  Where did he go?”  Just as she was saying this he appeared behind us out of nowhere!  Again, in dark silhouette still holding the drill!  

There was an open window by him and he instructed Jeff, who was the closest, “Reach in there and grab that rope…”  Jeff’s mind flashed with visions of pulling the rope only to have some sort of trap cut off his arm, but not wanting to refuse, he reached into the window…

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMPPP!!!!  The ferry’s horn sounded loudly, the girls screamed, I laughed with delight because I figured out what he was doing.

He went on to turn on the lights and show us around the boat and told various stories about things they’ve done to it, how part of the boat came from a ship that was wrecked in Hurricane Katrina, and what some of the scary scenes were like at the “Ship of Screams”.

Things were a lot lighter now, but he still held his drill - zzzzz! zzzz! - and we gently made our exit when he told us about a time he was walking on the dock and heard something in the dark about his size jump into the water, so he got his 45 pistol.  Wait, this guy has a gun?

All in all, he was a friendly guy and he took down our names so when we come back we can get a free ride on Miss Liberty.  At least, I hope that’s why he took our names…

The MTN Parking Lot

This past Labor Day I went to the same event I’ve been going to for the past 11 years, an awesome artist retreat put together by my church, Mosaic.  You know it has to be awesome for me to have gone 12 consecutive years, a record held only by me, David Arcos -the creator of the event, and (allegedly) one other person. 

The retreat is called Terra Nova which means New Earth.  This year it was dubbed MTN for “Mosaic Terra Nova”.  It’s a time where a group invades a camp ground to create, explore art, and connect to God.  There is a lot of singing and dancing along with that, too.  This year over 800 people went!  It’s a lot like Burning Man or a rave but with a little more Jesus and a little less ecstasy.  

(It is an amazing time and I encourage anyone reading this to go Labor Day 2015!  For more info, go to mosaic.org/mtn.)

Late Saturday night I was approached by Maylin, a young attractive asian girl whom I had never met.  It was a funny encounter because we were passing on a dark trail and she seemed to pick me at random.  

    “Do you act?”        

    “Yes.”

    “Do you do any improv?”

    “Only for the last 10 years!”

I don’t know if it was completely random or if God lead her to me or if she had been stalking me, but either way Maylin asked if I would be in her team’s short film.

We produced a film that was written, shot, and edited in all of around 12 hours.  Anyone who has done anything in film knows this is a feat.  The team worked very well together and very hard.  They did a great job and what was produced was the short film called “The Parking Lot”.

I’m happy to be a part of it.  To watch the film CLICK HERE or enjoy these pics of MTN and watch it at the bottom of this post. :)    

Click on the pics to enlarge!

Shock the Monkey Butler

Over 7 years ago I was teaching an "Actor's Group" in the bowels of the Mayan Nightclub for a very hip church named Mosaic.  Mainly teaching improv, I had the privilege of seeing performers like Dan Braswell take some of his first improv steps.  Soon we had our first show performing for a Mosaic Sunday service using "What could someone be destined to do?" as our suggestion since the theme for the service was Destiny.

Little did I know that the small group who started meeting in the infamous Blue House on Orchard Avenue by USC would turn into the juggernaut that is now known as Monkey Butler.  If you are not familiar with Monkey Butler, it is an improv troupe which has been teaching free improv classes for the past 7 years.  We have grown to teaching over 300 people a week in Los Angeles alone, not to mention becoming international and opening chapters in Colorado, New Zealand, and England.

Team Chauffeur

Team Chauffeur

The sad news is that Monkey Butler is being dissolved.  In a nutshell, it got too big to be able to manage.  No one was getting paid, remember?  However, I have no doubt that the amazingly creative people who were blessed by Monkey Butler will rise to do bigger and more spectacular things.

Everyone is welcome to come to one last party and show at 8PM on September the 19th at Mosaic on the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea in Hollywood, California.  Come laugh, cry, improv, and celebrate all that Monkey Butler was, is, and is to come!!

Special thanks to David Magidoff and Gabe Trevino and the countless hundreds who helped take the group to spectacular heights.  Also thanks to Ryan Self, Katie Self, Matt Tate, and David Arcos who helped guide in the last days.  It went way beyond what I could have hoped or imagined.  Only in Heaven will we completely see what impact Monkey Butler had on this world.

Special shout out to my team Chauffeur: Todd Ritz, Caleb Martin, Andrew Hanson, Jeff Braine, Nathan Davis, Gabe Trevino, David Magidoff, and protégés of mine Marc Chester and Morgan Owens.

Also shout out to my new, albeit brief team, Shoe Shine Kids: Grace Bannon, Erich Tamola, Nick Rasmussen, Nathan Davis, Moses Storm, and Brittany Joyner.

Monkey Butler (at least as we know it) is being laid to rest, but only to plant a seed of something bigger, better, and more beautiful.  Much love and thanks to all.  It's been one amazing ride.

Asking one last time: "What could someone be destined to do?"  How about destined to change the world through improv?

Shoe Shine Kids

Shoe Shine Kids

I kicked a dog

Imagine a small, cute lamb bleating in a field.  A man walks up and with a swift motion breaks its leg.  Does that anger you?  Sadden you?  Are you now placing a call to PETA?

In Biblical times when a lamb would wander off and get lost, the shepherd would often break its leg and then carry it on his shoulders until it healed.  This taught the sheep to be completely reliant on the shepherd.  From then on it would not wander off and knew that the shepherd was its source of food, care, and protection.

I was jogging the other day and this little dog started chasing me, barking furiously.  He seemed pretty young with short brown hair from head to paw.  I figured he would soon stop, but he didn’t.  He kept sprinting after me all the way down the street getting closer and closer, several times almost getting tangled up or stomped on by my big feet.

This is very much what he looked like and the caption for this pic I found read, "small dog barks at sky"!  How perfect!

This is very much what he looked like and the caption for this pic I found read, "small dog barks at sky"!  How perfect!

When the block ended, I stopped because I didn’t want him chasing me across the street.  Once he gets in the street, he could easily get hit by a car.  Our neighborhood, sadly, has been a battlefield of fallen road kill.

“Go home!”, I commanded.  He kept barking.  “Go! Go home, go home!”  I vigorously pointed and stomped my foot.  Alas, he didn’t.  I jogged back to the general area where he started following me.  “Which one’s your home, boy?”, I asked as if he was really going to show me.  I noticed two elderly gentlemen up the street admiring the paint job on a ’60’s VW bug.  It was a beautiful, shiny midnight blue.

“Excuse me.  Is this your dog?”, I queried as the puppy continued to bark at my feet.

The older of the two men gave a toothless laugh, “Haha, no.  He belongs to that house up there with the pink trim.  He’s always getting out.”

After thanking them, I went to the house.  The screen door was closed but the main door was open.  I could hear the whirring of a fan and could see one of the vertical blinds moving back and forth to the rhythm of the air being blown.  The screen door was in rough shape and the deadbolt was completely missing.  I could have easily walked right in, but two things stopped me:  I don’t want to get shot and there was the very strong and distinct smell of marijuana emanating from inside.

“Hello?  Anyone home?”  I knocked as the canine relentlessly yapped behind me.  No answer.  

“I could maybe push the dog inside,”  I thought, but then I had a flashback to when I was in middle school and the neighbor’s dog got out of the backyard.  When I tried to encourage it back, it suddenly and ferociously bit me.  I still have the scar.  Now thinking about it, I’ve had a lot of run ins with dogs of all types, but I’ll save those for another story.

I jogged away muttering something like, “Stupid potheads, going to get their dog killed,” while the little stinker was still hot on my heels.

What to do?  “I could kick him,”  I thought.  Maybe that would be enough to scare him home.  It’d be better than getting hit by a car, wouldn’t it?

As I pondered this dilemma, these two stories made me think of a deeper life implication.  I have a dear friend who recently was extremely hurt by someone, emotionally and financially.  What lead up to this was a series of choices which my friend knows I would have counseled against.  My friend is a Christian and not only does my friend know that I would have said to make a different choice, my friend knows that God would have advised the opposite direction as well. 

I’m not saying this to say I’m so much wiser than my friend, I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes.  It is just frustrating when you see someone you greatly love get hurt by poor choices that they have made.  Nor am I implying that God “broke my friend’s leg”.  I’m very much against blaming God for the consequences of our actions.

What I’m saying is that times that we are broken and we get hurt should be times that we turn to God and put our reliance, faith, and obedience in Him.  Just like the good shepherd, He knows what we need better than we do ourselves even when we wander away or wander out into the street and need a good smack down.  It’s not all smiles and rainbows.  God uses pain to draw us near to Him, which we should do instead of cursing our circumstances and cursing God, even if, at the very least, we run to Him for comfort after being hit by a car.  Have you allowed Him to be the good shepherd of your life? 

Now, I know most of you are wondering, did I end up kicking the dog?  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  He chased me across the street and I sped up as fast as I could until he finally got tired and stopped.  This morning, though, I went jogging and didn’t see him.  Maybe I should have kicked him…

Comics on Tap

Check me out on the new episode of the "Comics On Tap" podcast!!  Join us for comedy, love, and having Game of Thrones be a first date.  It's episode 55 and I'm also on episode 31 if you want to check out an episode from earlier in the year.  Special thanks to my friends Tony Ming and Adrian Herrera!!

CLICK HERE!!

Midnight With Robert Shaw

Have a hankerin' for some discussion of a slasher movie from yesteryear?  Check me out on my pal Kyle Scully's podcast "Midnight with Robert Shaw" where we discuss the beautiful cinema verité that is Part 2 of the Friday the 13th saga.  (This is not for the kiddies.  Duh.)

CLICK HERE!

What is Jason Voorhees' favorite dog?  

Chi-chi-chi Hua-hua...

Wait a minute.  Why is Jason's body the one in a chalk outline?  Oh, the irony!

Wait a minute.  Why is Jason's body the one in a chalk outline?  Oh, the irony!

WSOC in San Diego at The Comedy Palace

Well, I didn't win the San Diego satellite for the World Series of Comedy, but I had a good show and a blast doing it.  Special thanks to: Joe Lowers and Brad Reeder for putting on such an awesome shin dig, my comedy brethren Patrick Kanehann and Joe Dungan, and my sweetie, Angela, who finally got to see me do stand up for the first time.  Byron Valino we missed you!  Pauline Yasuda, I'm sure you rocked!  This also goes out to all my new friends I met there!

Afterward, Angela and I had some amazing fun at Seaport Village.  Click pics to enlarge!

WSOC in Winnipeg, Canada

Hojo Express with yellow tap water across the street from the "The Love Nest": my career touring in seedy hotels as a comedian has begun!!!

You know it's a fine establishment when your room has a motivational poster (without the motivation).

A Lady Gaga concert in Dubai will be censored to be culturally respectful.  She will be wearing a burka... made of meat.  

#jihaha

My birthday

My dentist texted me happy birthday...  I AM somebody!!!

I was charged by a pit bill on the beach.  His birthday gift to me:  he let me live.  (A terrifying fact: he was deaf so he couldn't hear his master calling him.)