One Rough School Assembly

I do school assemblies with a ministry called Youth Alive. Two weeks ago we were in Oklahoma setting up for an assembly in a jr high when the principal came over and asked about my segment. We have a few different speakers who present throughout the assembly and that day I was going to talk about bullying and suicide. He tells me that the school had an attempted suicide earlier in the week and to be sensitive of that.

I have never had that happen before. That was a hard one to get through. I usually have no idea any sort of back story behind the group I’m speaking to. It’s not until after the show that I hear stories of people dealing with the stuff I talk about. But this time I was on stage making eye contact with student after student trying desperately to hold back tears. Each student I saw I thought “this segment is for them.” “This segment is for them.”

When I was at a youth ministry conference  last week I was talking to a pastor about why confession is so important to me and why I’m always focusing on it as I close out my stand-up shows. He brought up one of his favorite verses “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind (1 Cor. 10:13).”

How comforting to know you’re not the only one. You’re not alone. I get to say it in my stand-up. You have the chance to say it to your family, friends, small group, or even complete strangers in their moments of need. You’re not alone.

The Dumbest T-Shirt Idea | Pre-order Now

If you saw me perform at a camp this summer or you saw week one of my Why Not Stories, you might remember hearing about my experience getting to milk a cow and how I drank that stuff fresh from the cow. Or, as I like to put it, I drank milk “straight from the uttz.”

For some reason people thought was the funniest phrase in the world. At one camp the whole audience started chanting it at me like a crazed mob. People started commenting “straight from the uttz” on all my youtube videos. It was a weird summer.

Last week I was messing around in photoshop and designed a Straight from the Uttz t-shirt. I put it in my instagram story, asking “is this too dumb of a t-shirt?” And I got SO MANY responses from people telling me they wanted one. I gave into peer pressure and put the shirt for sale on my site.

I think this shirt is so dumb but I can’t stop laughing at the thought of people actually wearing it in public.

It’s available for pre-order until this Saturday. You’ll get it 20% off.

Go to straightfromtheuttz.com

Or go to www.uttz.life

I bought both domains for this dumb thing.

Hurry up and pre-order it right now before you forget.

Every time I get notified about a new order I lose my mind.

Here's the video from Why Not Stories where I milked a cow

The Best Comedian on Snapchat

Gil Ozeri is one of the funniest people on the internet. He’s an improviser in LA and last year he started making the CRAZIEST videos for his snapchat story. Like, you will be surprised the amount of effort he put into some of the dumbest, silliest, and most bizarre 6 second videos.

Last month he released a BEST OF on youtube collecting his favorite snapchat story moments. Please watch it.

His big leg is probably my favorite. The part where Steven Spielberg is chasing him is also very funny.

Reading C.S. Lewis' Problem of Pain

This week my To Do list is nothing but sending a few e-mails to churches setting up services and comedy shows and then A TON OF READING. I’ve got a big ol stack of books I’ve got to get through to prepare for next year.

If you want to follow what books I’m reading and what I think of them, I restarted my Good Reads account. You can find it here.

Last week I finished C.S. Lewis’ THE PROBLEM OF PAIN. It’s really great. I took a ton of notes on every chapter except the one about why animals feel pain because I genuinely did not care. I’m really sorry if that offends you but I just need to be honest.

Here is probably my FAVORITE paragraph from the whole book:

“The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, please, and merriment, He scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

YES! YES! YES! That’s so good I could slap you right in the face. I love that. What a beautiful way to look at the happiest and warmest moments of our life. YES! I want to scream this paragraph at strangers on the street.

Also, let us never forget that C.S. Lewis wrote a children's book where Santa Claus shows up and gives everyone weapons.

Also also, did you know that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien went to the movies together and saw Disney’s Snow White? They did. And they hated it. They especially hated how dumb the dwarves were. They wrote letters about it. You can read about that here.

Things Got Awkward with a Magician

I spent the last two days at youth ministry conference trying to convince youth pastors that I’m funny and they should use me at their church. I had my own little booth and brochures and everything. Very fancy.

There was also a magician who had a booth on the other side of the expo center and I was too nervous to talk to him. I think my magic is really cool and I was afraid I’d come off too strong and scare him.

I’ve watched hours of clips from Penn & Teller’s show FOOL US on youtube. This clip is probably my all time favorite because of how mad Penn gets when he realizes how freaking good the magic trick was.

There are also two really great magic related documentaries on Netlfix.

Make Believe follows several teen magicians as they enter in a worldwide magic competition. It feels like some of the kids were created by the writers of The Office. But they’re real. It’s fascinating. It’s funny. For some reason I couldn’t stop yelling at my tv.

An Honest Liar is about The Amazing Randi, a magician turned skeptic who debunked psychics, healers, and televangelist who claimed to perform miracles but were actually frauds. This is also great but for totally different reasons.

So anyways, I’m at this conference avoiding the magician until the last day as everything is shutting down. He walks by my booth, I try to ask a genuine question, and I guess he thought I was making fun of him because it got real weird real fast.

I’m so sorry, magician man.

A Guy Falls in a Hole...

I’ve been watching West Wing on Netflix. This is my favorite quote from the show. It's a little story one character tells. It's great and it perfectly illustrates why I do stand-up the way I do.

Here it is:

This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.

A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, 'Hey you. Can you help me out?' The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. 

Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?' The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?' And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, 'Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.' The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.’

I love that.

And that’s the big idea behind my stand-up show, TELL A GOOD STORY. If you have a story of what God has done in your life, you have friends who need to hear it. You need to let them know you’ve been in the hole, too. But if you’re still stuck in the hole now, you need to know there are people who have found the way out, and it’s Jesus.

Watch the clip:

When Fear Gets in the Way of Your Big Ideas

Summer is the perfect time do something you’ve always wanted to. Even if you aren't a student anymore with a ton of free time, you can still check something off your “wouldn’t it be cool…” list.

That’s kind of what my new video series is about. It’s crazy how easy it was to do some of the dumb stuff I thought would be funny to try. For several videos all I had to do was post on Facebook and say “hey, does anyone know someone who can help me do this stupid idea?” And within an hour I'd get A TON of responses from people more than willing to help. A lot of times you never know until you ask!

A lot of you have a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” that has to do with making something or doing something creative. Record music, try stand-up, make videos, write, paint, design, perform, speak, OR WHATEVER.

One of the big obstacles that gets in the way of us actually doing the things we want to do is fear. Elizabeth Gilbert is an author who talks a lot about creativity and she made this video called “A Letter to Fear” that I really love. It’s basically the conversation she has to have with her fear before she starts working on anything.

Here’s a fun exercise I started doing to help me get over my fear. Think of one of your favorite movies of all time. Look it up on iMDB. Scroll to the bottom of the page and find user reviews of the film and read ALL of the negative and one star reviews.

You’re going to find people who HAAAAAAAATE movies that you love so much. It’s always funny to read people complain about scenes in the movie that are actually the parts you love the most.You’ll read review after review of people annoyed, confused, angry, or who just “didn’t get it.”

It’s such a relief to me when I do this. It’s nice to know that no matter what you make there will be people who don’t like it. There will be people who hate it and don’t get what you’re trying to do.

There are people who hate Elf. There are people who really don’t like The Muppets. When I remind myself of that it stops feeling like the end of the world if someone doesn’t enjoy my stand-up. If those movies I love so much aren’t able to please everyone, then it’s ok that I can’t either.

What's on your "wouldn't it be cool if..." list? What are you going to try and do this summer? What's been stopping you from doing it?!

Talking about Black Holes at Camp

Two weeks ago I got to be a part of Mission 58 camp in Marshall, TX. I was hired as an MC, introducing each service, and performing stand-up one night.

BUT ALSO on Thursday 4 of us camp speakers got to teach break out sessions on topics students and leaders wanted to hear about. This was the best part of camp for me.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on what I want to travel with after I finish performing my TELL A GOOD STORY show. I’ve come up with this idea to talk about “black hole topics.” These are the topics and struggles we don’t want to bring up with people because we’re afraid they’ll suck the fun and energy of any conversation away. We’re afraid if we share our black hole it’ll suck away our friendships. My break out session at camp was the first time I got to speak about this.

The first half of the session was about how to be the kind of friend someone would want to share their BH topic with. The second half I addressed anyone in the room who might be dealing with something.

It was a really emotional afternoon for me. There was a Q&A at the end where students would ask questions and then just break down crying. It’s so crazy that we have no idea what the people around us are secretly dealing with.

And so crazy how much people are willing to open up about their hurts and problems when we share what we’ve gone through. Some times we just need to know we’re not the only one who has experienced the type of pain we’re going through. Some times that’s all we need before we’re willing to open up.

I really like the name. I like calling them “black hole topics” but I also see a problem with it. A few times during my session it sounded like I was talking about a butt. I said “what if someone shows you their black hole” and when I heard myself say it I tried really hard not to laugh.

Wonder Woman Calls You Out for Compromising Your Beliefs

"Perhaps we’re too familiar and comfortable with the current state of the church to feel the weight of the problem. But what if you grew up on a desert island with nothing but the Bible to read? Imagine being rescued after twenty years and then attending a typical evangelical church. Chances are you’d be shocked."

This is a Francis Chan quote from Crazy Love but it’s also pretty much the plot of Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman grows up on an island, isolated from the rest of the world, until Chris Pine shows up and lets her tag along with him back to World War I. There’s a lot of goofs once they get off the island around how sheltered she is and how she doesn’t know how to act in “normal society.”

One of my favorite things to see happen in a story is when someone has to be taught how to be a “human.” I love it because there’s a moment that always happens. Whoever is being taught how to be a person turns out to be better at it than the one teaching them BECAUSE they haven’t yet learned how to compromise their beliefs.

Wonder Woman grew up being taught justice, fighting for what’s right, and protecting those in need. She doesn’t know about how we all are willing to add a “yeah but some times” to the things we know are right to do.

Wonder Woman hears a lot of “slow down,” “that’s not how things work around here,” “you can’t just do that” and she never listens to any of it. She still pursues what she knows is right and she always succeeds. She proves them wrong.

And the people trying to stop her aren’t the bad guys. These are her allies, those closest to her.

When we read the Bible we see people do some crazy stuff for Christ. People gladly go to jail for preaching the gospel. Others sell what they have to take care of the poor. It really sucks that some times when we try to follow the example of the New Testament church we hear a lot of “slow down,” “that’s not how things work around here,” “you can’t just do that” and we listen.

We compromise.

Last year the first season of Stranger Things premiered on Netflix and we were all obsessed with it because it’s such a great show. I loved it especially because it has this same element as Wonder Woman.

A major aspect of the plot is how this group of jr high boys find Eleven, a girl kept locked away, isolated from the rest of the world, for sake of scientific experiments. She escapes from captivity and her time with these boys is her first experience with the rest of the world.

The boys have to teach her how to be a person. They teach her about family. They teach her about school. They teach her about “mouth breathers.”

Eleven is taught that “friends don’t lie” and she takes it to heart. In her mind, if this is true then it’s ALWAYS true no matter what. Even when you’re scared. Even when you’re embarrassed. And she calls one of the boys out when he’s trying to lie to her! Why would he lie if "friends never lie?”

After watching the show I got a little obsessed with this. If I found Eleven, what would I teach her? And then how long would it take for her to call me out for being a hypocrite? How long until I don't practice what I preach because I'm too scared to fully commit and I'd rather take the easy way.

What if I found Eleven and I told her what a Christian is? How long until she calls me out?

I don’t want to keep compromising. If I read Jesus say “take care of the least of these” I don’t want to listen to the “slow down,” “that’s not how things work around here,” or “you can’t just do that.” I just want to do it.

This Podcast Changed the Way I Looked at Being a "Christian Comedian"

I was right out of college, working part time as a youth pastor and spending the rest of my energy trying to travel as a stand-up comedian. I had no idea what I was doing and I was dealing with a ton of insecurities. I wanted to find a way to make stand-up comedy my full time job but HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK?!

I wasn’t good at “putting myself out there.” I barely knew what that meant. Most of the time I was performing in churches and, if I’m going to be really honest with you, I was embarrassed about that. I was becoming a “Christian comedian” and I hated it. It was embarrassing and I didn’t want to tell anyone outside the “church world” about what I was doing.

In my mind Christian comedians are comedians that only Christians find funny.

I DID NOT WANT TO BE THAT.

My Brother My Brother and Me is one of my favorite podcasts. It’s an advice show. Kind of. People send in questions looking for advice and the three brothers use that a jumping off point for all their silly goofs.

I actually went to them for advice on what I was going through. I was insecure about being a Christian trying to do comedy and I wanted to hear from a non-Christian perspective. I knew all the things people in the church might tell me. I wanted to hear from a different voice.

It really freaked me out the week I heard them read my question on the show. They said some really incredible and encouraging stuff. I’ve listened back to this a few times as I’ve gotten ready to post this and, MAN, it’s still so good.

Here’s the clip from the episode. I’ll warn you here that there is some NSFW language.

My Favorite Moments:

Just be true to yourself and you’ll end up with something original and sincere that people will be more interested in than if you just did what you think would be popular.

You might actually be able to change some people’s minds about what Christians are like and that could be a really cool thing.

You can be anything and also be funny.

When Justin said the thing about changing people’s mind, that really hit me. I feel like with today’s culture a lot of what it means to share the gospel in America today is just doing PR work

A lot of people have some really negative preconceived notions about what it means to be a Christian. It could be from people in their life or just what they’ve seen in the media, but it’s our job to be open about our faith and also not be a jerk or weirdo or someone who makes them uncomfortable, you know?

The guys from My Brother My Brother and Me really helped me be ok with being a Christian (who is also a) comedian.

Thanks, guys.