If your story doesn't contain a surprise, then your story isn't a story. It's a report and the better the surprise, the better the story. Today's june 21st 2022 the longest day of the year, and i wanted to structure this video like a story, so that i could keep your attention to the end and i could elucidate the story structure, which is a struggle, got a lot of things. I want to say, got ta put them in the right form so that it's interesting sitting at my typewriter last couple days.

How am i gon na do this? How am i gon na do this and i notice behind my imac this post-it note and this post-it note two and a half years old. It is the solution to my structure problem everything fell into line when i read this and i'm gon na hold it over your head until the end and that's kind of what a story is bert: kreischer top of the food chain, apex, predator comedian, excellent storyteller, master, Storyteller, as all of those top-notch comedians are he does a podcast with tom segura called two bears one cave, and on this podcast he tells a story that exemplifies the difference between a good storyteller, telling a story and a bad storyteller telling the same story, and i'm Just gon na steal the whole thing, because it's the best example i've ever heard so here's my version of bert's version of the story. Bert's baby daughter is in the hospital and if you want to see a grown man cry ask him about the time his baby was in the hospital he's distraught and he's talked to the doctors. He has to go back into the waiting room.

He has no control over anything, he's a comedian and in the waiting room, an attractive, african-american lady sees him and says to him: it's tough being a daddy, and it was the perfect thing for her to say the perfect compassionate thing for her to say - and i Imagine it allowed him to be vulnerable and pull the cork out of the tears and regroup, which is what he needed to do, and here is the surprise the surprise that would allow me to embellish the story, because it's so good that woman was whitney houston. The greatest love of all, so that was my version of bert's version of the story. So here's my version of bert's version of leanne's version of the story. Leanne is his wife and she is the example of a bad storyteller.

This is how leanne a bad storyteller tells the same story. Isla was in the hospital and whitney houston was in the waiting room and then she goes into boring detail of all of the hospital visit of the she had and isla had this, and the doctors were running that and they did this test and we had to Wait and blah blah blah now, if you save that whitney houston punch line to the end and you slowly build to it and you slowly work your way, you can include all those little details you can include and then the doctor's report came back and you might Have to fudge the facts and the chronologies around, but the humanity of the story will come through and what got bert on this subject to begin with was his beef. That leanne would interrupt him in his stories with facts that made the story worse, but just made it more factual and never let the facts get in the way of the truth. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

You do not interrupt a good storyteller. Okay. Now the post-it, the spirited man, is brought to you by the spirited man. Patreon team join our patreon team at five dollars a month for exclusive access to archival videos with directors commentary and peer discussions and live streams.

Answering your questions and comments plus patreon exclusive, limited edition, zines link in the description. Okay, now the post-it it's dated december 11. 2019 is a note to myself, and it says this write. The story about the driver in maryland starts with the reason that we were at this particular hotel was because it was in wedding, crashers, okay, so here's the story, isabel's best friend, was getting married in maryland.

We had flown all the way across the country to this wedding, even though isabelle and i live in california and the bride and groom lived in california, and i think it was so that they could have this wedding at this place in maryland. That was in wedding. Crashers, so we needed to get from where we were staying in town to the wedding to this plantation, the hotel had a driver and a car and the driver drove us. It was like 20 minutes now the driver was an african-american man and he had said something something in my tuition.

Let me know. Oh this guy has seen think this guy has been places, so i asked him i said: where have you been in this world? Tell me some of the places you've been in this world and he just he had like he was, i think he was in the army and he lived in germany and that started this whole foreign travel part of his life and he had been everywhere and he Had seen things he was someone i had i connected with closely i'm one of these very guys who hates weddings. I don't care how fancy it is. I don't care where it is.

I don't like it. I don't like being trapped there. I don't like that. I don't unless it's somebody who's a very close friend of mine.

I especially don't like all of the small talk and having to be polite, and i knew almost no one at this wedding, and so it was days of just small talk and no connection to anyone and this man i connected with him in 20 minutes, because we Were both worldly people, i think, and so we're pulling into the driveway of this plantation and we get to the end and he stops and and here's the surprise he said you know, frederick douglass was held as a slave for two years on this plantation and it Made me feel better, having heard him say that, and it kind of bothered me for a while like why that's a dark piece of data, that's a dark fact why? Why, and i think it was something about the honesty of it. It was. It was as if he was saying i respect you enough to tell you this, or i don't know what he was saying, but it was like you know. Storytellers are sensitive people, people who choose to do this for a living were sensitive, and i would rather be strong and rational i'd.

Give it away and i'd rather be a strong, rational person than this sensitive t cry baby, and you know i think, chrysler's like this. His daughter's fine, now she's off to college next year and a story in its essence is a model that connects us to the human experience. Today is june 21st, 2022, and yesterday was the first anniversary of the juneteenth holiday and at this time in american history, the the consensus is we're a divided nation. We're divided, divided, divided division, division division, but in talking to people, i think everyone agrees that no one sang the star-spangled banner more beautifully than whitney houston this week on the patreon zine one has been retired.

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