Winning Wrestling Moves by Mark Mysnyk, Barry Davis, Brooks Simpson

• A basic skill is either a fundamental wrestling technique or a skill that is key to several other moves.
• In either case, all wrestlers should master these seven basic skills: stance and movement, penetration step, lifting, hip heist, back arch, step back, and coming to a base.
• Stay on the balls of your feet when you move; take short steps, and never cross your legs. Your knees should be comfortably bent and your body flexed slightly forward at the wait. Your elbows stay close to your side to protect you from your opponent's offensive attack, ahdn your hands should remain in front so you can stop your opponent if he shoots in.
• In the hip heist the hips are lifted, or hoisted, off the mat and then rapidly and powerfully turned. The move can be used as an escape from almost all positions.
• Coming to a base refers to getting up from flat on your belly to your hands and knees. The correct way of getting to your base after you’ve been broken flat onto the mat is to bring one knee up to your side and then to push back over that knee.
• A more effective way to grab his wrist is with your palm facing out and your thumb on the bottom. It is much more difficult to break this grip.
• One of the basic things you want to do consistently is to get your opponent’s head down.
• Whenever you have an underhook, your opponent has an overhook (and different offensive possibilities of his own). It is therefore essential that you are lifting his arm and elbow with your underhook, thus controlling him.
• The most important basic principle for escapes and reversals is to always have hand control. Getting hand control should be the first step in almost every escape. Without it, good position, effort, and all subsequent moves may simply be wasted.

Wrestling for Beginners by Tom Jarman & Reid Hanley

• Wrestling is one of man’s oldest sports, but many people really don’t know what it is.
• The basic concept of wrestling is simple. The wrestler tries to take his opponent to the mat; his opponent tries to get away from him or reverse positions with him. The wrestler tries to turn his opponent to his back. The maneuvers used to accomplish these relatively simple goals are not so simple, and they number in the thousands.
• Wrestling is a safe sport, and serious injuries rarely occur. There are however, constant bumps, bruises, and strains because of the contact nature of the sport.
• Distance running is one of the most neglected forms of conditioning. It will improve lung capacity and circulation. Not everyone enjoys running, but the benefits make the effort more than worth it.
• If everything else is equal, strength will always win. Without sufficient strength, you won’t even be able to properly use the techniques.
• Weight training is most crucial in building strength.
• Physical conditioning isn’t easy and often isn’t fun. But it is worth it, and keeping the rewards for your efforts in mind will help you maintain a good attitude. To gain the winning edge over an opponent, you must carry out your training with dedication and optimism.
• The seven basic skills: motion, level, penetration, lifting, back-stepping, back-arching, posture.
• More matches are won or lost because of body position than any other aspect of technique.
• Any time this alignment breaks down, your posture is poor. You are then vulnerable to attack and can be turned.
• Good wrestling position allows you to defend and attack in all directions.
• To execute a good move, start from the proper stance and maintain good position throughout the maneuver.
• Constantly evaluate your position and stance.
• Stay in alignment, with your shoulders over your hips  and your hips over your heels.
• When good position is lost it is usually best to bring your head up and curl the hips forward until alignment is restored.
• Good position can compensate for a weakness in balance by stabilizing you.
• The ability to move properly is very important in wrestling.
• Speed is a wonderful gift for the wrestler to possess, but maintaining good position during movement is more important.
• Motion should never take you out of a good base of support or throw you off balance in any way.
• Motion is used to attack, defend, set up, and execute moves.
• Motion should never take you out of good position.
• Motion should not throw you off balance.
• The foot closest to the direction of motion is the one to move first.
• The wrestler must work for hours and hours to perfect his motion.
• Changing levels involves the raising and lowering of your hips to set up, execute, finish, and counter moves.
• In setting up moves, level is lowered or raised to get past an opponent's defenses. Moves also can be set up by changing levels because a change forces the opponent to react by matching that level.
• Level changes are almost always involved in finishing moves.
• The tough part about changing level is maintaining good posture.
• Level is changed to set up, execute, finish, and counter moves.
• Strength and flexibility must be developed in the legs and hips to change level effectively.
• Changing level becomes more critical as the level of competition rises.
• To accomplish a takedown you must attack your opponent's upper body or legs. On all leg or hip attacks you must take a penetration step (or steps) to get inside your opponent's defense and within range to complete the move.
• The two types of penetration used for the majority of leg attacks are the center-step and outside-step.
• Position is more important than depth of penetration.
• Keep your head up and your hips forward.
• Do not reach for the opponent.
• Do not overpenetrate.
• Keep your arms close to your body until the last instant.
• Bounce or pivot on the knees but do not stay in a kneeling position.
• Lifting may be the most neglected skill among wrestlers in the United States. Only in recent years have coaches recognized the advantage of lifting an opponent clear off the mat.
• The basic principle behind lifting is simple: once an opponent is in the air, he no longer has a base for support, balance, or power. Without that base it is almost impossible to counterattack.
• Position is the key to lifting. To clear an opponent from the mat, leg and hip strength must be used.
• Lift with your legs and hips, not with your back.
• Always lower your level before you pop your hips into your opponent.
• Lifts can be used to finish a takedown, to set up a pinning combination, to counter an escape, or to counter a takedown.
• Lifts can be set up by motion and by level changes.
• Remember to perfect the lifting pattern without a partner before you lift another person.
• Good footwork is more important than upper body strength.
• Set up the back-step with motion and with level changes.
• Lowering your level on the initial step is critical.
• The feet must be kept close together to aid in the pivot and to maximize the extension.
• Be ready to go for the fall. Your opponent will usually be on his back after the throw.
• The hips are the key to successful arching.
• Your opponent must push in if you are to arch successfully.
• Think of arching underneath your opponent instead of throwing back.
• Make sure you have perfected the arch before attempting a throw with a partner.
• The most common finish for the high single is the dump.
• In order to initiate a throw, you must be sure your opponent is pushing into you. The best way to get an opponent to push in is to push into him and wait for him to push back. When he pushes back the throw is attempted. Remember, when you push in you are vulnerable to a throw.
• The snapdown is so effective in turning an opponent's attack into points against him that many consider it one of the most important moves in wrestling.
• A wrestler coming out of the bottom position must be more aggressive than in any other situation.
• To counter a roll a half-nelson is often used.
• The best way to ride is to apply pressure through pinning combinations, not simply by hanging on.

There are no electrons by Kenn Amdahl

• No one really understands electricity. But no one wants to admit it. Once I realized that truth, it became easy to learn about electricity.
• Just about every area of human activity, from sports to medicine to electronics, has its own specialized vocabulary, it’s own “little language”. These words and phrases are the “jargon” of the activity.
• Remember that most education is based on the premise that “speaking the language is more important than having something to say”.
• As a practical matter, jargon serves two rather wonderful purposes. First, it’s a shorthand for the people who understand it. [...] It’s poetry. Unless, of course, you don’t understand the vocabulary. Which brings up the other wonderful thing about jargon: It can be used to confuse and exclude people who are not members of the club. I call this “The Pig Latin Principle”.
• Perhaps eighty-five percent of the task of learning electronics is simply remembering about two dozen neat words. And there are, indeed, wonderful words, masterpieces of jargon.
• Like charges repel each other. Opposites attract.
• The truth is that electricity always moves from negatively charged things toward positively charged things.
• In static electricity, things with the same kind of charge (“like charges”) will repel each other, while things with opposite charges (a positive and a negative) will attract each other. And when electricity, whatever it is, moves, it always moves from negative things toward positive things.
• Man thinks in analogies, in fables, in parables. That is, he compares things he doesn’t understand the things he does. This makes facts understandable and easy to remember.
• We take subtle, confusing or complicated phenomena and translate them into simple little picture stories. These “scientific models” are useful teaching tools and handy communications aids, but they are also dangerous, because no model is perfect.
• When we use an analogy or model too much we risk losing sight of the reality that the model tries to represent.
• Scientific thought has always been limited by the imperfections of its various analogies.
• Voltage is the force that pushes electricity, the reason it moves, or wants to move.
• Voltage is measured in units called volts.
• Voltage is sometimes called “potential” because, whenever there is voltage, there is the potential for electricity to move.
• Voltage is the force behind electrical movement. Current is the movement of electrons through something. Electricity can have both voltage and current at the same time, and usually does. We measure voltage in volts and current in amperes or amps.
• Since everything electricity goes through has some resistance, everything heats up, at least a little.
• The fact that electricity always produces heat when it moves through resistance is extremely handy.
• If an electrical device is producing heat, some current is probably moving through some resistance.
• Heat produced by resistance is one of the most common and valuable products of electricity. Unwanted heat is also one of the principal causes of equipment failure.
• To get current to flow, there has to be a return path, a closed loop, a “circuit”.
• We have known for a long time that electrical current is always surrounded by a magnetic field. We also know that whenever a magnetic field moves past a conductor, it creates an electric current.
• The most important thing to remember is this: Self-induction opposes any increases or decreases in current.
• You can think of capacitance as both the ability of something to store a charge and the attraction of a current to a place where it can’t get through. If you direct a current onto something that has lots of capacitance, but no electrical path out the other side, current will flow until that something becomes full. Once it’s full, or charged completely, no current will flow.
• AC is better than DC for long distances because of self-induction.
• Direct current travels in one direction. Alternating current reverse direction rhythmically. These reversals are measured in “cycles per second” also known simply as “cycles”. Each cycle represents a round trip, and includes two current reversals.
• Generators produce DC, alternators produce AC.
• The part of a generator or alternator that spins is called the “rotor”. The part that is stationary is called the “stator”. [...] The electromagnet may be either on the stator or the rotor. The electromagnet itself is called the “field” and the coil of wire you’re trying to produce electricity within is called the “armature”.
• Life would be a lot different if [electrons] didn’t get angry and hot when forced to move through resistance. If an electrical device is supposed to produce heat, there’s probably a high-resistance heating element lurking in it somewhere.
• Life would also be a lot different if every electrical current wasn’t surrounded by magnetism. Most of the electrical devices that move in one way or another use an electromagnet to do the moving. Think about that: if an electrical device is moving, an electromagnet is probably at work.
• Magnetism is the only practical way to get much physical motion out of electricity.
• If it turns or spins, there is probably an electric motor turning it, working because of magnetism.
• Heat and magnetism are the main links between the world of the [electron] and the world of the humans.
• Except for a few wonderful by less common tricks, the final product of all electrical devices involves either magnetism, heat, or phosphorescence.
• “Components” is a fancy word that means “little electrical parts”.
• To determine the total amount of resistance of resistors in series, just add them up.
• If all your resistors are the same size, the more of them you put into a circuit parallel to each other, the less total resistance you’ll see in your circuit.
• The total resistance of resistors in parallel will always be less than the smallest resistor.
• If you add a capacitor in parallel to another, you effectively increase the surface area. You know that more surface area means more capacitance.
• When you put capacitors in series you are effectively increasing the distance between the plates. Since increasing the distance between the plates decreases the amount of capacitance, putting capacitors in series actually decreases the total capacitance.
• To increase a coil’s self-induction, add more loops of wire, squeeze the loops together tightly, or add an iron core.
• When we want more self-induction in a circuit, we add a coil of wire.
• Maybe you want to protect your other components from a violent surge of current. No problem. Add a coil. Surges of current are the things that coils stop the best.
• Soils tend to stabilize the current in a circuit. They tend to oppose any change in the status quo.
• Coils that are used to eliminate AC above a certain frequency are called “chokes”.
• Inductance is measured in “henrys”.
• Coils in parallel act like resistors in parallel.
• When two coils are placed close to each other for the specific purpose of letting the current in one induces a current in the other, we call the thing a “transformer”.
• Transformers can be used to connect two circuits together when one might have some DC which you want to isolate from the other. Only the AC will induce current. Whatever DC might have been in the first circuit will be left behind, while the AC continues onward.
• If you send a pulse of electricity through a closed loop of a superconducting material, it will keep going “round and round” forever.
• Electricity moves across a P-N junction in the “N” to “P” direction fairly easily. It does not move the opposite direction easily at all. This is why a P-N junction diode works.
• A transistor is a sandwich made of “P” material and “N” material.
• A triode is just a diode with a metal screen or grid between the cathode and the plate. By itself, the screen has no effect on the circuit. [Electrons] stream right through it. However, a slight negative charge on this grid will stop the current.
• Electrical amplifiers don’t really increase anything. They are devices in which a small current or voltage controls a larger voltage or current.
• That’s what a transistor is, really. A variable resistor. Transistors can be used as either little electronic switches or as amplifiers.

Left of Bang by Patrick Van Horne & Jason A. Riley

• Most success stories should be understood as a combination of mutually supporting factors, two of which are hard work and opportunity.
• What is also a stumbling block for many people is that, once a person has learned about combat tracking and combat profiling, it doesn’t seem complicated. It seems obvious.
• Another problem is that most people can’t articulate what they see, and they can’t say anything about the meaning of other people’s behavior.
• Getting left of bang requires two things. The first is a mindset and mentality to actively search your area for people that don’t fit in. The second is the knowledge to know what causes someone to stand out from the crowd.
• The preparation for an attack leaves behind cues a trained observer can pick up on to provide an early warning.
• Being left of bang means that a person has observed one of the pre-event indicators, one of the warning signs, that most occur earlier on the timeline for the bang to happen.
• Most of the training that military operators and law enforcement personnel receive is reactive.
• Whenever a person is operating right of bang, it means that the enemy has the initiative and controls the situation.
• From the perspective of combat profiling, a basic mental preparedness to take lethal action may be the difference between life and death.
• Cooper’s Color Code posses four levels of awareness: White, Yellow, Orange, and Red.
• Condition White means being unprepared and unready to take lethal action.
• Condition Yellow means that the person understands that his or her life is in danger and is therefore psychologically prepared to do something about it.
• Condition Orange is the mindset in which a person is focused on a specific threat and is prepared to take action against that threat.
• Condition Red is labeled the “lethal mode”--it is the psychological willingness to kill if circumstances warrant that action.
• In the Marine Corps’ system, another color condition exists: Condition Black. Condition Black is characterized by when a person’s heart rate reaches a point that is counterproductive (above 175 beats per minute) and that person begins to lose awareness of the surroundings. A person in Condition Black can no longer cognitively process information and may completely shut down.
• Combat Profiling rests on the assumption that being proactive, being left of bang, requires continuous awareness and alertness. It requires that the combat profiler always be psychologically prepared to take action.
• Regardless of whether one knows danger is present, one should be ready to take action and be looking for indicators of a threat.
• Intuition is a powerful force; however, it is poorly understood. Intuition is not black mage or some inexplicable force of nature. Intuition is nothing more than a person’s sense about a situation influenced by experience and knowledge.
• Intuition is the way the mind picks up on patterns and uses experiential and learned knowledge to guide a person during a given situation.
• Three specific skills were identified and focused upon: enhanced observation, combat tracking, and combat profiling.
• The foundation of every hunter is the ability to see his prey.
• Combat tracking teaches Marines how to read and understand the physical terrain and identify the physical evidence individuals leave behind as they move through an environment.
• While combat tracking is focused on the physical terrain, profiling teaches Marines how to read the human terrain through an increased understanding of human behavior.
• The goal of Combat Hunter is to teach Marines how to separate the “sheep” (the unarmed civilians that populate the battlefield) from the “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (the enemy).
• Combat profiling is universal and applicable anywhere in the world.
• Combat profiling is a practice based on a proactive mindset that incorporates many specific skills. Four of these are situational awareness, sensitivity of baselines and anomalies, critical thinking, and decision-making.
• To have situational awareness, you must be able to read both the environment and the people around you. However, you must also be able to separate important from unimportant information. Not everything you see is relevant for identifying threats.
• The second skill in combat profiling is the ability to determine what indicators are important and directly related to your safety.
• Heuristics are ways of making a decision with limited time and information.
• Whether you are in the military or law enforcement, you will never have all the time or information you need to make the perfect decision. So you must make the best decision with what you have.
• The first, and primary, difference between criminal profiling and combat profiling is that criminal profiling is reactive, while combat profiling is proactive.
• Throughout life, people are expected to simply learn through trial and error how to make a decision.
• Marines learn two lessons early on that give them a false sense of decision-making ability: BAMCIS and OODA.
• BAMCIS is a Marine Corps acronym for the six troop leading steps:
• Begin the planning
• Arrange the reconnaissance
• Make the reconnaissance
• Complete the plan
• Issue the order
• Supervise
• The second acronym, OODA, stands for:
• Observe
• Orient
• Decide
• Act
• This is a very helpful way to envision how people observe their surroundings (Observe), make sense of what they see (Orient), decide what to do (Decide), and then execute what they’ve decided (Act).
• Just because a person uses analysis does not guarantee that the decision will work, be right, or even be good. Analysis is often wrong and in many cases ends up with less accurate decisions than either intuition or heuristics.
• The amount of information that Marines must try to process at any given time is overwhelming.
• Marines never have enough information to make a perfect decision.
• Perfect decisions aren’t possible.
• One of the Marine Corps’ own doctrinal publications sat; Many military problems simply cannot be solved optimally, no matter how long or hard we may think about the problem beforehand. In many cases, the best we can hope for is to devise partial, approximate solutions and refine those solutions over time, even after execution has begun.
• The goal is to act violently and quickly to drive the tempo of battle and cause the enemy to react.
• Heuristics is nothing more than a way of making decisions with little time and information.
• Often, just one piece of information, one cue, is important. A heuristics focuses on the important cue or cues and ignores the rest.
• Thin slicing means making a determination about a situation or person with a thin slice of information, often with just seconds of observation.
• When a person encounters something that innately or through earning has emotional significance, they automatically experience an emotional response.
• Intuition is best used when a person has significant experience and knowledge, which guides that person's subconscious thought process.
• The front parts of our brains, above our eyeballs, defines the modern human. The frontal cortex is the place where thoughts, emotions, and senses are experiences and recorded.
• All our gestures, postures, and expressions result from the way our brain identifies and perceives threats, consciously or subconsciously.
• The most important part of the brain that directly affects nonverbal behavior is the limbic system.
• The body will react to a threat by stopping in place and halting all movement, moving away from the threat, or preparing to physically engage the threat. These three responses are often referred to as the “freeze, flight, or fight” responses.
• The freeze response is an early survival mechanism that is hard-wired into the brains of most creatures.
• By simply halting all movement, humans and animals increase the chances of not being seen and therefore increases the chances of survival.
• The flight response is the second option the limbic system considers regarding survival. The purpose of fleeing is to create a physical separation from the predator or threat and thus avoid injury or death.
• The greater the distance from the attacker, the fewer options the attacker has to do harm and the more time the victim has to respond to further movements by the attacker.
• The fight response is the last option considered by the limbic system because of the inherent potential for harm or death.
• The potential for harm makes fighting the least preferred response.
• Before engaging in a fight, most creatures will attempt to persuade the other combatant to back down without physical confrontation. This is called posturing and is an attempt to win a fight without fighting.
• Posturing involves trying to appear larger and more dangerous and includes shouting, spreading the arms or other appendages wide, puffing up the chest to look larger, or moving around and taking up more space on the ground while appearing unpredictable.
• When we feel threatened, we will attempt to distance ourselves from that threat, even if it is only a few inches or feet.
• Understanding the limbic system and its core freeze, flight, or fight response is the first phase in detecting a threat.
• Combat profiling is heuristically and intuitively driven.
• The basic foundation of combat profiling involves quickly establishing a baseline and determining anomalies, as well as quickly identifying threat indicators. Establishing a baseline involves observing only certain types of information, the information that comes from the six domains. Once an individual reaches the threshold of decision--identifying a certain number of anomalies or certain types of indicators--the individual must make a decision.
• Combat profiling drives individual to have a bias for action.
• Before the combat profiler can act and destroy the threat, he needs to detail and profile his target to support and determine his action. But for a combat profiler to identify the anomalies that influence his decision, he needs to establish a baseline of behavior.
• When something isn’t normal, watch out.
• Identifying threats means establishing a baseline and looking for anomalies. A baselines is what is normal for an environment, situation, or individual.
• Generally, every environment, type of situation, or individual exhibits normal patterns: patterns of movement, emotion, behavior, and interaction.
• An anomaly is any variation form the baseline--and what we are primarily searching for is anomalies. Anomalies are things that either do not happen but should, or that do happen but shouldn’t.
• Anomalies indicate something has changed in the situation. Often they are indicators that something is awry.
• Another way to classify an anomaly is based on the presence or absence of something. When something (or someone) is not present when it should be, or is present when it shouldn’t be, this is an anomaly.
• Another way to describe the relationship between anomalies and the baseline is that anomalies are things that rise above or fall below the baseline.
• The physical environment, like the social environment, has a baseline.
• Nothing in nature looks like a human footprint.
• Thankfully, humans act in predictable and usually ways that can serve as a starting point for observing human behavior and establishing baselines.
• The founding principle of combat profiling is that beneath the differences and idiosyncrasies of varying human cultures there remains a universal constant we call human nature.
• Honest signals are biology-based cues that animals and humans demonstrate that can be used to reliably predict behavior.
• Humans are creatures of habit.
• Not only do people follow patterns, but also humans are reluctant to change those patterns until the behavior becomes unproductive. In fact, even if faced with clear failure, people often follow the same behavioral patterns in the hopes they will work again.
• Humans are lazy.
• Humans are generally lazy and will take the path of least resistance. Faced with two or more options, the human will generally take the easiest.
• Humans are lousy liars.
• Humans have significant cognitive limitations. It has been shown that imposing cognitive load can help uncover liars.
• Humans cannot divide their attention well. The more tasks a person divides his attention between, the poorer he will perform any of those tasks.
• Humans can only remember, on average, between five to nine items using their short-term memory.
• Humans will run, fight, or freeze.
• Humans telegraph their intentions.
• Humans are predictable.
• Humans are not generally spontaneous or random.
• Once we know the enemy's pattern, we can practically predict his next move. Unfortunately, this also means that we are not as random as we think and that the enemy can identify our patterns to predict our next movements and actions.
• Humans are not good at multitasking.
• People can only do one thing at a time well; when they attempt to do more than one thing at a time, focus, ability, and productivity suffer.
• Humans are generally clueless.
• Humans in general lack situational awareness.
• Humans can’t do very many different things.
• Kinesics is the domain that involves people’s conscious and subconscious body language. This is important because humans give off signals through their postures, gestures, and expressions that communicate their current emotions and possibly their future intentions. Being able to pick up on these signals is critical to proactively identifying threats.
• Biometric cues is the term we use to describe the uncontrollable and automatic biological responses of the human body to stress. These physiological responses are key to understanding a person’s emotional states and changes.
• Proxemics is the domain that allows us to understand groups of people by observing interpersonal distance and identify an individual’s relationships and intention based on how they use the space around them.
• Geographics is the domain that involves reading the relationships between people and their environment. This helps us to understand and identify who is familiar or unfamiliar with the area they are in and how people move around their surroundings.
• Iconography is the domain that allows us to understand the symbols people use to communicate their beliefs and affiliations. Gangs, insurgents, terrorist groups, and individuals use iconography as a symbol of group unity, for rapid recognition of other members, and to communicate their beliefs to the larger populace.
• Atmospherics is the domain focused on the collective attitudes, moods, and behaviors in a given situation or a place.
• Kinesics is the study of body language and accounts for a significant part of all interpersonal communication.
• Most gestures, in and of themselves, are not important. What’s important to the combat profiler is a gesture in the context of the baseline.
• Combat profiling focuses on clusters of behavior, or multiple cues, rather than single gestures.
• To identify facial expressions accurately, you must be relatively close to the person you are observing.
• Clusters are based on a person’s perception of threats and how they are preparing to deal with them. They are:
• Dominant vs submissive
• Uncomfortable vs comfortable
• Interested vs uninterested (in the person or object they are interacting with)
• By ensuring that everyone is using the same terminology and language to describe and communicate their observations, we can also ensure quick, concise, and accurate discussions and decisions between everyone involved.
• Dominant behavior is an expression of the limbic system’s fight response. Even in situations in which physical aggression is inappropriate, people often use dominant behaviors to intimidate, bully, and assert control over others.
• Generally speaking, authoritative people seek to establish ownership over people and objects in their immediate vicinity, and this begins with taking ownership of the space around them.
• Dominant behavior includes gestures and postures that make a person look larger to intimidate “smaller” people into submission.
• The submissive cluster is the opposite of the dominant cluster and is characterized by the absence of the fight response.
• Submissive behavior is identified by the types of behavior that causes a person to take up less space.
• The important of putting observations into the context of their surroundings can’t be overstated.
• Oftentimes people display submissive behavior when they are feeling non confrontational.
• When a person feels threatened, scared, nervous, or begins to experience some other negative emotion, that person will display discomfort.
• Distancing behaviors, using barriers, and pacifying behaviors are clear indicators that someone is uncomfortable.
• The use of pacifying behaviors is an immediate sign someone is uncomfortable. A pacifying behavior is any act or gesture used to calm or comfort oneself when experiencing the body’s autonomic responses to stress.
• Because a person cannot experience both a fight and flight response simultaneously, a person can only display one cluster at a time.
• The guiding principle for identifying a person’s interest is assessing where the person’s attention is focused, whether on the subject with whom they are interacting or elsewhere.
• Being able to determine who is interested or uninterested can provide a significant advantage when determining who to contact and engage in conversation.
• Emblems are hand gestures that can replace words. Gestures used to communicate messages such as “stop” or “come here” are emblems.
• Many emblems are displayed subconsciously and are very reliable indicators of the person’s emotional state, particularly in settings in which a person must conceal his or her emotions.
• The first area of the body Marines should observe on a person is the hands. Checking the hands of a person enters that the person is not holding a weapon and is not preparing to strike.
• Hands can often times betray where a person’s attention is. If a person has something concealed they don’t want discovered, such as a gun, a knife, drugs, stolen items, etc., that person will often tough or pat that area on the body where the object is concealed, as if to ensure the object has not been lost and it is still hidden from view.
• Repeated patting can indicate that the person has a weapon or something else worth identifying concealed on his or her body.
• Another indicator to look for is people who are “checking their six”. This is when a person looks over the  shoulder to see who is around or behind them. Only people who are aware of their surroundings conduct this behavior, and since most people do not bother to search for threats or bother to be aware of their surroundings, this is an indicator that demands further observation.
• Any person checking his or her “six” is immediately an anomaly and deserves further observation.
• A kinesic slip occurs when a person’s nonverbal behavior betrays the person’s words. Nonverbal communication should complement and supplement verbal communication, either adding emphasis or illustrating a point, but can also contradict the words used. So when the nonverbal communication contradicts the words used to communicate the same point, combat profiles should be altered that something might be awry.
• One of the principles of human nature that combat profiling is based upon is that people only look natural when they are naturally doing something.
• Time spent developing the ability to read and understand body language, both quickly and accurately, will provide much insight into other people’s intentions and emotions.
• One gesture is insufficient to make an observation; always form a cluster of three indicators leading to the same conclusion.
• Threat indicators include smuggling behavior (patting an area on the body), situational awareness (checking their six), and attempting to act natural.
• When a person experiences some type of stress, a threatening situation, or a strong emotional response, that person’s body experiences certain physiological changes--mostly caused by the response of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and by the release of certain hormones such as adrenaline.
• Anger is the most common dangerous emotion since the motive of anger often is to harm the target.
• An angry person may flare their nostrils and become red in the face. Anger is associated with increased heart rate, increased respiratory activity (faster breathing), and facial flushing.
• Fear is an emotion that is closely related to anger. Fear is caused by events or situations that signal danger as well as the threat of physical or psychological harm.
• Evolution has predisposed humans to a few main responses to a threat--freeze, flight, or fight.
• Pupil dilation has often been shown to be associated with both anger and fear.
• A normal person blinks thousands of times each day and rarely notices it; however, blinking is an incredibly reliable indicator that a person is undergoing stress.
• A person’s normal blink rate is between six to ten times per minute, but blinking increases when a person is under stress, emotionally aroused, or when a person attempts to mask emotions.
• For a combat profiler, any significant change in a person’s pupil size should be taken as an indicator that something has aroused that individual, whether positively or negatively, and that person has experienced some type of emotion.
• Attempting to suppress an emotion is physiologically taxing, and a specific indicator of someone attempting to suppress an emotion is increased blinking.
• Tunnel vision is the extreme loss of peripheral vision. It is an automatic response that happens as a result of severe stress and an excessive heart rate.
• The key is that any significant color change in a person’s face is a clear indicator that the person is experiencing a significant emotional response.
• Dry mouth is often associated with increases activity of the autonomic nervous system.
• Biometric cues are the uncontrollable and automatic responses to stress.
• The way humans use space to communicate is called proxemics. Like other animals, humans move toward what they are attracted to and move away from what they fear.
• Status is significant in how people use space to communicate, as subordinates rarely initiate contact with someone of higher social rank.
• Relationship affects the distance at which two people will stand.
• How people interact with the space around and between them is a significant dynamic and predictor of human behavior anywhere in the world.
• People move for a purpose, and the way a person moves can reveal that person’s intentions.
• Combat profilers classify movement into three categories: movement toward, movement away, and idle movement.
• A foundational dynamic of human nature is that people will approach things they like and which they expect will deliver pleasure and avoid things that are unappealing or could cause them pain.
• The first principle of Geographics is that human beings act with greater confidence in areas with which they are familiar. Home field advantage is real.
• In any environment, humans and animals will seek the path of least resistance.
• An anchor point is a home base. It’s the place from which a person or group operations.
• An anchor point may be identified by the volume of traffic coming and going--and by the emotional attachment it evokes in those who belong.
• Anchor points are identified based upon the behavior of the people at that location.
• Human beings are territorial. Groups take possession of space.
• Whenever we observe behavior characterized by identification with a geographic area in a way that indicates ownership, we also expect that ownership to involve defense of that territory against perceived invaders.
• People are always more vulnerable on the move, and if we continue to eliminate safe havens and anchor points for criminals, our ability to neutralize and eliminate them will increase exponentially.
• Buffer space is another characteristic that can help us locate an anchor point. A buffer zone is the demilitarized area surrounding an anchor point.
• The combat profiler should look for areas that, though surrounded by instances of criminal activity, remain remarkably immune to attacks and crime. This may be an indicator of an anchor point surrounded by a buffer zone.
• People act differently in an area depending on whether they are familiar or unfamiliar with the environment.
• Iconography is visual language.
• An icon is any symbol used to promote a person’s or group’s presence, beliefs, or affiliations.
• Iconography often communicates complex messages through simple pictures, symbols, and writing.
• Because tattoos are permanent, they often possess extremely significant meaning for the wearer. The location on the person’s body may be meaningful as well.
• Individuals select clothing and other artifacts to communicate messages to others.
• Iconography is not an uncontrollable element of human behavior, so it can be easily masked or concealed, and sometimes requires significant interpretation.
• Combat profiling is about having situational awareness and proactively identifying threats.
• Atmospherics can be defined as the collective mood of a situation or place.
• Moods and emotions are also contagious. They pass from one person to another subconsciously through mimicry and other means.
• Every place or situation possesses an emotional atmosphere. This atmosphere will be a true indicator of the emotions and attitudes of the people in the situation.
• Interpersonal distance can be a key clue to the atmosphere in a situation.
• Silence may be explained by two phenomena: lack of noise or auditory exclusion.
• Auditory exclusion occurs when your brain begins to shut down or reduce your ability to hear any sound or certain sounds in stressful situations.
• True silence can occur because people in an area have fled or hidden themselves because of fear or because tension or dread has caused people to become silent.
• Positive atmospherics indicate a sense of security.
• Negative atmospherics are often a “left of bang” indicator of a threat.
• The process for making decisions is simple: Establish the baseline, identify anomalies, decide, and act. The key to any decision-making is when to decide--the combat profiling heuristic says that three anomalies are enough to decide.
• Any effective method of decision-making should have a threshold of decisions. This is the point at which, no matter what, you must make a decision. A threshold of decision guards against hesitation and indecision due to overanalysis or waiting for additional information.
• In combat profiling, we look for a cluster of cues. We advocate making decisions based on three cues. Once three cues are identified, a decision must be made.
• The three decisions that a combat profiler may make are: kill, capture, or contact--in that order.
• In any given situation, in a potentially hostile environment, the first decision that combat profilers should make is to kill or prepare to kill.
• Humans have an internal reluctance to kill.
• The second, and more important, reason the decision three begins with the most violent option is that, in combat environments, to not be prepared to take the most violent course of action is to put oneself at risk.
• In hostile situations, it is much easier to back down from a decision to kill than it is to ramp up to a decision to kill.
• Decisions are situational. There are no decisions that will absolutely apply to all situations.
• Getting left of bang requires identifying a potential threat before something happens.
• The key is to observe pre-event indicators, and to do this it is necessary to be in Condition Yellow: aware and observant.
• Ultimately, the combat profiler is attempting to determine the large-scale behavioral patterns in order to establish a standard against which to judge anomalies.
• The first indicator for identifying key leaders is an entourage. In fact, it’s a necessary indicator, since it’s difficult to identify a key leader of a group without a group. An entourage is obvious because the well-established fact in leadership research is that interaction is one of the main activities of leaders.
• The second leadership indicator is direction--the leader provides direction for the rest of the group. A leader who is significant will be in control of his subordinates.
• The FBI suggests that one way to survive workplace violence is having a “survival mindset”. This means being aware, prepared, and having rehearsed the actions you will take during a workplace violence incident.
• Those who prepare and train themselves for the possibility of violence will react differently than those who do not.
• Attacks do not happen “out of the blue”. Even what may be considered spontaneous violence is almost always the result of a gradual progression of aggression and precursors to violence.
• The key to preventing many attacks is identifying the pre-event indicators.
• The combat profiling heuristic requires that when you observe three behavioral indicators that someone is an anomaly, you act. However, sometimes it may be necessary to act on one or two indicators, provided those indicators are clear and obvious in communicating a person is a threat.
• Learning is impossible without humility. We encourage confidence, not cockiness.

Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy by Greg Dean

• A joke contains two parts: (1) the setup and (2) the punch.
• The setup is the first part of the joke that sets up the laugh.
• The punch is the second part that makes you laugh.
• The setup and the punch are directly related to expectation and surprise.
• In order to work, a joke has to surprise you. The trick is that you cannot be surprised unless you’re expecting something else first. That’s what a joke does: It causes you to expect one thing, then surprises you with another.
• The setup creates an expectation.
• The punch reveals a surprise.
• A joke requires two story lines.
• The setup of a joke creates a 1st story in our minds that leads us to expect something, then the punch surprises us with a 2nd story that's compatible with, yet somehow different from, what we’re expecting.
• Every part of a thing you imagine exists--but aren’t directly perceiving--is an assumption.
• Human beings, as a rule, have a profound need for things to make sense. If something doesn’t make sense, we’ll fill in the information so it will make sense, and we do that by making assumptions based on our past experience.
• The target assumption is the key assumption upon which the 1st story is built.
• The target assumption is the assumption directly shattered by the punch.
• Many jokes have target assumptions that most people accept based on physical laws, societal biases, cultural and national presuppositions, accepted definitions, stereotypes, and familiar environments, to name a few example.
• On a daily basis, people make millions of assumptions without even realizing it. It’s these unconscious assumptions that are targeted by jokes without setups.
• The aim of the reinterpretation is to shatter the target assumption.
• Any interpretation other than the assumed one is a reinterpretation.
• At the center of joke structure is a third mechanism which I call the connector, defined as one thing interpreted in at least two ways.
• Jokes are rather simple structures because they revolve around one central idea. If there’s more than one connector, there’s more than one joke.
• Every joke writing system lends itself to writing one-liners.
• Interestingly, the vast majority of jokes in the world come from social situations as jokes without setups. But jokes without setups are nearly impossible to teach without first understanding the makeup and composition of jokes with setups.
• You explore a joke’s passageways by asking questions.
• Asking questions forces you to come up with answers, and each answer will take you farther along your way or even lead to a completely different tunnel.
• Any exploration is better than being stuck saying the same thing over and over again.
• If at any time in the process you think of a joke, write it down.
• Often the most obvious assumption is usually the best choice for the target assumption because it’s the one everybody will make when you deliver the setup.
• Remember, you want to eventually shatter the assumption held by your audience. That won’t be possible if you choose an obscure assumption that most of the audience members won’t make.
• Write punches in the way you naturally speak or act.
• Since brevity is the soul of wit, you should really try to reveal the 2nd story in as few words as possible.
• When it comes to joke writing, nothing is set in stone.
• As an artists you have one incredibly precious thing that no one else in the entire word has: your own perspective.
• One thing you should never, ever try to write about is what you guess the audience might think is funny. There’s actually a word for people who only try to write what they think someone else will like: Hacks.
• The jokes are in the details.
• The sense of humor evolved as a means of coping with painful things.
• Any creative endeavor that tries to cover more than one central idea tends to get lost because it has no single through line.
• An important note: A topic must not include an opinion.
• The function of a topic is to begin with something general, from which you can generate countless details.
• Once you’ve chosen a general topic, make an association list of all the specific things you can think of relating to that topic. Keep the entries on the list as short as possible and avoid long descriptions.
• The punch-premise is a negative opinion about a smaller aspect of the topic.
• Whether your jokes go from good to bad or bad to worse, they’ll always be moving toward the more negative. If you’re uncomfortable with this concept, get used to it because it’s a consistently useful technique that will come in handy whenever you’re writing jokes.
• It’s important to remember that a setup-premise is not a setup. If you write a joke using your setup-premise as a setup, you’ll only get one joke.
• The steps to the Joke Map are:
• List some topics
• Select on topic and make an association list
• Create several punch-premises
• For each punch-premise form a setup-premise
• Choose a setup-premise and write a list of setups
• You explore by asking questions.
• Asking questions is the cornerstone of creativity.
• Remember, comedy is a playful means of dealing with painful things. The more horrific a concept, the better it usually is for comedy.
• A famous writer once said, “There is no writing, only rewriting.” That may be extreme, but the point is well-taken. Once you have a first draft, there are many things you can do to improve it.
• When you go about polishing your jokes you’ll discover there are many possible versions depending on which technique you employ.
• One word of advice: Don’t worry about polishing and improving your material while you’re coming up with it. Creating and editing are two very different and mutually exclusive functions.
• When you’re writing new jokes, write quickly and move on.
• As Shakespeare said, “Brevity is levity.” Nothing kills a good joke more certainty than something it with an avalanche of unnecessary words and information.
• As a general rule, the audience should respond to your jokes, not think about them. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write intelligent jokes. It means that a joke, even if it’s  a novel idea, should be so understandable that the audience doesn’t have to figure out what you’re talking about.
• Comedy has its own conservation of energy law: Energy spent by the audience thinking is energy taken away from laughing. That’s why it’s important to give them no more information to process than absolutely necessary.
• The less time it takes to get a laugh, the more laughs per minute, LPMs, you get. Economy is an important technique for achieving high LPMs.
• Within every punch there’s a pivotal word, phrase, or action that presents the reinterpretation, which in turn shatters the target assumption with the intent of making the audience laugh. From the audience’s perspective, this pivotal word, phrase, or action is hidden until the punch exposes it, which is why I call this technique the reveal.
• To effectively construct a joke, make sure your reveal appears at the very end of the punch. A properly placed reveal is a very important factor, because it determines when the audience laughs.
• Talking past the reveal is one of the most common and irritating errors. It usually occurs because the comic inserts mindless prattle beyond the point where the joke gets a laugh.
• It’s imperative to identify the reveal; otherwise it may get mixed up with less important information needed to make the joke work.
• The hard consonant sounds, especially K sounds, which include hard C, Qu, and, to a lesser extend, T, P, hard G, D, and B, tend to make words sound funnier. Using words with these hard consonants instead of synonyms with softer sounds really helps improve a joke.
• Make it a habit to search for words with hard consonants and test this out for yourself.
• A pattern is a simple way to get people to make an assumption because they assume the pattern will continue. And what is the smallest number of beats needed to set up a pattern? You’ve got it--two. Two beats set up the pattern and the assumption, and the third beat breaks the pattern, shattering the assumption.
• If they don’t understand what you’re talking about, they won’t laugh. When a certain word or reference is crucial to the understanding of a joke, you must consider whether it’s familiar to your audience. Sometimes you’ll need to use a more familiar alternative.
• If there’s a reference or information that’s crucial to your joke that is not in the common realm of knowledge and has no convenient alternative, explain the reference or state the information in the setup.
• Sadly, once in a while you’ll have to drop a joke altogether because explaining the reference kills the comedy or gives away the punch.
• Quoting yourself and the characters in your jokes brings the scene into the present, greatly adds to the reality of the performance with personal interactions, and provides opportunities to find more jokes.
• Puns are an old, somewhat outdated style of comedy.
• Making the characters in your jokes real and specific greatly enhances the jokes’ effectiveness.
• Refer to the characters in your jokes as friends or relatives rather than nebulous persons, or use actual public figures.
• Every town has an area or some nearby town that people look down on. Find out what it is and refer to it. Make it the place that an unlikeable character in one of your jokes comes from. The audience will love you for it.
• Tying your old jokes in with current news stories helped make your material sound fresh and up to date.
• Have some jokes and routines handy for all of the special calendar days. You can do these “topical” jokes year after year, and they’ll never get old.
• People don’t talk like they write, so you should write like they talk. Proper grammar and syntax have nothing to do with making a joke funny. In fact, stiffly worded jokes seldom flow as well as jokes written with the flaws and rhythms of everyday speech.
• Comedic license permits comedians to muck around with language for the purpose of making jokes.
• Don’t be afraid to try acting out scenes instead of talking about them.
• Tagging a joke is a comic’s slang for adding another punch to a complete joke. Getting two or more laughs from your initial setup increase your overall LPMs.
• Tags are the road to success. If all you do is setup and punch, 95 to 99 percent of your stage time is spent on the setups. That means 95 to 99 percent of your time is spent not being funny. But if you’re tagging all your setups with multiple punches, you increase your LPMs, hence the percentage of time you spend being funny.
• With every new punch comes a 2nd story filled with numerous assumptions.
• Ask yourself what new assumptions you’re making about the punch or tag, and go down the list of questions in the Joke Mine until you dig up another punch.
• Fine-tuning your jokes can make the difference between getting a chuckle or a really big laugh. Stick with it, and you’ll find the increased number and volume of laughs well worth the effort.
• Maintain a joke and routine file.
• Routine Builder:
• Put each joke on a separate index card
• Organize the jokes into categories
• Arrange jokes so one thought leads to the next
• Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite
• Joke writing isn’t a linear science; it’s erratic and unpredictable.
• You’ll need to experiment with wording, editing, and reordering to make the jokes flow as an entire routine. When you’re rewriting, read the jokes out loud.
• It’s so unnatural to just come on stage and start saying your first joke. You’ll want to bring up the subject matter of your routine in the same way that you’d bring it up in normal conversation.
• Segues are transitions between categories.
• Personally, I find most segues to be a waste of time.
• I believe the best segue is when the comedian just stops to think; the audience will know that a new topic, punch-premise, setup-premise, or category is about to follow.
• Assembling a routine isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.
• Narrator POV: how you perceive things as a non participant or observer.
• Self POV: how you perceive things as a participant
• Character POV: how you perceive things as someone or something else
• In Narrator POV, the comedian is never directly involved in the experience the joke is about, but observes, reports, talks about, or...narrates it.
• When doing Self POV, the comedian is involved in the experience, which is acted out as if it’s happening in the present.
• Character POV is anyone or anything the comedian can act out as a character. This includes people, impersonations, animals, objects, and concepts such as emotions.
• Having a particular voice you can focus on helps settle you into a character.
• A distinct posture, mannerism,or physical idiosyncrasy really helps you find a character quickly.
• One of the most common mistakes beginning students make is mixing up the sides the POVs are on. It’s confusing when the audience accepts a Self POV on the left side and a character POV on the right side, and then switch sides for no apparent reason, or even worse, both stand on the same side facing the same direction.
• If you’re uncertain which side each POV is on, the confusion will be reflected in your performance.
• POVs are a robust technique with a wide range of uses with implication throughout my entire comedy technique. The more you explore and play with POVs, the more applications you’ll find to help you express your personal style of being funny.
• Materials has a far greater impact on an audience when it’s reenacted as if it’s happening in the present.
• Once you begin to identify all of the Character POVs in your material, you’ll be astounded at how plentiful they are. The basic method for doing this is to never tell the audience what someone or something says or does. Instead, become that someone or something and let them say or do it.
• Portraying Character POVs is one of the most overlooked techniques in comedy.
• If you’re willing to be vulnerable enough to put your honest thoughts and feelings into your show, you’ll be surprised at how many people will identify with you.
• Acting out an experience as if it’s happening is a wonderful opportunity for honesty because there are no consequences. In comedy, you can say all those things you’ve been thinking, but were afraid to let out.
• Using Character POVs allows you to say or do things in front of an audience that you’d never do in public. If the audience finds it offensive, you can always blame it on the Character POV.
• Comedians interpret jokes in ways that make people laugh.
• Consistently making people laugh is an act of creativity; it takes a great deal of experience.
• As a teacher, I find students have many more performing problems that need to be solved than writing problems. Joke writing problems can usually be eliminated with practice, time, and effort, but performing problems will keep a student stuck at the same level until they’re solved.
• I’ve found that almost all performing problems are a result of improper rehearsal.
• How you rehearse is how you will perform.
• The lesson here is that since the performance state mimics the rehearsal state, it’s extremely important to use a rehearsal process that will bring forth your natural state of being funny.
• You must rehearse in two physically separate locations. One allocated to the critic, referred to as the critic spot, and the other assigned to the creator, called the rehearsal space.
• A joke is a response to some experience.
• Words are symbols that represent experiences. Since they’re just representations, they don’t affect us as actual experiences do.
• The classical rehearsal mistake beginning comics make is to redo a funny story about something that really happened to them to the things that were said, and then memorize those words verbatim.
• The problem is that a very large part of what makes a joke funny lies in how the comedian responds to the circumstances of the story.
• This is the crux of my Rehearsal Process. A joke is a comic response to some experience, so if you know what that experience is, you can recall it as a means of remember the joke.
• The only way for you to bring the audience into your movie is for you to rehearse your material as a sensory experience, remember it as a sensory experience, and communicate it as a sensory experience. Then, and only then, can the audience perceive it as a sensory experience.
• Ultimately, what I want you to understand is stand-up is not a presentation, but rather an interpersonal communication of bringing the audience into the comedy movie of your show. But before you can do this, you must first learn to rehearse it as en experience.
• Your goal in rehearsing is turning your material into sensory experiences from all relevant POVs as though it is actually happening to you.
• To truly communicate the comedy within this joke you must first understand what is happening within this mini-universe.
• An emotion is a response to an experience.
• Your job is to create an experience so you can recall the pictures, sounds, and feelings that will allow you to respond with this joke. The only right way is your way.
• The rule of thumb is: Hold the mike in your hand unless the bit requires your hands to be free; only then put it back on the stand.
• Do speak over the top of the mike. Most hand mikes are omnidirectional, which means they pick up sound just as well from any angle within a certain distance. Holding the mike at chin level, you’ll easily be within that distance.
• Your job is to be funny.
• My definition of comic timing is African dancing and drumming. The audience is following the comedian and the comedian is following the audience. The comedian doesn’t have timing; the comedian spontaneously creates timing based on how he or she is being affected by the audience. You can’t decide on it ahead of time because it’s an act of creativity that happens in the present.
• Be careful not to get arrogant after one or two good shows Stand-up comedy is like the wild animal; just when you think you have it under control, it’ll turn around and bite you in the ass.
• Remember, a good introduction can set the proper tone for your entire show. Just as a bad one can dig a hole that may take you some time to get out of. Introductions are important, so take the time to create one that’s right for you.
• It’s better to have an unfunny introduction that sets you up to get into your material than to have a funny one that puts you in the wrong light.
• Before a show begins, you’ll want to warm up so your comedy motor will be ready for the race when you step on stage. As a beginner, you’ll usually get about three to six minutes to perform. If you go on stage cold, by the time you hit your stride your time will be up.
• Some people need to be left alone before they perform. If this is your style, physically warm up, then find a place where you can be somewhat alone. But be sure to let the M.C. know where you are--you don’t want him to think you’ve disappeared.
• When a comic comes out and jumps right into his act, it’s often jolting. The purpose of the greeting is to familiarize yourself with the group of people in front of you and begin building a relationship.
• After you greet the audience, it’ll help you to relax if your first shot at being funny gets a big laugh. So having a great opening joke really helps. It can also establish who you are.
• If there’s something about you the audience might fixate on, you must address it so they’ll let it go and you can get on with your show.
• Notice the phrases and idiosyncrasies that all the hack comics are using, and avoid them like unsafe sex.
• Of all of the comics’ cliches, asking a question as a means of bringing up a new subject matter is the most frequently abused and the biggest waste of valuable stage time.
• Riffing is one of the only appropriate reasons for asking the audience questions, because in this case you really want to develop a comedic dialogue. If you’re going to ask the audience a question, be prepared to converse with those who answers. Otherwise, state your negative opinion about your subject, which will save you time and segue into your next bit.
• There’s nothing sadder than watching a comic mess up a series of really great jokes by performing them on fast forward.
• This is one of the best pieces of advice I can give you. If you don’t relate to the audience as individual, they’ll feel you don’t care about them. Take the time to make eye contact with several people.
• When the audience is laughing--shut up.
• Being a really good M.C. is a valuable skill and it can help put you in a position to get stage experience.
• Nothing will ever replace stage experience for teaching you what you need to know about being a comedian.
• When you take responsibility for your feelings you become empowered because you’re in a position to do something about them, rather than just being a victim of them.
• If you want to perform out loud, you must rehearse out loud. If you want to be emotionally associated, you must rehearse emotionally associated. If you want to play a character, you must rehearse playing the character. You must rehearse it as you wish to perform it or else you won’t remember it.
• If what you’re doing isn’t working--do anything else.
• Bombing isn’t just the suffering part of being a comic. It’s the learning part. If you never bomb, you’ll never learn. From bombing you usually learn what doesn’t work, which is just as important as knowing what does.
• A saver is a line that’s not regularly in your show but kept in the back of your mind for emergency situations. And bombing is an emergency situation.
• Most hecklers think they’re helping make your show better.
• Handling heckles effectively is a skill that is only acquired through a great deal of stage experience.
• The time to verbally cut down a heckler is when the audience is just as irritated with him as you are. If the audience doesn’t perceive that he deserves it, they’ll view you as an overly aggressive jerk.
• You can’t blast women as hard as you can mean, no matter how much they deserve it. You could call this sexism, and maybe it is, but it’s also a comedy reality. Everyone has a primordial instinct to protect women.
• Since most hecklers think they’re helping your show, sometimes just nicely asking them to stop can be enough.
• Give all the attention to the area of the crowd that’s being respectful and attentive. This creates a kind of rivalry for the comic’s attention. Since the ignored section wants the comic’s attention back, they’ll turn on the heckler and get him to shut up. It’s a smarter choice to get the audience to do the work for you.
• Remember, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.
• Perform anywhere you can get in front of an audience.
• Do clean material .This is a recurring theme in this chapter for several reasons. If all of your laughs come from the shock value of foul language, you’re not writing jokes. You’re just shattering assumption of social propriety.
• If you speak at a Toastmaster meeting, there’s no reason why you can’t use your comedy routine as your speech.
• The ability to ruthlessly edit your own jokes is the most valuable skill you’ll ever learn in comedy. Most funny people hold onto their jokes as if they were their children.
• The sooner you’re willing to cut out the marginal jokes, the sooner your show will move up to a professional level.
• Before editing the joke out of your show, try to figure out why it didn’t work. It’s amazing how much information you can pick up about a joke just by performing it.
• If you have an intuition about the joke or feel confident it can be salvage, then play around with it to see if you can make it funnier.
• You’ll want to rearrange the jokes so the show ends with jokes that get the biggest laughs.
• People tend to laugh harder at sexual material than they do at nonsexual material. Since that’s the case, it follows that you should end your show with sex jokes.
• Conversational material often works better after you’ve gained acceptance with the audience. A routine that could alienate the crowd if you open with it may work just fine once you and the audience have become friends.