EPIC!

Have you ever asked people what kind of super powers they would like? I have always said I would like the power of flight and invisibility. Of course, human nature being what it is, I might not fight crime with those abilities-I would be crime!
Last night after a show I am having flap jacks with two comics. Both of them are attractive women. The one woman says, "I would have the power to get men to do things."
You already have that power. It's called a vagina.
"I think our powers should be based on some ability we already have." She tells me.
OK, but you can already achieve that, I explain. She considers this for a moment and then says, "I could find a sale anywhere!"
Really? That's a super power? How is that going to fight crime?
Some one help! My baby has been kidnaped!
"There's a sale on diapers!"
My God! This man is going to stab me!
"Mail in rebate for $100!"
None of these things fights crime. Besides, how are you going to get there? I have flight! What if the sale is somewhere across town? You can't jump on Muni wearing a cape. Well, OK I have seen that but I doubt very much they were headed somewhere to fight crime.
"I got this cape on sale!"
Good for you!
Alright, if the super power has to be based on something we already have, then mine would have to be sarcasm. This might actually work though.
"Sure. Go ahead and steal all that money. I'm sure you will be happier once you do."
My mother had this ability. All it ended up achieving is a son who thinks about committing crime. I guess it back fired.
The other woman, who has been sitting silent eventually says, "telaportation."
Ok, That's a super hero power. You could legitimately fight crime with that ability. Or, once again, be crime. There is no safe super power you could choose that couldn't also be used for evil.
I guess that's our lesson for today kid's.
I know, I have been very serious lately. A suicide under your roof will do that. All we really have to deal with life is a sense of humor, metaphors and religions. All of them seem a bit lacking to me right now. You want to hear the biggest cliche there is?
When I went to bed last night I was 20. This morning when I woke up, I was 39 years old still waiting for life to begin. How about that? Denial is not a super power, but the way I do it it is.
In everything that has been going on, there has been movement beneath the surface. I feel it even if I don't want to.
If your 20, hold on to it. Because even though I use to roll my eyes at it too, I did just wake up and find 20 years has passed me by. What the hell have I been waiting for?
I have nothing on my walls. No framed photos of friends and family, no awards or posters. Just bare plaster staring back at me. Why? You know why, I keep waiting for someday.
Someday with the right girl, the right job, the right moment. But the more I think about this the more people have been helping to fill in the blanks. Sometimes without meaning to. What ever life it is you want, you can't wait for it to find you. You have to go out into the world and make it. Hows that for the most obvious statement of the ages?
Being on stage lately hasn't felt right. There is this sensation in my chest that tells me something is off. I feel it. I hate it. Whatever it is I need to deal with in life has started to fuck with me in the one place I care the most about. Stand-up is the one constant in my life. Now, it too is being smudged with the finger prints of a thousand irritable ghosts. So now what?
I gotta tell you, that facebook post that had the photo of the F-15 fighter jet and Jesus really bothered me. It's that sort of casual mixing of complete opposites that makes us a very strange country. You see it all the time too. We have Amber alerts for missing children, programs to make sure predators are kept away from our kids yet we let young girls walk around in tight fitting sweat pants with the word juicy stenciled across their ass.
I got totally busted checking out a girls ass the other day. She turned around and yelled, "What do you think your doing?"
"I'm a slow reader." I said.
Yeah, it's funny. It made her laugh, but come on. You know you have a perfect ass. That's why you put on something that looks like it was spray painted on. Then you have the nerve to yell when someone looks? Come on. I have 2 million years of instinct and four inches of wood in my pants; of course I am going to look! You don't get angry at a fish when it takes the bait, do you?
My God. it sounds like I am attempting to justify horrible behavior from guys. I'm not. It's just cause and effect.
Pretty girl in hot pink pants stretched across her perfect ass-I look.
Again, it's this complete lack of seeing how we make society schizophrenic that is getting us all into trouble.
Yes. I notice young girls. How can you not? They are all over every bit of advertising, porn is e-mailed to you, and they walk around malls emulating what they see as self empowering sensuality. All you have to do is look no farther than Brittney Spears to see how that can end up.
Cause and effect.
OK, you want a less creepy example?
The mortgage crisis we are in right now. People borrowed money they really couldn't aford with loans they didn't really understand and now they want the government to step in and re-write the terms of those home loans.
The loans might as well have had the words juicy written in bold letters across them. I'm not saying that there wasn't a lot of predatory lending going on, cause there was. But come on. Course, this is the same government that doesn't put the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupation in the official military budget. Why bother, someone else will deal with it someday.
Back to me.
That's the kind of thinking that has kept me in this holding pattern for a while now. America too. We want change but are afraid to pick a direction. It's the same thing but on vastly different scales.
Should I look for an apartment down in the mission like I have always wanted?
Should we pull out of iraq?
What will happen if I have to get a new car?
What will happen to oil prices if we leave Iraq?
Will this comedy festival be the big break I have been waiting for?
Will another terrorist attack on America mean the war failed?
We are all in the same leaky boat my friends.
Did I tell you about the festival?
I got a call from Eddie Brill. if your a comic you know who that is. He is the Comedy Booker for the David Letterman show. I am not on the show. Yet. I have been invited to attend the first Comedy festival in Johnny Carson's home town of Norfolk, Nebraska. Yeah. Nebraska. It is a huge opportunity. An opportunity to get in-front of industry. How ironic would it be if the first big break in my career came in the middle of a corn field?
I don't have all the details yet, but there has already been talk of money and management. It's time to practice what I preach. Being on stage is the tip of the ice burg. It is everything you do off stage that really insures you will have a great set. For me, that means getting some kind of connection to a power greater than myself. It means getting out of my own head and doing something besides think of what I have and don't have.
The ultimate super power would be time travel. No matter what happened, you could know what happened.
I don't know what will happen. The tip of the ice burg will take care of its self provided I take care of myself. No super power or special talent required. I just want to be a happy adult.
Maybe the best way to get rid of those ghosts is to put a picture up on my own wall in a place I chose to live in.