LOL: A Beginner’s Guide to Comedy, Telling Funny Jokes, and Conversational Humor


Book Description

LOL is a beginner’s guide to comedy, telling funny jokes, and learning how to incorporate humor into everyday conversations. Being funny on demand is a skill. It’s a skill that allows you to disarm tense situations and spread joy. In LOL, You Will Learn: The benefits of having a sense of humor. What is a joke? How to practice telling jokes. Where to practice telling jokes. How to unlock autopilot humor. How to study and refine your comedy skills. The stunning benefit of smiling and smirking when delivering a joke.




Small Talk: A Beginner's Guide to Breaking the Ice, Talking to Strangers, and Turning Acquaintances into Friends


Book Description

Small Talk is a beginner's guide to breaking the ice, talking to strangers, and turning acquaintances into friends. Tons of opportunities lie in the hands of people you've never met. Let's strike up a conversation with a stranger and see where the dialogue takes us! Every strong social bond started off with small talk. In This Book, You Will Learn: • The #1 intent of small talk. • How to easily break the ice with strangers. • 2 Unique frameworks to make small talk (F.R.O.G + Walls & Bridges). • How to use the social filtration system to turn strangers into acquaintances and acquaintances into friends. • How to deal with rejection like a winner. • Strategies to evolve small talks into deep talks. • How to deepen the conversation with 4D listening.




Lights, Camera, Action!: A Beginner’s Guide to Overcome Camera Shyness, Record Videos, and Build a Digital Presence


Book Description

Lights, Camera, Action is a beginner’s guide on how to overcome camera shyness, record videos, and build your digital presence. This book will help you feel comfortable when the recording light is on. Learn to relay your ideas from your mind to the world! Use the camera and make it your best friend. In this book, you will learn: Camera shyness exists How to practice effectively in order to overcome camera shyness Different methods in order to brainstorm topics to speak about How to add nuanced to your ideas Proper camera etiquette to improve your delivery The power of posture Why you should start a private YouTube channel The importance of watching film




Creativity


Book Description

The legendary comedian, actor, and writer of Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and A Fish Called Wanda fame shares his key ideas about creativity: that it’s a learnable, improvable skill. “Many people have written about creativity, but although they were very, very clever, they weren't actually creative. I like to think I'm writing about it from the inside.”—John Cleese You might think that creativity is some mysterious, rare gift—one that only a few possess. But you’d be wrong. As John Cleese shows in this short, practical, and often amusing guide, creativity is a skill that anyone can acquire. Drawing on his lifelong experience as a writer, Cleese shares his insights into the nature of creativity and offers advice on how to get your own inventive juices flowing. What do you need to do to get yourself in the right frame of mind? When do you know that you’ve come up with an idea that might be worth pursuing? What should you do if you think you’ve hit a brick wall? We can all be more creative. John Cleese shows us how.




On the Inconvenience of Other People


Book Description

In On the Inconvenience of Other People Lauren Berlant continues to explore our affective engagement with the world. Berlant focuses on the encounter with and the desire for the bother of other people and objects, showing that to be driven toward attachment is to desire to be inconvenienced. Drawing on a range of sources, including Last Tango in Paris, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Claudia Rankine, Christopher Isherwood, Bhanu Kapil, the Occupy movement, and resistance to anti-Black state violence, Berlant poses inconvenience as an affective relation and considers how we might loosen our attachments in ways that allow us to build new forms of life. Collecting strategies for breaking apart a world in need of disturbing, the book’s experiments in thought and writing cement Berlant’s status as one of the most inventive and influential thinkers of our time.




Born Standing Up


Book Description

Steve Martin has been an international star for over thirty years. Here, for the first time, he looks back to the beginning of his career and charmingly evokes the young man he once was. Born in Texas but raised in California, Steve was seduced early by the comedy shows that played on the radio when the family travelled back and forth to visit relatives. When Disneyland opened just a couple of miles away from home, an enchanted Steve was given his first chance to learn magic and entertain an audience. He describes how he noted the reaction to each joke in a ledger - 'big laugh' or 'quiet' - and assiduously studied the acts of colleagues, stealing jokes when needed. With superb detail, Steve recreates the world of small, dark clubs and the fear and exhilaration of standing in the spotlight. While a philosophy student at UCLA, he worked hard at local clubs honing his comedy and slowly attracting a following until he was picked up to write for TV. From here on, Steve Martin became an acclaimed comedian, packing out venues nationwide. One night, however, he noticed empty seats and realised he had 'reached the top of the rollercoaster'. BORN STANDING UP is a funny and riveting chronicle of how Steve Martin became the comedy genius we now know and is also a fascinating portrait of an era.




On Humour


Book Description

This is a fascinating and beautifully written book on what philosophy can tell us about humour and about what it is to be human. It will fascinate and intrigue anyone with a sense of humour.




How to Talk to Anyone


Book Description

"You'll not only break the ice, you'll melt it away with your new skills." -- Larry King "The lost art of verbal communication may be revitalized by Leil Lowndes." -- Harvey McKay, author of “How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive” What is that magic quality makes some people instantly loved and respected? Everyone wants to be their friend (or, if single, their lover!) In business, they rise swiftly to the top of the corporate ladder. What is their "Midas touch?" What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people. The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone (Contemporary Books, October 2003) Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques-- she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed book you’ll find: 9 ways to make a dynamite first impression 14 ways to master small talk, "big talk," and body language 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone 9 ways to feed someone's ego (and know when NOT to!) 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten alive In her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you'll remember them when you really need them, including: "Rubberneck the Room," "Be a Copyclass," "Come Hither Hands," “Bare Their Hot Button,” “The Great Scorecard in the Sky," and "Play the Tombstone Game,” for big success in your social life, romance, and business. How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work! By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!




Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Comedy


Book Description

Cutting-edge philosophers, psychoanalysts, literary theorists, and scholars use Freud and Lacan to shed light on laughter, humor, and the comic. Bringing together clinic, theory, and scholarship this compilation of essays offers an original mix with powerful interpretive implications.




How to Write Funny


Book Description

A discussion of the basics and genres of the comic point of view includes essays and interviews with such authors as Dave Barry, Sherman Alexie, and Melissa Bank.