−

“Good day to you, moth, pray, how came you here by?”

“Bozhe moi, doctor, where to begin?

Beset with cold sweats, seized by spells of shakes, I

Feel my fevered fate, fast, wearing thin.”

•

Year upon year, have I toiled away

For my boss, Mr. Gregor Alinovich.

Do I dream, will I wake? I watch night bleed to day

In dejected malaise, rarely caring which.

•

Weary, I wake in the night, nearly numb,

To a woman, from cruel, restless sleep,

Whom once called I wife, though now what has become

Of that life, I know not, and I weep.

•

Aleksendria, doctor, my youngest, she fell,

As so many, e’er wintertide draws,

Unforgiving, the frostbitten beckoning knell

Tolled her claim into icicled claws.

•

In the eyes of my son, Yuri, doctor, I fear,

This the most painful pill I’ve to swallow,

Rots the cowardice, daily, I meet in my mirror,

Now the love I once bore him rings hollow.

•

Had I one kernel of courage, I might

Find within me the strength for to draw

The cocked, loaded gun by my bedside this night,

And escape from this hellish façade.

•

Doctor, sometimes I won’t feel, at all, like a moth,

But a spider who’s spun his last thread,

As a hungry inferno of flames dance and froth,

Everlasting, ablaze, ‘neath my web.”

•

“Heavens to Betsy! Mayhap a psychiatrist,

Moth, would be where to have gone.

Just what on earth brought you to see a podiatrist?”

“Well, doc, you left the light on.”

What is Tension and Release?

Mike explains it best:

You control the audience by making them as uncomfortable as possible by creating tension, then releasing that tension with a joke just at the right time.

 
I don’t think I wanna approach this one yet! In order to pull this off, you need to have created a lot of goodwill with your audience. In other words, they need to KNOW that you’re about to say something hilarious; it’s the only reason they keep paying attention to what you’re saying. In addition, because the audience already loves you before the joke, they laugh throughout the joke anyway because it’s you.

Watch how Conan interrupts at one point, “How long of a drive is this?!” He’s uncomfortable, too. It’s important to recognize that Norm has KILLED on Conan many times before, and so he had gathered enough goodwill to go off like this.

For those. Of you. That Don’t. Get it. Here’s. Another. Example. Of what. I’m talking.
 

about.

Michael Jagdeo

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