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January 19 – Travel Writing; How to Get Paid to Travel the World — Have you taken a trip that’s changed your life? Do you want to document your adventures with a paying assignment for a magazine or newspaper? This information-packed, inspiring workshop, taught by . . . Read more

January 29 – Atlanta’s Most Popular Blogging Workshop — This is Atlanta’s Most Popular Blogging Workshop! If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or if you’ve already started one, this workshop will teach you how to sharpen its concept, write better posts, rank higher on Google, triple your traffic and start making money . . .  Read more

January 29 – Turn Your Blog into a Profit-Making Business — Learn how to discover and leverage your blogging voice, develop killer content, effectively analyze your stats and blog traffic, increase your readership and develop loyalty and improve your “findability” on Google!  Read more

Feb. 7–March 6 — Debra Coles Wisecrack U: A Stand-Up Comedy Class for Kids — Great speakers don’t always make straight A’s. They may not even do well on the SAT. However, great speakers know how to give an organized speech with energy and humor . . . read more

February 22 — WordPress Crash Course with Jami Howard Learn everything you need to know to get your wordpress site off the ground, including a guided tour through the bewildering world of plugins . . . read more

March 17–18 – The Shocking Real-Life Book Writers Boot Camp Weekend — This is not your average writer’s retreat! This is a lively, active, results-oriented symposium of creative and accomplished authors, attendees and answers to the questions that have been dogging you for years regarding how to go about getting a book deal . . . Read more

Dates Vary – The Pitch Doctor with Hollis Gillespie Here’s a secret, you don’t need to have a finished manuscript to get a book deal. All you need is an amazing idea and as little as 10 pages. I’ve helped scores of writers get book deals and agent representation, you’re next . . .  Read more

[For a calendar of these classes, scroll to the bottom of this screen.]

Debra Cole

Debra Cole’s Wisecrack University!

This 5-Week  Course for Teens  begins Tues., Feb 7th!
Click below to sign up now to reserve your seat! This Class meets each Tuesday from 6 to 8:30 beginning February 7 and concludes with graduation speeches March 6th.

Cost: Just $350 for this 6-week course including Saturday Night Stand-Up Finale

Does your teen have a knack for talking to people? Is your teen interested in politics, business, teaching, ministry, science, journalism, entertainment, activism, or law? Does your teen need something to get excited about outside of school?  The truth is, it doesn’t matter what career your son or daughter wants to pursue. Whether it’s acting or engineering, being able give an effective presentation with humor will open doors during the college years and beyond. All industries have conferences and seminars that require participants to deliver information while keeping audience members from yawning and rolling their eyes.  Young people who are willing to work at public speaking will be able distinguish themselves at the university, in the boardroom, or on stage.

Great speakers don’t always make straight A’s. They may not even do well on the SAT. They’re not necessarily the best looking or even the most popular. However, great speakers know how to give an organized speech with energy and passion. They know how to reach the public. They know how to deliver a good joke to gain favor with the group. If you want your teen to learn to connect to others from the podium, build confidence in a challenging yet fun environment, and learn from a pro working in the field, sign up for this course now with professional comedienne and former educator Debra Cole. 

Debra Cole is a staple in the Atlanta comedy scene. She is the host of Funny Fridays at the Aurora Theatre in Lawrenceville.  She recently performed in New York City and travels regularly to audiences in clubs and at events. You may have seen her at the Ansley Park Playhouse, Buford Variety Theatre, The Warren, The Star Bar, Eddie’s Attic, The Laughing Skull, The Funny Farm, The Punchline,  and other charity events. She’s also performed for charity events like the Hotlanta Roundup, Pets are Loving Support (PALS), Comedy for Critters and others. A former school teacher, Debra is now known for her smart, sophisticated humor delivered with sarcasm and an authentic southern Georgia twang. As an educator, Debra taught English and orchestra in the public schools for 9 years before turning to her true calling as a comic. She has undergraduate degrees in music and history and a master’s degree in educational leadership.

Sign up below for a course at Wisecrack University with professional comedienne Debra Cole!

In her course your teen will learn the basics of an effective speech, writing techniques, creativity warm-ups, how to act on stage, and how to find his or her voice. Whether a novice or more advanced speaker, Professor Debra guarantees that your teen will be able to give a more effective presentation with appropriate humor. Classes will be FUN, RELAXED, and NON-THREATENING! Language and topics will be age appropriate. Participants are encouraged to bring food given the time of class.  Requirements are a positive attitude, a sense of humor, and a great work ethic!

Click below to sign up now to reserve your seat! The 5-Week Class meets each Tuesday from 6 to 8:30 beginning February 7  and concludes with a graduation class of final presentations March 6, 2012. Parents will be invited.

Debra Cole is a staple in the Atlanta comedy scene. She is the producer and star of the weekly Debra Cole Comedy Show at the Ansley Park Playhouse,. You may have also seen her at the Aurora Theatre, Buford Variety Theatre, The Warren, The Star Bar, Eddie’s Attic, The Laughing Skull and many other clubs and events. A former school teacher, Debra is now known for her smart, sophisticated humor delivered with sarcasm and an authentic southern Georgia twang.  Debra also taught English and orchestra in the public schools for 9 years before turning to her true calling as a comic.

Sign up below for a course at Wisecrack University with professional comedienne Debra Cole!

Cost: Just $350 for this 5-week course including the graduation speech. 

Still need convincing? Here are some more concepts to be covered in the Debra Cole’s Wisecrack University Stand-Up Comedy Workshop:

  • Stage Presence, Vocal Projections, Fluency, and Pacing
  • How Public Speaking  will open doors personally and professionally
  • Techniques Great Speakers Use
  • Knowing your audience
  • Organizing your Speech
  • Understand the Power of Humor
  • Tricks for Memorizing
  • Distinguish and Apply Different Styles of Humor
  • Writing an Effective Joke
  • Coping with Performance Anxiety
  • Make a Great Impression at the Microphone

This Wisecrack University Public Speaking Workshop with Debra Cole is designed to help your teen develop skillful delivery and begin their journey into public speaking. Here are more concepts to be covered:

  • Build Confidence at the Podium
  • Connect with Others
  • Find his or her Passion
  • Get a laugh
  • Know What’s Appropriate
  • Manage Mannerisms
  • Recognize elements that make a Speech powerful

By the end of this class, your teen will have a better grasp of professional humor-writing techniques:

  • Repetition.
  • Misdirection: Appear to go one direction with your writing, but end up in a completely different place. For instance: Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. – Groucho Marx
  • Escalation: Start out reasonable and sensible, then become increasingly extreme, irrational, and absurd.
  • Being Self-referential.
  • Understatement. For instance, “many people would say that the Holocaust was not a good thing”.
  • Reversal. Example: Work is the curse of the drinking classes. – Oscar Wilde.
  • Be silly about serious things.
  • Be serious about silly things.
  • The Straight Man. A common beginner’s mistake is to be ridiculous the whole way through. However, being serious is a vital part of being frivolous. They’re yin and yang, opposites that need each other.
  • The Importance of Writing in a Consistent Style

Click below to sign up now to reserve your seat! The 5-Week Class meets each Tuesday from 6 to 8:30 beginning February 7 and concludes with graduation speeches March 6th.

Cost: Just $350 for this 6-week course including Saturday Night Stand-Up Finale

Still need convincing? Here are some more concepts to be covered in the Debra Cole’s Wisecrack University Stand-Up Comedy Workshop:

  • Stage Presence
  • Great Comics: What they do and how they arrived
  • Knowing your audience
  • Joke Brainstorming
  • Comedy Formats
  • Tricks for Memorizing
  • Finding your individual brand of humor
  • Looking for Premises
  • Making a serious statement while keeping it funny
  • Unique challenges of the comedy world

This  Wisecrack University Stand-Up Comedy Workshop with Debra Cole is designed to help you develop your own strong comedy material and confident skillful delivery. It will help you:

  • Create funny new material
  • Punch up your current material
  • Learn how to get more laughs from your comedy idea
  • Learn how to turn your traumatic life stories into stand-up comedy material
  • Get more laughs by performing characters and acting out scenes
  • Create your comic persona
  • Learn advanced joke writing techniques

This course will take you from the philosophical (the essence of humor) to the practical (the mechanics of joke structure). You’ll see why good humor writing is like other good writing, only funny. You’ll learn to turn facts into riffs, the personal into the universal, and the tragic into the comic.  By the end of this class, you will have learned the following professional humor-writing techniques:

  • Repetition.
  • Misdirection: Appear to go one direction with your writing, but end up in a completely different place. For instance: Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. – Groucho Marx
  • Escalation: Start out reasonable and sensible, then become increasingly extreme, irrational, and absurd.
  • Being Self-referential.
  • Understatement. For instance, “many people would say that the Holocaust was not a good thing”.
  • Reversal. Example: Work is the curse of the drinking classes. – Oscar Wilde.
  • Be silly about serious things.
  • Be serious about silly things.
  • The Straight Man. A common beginner’s mistake is to be ridiculous the whole way through. However, being serious is a vital part of being frivolous. They’re yin and yang, opposites that need each other.
  • The Importance of Writing in a Consistent Style
Cost: Just $350 for this 6-week course including Saturday Night Stand-Up Finale
Class Location:

The Shocking Real Life [anti]Establishment for Continuing Education Location:

cbp buttonWe are located in the historic Castleberry Artist district in Atlanta! Click HERE for directions from your location to our space at 313 Nelson Ave., Atlanta, GA 30313!

 

Refund policy: Enrollment is limited. If you need to cancel your registration for a class or seminar, please notify deblaughs@gmail.com by email as soon as possible. Refunds, minus a $25 administration cost, will be remitted for cancellation notifications made up to two weeks in advance of elected seminar. For cancellations made up to one week in advance of the elected seminar, a credit be issued towards the next Wisecrack University Stand-Up class or seminar of the same price. Any cancellation made within one week of the elected seminar results in forfeiture of the registration fee.

Writer, designer and social media snark shark, Jami Howard, is offering three classes on Sunday, January 22nd to help you install, learn how to operate and dazzle your WordPress powered website!

You can come with absolutely nothing for a website and leave with WordPress securely installed on your new hosting account, properly gussied up and, most importantly, you will have the knowledge to run and update your WordPress powered website.

WordPress Open Studio

Get WordPress Installed with a techno-nerd over your shoulder!

Do you need help installing WordPress and aren’t sure how to just make it “do”? This Open Studio Session floats just before the Learn WordPress! Workshop on the same day and will be FREE for students that have enrolled in WordPress workshop and for folks who use my affiliate links to register their domains and hosting.

There will also be an inexpensive drop-in rate of $15 for non-students or folks who have already registered domains and hosting but still need help. Get set to bring your laptops and get free or basically free consulting from Jami Howard!

Sunday, January 22nd

10am-11am

Cost: FREE with Preferred Hosting Promo or Learn WordPress! Registration or $15.00 for drop-in rate

To register for WordPress Open Studio, click here to be redirected to Jami’s website.

 

Learn WordPress!

Learn everything you need to get your WordPress Blog off the ground!

The longest class out of all of these offerings, Learn WordPress! aims to get you familiar with all of the stock options that come with your WordPress hosted blog as well as dip into the basics of how to optimize and customize your site with plugins and theme selections. Learn the basics of how hosting works, in plain English, so that you understand what you’re paying for with your self-hosted WordPress site. Learn the difference between Categories and Tags, how to install themes and plugins and how to best optimize your WordPress site for search engines.

Also, get your grub on — my incredible chef fiance will put together an awesome lunch that is included in your registration!

Sunday, January 22nd

11am-3pm

Cost: $149

To register for Learn WordPress!, click here to be redirected to Jami’s website.

 

Dirty Hands From All The Plugins

With over 17,000 Plugins, how do you know which ones to choose?

So you’ve got WordPress installed, you know how to publish content and you’ve got a theme you love. Now you just need help with the Plugins. I’m going to teach you how to THINK like a Plugin developer which will help you find the right Plugins to meet your needs. We’ll cover all the elements to look for when hunting down the right Plugin and my Top 20 Plugins That You Need Now.

Sunday, January 22nd

3:30-5:00

Cost: $35

To register for Dirty Hands, click here to be redirected to Jami’s website.

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Meet Jami Howard

Jami Howard used to want to teach Jazzercise, but realized she liked ice cream too much. Instead she became a Facebook wizard, social-media specialist, writer and professional graphic designer. A self-professed techno-nerd, she is also a single mom with a penchant for snark, profanity and mocktacular writing, as evidenced by her extremely popular site Datewrecks. Such qualities have traditionally translated to huge popularity on the internet. She carries her torch on her personal blog, Freak Bacon which is not actually about bacon at all. She likes craft beer and making fun of people (but not you) (okay maybe you) (probably).

As something of a Facebook addict (ask her fiance), Jami knows her craft. She’s also learned WordPress from the inside out and the Suffusion theme has surrendered to her superior abilities. As a talented graphic designer with five years of experience in print media, she’s got an eye for what looks stellar and she’s using that keen ability to create dynamic and engaging web pages using WordPress.

She’s ready to give your business or brand a social media makeover but more importantly, will teach you HOW to manipulate these social media tools to your advantage. Having no interest in being a web designer or a web host, she seeks to guide you to implement your ideas online, show you how to master them and then she wants to watch you ride off into the sunset.

In today’s market of open source everything, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to control and manipulate every single space that you occupy online.

Writer, designer and social media snark shark, Jami Howard, is offering both of her wildly popular Facebook Pages Workshops on Saturday, January 21st to help you fully take control of the power of social media through your Facebook Page.

We start with the basics in the Intro to Facebook Pages Workshop and then move into the fancy bells and whistles in the Custom Facebook Page Workshop. At the end of these two classes, you’ll know how to make your Facebook Page sparkle and shine as well as how to really leverage the power that you’ve been given by Facebook to tap into your customers and fans.

The Intro to Facebook Pages

The original and still, by far, the most fun!

Learn about the ins-and-outs of your Facebook Page’s dashboard and how to get it optimized for peak performance. Billed as “The Anatomy & Physiology of Facebook Pages”, this class will take you from knowing nothing to ready-to-rock! Jami shows you some neat tricks to “MacGuyver” tools on your Facebook Page for better performance.

Saturday, January 21st

10am-12pm

Cost: $79

To register for The Intro to Facebook Pages Workshop, click here to be redirected to Jami’s website.

The Custom Facebook Page

Take your Facebook Page to the next level!

Get familiar with what to post and when and how often you should be posting to your Facebook Page. Learn how to add custom content like optimized profile images, custom landing pages, contact forms and more. Integrate your Facebook Page with your blog using RSS Third Party Publishing. Learn how to create “The Organic Ripple Effect” by soft-selling and strategically networking socially!

Saturday, January 21st

1pm-3pm

Cost: $79

To register for the Custom Facebook Page Workshop, click here to be redirected to Jami’s website.

 

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Meet Jami Howard

Jami Howard used to want to teach Jazzercise, but realized she liked ice cream too much. Instead she became a Facebook wizard, social-media specialist, writer and professional graphic designer. A self-professed techno-nerd, she is also a single mom with a penchant for snark, profanity and mocktacular writing, as evidenced by her extremely popular site Datewrecks. Such qualities have traditionally translated to huge popularity on the internet. She carries her torch on her personal blog, Freak Bacon which is not actually about bacon at all. She likes craft beer and making fun of people (but not you) (okay maybe you) (probably).

As something of a Facebook addict (ask her fiance), Jami knows her craft. She’s also learned WordPress from the inside out and the Suffusion theme has surrendered to her superior abilities. As a talented graphic designer with five years of experience in print media, she’s got an eye for what looks stellar and she’s using that keen ability to create dynamic and engaging web pages using WordPress.

She’s ready to give your business or brand a social media makeover but more importantly, will teach you HOW to manipulate these social media tools to your advantage. Having no interest in being a web designer or a web host, she seeks to guide you to implement your ideas online, show you how to master them and then she wants to watch you ride off into the sunset.

In today’s market of open source everything, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to control and manipulate every single space that you occupy online.


5. “Christmas Conga,” by Cyndi Lauper. There is no better impetus for yakking up your holiday turkey than an eighties pop diva’s senseless Latin yuletide croak fest. “Bonga bonga bonga. Do the Christmas conga,” are lyrics that will increase the holiday suicide rate for sure.

4. “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” by John Mercer and Margaret Whiting. The song is the most blatant endorsement of date rape in the history of songwriting. The female lyrics actually contain the words, “What’s in this drink?

3. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” by Dr. Elmo. Way to celebrate granny-cide, even if she was a drunk and demented, sloppy old shrew.

 2. “Please Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk this Christmas,” by John Denver. Even though  I have an unexplainable love for the late John Denver, this saccharine appeal from the perspective of an 8-year-old boy to his boozer dad is enough to suck all the fun out of the holidays.

1. “Christmas Shoes,” by NewSong. BARF! I hate this song with the intensity of a hundred suns! From the idiot kid who is in line to buy shoes rather than at the side of his dying mother, to the idiot narrator who hands over a couple bucks rather than alert the authorities that there’s an abandoned child panhandling in public, this song, from the first note, is nothing but a senseless montage of emotionally manipulative turds lined up to tug heartstrings. Below is Patton Oswalt’s deservedly viciously ripping it apart:

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