Rune's World: Socks

Rune's World is full of quick, hard-hitting and hilarious comedy magic. During the process of writing the book, I was privy to Rune's thought process on how he develops many of his bits. He has a knack for distilling a premise or idea down to its simplest form. "Socks" is a great example of this. He saw all the "Smash and Stab" type of routines and the lengthy setup they require to make sense of. Instead, he realized that you could do a reveal of a sharp object AFTER the decision was made without ever touching on the premise. Rune discovered that the shock of a sharp object is still strong, even if the "choice" appears to be 50/50. I like this routine a lot. I even used it to open my Tonight Show appearance, for the simple reason that the routine I performed had a lengthy procedure before the revelations. I needed a payoff--and a punchline early in my segment, and this fit the bill.