Anzzia: That's crazy! Have you always been a funny person or did you just now find this about yourself?
Carmen: No, I was definitely always... okay, so I've come up with, these two terms, there's a class clown and a class comedian. I think the class clown would always disrupt and goof off and stuff. Then there's the class comedian who just had good timing and always had the line, was always funny. I think I was definitely a class comedian. Just always the most enthusiastic, I got that award in 8th grade, Most Enthusiastic. Because I would always have fun and joke around. Yeah, I guess I've always kind of been a happy go lucky kind of guy in a way. But doing it on stage. That's the other thing people forget, just because you're funny with your friends doesn't mean it transfer's on stage. But, it definitely kind of helps a little bit.
Anzzia: Very true.
Carmen: But, yeah there's like a whole learning curve that comes with actually writing it and performing it. It's a whole different thing. But, you have to have, I guess “the chops” to do it or whatever.
Anzzia: Yeah I can definitely see that. Not everybody's funny. Where do you find the inspiration for your jokes?
Carmen: Yeah, that's another great question people always tell me. There are two ways I think, as a comedian, to come up with new material. One, is when you're really lucky and something just popped up and you jot it down and you're like, "Oh, that's great! I've got to keep that. I've got to write that down. That thought was really funny. I can't believe this happened!” You text yourself or you leave yourself a little voicemail type thing or, whatever. Then there's the forcing yourself to sit down and write. Which is a whole 'nother thing that I think some comedians can't do. Like, force yourself to sit there and write a joke. Like, if you had a blank piece of paper, okay you've got to come up with something funny, you know?
Anzzia: Right.
Carmen: That to me, that's another thing that separates good comedians from bad ones. You could do that. I've got a hand full of buddies that we get together once a week and we'll start with a blank piece of paper and just try to write jokes and just read them. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad. You could write ten jokes and then only one of them is really good out of the ten. But, you know what? If I get one good joke out of ten or twenty, that's worth it. That joke will always get a laugh, I can add it to my act.
Anzzia: Okay. I like that! /laughs Who would you say are some of your influences in the comedy world? Do you have any?
Carmen: I guess growing up I always watched, I always loved Robin Williams and Jim Carrey and all of those like, greats from the eighties and nineties, so to speak. There's a lot of good comedians out there now. A lot of good names out there. Erik Myers is one of my favorite very underrated, unknown but, very funny comedian. Erik Myers, I love watching him.
Anzzia: So, for someone like myself, who isn't, do you think people can learn to be funny?
Carmen: Well, yeah I do. Like I said I took the comedy class at the improv and now fast forward all of these years later, I actually teach the class at the improv. So, I see it. I get to see people learning to be funny. Once you kind of study joke structure and learn how a punch line gets formed or how an act gets formed, I believe anybody can be funny. But, some people never get over the stage fright so, they might not, you know? But, they can fight it, you know?
Anzzia: Yeah. See that leads me to my next little set of questions. Do you get stage fright? If so, how did you learn to deal with managing your stage fright and your comedy routine?
Carmen: Yeah, I think when I first started I was really nervous all of the time. I would get really scared and be really nervous. As I just did it more and more and more, like that sting is kind of gone.