NEWSLETTER SENT: 2020-06-21
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Sarah Cooper Is An Absolute Legend
Ok, so this was funny.
Sarah Cooper — the Jamaican-American Googler turned comedian — is having a serious moment right now.
Her Tik Tok Trump lip-synchs have garnered over 100m views and she has added 1m Twitter followers over the past few weeks based on her hilarious videos.
I was so fascinated by her rise that I wrote an article about her creative journey: Sarah Cooper’s 10,000 Hours.
Through some internet jujitsu, I managed to get the article in front of Sarah and she liked it…enough to tweet it.
Before blasting it to her 1.4m Twitter followers, Sarah emailed me this… 
…and moments later, she tweeted out my article (I’ve never been happier to be called a “blogger”).
While she was probably half-joking in her “prepare your servers” email, Sarah’s tweet did end up crashing my website.
I scrambled to call my host provider and they basically told me “yeah, of course your site crashed dude, you bought the starter hosting package you cheap f*ck.”
Anyways, if you haven’t read the article, please do.
Sarah is an absolute legend and I greatly appreciate that she used her massive platform to help out this humble blogger 🙏🏼.
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Jerry Seinfeld Only Cares About “Funny”
Speaking of funny, Jerry Seinfeld went on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and it was amazing.
Let me set the table.
- Marc Maron is a popular comedian and also a prolific interviewer of comedians (1100+ podcast interviews).
- Marc is known for “putting himself out there” and his vulnerable personality is a big part of his comedy act.
- Jerry Seinfeld is probably the most financially successful comedian ever (worth >$500m) and a comedy purist. Being funny is the only thing that matters. Back stories and personality are irrelevant considerations.
- Marc likes to ad-lib on stage. Jerry is a perfectionist and likes to spend hours writing a single joke out, before testing it on stage (then back to the notepad then back to the stage until its done).
- Marc has been trying to interview Jerry (who has his own comedian interview show) for more than a decade and, until now, was stonewalled.
- This is the first time the two have actually ever met and to add to the underlying tension, Marc’s girlfriend recently passed.
The interview is an incredible listen (I’ve done it twice).
A Twitter commenter astutely observes that the conversation “…was like listening to a mathematician and a biologist discuss how to approach science.”
I was particularly interested in Jerry’s purist approach; here are some of his thoughts:
- On why he doesn’t curse: “It is so much more difficult to get a laugh without swearing. If you get a laugh because you got a ‘f*ck’ in there, you haven’t actually found the comedy gold.”
- When Marc asks ‘if you have to be wounded or broken to be a comedian’: “You can’t be anything other than what you are. Comedy has nothing to with anything. It’s not about a type. It’s like dandelion spores, it’s just sprinkled out there. You’re funny if you’re funny.”
- When Marc says, ‘but the reason you’re funny is…’: “I’m gonna stop you at ‘reason’. If you’re funny and you love to be funny, that’s it. I reject the entire premise of the psychology of funny. You’re funny if you’re funny. There is no reason why. And, if there is, who cares.”
- On whether there is ever something deeper than the joke itself: “My job is to make people laugh, that is the only relevant currency. If there is something deeper in the joke — and with any great joke there always is — that’s great. But never put anything above the laugh, like self-flagellation, opinion or insights. Never weight them more than the laugh. Nothing is harder than getting a laugh. There are other things you can do on stage, but if you want to do the hardest thing, it’s getting a laugh. That it’s. There are comics that will tell you that there are other interesting things to do, and that’s where I’ll part ways.”
Those snippets are just the tip of the iceberg. Def listen.
Stay safe and happy father’s day,
Trung
PS. Sarah’s newest Trump lip-synch is Father Day’s – themed hahaha
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