X-mass Time Stunt Doubles=)

A few years ago I visited one of my sister's back in Illinois. It was Christmas time.
Winter in the Midwest is a bleak affair. The land is flat. The sky is an unbroken gray. It's a perfect movie backdrop for suicide.
I think that's why Christmas lights and baby Jesus scenes become the glowing attractions that they are out there.

Let me explain that my sister lives in a town named Paw Paw. It's supposed to be named after a fruit that grows there or a small Indian tribe. I'm not sure.
There are just too many jokes to make about inbreeding and the identity of fathers.

It's a farm town.
It is two and a half hours southwest of Chicago and trapped somewhere in a 1950's Norman Rockwell America with 70's AM radio for a soundtrack and FOX news coming in loud and clear on the TV's.
Most people set up a manger scene on their front lawns. They do the whole thing; three wise men, statues of animals, Mary and Joseph and of course, little lord Jesus asleep in a hay-filled manger.

All of this pious folk art is then strung with lights. It sort of gives the appearance that Mary and Joseph traveled to Reno instead of Jerusalem.
My sister loaded her family up in the jeep and took us on the annual tour.

I started to notice something as we take in the displays.

Over the years some of the statues must of been lost, broken or misplaced in the huge barns that sit hulking on the barren prairie.
What you start to get is a stand-in cast of whatever figures are available. Problem is, sometimes there not the Biblical figures or the replacements were built on a different scale. The manger scenes then become unintentionally hilarious.

In one scene I see the baby Jesus, two wise men, and Santa Claus.
It's particularly striking because this Santa is one of those plug-in ones that glows with a painted plastic light. Being red, he looks like the Devil.

Another scene has everything perfect but instead of Mary, Joseph is standing next to an elf. I suppose it's possible that Joseph might be attracted to an elf, but it's obvious that whatever set the elf originally came from was a much larger scale.
The elf is huge compared to Joseph!

What is supposed to be a humble smile on Joseph's face seems more of an expression of acceptance. Like Joseph has just learned to accept being this massive elf's bitch.

At least all these manger scenes still stay in the Christmas theme. More than a few just assembled whatever characters they had and placed them in the traditional positions. That's the only way I would know that the little mermaid, Frankenstein, and the tin man from The Wizard of Oz were filling in for the wise men.

During the day one creative farmer tied up live animals around his manger scene. Unfortunately he put real hay in the manger so the two cows and four goats were all feeding on the hay. It looked like the animals were eating the baby Jesus alive!

Letters To Issues

My therapist suggested I write letters to the people, places and things that upset me recently. Your not suppose to mail them but it seems a shame just to throw them away.

Dear people booking a comic for your annual corporate event,
Thanks for booking me. Seriously. These can be fun shows that exceed every ones expectations. To insure that your gig goes great, please follow the advice of the comic who has been at this for almost two decades. When I say, don't have the crowd of 300 people in a hotel ballroom just sitting down to be served dry chicken and fish as I am about to perform, that means don't have the crowd just siting down to a meal of dry chicken and fish at the same time you introduce me.
Oh, and as I said in the e-mails, comedy works best with intimacy. A large ballroom is fine, but having people sit around the edges of the dance floor, one hundred feet away, and expecting them to pay attention to the guy on the unlit stage as they get served their dry chicken and fish doesn't help. Neither did a shitty sound system that couldn't reach the back of the room.
I think that was mentioned in the e-mails too, but its was a delightful three hour drive in the rain only to see that none of the agreed upon instructions were followed.
P.S.
Let me get this straight, you write the student loans for people all over American and don't see anything just a little unsettling that you have a casino night at your convention? Good to see all that money people are struggling to repay for job's that no longer exist is being gambled away by people who can't follow simple directions.

Dear lawyers at that other gig,
What a surprise that self-satisfied, self important manicured card board cutouts from a Banana Republic catalogue wouldn't laugh that hard. Thanks you for keeping me waiting an hour and a half and thank you for having the meal served just as I am about to perform. It was so very original to hear the guy with a smile like a hatchet eating his chicken like a date rapist say, "tough crowd."
Tough? No.
People with a sense of superiority don't like to laugh. Not because it is a sign of weakness, but because they hate to feel like they have no control.
Laughter is involuntary.
Thanks for living up to almost every stereotype about lawyers.
Thank you Dude in the front for not even turning around during the whole performance but still saying ridiculous shit under your breath as you looked across the room at a poster of yourself waving good-bye. How weird was that?
Thank you head partner in the company doing everything to look above it all. The jeans with a blazer is a nice touch if you were a comic in the 80's. It says, I am so rich that conventional professional dress codes no longer apply to me. But thanks for the check. How many people can say they annoyed a room full of attorneys for half an hour and got money out of them?
I won.

Dear Ambien,
What the hell is in your shit? I took one and woke up the next morning feeling more worn out than if I had just not slept. I think I know why. It's because I lead another life in the hours I was suppose to be asleep. I went on line, called people and generally made an ass of myself as I sleep blogged.
It would of been cool if I had started something like a fight club, but instead I wrote about candy as I instant messaged people.
The warning label on Ambien should say, Don't take with Internet!
Jesus Christ, the whole reason I quit drinking was so I wouldn't wake up feeling like shit and not remember the crazy shit I did the night before!

Dear Apple,
I like your products and yes, there is definitely a sense of being hip when I sit in a cafe and shoot a condescending look at the P.C. user struggling with some Microsoft problem.
Brilliant marketing.
What you lack in bugs you make up for with trying too hard to be unique. Your like the kid who dyes his hair purple and cuts his arms even though you live in the suburbs and your greatest problem is deciding what bumper sticker to post under a stop sign in the neighborhood.
USB, Fierwire connections, different cables, downloading drivers and 'latency' issues all have to be overcome if you want to record your guitar on Garageband. I guess I thought it would be easy because in every official Apple manual I could find all it says is, just plug your guitar into the computer! Even the video tutorial says it but oddly enough doesn't show it. There isn't the slightest mention of Audio Interfaces ANYWHERE other than the blogs and chat rooms dedicated to the millions of other people who had to find out the hard way that you can't just plug your guitar into your shinny new Apple and expect it to do what the side of the box, computer, website, salesperson and manuals all say you can do! Five hundred dollars later and now I can plug it in and you know what?
It sounds amazing, ass-holes!

Dear comments posted and e-mails sent to me concerning my last post where race was mentioned once,
Thank you for pointing out that I am now a racist, wrong or mislead when I said I don't agree that all white people, by virtue of being white, have it easier. I guess I will become like Joe the Plumber, a Klan member or the typical cartoon image of the angry white guy for pointing out what is a huge simplification with punch lines. You know, like comics do. I didn't realize this was the first step in becoming a racist but it must be true because you say it is.
Thanks for telling me what I can and cannot say and then explaining how you're still different from those evil conservatives who censor people. Of course your all correct and I was wrong. Next time I will check with you to see how I feel. Again, I apologize for taking issue with a gross generalization and pointing it out in a humours way.

Dear Democrats,
I know the Republicans have no heart, but do you guys have any balls? Let me see if I understand this right. The health care reform you have been arguing over for a year would make the purchase of health insurance from the same companies that have fucked everyone over mandatory? How is that reform? OK, sure. You say the Bill would make it illegal for them to drop people but the same bill would also let the insurance companies charge elderly people up to five times more. How is this reform and not some give away to the insurance companies? You're going to take tax money and pay the insurance companies to cover people who can't afford to buy it from those same companies and if people don't purchase health care insurance they will be fined?
Are you guys out of your fucking heads?
You guys already get health insurance paid for by tax dollars. Can't we at least have the same thing as our representatives?

Tofu: an essay on the state of stand-up and the fear of losing my liberalism.

Once upon a time Dennis Miller was cool. He is famous for explaining in an interview why he started self identifying as a conservative. After 9/11, he heard a lot of his liberal friends call Ruddy Giuliani a “Nazi.” He reexamined his beliefs and realized that he now had more in common with conservatives than liberals. Saying anyone is a “Nazi” is always a huge exaggeration. Kind of like saying a health care reform plan that would cover more people and save more lives while denying record profits to companies who have a nasty habit of dropping people once they actually need what they have been paying for is Nazi like. Whatever. I do understand hearing something and having a hard time finding a place for it in the context of what you believe. That was Denis Millers tipping point. I am worried it’s happening to me. It started with Tofu.
I was performing at a show recently when I did this joke.

Science now says that eating too much tofu can have a negative effect on your memory. I think this is true because every time I have it I forget it tasted like shit the last time.

From the back of the room a high-pitched voice went “Come on!”
The tone of outrage was unmistakable. It was a Vegan girl who wanted to dispute the scientific findings, the slanderous statement I made about its taste and her disapproval in general with any swipe at her food of choice.
Since she obviously eats a lot of Tofu I thought, just move on. She will probably forget this in a minute or so.
No such luck.
Here is the thing. I was at the end of a long show already. A show where she had sat quiet or laughed at the usual endless stream of dick jokes, an implied rape joke, a domestic abuse joke and other assorted politically correct challenging jokes ranging from poor taste to borderline racist. But tofu? That is where she drew the line!
Oh San Francisco.
I could write this off to the phenomena of everything is funny until its your issue, but her displeasure at having Tofu mocked while none of the other material she had heard inspired her to comment just seemed more ridiculous to me than usual. I hadn’t made some outrageous statement like all women are objects or God created black people to serve us; I made a pithy little joke about fucking Tofu and she lost her shit!
Stand-up comedy is a lot of things. It is the intersection between art, bad taste, the first amendment and trying to make a room full of strangers laugh in an age where every subject is polarizing. People go out to see stand-up comedy with an expectation that its going to be just like the one comic they saw five years ago on a TV show and then become offended when real issues are talked about. But again, this is fucking Tofu! Her reaction seemed out of proportion for the subject.

I am for Gay marriage, health care reform, a colorblind society, cutting pollution and a woman’s right to choose. Down the line, I am a liberal. What I am starting to have problems with is the mentality, the blanket statements and the lack of willingness to turn that critical eye inward. One day a woman standing in front of me on MUNI was wearing leather pants and going on about cruelty free food choices clearly oblivious to her fashion choice of irony. The bus stopped to pick up a guy in a wheelchair and half the bus with hemp shirts on and End Don’t Ask Tell Now bumper stickers across their Apple Laptops moaned at the few extra moments this process would take. A white Dude with dreadlocks rolled his eyes and loudly said, “Fuck!”
I looked down at him in the seat reserved for disabled and elderly people and went “Are you going to be late to the compost heap?”
So often in comedy shows it really is a case of everything is funny until it’s my issue but so often in San Francisco it seems like my liberal cause cancels out your liberal cause.
It’s a guy in a wheel chair, Ass-holes! You know, all inclusiveness and such? It’s sort of what all liberal thinking rests on.
We always ask conservatives if they have ever asked questions or tested their assumptions, but do we?

I get annoyed at people who wear their beliefs like fashion choices.
Does the color of my breast cancer awareness ribbon clash with my gay rights rainbow flag button? I have a No Blood for Oil bumper sticker on my Land Rover, so its alright to idle my engine for ten minutes as I block traffic waiting to get into the Trader Joe’s parking lot for sustainable farmed free range waffles.
These aren’t such crazy exaggerations.
A girl wearing a fur coat once heckled me after a joke about bestiality. She explained that the coat was second hand and like some moral version of the carbon-offset concept, she could wear it guilt free. This is classic San Francisco thinking to me! Since I didn’t purchase the coat and it looks great on me it’s all right to wear the skin of an animal but it is never all right to have sex with one?
I looked at her from the stage and asked, “So with your logic it would be OK to be the second one to fuck the horse?”

I heard a comic on stage talk about the idea of white privilege recently. He made the blanket statement that all white people have it easier.
All white people?
I understand that many of our institutions still have a bias built into them and that racism is alive and well even after we elected the first black president, but a blanket statement like that, no matter how many guilty white liberals nod along in agreement is still a huge generalization.
I would trade my poverty, my lack of access to dental and medical care, clinical depression, alcoholism, addiction, IRS problems and crushing debt for the cops pulling me over and white woman wanting to fuck me any day.
When I expressed this thought to a friend, she looked at me like I had just put on a white sheet and set fire to a cross! Her argument, more people of color have had it far worse for far longer than you!
True. No argument about that at all. The thing is, I had nothing to do with it. I can’t donate money I don’t have or give jobs in a company I don’t own or make some statement that comes off sounding condescending about the plight of minorities or even sit through Blind Sided. The best I can do is be respectful to everyone regardless of his or her race, color or creed. If that isn’t enough then were in bigger trouble than we want to admit. I walk into a show as a white person but leave black and blue because I get hit over the head with the message so much that I am the problem.
I am a white, heterosexual male.
Apparently I’ve been the problem all along. Slavery, that was me. Denying woman equal pay, me as well. In fact, I had the idea to have Puritans with small pox sneeze on blankets before we handed them out to the Indians.
I’m not saying white people in history haven’t pulled some of the worst shit in history, I am just saying I wasn’t there, don’t agree with what was done and I am one broke barely hanging on guy looking for the answers too and it sure doesn’t feel like I have had it any easier than anyone else.

All of these are examples of those moments when I have an uncomfortable realization; I am liberal, but I don’t exactly agree with what is being said. Sometimes I can’t put my finger on it but it feels wrong or off or maybe just not my truth yet I am scared to say it. I have to think Dennis Miller didn’t just throw out his ideals all at once. It was probably a lot of little moments like this that lead up to it. When that girl shouted “Come on!” after a silly little joke on Tofu, I felt a sharp snap in the back of my head. I’ve had it with this liberal bullshit!
That was my first thought.
In tone, it sounded the way any commentator on FOX news has said it a hundred times before. Thinking about it later, I was a little scared. Am I getting older and growing more jaded to the world’s problems, or am I becoming pragmatic? Are we accomplishing anything or just replacing one set of slogans for another? Can you point out the shades of gray without being labeled a racist, Nazi or hater when everyone seems to suffer from black and white thinking these days?
Tofu is a great way to explain most stand-up comedy. Bland, tasteless and forgettable five minutes after you’ve watch it, Tofu is the mainstay in the American intellectual diet. When most of the population has a better understanding of the plot lines on Lost than the war in Afghanistan, it makes sense to have someone heckle you over soybeans I guess. Part of why I think that heckle happened and not during all the other stuff is a bit depressing to ponder for my art, but it is an inescapable conclusion. Dick jokes and jokes that only work if the audience feeds into some portion of the stereotypes used in most routines are expected. Crude, lewd and decidedly not politically correct is the expectation most people have for a comedy show when they walk in a club. Guys and girls are different, dating is weird and almost any joke that start with the comic emphatically saying, fellas or ends with the comic saying, what’s up with that are worn premises and tools, but it is still the framework for much of the stand-up out there today. When you step outside that narrow margin of safety, you are bound to hit someone’s big red button that almost every American not only has, but also expects you to know about without ever having met them before. I just never thought that Tofu would be one of those buttons.

Long time no see=)

Well, I've been cheating on you, Blogger. For most of this year I have been posting my musings, imagined genius and two cents on the state of western cultures decay on Facebook. But I miss you, Blogger. That new blog thing didn't work out either. There just wasn't enough people willing to pay for a collection of blogs from comics. That was a kick in the ego! Anyway, I'm coming back to you, Blogger. I miss your familiar dashboard and ease of use. So, were gonna find away to make Facebook and Blogger work together to further my take over of the media.
More to come!

new blog thing

Well folks, I haven't updated my blog in a while for a few reasons. I am writing on a blog that is attempting to create the new business model for the information age. Its named, www.blogfundy.com
Check it out. Its a collection of funny people writing about everything and anything. Yes, we would like you to become a paid subscriber. For the price of a cup of coffee you could read insightful, funny and unique perspectives on things. Check it out=)
The other reason, I've been publishing blogs to my facebook page. You can read whats what there and eventually they will just publish to both sites.
www.facebook.com/standupjoe

San Francisco Blabity Bleh! at The Purple Onion this Thursday!

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/62136

Upset Over the Little Stuff?

Swine flu.
By now you have heard about it. The cable news networks seemed to take a delight in telling us how dangerous the swine flu could be. I got the feeling watching some of the coverage that not since the days following 9/11 has CNN had something so juicy to scare people with!
So far, only one person has died in America from the swine flu while 13,000 people have already died this year from the regular flu.
In other words, salmonella tainted spinach has killed more people. Hell, bad peanuts have killed more people than spinach this year. In fact, America has killed as many pirates this year as the swine flu has.
Yesterday, the acting head of the health department announced that the swine flu is no more deadly than the regular flu.
How about that? We closed schools and diverted flights, wore masks and ran out of hand sanitizer for a virus that is no worse than a really bad cold.
What is it about us? Why do we constantly get upset at the wrong things while the more dangerous things in society are regarded as business as usual situations and not problems?
Example-
Gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.
When Bush got elected a second time, liberals stocked up on sugar free snacks and poster boards for protests.
Almost four months into a new presidents term and the right is stockpiling arms.
Great. How can this go bad?
If the gun lobby had its way, guns would be sold in vending machines outside school cafeterias.
Thats the only way I would agree to school prayer in public schools.
By the way, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said there were 37 known vending machine fatalities between 1978 and 1995. Every year about two Americans die when they shake a machine trying to get a stuck snack out. Thats why we have warning labels on the side of Coke machines telling you not to shake them.
Vending machines killed more people last year than swine flu so I guess there pretty dangerous. If thats so, why don't guns at least have a warning label? I don't know exactly what it would say, maybe something as simple as WARNING: the U.S. Surgeon general has determined that guns can create big fucking holes in people!
If vending machines killed 10,000 people on average every year do you think there would be a strong lobby in Washington D.C. busy keeping them legal and on the streets?
Vending machines don't kill people. People kill people!
"You will have to pry this can of Coke from my cold dead hand!"
Squirt guns that look too much like real guns are against the law.
Law darts were made illegal after a kid was killed by one.
Vending machines, killing two people on average every year have more precautions built into them than guns do and guns were designed specifically for killing. Yet the idea of making them less available to society at large is seen as an attack on peoples personal liberties.
I can't think of a greater way to deprive someone of their personal liberty than shooting them, yet suggesting we do something about this uniquely American problem gets people crawling out of the wood work and screaming, "Second Amendment rights!"
The only way to remove a gun from the streets is apparently to announce that it was held by a Mexican with the flu.
Course, the people with guns will only say, we need to strengthen immigration laws!

Carrie Prejean is back in the spotlight again. She is better known as anti-gay marriage Miss California. She is now a spokesperson for traditional marriage and in trouble over topless photos of herself. Little miss traditional values posed for some racy photos back in the day! The photo—showing a topless, pink-underpants-wearing Prejean with her arm strategically placed—first appeared on TheDirty.com before making its way around the web.
I could care less. What makes this truly hilarious is her sanctimonious defense. If the traditional marriage people think a model who is already notoriously bad with words is a good spokesperson then you might have just proved you are dumber than her.
And that is saying something!
She called the release of the photos, "attacks on me and my integrity as a woman."
Lets stop right there for a moment, shall we? Think what you like about nudity or values or whatever. Its none of my business what you do. But the argument can be made that a woman of integrity might not pose topless in her underwear for money. I don't think that way but I am guessing the people who hired her as a spokesperson do.
Oh but its gets better!
"I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos. Recently, photos taken of me as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid website that openly mocks me for my Christian faith."
Your being mocked, bubble head because you posed nude and still want to claim you're a Christian.
How do you reconcile this in your own head? Jesus, hung almost naked on the cross so its alright for me to pose naked? Even if it is a sin, he died for those already, right?
Can't you almost see her incredulously stomping a single pump wearing foot down when she says, "I am a Christian and I am a model!"
"I am not perfect, and I will never claim to be. But these attacks on me and others who speak in defense of traditional marriage are intolerant and offensive. While we may not agree on every issue, we should show respect for others' opinions and not try to silence them through vicious and mean-spirited attacks."
If you're a model people will use your photos to make the most amount of money they can. Now that you are shilling for family values, anyone who ever snapped a photo of you is going to release them for profit and in the process irony laden statements like this one will erode your credibility while it drives the price on your old photos up.
Also, you're defending traditional marriage? Whose attacking it? Far as I can tell, its the straight married people who are attacking gay peoples self evident right to ruin their lives as they see fit. If anyone is attacking the sanctity of marriage its married people. It ends in divorce 50% of the time. In fact, I bet at least one married man jacked-off to her photo. If anything, this model Christian has created more situations that put traditional marriages in jeopardy than a gay couple wanting the same rights society gives other married couples.
Unless your husband in jacking-off to gay guys posing in their underwear. If thats the case you might be married to the leader of a church.
What everyone is missing and what seems to be lacking in any intelligent debate about gay marriage is the fact that marriage fails half the time. Why defend anything with a 50% failure rate?
It would add an extra sense of adventure if guns only went off half the time. Might give animals being hunted a sporting chance too. I doubt anyone from the gun lobby would defend a product that only worked half of the time.
I say, get that statistic up to at least 80% before you go claiming another group is going to ruin it. Maybe one way for people to take the whole traditional marriage thing seriously is not hire a spokesperson who can be found nude on the internet. I'm just saying.