A Scarier Thought Than Anything Hallowe’en Could Dredge Up…
With the fact that I can’t get iTunes to talk to my goddamn Outlook calendar, at all, I feel like technology can go and eat me for all I care. There’s a crate of stuff out there technology-wise that has made our lives easier for sure, but when one small piece of it stops working, it gets to you like a cut on the roof of your mouth. I now don’t have a portable calendar and it’s really beginning to brown me off.
The way we interact has been streamlined as well. Personal websites and blogs fell to MySpace which fell to Facebook which now has one aspect of it displayed as Twitter. Twitter is a single line of 140 characters that you type in and have displayed. You are able to follow others and read their postings and they in turn are able to do the same with your posts. Pretty simple. You’re also able to see posts from everyone in the world (well, 20 or so folks) from around the world and see what they’re writing. I’ve even got a link-up below the pic on my site to show the Tweets (their word, not mine) that I’m making to the big, ol’ Etherspace. What’s the point? Dunno. But I find using Twitter to be an interesting creative exercise.
If you’re confined to 140 characters, what would you say and how could you make it entertaining?
I’ve tried to limited success. Got some followers. Got some folks I follow. Weird thing is that some folks know I’m a comic and follow those posts on jokes I’m trying to write, shows I’m doing, that sort of thing. As with any other networking site, the object is to connect with folks. I’ve since met someone by the name of @thekid416 who, through the myriad posts that I’ve made, thought it would be cool for him and a friend to come see a show. They chose the New Material night at the AltDot Lounge @ the Riv on Monday as the ambassador of my live talent. Their loss. I warned them that this was new material night and would be stuff that’s never been performed before. Ever. It is written down on the page and saved for the stage. Yikes.
Then it got me thinking. In and of itself, usually a horrendous thing. The Riv is not only WiFi ready, but also a good venue for showing movies and the like through laptops. There’s two of the basic ingredients right there for being able to broadcast stuff on the internet. So, since these guys know me via Twitter, why not extend it a bit? Why not try to do an entire stand-up spot through Twitter? Because it could suck, that’s why not. But, it could suck no more or less than any other new idea. So, what the hell?
Two things happen. By projecting my Twitter page on the screen and having people watch me key in jokes that are limited to 140 characters on the fly, well, that’s definitely new. Add to this that folks can follow the posts on Twitter and see a stand-up show over the internet. Text-based, admittedly, but that’s all part of the exercise. I’m both excited and terrified at the same time. I’m hoping that everything works from the technology side so that the only cock-ups that will occur are from the funny side. Adding the character restriction to this makes the whole thing more cantankerous than a normal new material night. Not only do the jokes have to be new, but they have to fit inside the Twitter box.
Hope it works. Oh, and the topic for the New Material? “Change”. You couldn’t make it up.
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