What Questlove Taught Me: "Is This Allowed?"

There’s an episode of the A Piece of Work podcast all about emojis and whether they should be considered art or not. In one segment the host is interviewing Questlove, drummer for  The Roots and guy in the picture above this paragraph). He brings up this idea I absolutely love. He’s talking about music and says:

"…any album that’s ever come out and I had to ask “is this allowed?” Then it’s pretty much high art."

Now, I don’t know anything about art and I’d feel like a complete idiot if I started calling anything at all HIGH ART but I love the concept.

Think of ANYTHING groundbreaking, unique, revolutionary, or influential in our culture. There was a moment with all of them when people first encountered it and had to ask "are they allowed to do this?"

We get to so used to how things are already being done. How everything should look, sound, and feel.

Subconsciously trends turn into rules and we feel like we’re not allowed to break them.

I want to be more aware of this. When I’m brainstorming, when I’m working on something new, if I ever have an idea that makes me nervous and causes me to ask “is that allowed” I know I’m heading in the right direction.

Throwing Away Everything & Starting Over

For the last year and a half I’ve been touring with a stand-up show called Tell a Good Story. It’s a set show with its own jokes and a message about the power of telling your story.

BUT NOW IS THE TIME TO DESTROY IT ALL!!!

In January I’m throwing away all of Tell a Good Story and starting a new tour. It’ll have all new material. It’ll have a new theme and message. I’ve been slowly working out the material little by little over the last few months. I’ve snuck new jokes into shows since the summer. But there’s still a lot of work to do.

Writing new material is really scary for me. I have this fear that I’m going to forget how to be funny. I made this video last year about how frustrating it is for me to write new jokes.

I think one of the videos I’m most proud of is this one where I tell the story of the first time I ever got paid to do stand-up. The music I used in the video is all over the place and kinda distracting but I think it’s a really funny story. At the beginning I talk abut the process on becoming a better comedian. You basically have to fail a lot and embarrass yourself in public over and over until you’re good. Hooray!

I've only got a few more performances of Tell a Good Story this year. Then it's on to the new stuff. I'm really excited.

If you're interested in bringing my new show to your church next year, check out THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO USE COMEDY AS AN OUTREACH.

A PIECE OF WORK: an honest podcast about art

Last week while desperately hunting for a new podcast I found this 10 episode mini series called A PIECE OF WORK. The podcast’s website describes it as “everything you want to know about modern art but were afraid to ask.”

It’s hosted by Abbi Jacobson, co-creator of Comedy Central’s Broad City, and each episode she learns about a different style of modern art. Have you ever been to a museum and seen paintings that are just random paint splatters or a simple triangle painted on a wall and thought “Why?! What is this supposed to be?!” This podcast answers that question in the most entertaining way.

The thing I love about the show is how honest it is. The host often brings her friends (including Hannibal Burress, Tavi Gevinson, Questlove, RuPaul) to the museum of modern art and introduces art pieces to get their opinion. I love this part because the guests don’t feel like they have to lie, pretend, or sound smart. They’re just honest. If they think it's dumb, they’ll say. If they like it but they’re not sure why, they’ll say it. No consideration given to how "uneducated" they may sound.

Museums can feel like such daunting places because you might feel like you’re not allowed to be yourself. You feel this pressure to go from art piece to art piece, stare in silence, make a face like you’re REALLY getting something deep from it, then nod your head and move on. Like an intellectual or a fancy boy.

Whenever a museum curator is interviewed for A PIECE OF WORK they never shy away from the fact that they were well aware of what most people think of modern art. They know we often think it's total crap. They're not afraid to quote the biggest criticism all modern art receives: “What is this junk?! I could have made that.” But what's cool is they're willing to start there because they're confident in their ability to get us to a place where we understand and appreciate the art.

I think the honesty makes this podcast so accessible. The show doesn’t shame you for not “getting it.” It’s ok with you admitting you don’t like modern art. I think that approach made me lean in. That made me want to be more open to learn, and be a part of this conversation.

Honesty has that effect.

Listen to all 10 episodes: https://t.co/aguRGFGjS7

Inviting People to Church

Christians have a lot of weird ideas for how to get people in to their church. I think I’ve come up with a great test to help figure out if your method of inviting people is weird or not. 

I think a really easy way to invite someone would be to say to friends you’re hanging out with “Hey, you want to come to this free comedy show?”

That doesn’t seem too strange at all.

Churches should think about hosting comedy shows. HINT HINT HINT.

Here’s the most effective way to use comedy as an outreach.

One Rough School Assembly

I do school assemblies with a ministry called Youth Alive. Two weeks ago we were in Oklahoma setting up for an assembly in a jr high when the principal came over and asked about my segment. We have a few different speakers who present throughout the assembly and that day I was going to talk about bullying and suicide. He tells me that the school had an attempted suicide earlier in the week and to be sensitive of that.

I have never had that happen before. That was a hard one to get through. I usually have no idea any sort of back story behind the group I’m speaking to. It’s not until after the show that I hear stories of people dealing with the stuff I talk about. But this time I was on stage making eye contact with student after student trying desperately to hold back tears. Each student I saw I thought “this segment is for them.” “This segment is for them.”

When I was at a youth ministry conference  last week I was talking to a pastor about why confession is so important to me and why I’m always focusing on it as I close out my stand-up shows. He brought up one of his favorite verses “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind (1 Cor. 10:13).”

How comforting to know you’re not the only one. You’re not alone. I get to say it in my stand-up. You have the chance to say it to your family, friends, small group, or even complete strangers in their moments of need. You’re not alone.

The Dumbest T-Shirt Idea | Pre-order Now

If you saw me perform at a camp this summer or you saw week one of my Why Not Stories, you might remember hearing about my experience getting to milk a cow and how I drank that stuff fresh from the cow. Or, as I like to put it, I drank milk “straight from the uttz.”

For some reason people thought was the funniest phrase in the world. At one camp the whole audience started chanting it at me like a crazed mob. People started commenting “straight from the uttz” on all my youtube videos. It was a weird summer.

Last week I was messing around in photoshop and designed a Straight from the Uttz t-shirt. I put it in my instagram story, asking “is this too dumb of a t-shirt?” And I got SO MANY responses from people telling me they wanted one. I gave into peer pressure and put the shirt for sale on my site.

I think this shirt is so dumb but I can’t stop laughing at the thought of people actually wearing it in public.

It’s available for pre-order until this Saturday. You’ll get it 20% off.

Go to straightfromtheuttz.com

Or go to www.uttz.life

I bought both domains for this dumb thing.

Hurry up and pre-order it right now before you forget.

Every time I get notified about a new order I lose my mind.

Here's the video from Why Not Stories where I milked a cow

The Best Comedian on Snapchat

Gil Ozeri is one of the funniest people on the internet. He’s an improviser in LA and last year he started making the CRAZIEST videos for his snapchat story. Like, you will be surprised the amount of effort he put into some of the dumbest, silliest, and most bizarre 6 second videos.

Last month he released a BEST OF on youtube collecting his favorite snapchat story moments. Please watch it.

His big leg is probably my favorite. The part where Steven Spielberg is chasing him is also very funny.

Reading C.S. Lewis' Problem of Pain

This week my To Do list is nothing but sending a few e-mails to churches setting up services and comedy shows and then A TON OF READING. I’ve got a big ol stack of books I’ve got to get through to prepare for next year.

If you want to follow what books I’m reading and what I think of them, I restarted my Good Reads account. You can find it here.

Last week I finished C.S. Lewis’ THE PROBLEM OF PAIN. It’s really great. I took a ton of notes on every chapter except the one about why animals feel pain because I genuinely did not care. I’m really sorry if that offends you but I just need to be honest.

Here is probably my FAVORITE paragraph from the whole book:

“The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, please, and merriment, He scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

YES! YES! YES! That’s so good I could slap you right in the face. I love that. What a beautiful way to look at the happiest and warmest moments of our life. YES! I want to scream this paragraph at strangers on the street.

Also, let us never forget that C.S. Lewis wrote a children's book where Santa Claus shows up and gives everyone weapons.

Also also, did you know that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien went to the movies together and saw Disney’s Snow White? They did. And they hated it. They especially hated how dumb the dwarves were. They wrote letters about it. You can read about that here.

Things Got Awkward with a Magician

I spent the last two days at youth ministry conference trying to convince youth pastors that I’m funny and they should use me at their church. I had my own little booth and brochures and everything. Very fancy.

There was also a magician who had a booth on the other side of the expo center and I was too nervous to talk to him. I think my magic is really cool and I was afraid I’d come off too strong and scare him.

I’ve watched hours of clips from Penn & Teller’s show FOOL US on youtube. This clip is probably my all time favorite because of how mad Penn gets when he realizes how freaking good the magic trick was.

There are also two really great magic related documentaries on Netlfix.

Make Believe follows several teen magicians as they enter in a worldwide magic competition. It feels like some of the kids were created by the writers of The Office. But they’re real. It’s fascinating. It’s funny. For some reason I couldn’t stop yelling at my tv.

An Honest Liar is about The Amazing Randi, a magician turned skeptic who debunked psychics, healers, and televangelist who claimed to perform miracles but were actually frauds. This is also great but for totally different reasons.

So anyways, I’m at this conference avoiding the magician until the last day as everything is shutting down. He walks by my booth, I try to ask a genuine question, and I guess he thought I was making fun of him because it got real weird real fast.

I’m so sorry, magician man.

A Guy Falls in a Hole...

I’ve been watching West Wing on Netflix. This is my favorite quote from the show. It's a little story one character tells. It's great and it perfectly illustrates why I do stand-up the way I do.

Here it is:

This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.

A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, 'Hey you. Can you help me out?' The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. 

Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?' The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?' And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, 'Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.' The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.’

I love that.

And that’s the big idea behind my stand-up show, TELL A GOOD STORY. If you have a story of what God has done in your life, you have friends who need to hear it. You need to let them know you’ve been in the hole, too. But if you’re still stuck in the hole now, you need to know there are people who have found the way out, and it’s Jesus.

Watch the clip: