Look in any comic’s notebook and you’ll find a very particular form of madness. Pages of carefully composed setlists or wild drunken doodles or joke ideas dashed out in a momentarily inspired scrawl. These notebooks usually look like the work of an insane person, with catalogs of disconnected concepts grouped together chaotically, mixing together the sacred, the profane, and the banal—“GOD” to “fisting” to “Pop Tarts” with no supporting information.
Taken out of context, they read like Dadaist poetry or completely unhinged hypergraphia. Some comics draft a rough road map for their sets in bold, slapdash letters and others log every performance meticulously in tiny script, making little notes about what worked or didn’t, noting the date and the venue. You can glean something of each artist’s unique approach from looking at these notebooks.
Everyone has their own system. Most of my notebooks are full of columns of one-word prompts, joke titles arranged into “chunks” with the occasional series of tags or post-show, post-spliff brainstorms scribbled out while standing in the drizzle under a dim streetlight. I only use a certain type of spiral-bound pocket notebook—the Roaring Spring Paper Products 5” x 3” Memobook—which I can find only at Bartell’s. I buy them in large stacks to tide me over and use up at least a few a month. I put a different sticker on each one to identify them at a glance—I noticed once at a Sonic Youth show that their guitar tech used the same system to mark axes of different tunings. Here’s what six years of these little notebooks looks like (with early notebooks from before I settled on the Memobook):
It’s always fun when you find someone’s notebook at a club. Comics gather around and try to guess whose it is by the material. Sometimes I write a goofy inscription on the inner cover of mine:
Other times, a comedy notebook holds memories of weird nights and strange gigs. Once at a bar in the suburbs I had the evening’s setlist notarized by a drunk notary public:
Inspired by Amanda Manitach’s totally engrossing Sketchbook Porn series, I got local comics to send me pictures of their funky setlists and notebooks.
Brad Upton, a former schoolteacher and regular opener for Johnny Mathis who recently celebrated 30 years in comedy, keeps all of his setlists on three-by-five cards. Here’s three decades of his collected performances:
If you look at Cathy Sorbo’s setlists, you get a little glimpse into her life:
But then again, there’s no telling what this set of hers was about:
Some comics have evolved beyond dead tree bark and now use their smartphones. This set by Gabriel Rutledge (previously on City Arts here) looks hilarious even without any additional information:
And here’s one of Chad Denick’s recent sets:
Andrew Rivers’s digital setup mashes together new joke ideas, emails to bookers, and notes on venues:
This is Adam Norwest’s contribution (smartass!):
Skippy Sprinkles sometimes uses a football playbook wristband to keep his list within view onstage:
Here’s Claire Jones’s first set list ever on a tattered dining hall napkin:
Sometimes it’s fun to just let the words wash over you like poetry. Douglas Gale:
Fred Bowski:
Molly Sokhom:
Dan Taylor:
Joseph Rogers’s slice of life:
I like the accumulation that takes place over years in comedy. Here’s an altar that Tannes Gale made for his young comedy career, complete with all the trappings:
Here’s Jen Seaman’s notebook collection:
Dan Kinnison:
Andy Miller (previously on City Arts here) has some arcane, hand-wrought system for joke management—what the hell is going on here?
Shannon Koyano:
Carl Powers’s Mariners lunchbox full of mirth:
Justinia Ells’s pile o’ jokes (she says it includes a pro/con list about suicide, a list of the men she’s slept with and a Moth StorySlam outline):
Finally, here’s Mitch Burrow’s pre-show prep (Burrow previously on City Arts here):
We’ll end with Brian Moote’s poignant barside snapshot:
