Greenlight yourself. Face your fears. Wrestle your demons. Buckle down. Buck up. Use whatever metaphor you like to get serious about your creativity. If not now, when?

SUNDAYS, JANUARY 10, 17, 24, 31, FEBRUARY 7, 21, 28 1-4pm at M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine 90038

Single classes $60
Any 2 classes $110
Any 4 classes $200

SUPER SPECIAL HOLIDAY SALE - Commit to your creativity and get any 10 classes for $400 or any 30 classes for $1000 (that's just $33 each!).

There's still plenty of time to get your creative work on track before the end of the year. There are 2 more classes of The Comedian's Way Workshop in December. Get onstage at M-Bar in Hollywood where you can work on your shows, performance, pitches, patter - or change your patterning.

Work with comedy guru Beth Lapides and me to supercharge your creativity. Or give a really meaningful gift to a creative friend!

SUNDAYS, DECEMBER 6 & 13, JANUARY 10, 17, 24, 31, FEBRUARY 7, 21, 28 1-4pm at M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine 90038

Single classes $60
Any 2 classes $110
Any 4 classes $200

SUPER SPECIAL HOLIDAY SALE - Only guaranteed until the end of 2009. Commit to your creativity and get any 10 classes for $400 or any 30 classes for $1000 (that's just $33 each!).

"ABOVE & BEYOND" (The New Yorker)

Beth Lapides' Un-Cabaret pretty much launched the modern comedy storytelling movement which gave birth to Afterbirth, Mortified, Sit n Spin, The Moth, Say the Word, etc. Before that, Beth was a pretty famous performance artist who toured her solo shows all over the world. Now she returns to her roots with a brilliant new show called "100% Happy 88% of the Time".

"A BREATH OF FRESH AIR!" (Whole Life Times)

"A MASTER COMEDIENNE... SMART & FUNNY" (Los Angeles Times)

What happens when a piece of material gets stale? How do you keep the audience - and yourself - interested?

Get some great advice about how to keep your material fresh, find the material that will stay fresh the longest, and tips on integrating this freshening practice into your creative process and your life in this inspiring rap from Beth Lapides at The Comedian's Way workshop.

Audit, register for a single class or get discounts on multiple classes. Upcoming classes: Sunday, Oct. 4 & 18, 1-4pm at M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine St. LA 90038.

Click here for more info about The Comedian's Way workshop or call 323-993-3305.

btw, this video was taken with the new Flip UltraHD Camcorder. Yes, the HD takes a long time to process and upload video, but the resolution and color are way advanced, the camera now holds up to 2 hours of video (instead of the previous version's 1 hour capacity), the sound is a lot clearer and, most importantly, it has retained virtually all its cuteness.

As a book coach and writing consultant, I have worked on a number of proposals with authors and agents, and almost every one is different. They vary pretty widely with the particulars of the project. Nonetheless, some guidelines are useful, so here is a good model, courtesy of Judy Brown, journalist (LA Weekly), author (The Comedy Thesaurus) and editor (National Lampoon Books).

Of course the entire publishing industry is in such chaos and contraction right now that pretty much all bets - and rules - are off, so if this outline somehow doesn't serve to convey what's so great about your project... don't use it.

HUMOR BOOK PROPOSALS, IN SHORT

Each of the below sections can be a couple paragraphs, or a page (at most) in length (With the exception of your sample chapter, which might reflect an actual chapter’s length.)

These are guidelines, so don’t get too hung up on the particulars, and you can skip the least important aspects.

The most important sections:

Patton Oswalt's new movie, "Big Fan", is all about celebrity and fandom gone wrong.

Celebrity stories are always of inherent interest to an audience. In fact, when I was producing Beth's daily radio show, a big-time radio consultant told us that there are only 4 things people care about: celebrity, sex/love, work and money. We resist defining things that narrowly, but he isn't all wrong.

We admit, there has been a good amount of high-quality name-dropping at the Un-Cabaret. Among Patton's many great stand up storytelling performances is this one about his Hollywood encounter with Elizabeth Taylor:

Hear more Patton performances on the Un-Cabaret compilation CDs, "The Un & Only" and "the Good, the Bad and the Drugly" and on several episodes of the Un-Cabaret podcast on audible.com (including one episode called "Close Encounters" that's all about celebrity encounters). You can also see free video detailing the anatomy of a great standup performance by Patton about falling in love - another one of the 'only 4 things people are interested in'.

Media critic Virginia Heffernan wrote a column recently about rants in the New York Times, but she completely omitted the comedy rant as a category.

A funny rant is a great comedy technique. It was pioneered (I think) by Lenny Bruce and subsequently practiced by other (usually) angry (often) young (almost always) men including Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks (who actually had an album called Rant in E Minor), Chris Rock, Dennis Miller, George Carlin and Lewis Black. Roseanne did some ranting, but it's a harder form for women to pull off because, let's face it, our culture by and large still likes its women nice and easy, not rough.

The Un-Cabaret has featured some impressive comedy rants by brilliant boys like Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, Taylor Negron and others. (You can hear some great rants on the Un-Cabaret CDs.) It has also provided a forum for some great female ranters like Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin. Here are two for your listening pleasure:

I always feel a little silly getting technical and medical and serious about the healing power of laughter.

But with the health care crisis reaching epidemic proportions and people freaking out about the state of the world, feeling a little silly is a small price to pay. In fact feeling silly is The Comedian's Way.

So here are the very serious facts about laughing.

1. People who laugh habitually are 40% less likely to have a heart attack. If you'd like to develop the skills to laugh more habitually and not just when you go to a Judd Apatow movie,  click here.

2. Laughing impacts how well your blood vessels expand. The better they expand, the lower your chances are for not just a heart attack but also a stroke.

Our wildly-effective workshop, formerly known as the Un-Cab Lab, has evolved into something we now call THE COMEDIANS WAY. 

It's a place to develop your writing & performance skills.
To find yourself and your authentic voice.
To tell your story.
To develop your 7th sense - your sense of humor.
To discover your own personal organic comedy style.
To define a funnier, more compelling, more marketable point-of-view that you can use in meetings, pitches, presentations, shows, books, blogs or just to have a better attitude in life.

Follow the path walked by Julia Sweeney, Patton Oswalt, Margaret Cho, Laura Kightlinger, Michael Patrick King, Merrill Markoe and so many other great comedians at the Un-Cabaret. Take the 'ow' out of Now and take your own fool's journey when you learn to live The Comedian's Way with alternative comedy guru Beth Lapides and me, her partner Greg Miller.