Wednesday, November 5, 2014

"Ariana Grande Isn't A Diva"

Brittney Griner was attacked in China by a knife-wielding man. The guy is still at large, but they just arrested the dude with the knife.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has come out as gay. This totally explains why the new iPhone charger holes became tighter after Steve Jobs died.

North Korea is banning tourism over the fear of Ebola. This made history as the first time North Korea cared for the health of its citizens.

New York City had its first case of Ebola. Doctors who tried to cure it by saying "Get atta here" to the virus proved to be wildly unsuccessful.

The WHO says Nigeria is Ebola free. Now, the only virus in Nigeria is the one that emails me about how I can have a huge penis in 6-8 weeks.

Jessie J said that Ariana Grande isn't a diva, she just "knows what she wants". Yeah, and Ted Bundy isn't a murderer, he just killed a ton of people.

A Dallas nurse with Ebola flew to Cleveland. Yep, the deadly virus that nobody wants to come in contact with had a nurse with Ebola fly there.

A parrot with a British accent got lost, returned, and now speaks Spanish. I knew something was up when it returned in a cage with 50 other parrots.

A study says that trauma and food addiction are linked in women. They must have experienced a huge conundrum when Twinkies were taken away.

That's all I have for right now. Well, I feel that I've gotten back in the swing of things with writing topical jokes. Maybe it's because there was a shit ton of Ebola stuff to write about, who knows, but I'm happy about it. However, as of late, with comedy, I've felt a sense of rejection from the community. I've done more than my fair share of alienation over my time as a comic, but I've spent the past couple years or so trying to not only undo it, but learning how to not do it. I'm trying, believe me, but it still feels like nobody wants me around. No, I'm not going to do anything to myself (sorry ladies), but I've felt super lonely for awhile. And every time I do try and hang out, everyone's off doing something else. "Aww, Schubs, is that what autism feels like" Maybe, but I'm trying to fix that, because I've been doing a lot of self-improvement shit. For example, I've been on this crazy thing called a "diet" (I've lost 45 pounds in the past year and counting), and I'm trying to be a better and funnier dude. I've alienated a lot of people, but tomorrow's a new day, and I want to go out and be the best comic I know people think I'm too sad to be. Also, on a slightly more positive note, I, after three and a half long and amazingly fun years, have reached 2,000 Twitter followers, so fuckin yay for me, and for them, I have given them a suicide hotline number. Anyway, more coming soon!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

"Stuck In A Stone Vagina"

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted for child abuse. He's expected to receive a lengthy suspension because his wife wasn't the one abused.

A new robot can make 360 hamburgers in one hour. This revolutionary machine has been given the code name "Chris Christie's Personal Chef".

A Penn State student is now famous for feeding and dressing up a squirrel. Finally, someone at PSU manipulating a tiny being in a good way.

Jennifer Lawrence had nude photos released by a hacker. I'm outraged that someone would invade her privacy and leak her nude photos without telling me where I can find them.

A woman in Seattle was arrested after having sex with lawn chairs. Soon after that she sat on her cousin in the front yard and drank a beer.

Kim Kardashian will publish a 352-page selfie book. It's kinda ironic that the one person more self obsessed than Kanye West is his own wife.

A new study says eating fish makes the brain healthier. This totally explains all those Harvard grads you see eating at Long John Silver's.

A 100,000 year old skeleton may reveal the oldest case of brain damage. However, it isn't as old and brain damaged as any Fox News viewer.

A food truck with marijuana infused sandwiches is going around in Washington state. I assume they're Phish sandwiches.

A guy in Germany got stuck in a stone vagina. Amazingly, that stone vagina wasn't even half as dry as the vaginas of girls who talk to me.

Robert Morris U will now offer athletic scholarships for online gaming. This explains their new fight song "Mom, The Wifi Is Down Again".

A Buffalo man is selling his world record collection of 11,000 video games. The man hopes to use the money to buy himself a girlfriend.

Longtime MLB player and coach Don Zimmer died at age 83. Pedro Martinez shoved his casket into its burial plot.

That's all I have for right now! To both of you that read this, sorry I haven't been posting a lot. I'm trying, but I'm back in school now and I've been super busy. I'm still on the comedy grind, and I feel that I've made significant progress over the past few months. After a great contest set that I juuuust missed advancing to the semifinals in (I lost by 5 votes...), a great Brewhaha (I MC'D OMGGGGG), and a couple more good opening sets at the Go Bananas, who knows what could happen? Could I have gotten that all-elusive thing I've been working for for almost two and a half years soon? Only time will tell. Anyway, I hope nobody from the Go Bananas sees any of this (me talking about looking to get a you know what), because if so, I'm fuuuucked. Anyway, more coming soon!

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Holy shit, five years

Holy shit. A half of a decade. A quarter of a two decades. Eh, screw it, you get the gist.

But the point is, I've been in the comedy world for five years. Comedy, to me, has been a life-changing journey full of laughs, self-discovery, pain, fun, rejection, stupidity, and a bunch of other words I can't think of right now. I know most people who know me don't really care, but comedy means so much to me. I've met some incredible people, I've made friends that will last for the rest of my life, all because I wanted to be funny. For those of you who are comics and have seen me for less time, my comedy journey began with one simple blog post from the NY Times.

http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/did-you-hear-the-one-that-isnt-about/

When my joke got featured, I remember losing my shit. I freaked out, I told everybody I knew, because for the first time, I was published. Looking back on it, the joke really wasn't that good (at all), but for the first year of comedy, that blog is what I stuck to. I felt accomplished every time I made the blog, and I was disappointed every time I didn't, but hey, that's life. Throughout that first year (my junior year of high school), I learned the art and science of the punchline by writing and watching (especially Leno), my writing got stronger, and in general, I got funnier. After my first year, I decided that there was no turning back. I was going to be in the comedy world for good.

My highlight of my first year of comedy was meeting Jay Leno. There are many people who think of him as kind of a hack (in fact, one friend of mine referred to him as "the worst"), but watching him made me want to go into comedy. I dreamed of being one of his writers, and I thought I could do it. I got to meet him in the spring of 2010 when I went on a spring break trip to LA with my mom, her boyfriend, and his son. It was a great trip for me because I got to experience comedy in real life, and it was mind blowing. After the show, someone who worked there took us backstage to the green room, where Leno came out in his typical all-denim style. He was super nice to me and everyone I was with. I will never forget that day because I realized that even the most successful comics will reach out to people just starting out.

The next year for me (my senior year of high school) was fairly uneventful. I wrote jokes, I did my thing and such. That year, only two noteworthy things happened, one good and one bad. The bad event happened in September 29th, 2010. Greg Giraldo, who would become my favorite comedian and still is to this day, died. I'll never forget where I was. I was in my bed about to go to sleep when my friend Alex texted me and said that he died. I was shocked, but it didn't really affect me severely until I watched his standup, then I realized what a truly brilliant comic he was.

The good thing remember happening that year (besides graduating high school) was what I think of as my first really good joke. The joke was "A new British beer contains Viagra. Let me suggest a name: Mike's Hard." With that joke, I had evolved into the next stage of comedic writing: dick jokes. I can now say I have a dick joke. That joke was my first tweet on my joke Twitter account, it was a staff pick on DailyComedy, it was featured on Reddit, and a little over a year later, the Huffington Post. It's truly great to me what one joke can do for you.

It was also at the end of my second year where I started my first all-joke Twitter account: @GroperCleveland. How I thought of that name, I don't have a clue. All I remember was that it was funny to me, and ever since then, it stuck. Jimmy Fallon said ON AIR that my Twitter screen name was funny (then again, Jimmy Fallon thinks Jimmy Fallon is funny, so it could go either way). I'm still extremely active on that account to this day, and I've had stuff on there that's disappeared into obscurity, and some stuff that has stuck. I've enjoyed every second of it.

My third year of comedy (my FIRST freshman year of college) was probably the most rocky year of my comedy career. It started out awful. I did start standup comedy at Go Bananas, and the first six months of my comedy career, well, I like to think of that as a bad dream. That's all it will be to me. I don't even count it as time spent doing standup, that's how bad it was.

This third year of comedy was also when I hit my personal low, which, unfortunately, involved comedy. It all started in August 2011 when I made jokes about the Indiana State Fair stage collapse, not knowing that anyone I knew was hurt. As it turns out, my friend Jaymie and our school's cheerleading coach Meagan were both seriously injured. Jaymie recovered and is fine now, but unfortunately, Meagan ended up dying. After that night when I found out that people I knew were hurt, I immediately apologized to Jaymie, and she said it was alright. However, in December 2011, I was in sort of a shitty mood, so for some reason, I went on Facebook and made some jokes related to that Indiana State Fair stage collapse. Why I did it, I don't know (probably attention that I so badly craved at the time, I don't know, and by I don't know, I mean yes it was). That night, I fed off of it, and kept going for some reason. I pissed off everyone that I went to high school with, and for about a week, or maybe even a month, everyone I knew hated me. I felt super alone. The next day, I treated that situation like I killed someone. I was in major damage control mode for about a week. I apologized to everyone, and while it took time for forgiveness, everyone eventually forgave me.

Do I regret what I did on those two occasions? Yes and no. I do regret it because I hurt several people I knew with what I thought was funny, and words can never be taken back. However, I don't regret it because it was a major learning experience for me. I learned that I have to be careful with what I say, as words can come back to haunt me.

As the end of my third year in comedy ended, my comedy career did begin to pick up. Instead of focusing on pop culture for my standup, I began focusing on me and what was funny about me. Almost immediately after that, I started to garner respect from fellow comics. I transitioned from learning the art of the one liner to the art of the bit, and that's where everything in standup sort of took off. I began meeting comics, I began going to shows and appreciating comedy for what it truly is.

My fourth year of comedy (my SECOND freshman year of college) essentially picked up where I left off from my third year. I began getting recognition from other comics as being funny, and on a fall night in 2012, what I think of as my first comedy accomplishment came about. In September 2012, I was invited to perform at the Northern Kentucky University Last Comic Standing competition. I auditioned, and that was a breeze to get through. That night, a ton of people showed up to watch, including three NKU staff members. There were five comics: Me, my friends Jake and Alex, a guy named Kevin who didn't do standup but liked comedy, and a girl named Pam who got all her jokes off the internet. It was a three round competition: the first round was standup, the second round was where we all told a one-liner, and the third round was improv with the MC, which was a comic named Kelly Collette. I eased my way into the finals with my friend Alex, and we were both given a topic. I don't remember what Alex's topic was, but I do remember that my topic was sex, which was hysterical for me. I had to act out me trying to have sex with her, and it was exactly like me trying to get with every other girl. And by that, I mean it didn't actually work and everyone watched and laughed at me. When I was in that round, I was super nervous because I had very little experience with improv. When she asked me whether I had sex before, I said "I don't know" (yeah, I was that nervous). Yeah, some things were said that made people laugh, but I'll never forget one thing I said. Kelly made a callback to when I said I don't know whether I've had sex before, and she said "What do you mean you've never had sex before", and I said, "Well, I went to church a lot when I was little and I don't remember a whole lot". When I said that, the whole room started laughing, and that was one of the best feelings I've ever had as a comic. After that round, ballots were collected to see who won, and I ended up winning. I won a hundred bucks, which was worth about two tanks of gas to me, and validation, which was worth about everything to me.

After that competition, I continued on in my comedy career, writing bits about how I grew up and things about my life that made me laugh. Things got better, things went on, and I progressed more in the Cincinnati comedy scene. I started doing guest sets for weekend shows, I opened up a few pro-am shows, and I began garnering even more respect from some people outside the city.

For me, my favorite point of my comedy career was the summer of 2013. I had some of the best shows I've ever done (and one of the worst). I did the Funniest Person in Cincinnati contest, which I did not move on in, which is fine. However, the next week, I had two shows that I desperately needed. They were both at bars in Cincinnati, and I had great sets at both of them. Things were going great for me, as I opened up more pro-am shows, did more guest spots, did my first comedy festival, and garnered respect from more people in the scene. I even had headliners say I was funny, which absolutely blew my mind. However, one morning in July of 2013, I thought of what I consider to be the funniest joke I have ever written.

I remember I had shitty sleeping habits that summer, which was fine, because I didn't have much to do during that time. But one morning, I was up in my bed, and I was riffing about the subject of prom night dumpster babies for some reason (when I find a subject that I'm interested in, I'll try and think of some jokes about it, which is, well, riffing). That riff culminated with a joke that is, to this day, one that I consider to be absolute gold (it's the second joke on the clip, and they cut out about half of the laugh in that joke). When I thought of that joke, I about died. I couldn't believe I had come up with a joke that funny. I laughed to myself for about fifteen minutes straight. Once I did that, I immediately put that in tweet form, put it in my draft folder on Twitter, and went to sleep. In the middle of the day, I decided to tweet it. It didn't get much Twitter love, so I decided to turn it into a bit, and that didn't get much love either. However, I brought it back for a roast of a friend of mine that I did, and a couple of my friends told me how funny they thought that joke was, so I kept it in that form. Later on, I was set to perform at a Go Bananas pro-am show, and I was nervous about telling that joke because it has kind of a dark side to it. When I told it in a sparsely filled bar, it got a ten second laugh, which was monstrous for me. I then told it at Go Bananas, and it got about the same laugh (including a "wow" and a "woo"). It felt great, as a ton of people came up to me after the show and said that joke was super funny. To culminate everything, Rooftop Comedy asked me if it could be a clip on their website, to which I immediately agreed. Then, I put that on Facebook, and thankfully, it worked. A lot of my friends said that they loved the joke, and I had MCs and features alike go out of their way to tell me how funny that joke is.

After I came up with that joke, it didn't work very well, but I previously mentioned that I did a roast for my friend Jay, and that might be the best night of comedy I've ever had. Every joke ranged from doing alright to destroying the entire room, and after that, multiple people said I was the best act of the night. Doing a roast was something I had wanted to do for a long time, and I prepared extra hard for it. Well, it ended up working, and I loved it. Not much happened after that. I kept doing pro-am shows, I kept progressing (slowly but surely), and I came up with more bits.

What do the next five years have in store for me? My first MC weekend? Maybe even a feature weekend? Who knows. Comedy is an unpredictable thing, but as long as I work hard, anything is possible. I know I have what it takes, but it's just the effort that I need to put in and great things are possible. Anyone who has made any part of these last five years possible, I can't thank you enough. If it wasn't for comedy, who knows where I'd be. I do comedy because I have the ability to, and I love doing it. I make fun of my flaws, I make fun of what happens to me, and while I come across as a guy who has a low self esteem (I kinda do), me being able to joke about myself makes me kind of alright with everything.

I'm going to end this post the way I've ended my stage performances for the past two and a half years: You guys, I've been Alex Schubert, thank you very much.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

"The Building Full Of Expensive Meat"

The voice of Tony the Tiger has died at 64. He had esophageal cancer, which was apparently severe enough to send him to his grrrrrrave.

Rob Schneider says America is heading towards fascism. Even worse, America is also heading towards another Rob Schneider movie.

Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned from the NBA for life. He was punished by having to spend the rest of his life at home with his 2 billion dollars.

An analyst says the world could have its first trillionaire soon. That trillionaire is me; I'm close to 1 trillion rejections by cute girls.

Donald Trump wants to buy the Buffalo Bills. Yep, the New York fixture known for disappointing its fans wants to buy the Buffalo Bills.

Kim Kardashian got ten Burger King restaurants as a gift from Kanye West. Yep, the building full of expensive meat got ten Burger Kings as a gift from Kanye West.

That's all I have for right now! Sorry about my lack of topical jokes right now. I know I've had two months to write these, but. I've just been on a bit writing spree. Whether those bits work out is totally my call; I really need to work on them. I'm doing my best to write topical jokes. Anyway, I'm coming up on five years in comedy (a little over two of them have been behind the mic), and I plan to write a review as to my experiences and what I've learned. Anyway, more coming later!

Sunday, March 23, 2014

"Running Into His House"

George Zimmerman signed autographs at an Orlando gun show. On the bright side, now we know who would go out of their way for his autograph.

TV pitchman Kevin Trudeau was sentenced to ten years in prison. It was originally seven years, but the judge said "But wait, there's more!"

A study says chimpanzees are better video gamers than kindergartners. Yep, the messy unhygenic monkeys who eat hair were outgamed by chimpanzees.

A new app maps a person’s enemies so they never run into them in public. It received high accolades from the Cute Girls Who Know Alex Schubert Association of America.

A new study says 11% of Americans think HTML is an STD. Question: if it was in fact an STD, would it cause pain in your HTTPenis?

A Texas man was killed after running into his house to save his cellphone. He'd still be alive if he just used the door instead.

Former SNL actor Chris Kattan was arrested for DUI. His dashcam footage was the first time he's been on camera in seven years.

Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps has died at 84. The Westboro Baptist Church will save a ton of money on graveyard plots when they realize that Fred Phelps can be buried in his own shame.

That's all I have for right now. Well, one of these jokes brought about one of my crazier Twitter experiences, and I feel that I need to explain myself. I tweeted the joke about the man in Texas who was killed after running into his house to save his cell phone, and a while later, I found myself being absolutely berated by my fellow comics (and the manager of my home club) because nobody got the joke. I'm going to break one of the Ten Commandments of comedy and explain that joke. You see, "running into his house" has a double meaning. Most people see "running into his house" as "oh, he went into his house to get something". Instead, when I thought of the punchline, I thought of the other meaning. It's like he ran into a brick wall, and running into a brick wall would kill him. And when I thought of the "he should have used the door instead" punchline, I started laughing (in public) because it was such a stupid thought, and I'm a sucker for a dumb joke. While I may go down in history as the only person who has ever laughed at that joke, I learned one comedy truth that day: the very first step in becoming a great comedian is making yourself laugh. I really don't give a shit if nobody else liked it.

If you want to see the Twitter ass-whooping I took that day, here's the link: https://twitter.com/GroperCleveland/status/439471280035999744

Anyway, sorry for the dragged on explanation of that crazy situation. I'll have more jokes to come soon!

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

"Signs Of Being In Love"

Justin Bieber spent $75k at a Miami strip club in one night. Really? All that in one night? Wow, those guys must have been really good.

A speechwriter for President Bush said President Obama plagiarized the SOTU address. It showed when Obama talked about his knowledge of shapes.

Cincinnati was named the least happy place to work in by Forbes. This is mainly because at two of those places, people have to work with me.

An 8th grade blind kid in Vermont made a shot in a basketball game. After the game, he beat Dwight Howard in a free throw shooting contest.

A new bra opens only when a woman’s body shows signs of being in love. If that bra could hold cases of things, a woman in my presence could be trusted with the Mona Lisa.

A man in Florida was arrested for attacking his wife with a banana. As to why he used a banana, the man said, "I was out of turtle shells."

A study says that bad memories can be erased by electroconvulsive therapy. When I read that I was shocked, then for some reason I forgot about the study.

George Zimmerman is now on Twitter. I follow his account, but I'm following it from 20 feet behind because it's wearing a hoodie and I'm suspicious.

A Utah polygamist with five wives and 24 children is getting a reality show on TLC. I'm just surprised he can tell them apart.

\A four year old boy in England has an IQ of 160. In fact, he's currently working with top scientists to develop a cure for cooties.

A school in Texas has banned red and green from its winter party. They should also ban white people because as far as I know, Santa is white.

That's all I have for right now. Well damn, I had my surgery, and I'm basically fully recovered. I feel fantastic (and yes, that's your cue to stop asking how my GOT DAMN JAW IS). Now, if only there was a surgery that could make my jokes funnier because damn I need help. Anyway, more to come soon!