Three is a Magic Number

An Annotated Stand-Up Comedy Routine

[The bracketed and italicized portions of this text are my commentary on the writing and development of my latest stand-up comedy routine. Feel free to read through the material itself for full effect and consider reading the “footnotes” only if you are interested in the craft of stand-up comedy.]

Cheers!

[This can be made into a joke for each venue by pointing out that “cheers” may not be an appropriate salutation for the dive bar / kava lounge / stranger’s backyard / comedy club I’m in or the fact I don't have a drink.]

I just got back from a wedding where I gave a toast. And at this wedding there was a baby in a suit. This little baby in his little suit was so cute and getting so much attention you would think it was his wedding, and not just the one that he caused.

[This is a joke I wrote months ago that has finally found its home in a longer piece. Until now it was just a one-liner that was getting a fairly strong reaction.]

Thanks DeSantis.

[Or Trump, if I am outside of Florida.]

Oh and my aunt with diabetes was making fun of my dancing. Look, I’d rather have two left feet than one foot left.

But she sure can dance. She puts the “beat” in diabetes.

My know-it-all cousin was there. I don’t like him and he knows.

[This, the diabetes pun, and the baby-in-a-suit joke are three “joke jokes.” I like starting a more challenging routine this way to establish to the audience that I do know how to write jokes even if what follows are more like funny turns of phrase, silly images, and comedic repetition which take a little more audience engagement to elicit laughter than a standard punchline. If the routine starts with the next line, which it did in its early development, its very easy to lose the audience and be trapped in a five-minute story with no laughter—a bomb. But all my best, and most original, material bombed the hardest at some point. The key is to not give up on an idea that I know is funny even if the audience doesn’t agree. There is always a way in to get the crowd to see the joke and join me on this adventure. This process of giving enough context to a routine often takes the most creativity and presents the biggest challenge but also garners the biggest payoff when it finally works.]

He shared this fact: all kangaroos have three vaginas. Which is not something I needed to know while eating–

Tres leches.

I’m guessing they have one normal vagina, and then one out back, and the third is down under?

No! They all have three regular vaginas.

Regular?

All of them? Even the males?

No, all of the girl kangaroos.

How do you know the kangaroo’s gender? That’s between them and their therapist.

I mean all of the biologically female kangaroos have three vaginas.

How do you know? Have you personally checked?

[This joke was the original one-liner that eventually became this 600 word routine. I was on a podcast where there was trivia (and a shock collar) and was asked how many vaginas kangaroos have. This fun fact raised the natural question, “who checks this stuff?” And it is the most hackneyed part of the joke. It is a long established formula to point to some oddly specific quantitative fact and follow it up with “WHO MEASURES THIS STUFF?” This overused trope even came up in Anthony Jeselnik’s new Netflix special with a joke about how there’s more slaves now than ever—'“you think your job is bad? Imagine counting slaves.” But I have also seen this formula used in a very original way by Jamar Neighbors when he came to Miami and did a bit about P Diddy’s 784 dildos… “that means someone had to count these things.” To which he spent the next three minutes fumbling over the numbers and sizes and shapes of various sex toys culminating with counting the microphone stand as number 784. This gave me some confidence that formulas are only “hack” if they are left in their raw state and unimproved. They can also be the training wheels for a joke that isn’t quite working. But by getting the audience to laugh (hacky jokes still kill since audiences aren’t aware of all the various comedy formulas), it gives new material a chance. Eventually these training wheels can be taken off. In a lot of ways that’s what this joke functions as here—it paves the way to discuss kangaroo anatomy with a surefire joke to get the ball rolling.]

Or is that just something you read in a science magazine, or some other kind of magazine.

Yeah, but that’s where facts come from.

No. Nature magazines are where useless facts are reported.

The facts come from some researcher with one, or more likely zero, vaginas–

That had to catch a Kangaroo and flip it over and hold it down and count.

And he can’t just catch one kangaroo–

One kangaroo may just be a black swan–

One all the other kangaroos make fun of for having a triple vagina.

Look there goes Four Pouch Pam. Ha ha. [Pointing along a bouncing path]

Like how we make fun of my know-it-all cousin’s mom with the diabetes.

There goes One Foot Pam– [Pointing as she falls to the ground]

Into shock–

I know, that’s low… blood sugar.

[This is an important callback that establishes this joke still happening at the wedding. This tool of reminding the audience of the context of this material is crucial so they hang onto facts long enough for later callbacks. And there is a certain flow that requires the first call back to be pretty quick after its set up, so that the audience remembers it, while the next (and hopefully final) callback to that idea can come much later or else it will seem too forced. This balance of where to put callbacks is hardly scientific but having a word processor here I can say the first one comes about a third of the way through the set which is in Fibonacci harmony with the final call back coming at the end, twice as far from the previous mention of the wedding.]

And why would kangaroos have three vaginas?

What’s the evolutionary benefit?

You think some mutant kangaroo had so much charm and appeal that a guy kangaroo hopped out on his wife and joey–

[These little kangaroo-centric word choices came in a rewrite of a rewrite when I could finally lend less attention to the flow and concept of the piece and apply a microscope to each line.]

Grabbed two friends–

And had a kangaroo foursome–

[Originally written “four-way kangaroo congress,” this simpler phrase makes the joke seem less prepared. The distinction between natural language and written word have always been a challenge for me to bridge but forced phrases that pull people out of the illusion of spontaneity are not worth any additional chuckle they may (and often don’t) receive.]

Reshaping the marsupial gene pool?

[Despite the previous note, a word like marsupial may be forced but word variety must also be utilized as to not say “kangaroo” so many times the word becomes sound and loses the audience.]

That selection is anything but natural.

That’s God’s fingerprint.

Our creator saying “I was here–

And here and here.”

Or maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that kangaroos have three vaginas given how much Australians love cunts–

[This is not my favorite joke and I am trying to avoid actual curse words and slang in this already dirty routine so as to not make it crude. But it is a connection to Australia which was the final angle on kangaroos I wanted to squeeze into this first chunk of the routine and this transition is otherwise too long without any laughs.]

And how often the number three shows up in nature and culture and religion. Like the three states of matter: solid, liquid, and farts.

Or the three primary colors: red, white, and blue.

The stooges! Larry, Curly, and Mo–

Which, if I was a kangaroo, is what I would name my vaginas.

“Hey baby, you want some Mo?”

[This is a part of the routine I can mix up with a different trio but always with the same follow up about naming my vaginas, each with their own appropriate tag… Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. “You didn’t get into Harvard, but Stanford will give you a full ride.” Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “All you can eat.” The concept of past, present, and future. “Hey baby, come back to the future.” Pop, lock, and drop-it. “Hey baby, want to dance?” The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly “Hey baby, want to Netflix and chill?” etc.]

Or the three Abrahamic religions!

Christianity with its trinity–

Judaism with its star of triangles–

Islam with its seventy-two virgins– which may just be twenty-four kangaroos–

Each with three vajayjays.

[This Islam line is my favorite joke of the routine. The line came from another comedian during a writing session. Collaboration is an understated part of stand-up comedy writing but having a new perspective on your material is an invaluable way to get more out of each premise. The way our writing sessions work, and we did not originate this method, is that one person does a minute of material or describes a premise for a joke and then we discuss for five minutes and anything that comes up during this time is material that belongs to the originator of the premise. By establishing this rule there is no confusion over who gets to use what on stage. I think fear of this overlap is what keeps more comedians from working with others but a clear guideline such as this eliminates the problem and creates value for everyone involved.]

A priest, a rabbi, and an imam enter into a single kangaroo–

Which happens to be the reincarnated Buddha–

And a Mormon walks by and thinks “I want three wives.”

Isn’t it a beautiful metaphor–

For how religions all have the same God, they’re just coming at it from a different angle?

[A routine about a kangaroo’s three vaginas would be fun and funny enough for me to perform but there needs to be some layer such as this take on religion for me to feel truly happy with a bit—though one cannot set out to write a joke about how kangaroo genitalia relates to spiritual oneness, these themes eventually emerge with enough patience and editing.]

Or how the three vaginas of the kangaroo represent the nuclear family: father, mother, and baby in a suit–

A family that did not like my talking this much about kangaroos at their wedding–

During my toast.

Cheers!

[This through line of the wedding toast came after most of the routine had already been written. At first I just came back from a wedding… It is hard to capture how a callback or narrative like this comes together for a joke like this. In fact, I just happened to start my set with the baby-in-a-suit joke one night to get a quick laugh from the crowd that eventually molded itself into part of the kangaroo material. There’s tremendous value in mixing up performances by rearranging material thereby creating new segues and connections in your act. It is also continuously rewriting material that gives it a polish that never comes with its original inception. Here is a clip of a presentation of this material that was still early but where I finally had the narrative of the piece plotted out:

And please, if there’s anything you see worth changing or adding to this piece (as a comedy routine is never finished), I am all ears! Thanks!]