Routine
I watched the stand-up comedian perform; and I laughed at some of his jokes, though I had mixed feelings about the comedy routine as a whole.
For example, one part of the comedy routine was, “And so then the president came up to me and was like, “You voted for me, right?” and then I was like, “I plead the fifth amendment!” and the president frowned and said, “Only I get to plead the fifth amendment!” and then I said, “And so I have to answer then?” and then the president said, “Yes. You must answer.” and then I said, “I voted for myself!, and so in my mind I won the election because my vote is worth more than all of the other votes combined!” and then the president said, “I shall accept this on one condition, and that condition is that you issue me a full and unconditional pardon for everything that I’ve ever done.” and then I said, “Nope! No pardon for you!” and then the president said, “Suit yourself.” and then he had me locked up in an offshore prison that was unconstitutional! But, of course; since he saw himself as being the only one who could plead the fifth amendment, of course he didn’t think twice about sending me to an unconstitutional offshore prison without any due process!” and then the president visited me in the unconstitutional prison and said, “Do you wish that you’d just agreed to pardon me now?” and I said, “Nope!” and then the president said, “Well, I suppose that it’s execution time then.” and then I was led over to a guillotine, and I gulped nervously as the guillotine was prepared and the countdown began!; and as the countdown was happening I realized that perhaps I should just agree to pardon the president…, and so I said, “I’ll pardon you!” and then the president stopped the countdown, freed me from the guillotine, declared that I was president, and then handed me pardon papers to sign; and so I then signed the pardon, and then he said, “Woohoo!” and then he exited the room while humming a happy tune; and so now I was president, and I needed to find someone to pardon me! And so I had the guards put the former president into the guillotine, and I said, “You shall be executed unless you become president again and pardon me!” and then the former president said, “I’ll pardon you! I’ll pardon you!” and then I made the former president president again and then he pardoned me! But then there was a big revolution, and the angry mobs still executed the president and I despite the pardon. Dammit!… And so now we were at the pearly gates, and I said, “Hello, Martha and Peter! Those angry mobs didn’t accept the pardons that the president and I gave to each other, but surely you will right?” and then Martha said, “There’s only one pardon that we accept around here, which is the one that Jesus offers to everyone who repents of their sins and accepts the pardon, and so are you 2 accepting that pardon?” and then the president said, “Can we discuss this with each other for a bit?” and Peter said, “Sure, you can take a few minutes to do that.” and then the president and I turned to each other, and the president said, “I’m not really the repenting-of-my-sins type, but I’m kinda tempted to do it because it’s necessary in order to accept that pardon…” and then I said, “And I don’t really care one way or the other about repenting of my sins, and so I’m pretty much thinking like you are and figuring that I should repent of my sins so that I can accept the pardon.” and then another person poofed! right next to us, and that person had horns and was carrying a pitchfork; and that person said, “If you don’t repent of your sins and accept the pardon then you’ll be fine, because you’re more than welcome to come to my world where you’ll never have to be pardoned or repent of sins or anything like that!” and then another person poofed! into the air next to us, and that person was a polar bear who said, “Hey, y’all! I’m Jester! And I’m here to let you know that in my world you are free to either repent of your sins or not repent of your sins, and we’ll just deal with situations as they arise and see what to do.” and then the person with the horns and pitchfork said, “This guy’s a joke, and his world’s a joke! See, in my world we celebrate sins and we shame anyone who repents of their sins! Because “sin” is just a word that people throw at you to tell you that you’re not allowed to have any fun!” and then Jester said, “This dude’s so full of it; and I can prove it! See, ol’ pitchfork-brains here is saying that it’s a sin to repent of sins! And so that means that they’re not actually always pro-sin, they’re just defining sin in a more ‘sin’ister way! Hehe. Get it? ‘Sin’ister? But I digress…; and so the point here is that you’re never actually going to find anyone who is pro-sin 100% of the time because even horns over here says that you’ll be shamed for doing what pitchfork-brains considers to be sinning!” and then the person with the pitchfork said, “Whatever, Jester! The point is that my world is the one where you’re allowed to have the widest variety of wild and crazy fun! And, your world isn’t as much of a drag as the one that Peter and Mary are gatekeeping is, but if someone really wants to have a helluva wicked time then my world is by far the best place to be at! Period. End of story. No question about it!” and then Jester said, “Look, you 2, I know that ol’ horns here can sound convincing to some; but I’m pleading with you to either choose the world that Martha and Peter are gatekeeping or choose my world, because ol’ pitchfork-brains here’s version of fun is pretty likely to be them sticking a pitchfork in your brains!” and then the horned person said, “Blah, blah, blah. All this Jester dude does is talk; and he’s BORING, just like his silly little world is BORING; and so if you 2 don’t wanna be bored out of your minds then you’re welcome to head over to my world at any time!” and then suddenly! the horned dude and Jester poofed! out of sight; and so now it was just the president and I again; and so then I said, “That Jester dude sounded pretty reasonable…” and the president nodded and said, “Well, I think that we have our answer then.” and so then the president and I turned to Peter and Martha, and I said, “We appreciate the offer to repent of our sins and accept a pardon so that we can enter the pearly gates; but Jester seemed pretty chill, and so we’ve decided to go to his world.” and then the president said, “Yup. No offense, but repenting of all of my sins just seems a bit much, ya know?” and then Martha and Peter shook their heads sadly, and Martha said, “If you ever change your minds then just let us know.” and then suddenly! the president and I found ourselves on a boat that was drifting down a long and winding river; and then I said, “Hey, this place doesn’t seem so bad!” and then the president grinned and said, “Yup! I think that we made the correct choice!” and then the boat began speeding up a bit, and I heard a loud sound up ahead!; and I said, “Ummmm… Is that a waterfall?…” and then the president and I saw a waterfall come into sight; and we both screamed! as the boat sailed off of the waterfall!; and we were now falling, falling, falling; down, down, down; and the fall seemed to be almost endless!; and after about an hour of falling I said, “And so what do you think it’s gonna be like when we finally land?” and then the president said, “Hopefully not that bad?…” and then eventually we landed with a couple of mighty splash!es in the water that awaited us; and we sank so deep, deep, deep down into the water that eventually we fell through the bottom of the water and landed in another boat that was drifting down a long and winding river; and landing in the boat didn’t really hurt because the water had slowed us down a quite a bit and the boat was pretty well-padded; and then the president said, “Well!… That was pretty insane!” and then I said, “It sure was!…; though I guess we’re alright despite all of the scariness and insanity that we just experienced…” and then the president chuckled and said, “We sure are!; and so I still think that (for now, at least) continuing down this long and winding river will be preferable to repenting of all of our sins.” and then I said, “Agreed…; and, I mean, we can probably take preventative steps to prevent us from going down another waterfall again!…” and then I felt the boat begin to speed up again; and I heard some noisy water up ahead; and then I said, “Or perhaps we won’t be able to prevent ourselves from going down another waterfall again!…” and then the president and I picked up the paddles that were in the boat and began trying to paddle the boat back to more manageable waters; but our paddling barely even managed to slow the boat down at all, and then we we soon sailed! off of this new waterfall!; and we were now falling, falling falling; down, down, down; again just like had happened before!; and so as we fell I said, “Okay, so once we reach the next boat I say that we pick up the paddles immediately! and pay careful attention to if the water begins speeding up like it did the last 2 times!” and then the president said, “Yes indeedy! We’ve just gotta be smarter than what we’re dealing with!…” and then I said, “You don’t think that we should repent of our sins and try to get Peter and Martha to come and get us out of here do ya?” and the president said, “Naw. I mean, this place is a bit tricky, I’ll give it that; but we can conquer this climb yet!” and then I said, “Well said, my fine sir! And so it’s onward and upward for us then!…” and then the 2 of us continued falling, and we hoped that this time once we landed into a boat we’d finally be able to manage the situation well enough that we wouldn’t sail right off of another freaking waterfall!”
And, so, like; there definitely had been parts of that part of his comedy routine that had made me laugh pretty hard; but it seemed to me like that part was more like a story that happened to sometimes be funny and wasn’t so much a full-on comedy routine…
That said; nobody in the audience ever booed him or anything, and everyone seemed to enjoy his schtick; and so maybe it didn’t matter that it was more of a storytelling routine that happened to sometimes be funny instead of being what I would classify as a stand-up comedy routine?…
Lol; and so I decided that I either could get all caught up in focusing on the question of what counts or doesn’t count as a stand-up comedy routine, OR I could try my own luck at writing and see what might happen with it!…
Though I did figure that whatever I might write would probably be more of a story and wouldn’t be something that I’d try to pass off as a comedy routine; and so once I got home to my abode I pulled out some pens and papers, and I began seeing what I might come up with by trying to write a story!…
