Learning the Ways of Stand-Up Comedy

In my quest to become the ultimate stand-up comedian, I have sought the advice of many great humourists, on and off the internet, but no other comedian has influenced me more than Bill.

I met Bill about a year ago, while waiting for a street car on the way home from a party on the East Side of Toronto. I was scribbling some ideas in my notebook about some observations that I had made at this party, and I heard a drunken voice ask me for a light, I looked up and saw a ragged looking homeless man in his mid-fifties. 'Hey man, you gotta light?', he slurred, I offered him my lighter and he lit his cigarette butt. 'Whassat cha got there?' he gruffly asked as he stumbled forward to return my lighter, 'you some kinda student or something?'.
'Just some notes' I replied hastily, hoping he would go away.
'What kinda notes?'
'I'm putting down some funny ideas.' At that point, he plonked his smelly self down to occupy the seat at the stop next to me, and made a grab for my note pad.
'You wanna write comedy or somefffing?', his face was almost right up to mine, I could smell his foul alcohol breath and his stinking urine stained trousers.
'Well, I'm just starting off, I hope to be able to do stand up oneday', I was conscious of my nose spasming on it's own accord to the horrible stench that was emanating from this despicable man.
'I used to be a fucking stand up comedian you know...', he stared at me with a wobbly gaze and pointed a finger at me.
'Oh really.' I replied most disinterestedly.
'I used to be the fucking best, this was the fucking early 80s, I toured all of Canada and all of the West Coast down to Mexico, I played gigs in New York too.'
'That's interesting.'
He took a final drag on his cigarette butt and flicked it onto the road, 'If you wanna write comedy, you gotta know how to write...'
'Right.'
'Because, if ya dunno how to write, you aint nobody, your jest some fucking guy in a bar talking shit.'
'Indeed.' I looked to see if a street car was on it's way and almost contemplated walking to the next stop.
'You gotta know how to write, beeecos, its your strategy', he nudged my shoulder then slapped my notepad, 'these are your war plans, without these you aint got shit an your just another man in a bar...'
'Okay, that's great, thank you.' He stared at me, the smell was so bad now that I was worried that my eyeballs would melt any second, they were streaming tears.
'I can tell you're a passionate fellow about comedy..', he grinned his ugly black teeth, 'but writing is useless on stage cuz you can't take it up there, you need your weapons on stage.'
'Okay. Yes. Thank you. Great.' I smiled, hoping he would depart.
'Watcha need when you're on stage are the weapons of timing and delivery..'
Maybe this stinky bum really does know what he's talking about, I thought to myself.
He swayed for a few seconds and then continued as if he were trying to focus on something in the distance, 'ahhh, it's the way you say them', he suddenly grabbed my notepad and looked at it, he pointed at something, 'wasshis say?'
I looked at the sentence that I had written only a couple of minutes ago and read it out, 'sometimes, when you drink a bottle of beer too quickly, it fizzes and shoots up your nose and you hope that nobody has noticed.'
'Seee, that aint fucking funny, that's bullshit, damn fucking bullshit!!', he clenched his fists as if in rage. Then the rage disappeared as suddenly as it came, and was replaced by sobbing, he had wrapped his dirty hands around his head in his lap, he raised his head slowly with blackened tears streaming down his cheeks, 's-s-s-ometimes...' he sobbed, 'when you drink a bottle of beer, too quickly...', he sobbed again and wiped snot from his nose, 'it f-f-f-fizzes and shoots up your nose...and... and... and...', he gasped then acceleratedly said, 'and-you-hope-that-nobody-has-noticed!' to which he started bawling out loudly like a big baby.
Concerned, I asked him if he was okay.
He sprang up, 'Hi, my name's Bill! Thank you for watching!', proceeded to offer me a grubby handshake, and then took off with a merry swagger down the road.