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Sunday, February 22, 2009

???!

A fully intact Mammoth Skeleton was found in down town L.A.
And they say no one gets discovered in L.A. anymore.
This gives me hope. I wonder who he got as an agent? This also shows that Hollywood is not youth Obsessed. Well, maybe not entirely. Finally Hollywood gets a celebrity with even less meat on their bones than Paris Hilton.

Oh the times we live in Friends!
A-Rod gets dragged before the collective media to admit he used a "performance enhancing substance" but the guy who owns the peanut plant that knowingly sent out products contaminated with salmonella that killed 9 people gets dragged in front of Congress just so he can say, "I take the fifth..."
Why is A-Rod getting all the attention here? He did something unethical sure, but none of his mistakes lead to any ones death.

Meanwhile, everyone continues to hate the mother of eight new babies because she personifies a lot of what is wrong with America. Over consumption, poor planing and aggressive ignorance when questioned about her choices.
She doesn't have a job but set up a web site seeking donations. At least she won't be on welfare folks. Course, it looks like the first things she spent money on was Botox and collagen for her lips.
Nice.
She does look a little like Angelina Jolie if you cut off her face and tried to put it on a much bigger head.
lets hope she's not trying to out baby Pitt & Jolie. Lets hope she's done having kids.
I would like to send out a song on the request line. Its an old one but a good one. Heres the Go-Go's with, "Are Lips Are Sealed."

Its been a surreal few days for me too. First, I lost my wallet. Ever have that happen to you? What a sickening feeling it brings on in the pit of your stomach. I.D., Money, Credit cards, receipts, business cards, notes, phone numbers, photos- all little things that have so much power.
They were all gone. Somewhere between a Starbucks and a gym the damn thing got a way from me. I looked everywhere, called Starbucks even showed up to bug them but it was gone. The money was the thing I was least worried about.
A hundred bucks from the gig last night. I can always make more money telling stories. Oh well. I also had a check in there from another gig. I had already signed it with my account number on it. Shit. I called the bank and waded into the swampy red tape frustration that that was. Christ on a cross! Phone trees are the switch board to the nine circles of hell. They never ever give me the one option I need. They ask for my account number (followed by pound of course) and when I do get a human being they just ask me for the number again?
Look at me. Complaining about phone trees. I am such an old man.
Anyway, I lost my wallet and began the task of laying claim to my identity. At best, its a preemptive strike against the worse case senior. Frankly, I couldn't sell my ID if I had to. Good luck if you stole it dude, but I doubt you could do anymore damage to my credit that I haven't already done.
Everything got taken care of but there is a ethereal sense of loss that comes with life in the digital age. Passwords got changed and numbers replaced, all new things to remember and where do you write that down and keep it all?
Your wallet?
Shit! Shit! Shit! All this just a few days before I was set to fly to a gig in Sun Valley, Idaho. Now I had to dig out the passport in whatever dusty corner it had fallen into. Oh, you can't download a form or do anything via the Internet to get another drivers license. You have to go down there and sign a from in front of them with your birth certificate. Joyful employees they are not down at the ole DMV. Ever have an overworked under paid in fear of being laid off 300 pound government worker analyze the one document that proves you were born? Such a delight! Here is what everyone says who has ever seen my birth certificate says. "Why are there so many blank spaces on this?"
Its true. I'm adopted and for some reason or another there are empty spaces where information should be. The basics are there. Name, place of birth, attending Doctor. But things like time of birth and mother name and a few other little bits of info are simply not there.
I think it adds a bit of mystery to me. I like it. But these moments come up from time to time in life where I have to show this piece of paper and people don't believe it is a legitimate birth certificate.
Its legit. I'm not.
A running family joke was it didn't look like a birth certificate. It looked more like a gift certificate or a Mad-Lib.
Ha. Ha.
I had to take money out of my bank account for the trip to Idaho. I rely so much on ATM's and my credit/debt card that I seldom have more than a twenty in my wallet. Now I was walking around with four hundred bucks in twenties stuffed in my pocket.
I didn't want to be in a situation where something came up and I had no money so that was the figure I settled on.
Walking through Airport security with a bunch of cash stuffed in your pockets makes you crazy paranoid. Well, thats what it did for me. And wouldn't you know it I got picked for some additional screening. Apparently it was my luggage they were more concerned with. The guy watching the screen on the X-Ray was squinting at it the way I use to watch porn on the scrambled channels. Anyone else remember that? It seems crazy that you can sit down in any public library now and type the word pussy into Google and in a micro second be rewarded with ample choices of visual material. We use to have to tune into HBO late late at night on Saturday and see naked bodies rubbing all over each other as the signal was messed up so it looked like you were seeing some movie shot in Picasso-vision.
That could be a breast that might be some bush. Every once in a while the screen would come in completely clear for a second or two and you might get a butt shot.
Of a guy.
Airports have intense energy. All these souls in transit leave some mighty fierce echos. I was also flying on a friends employee pass. That means you fly on standby. There was a chance I might not make it. I hate thinking that. I am anal about being on time and making the gig. This time I was rolling the dice to make the gig profitable.
I made it.
I landed at the small airport in Sun Valley and along with four other people left in the resort shuttle. We were rewarded with the shortest tour in history. The ride wasn't short. Just the tour. This is what it amounted to. Our driver would point to a building and simply say, "Bruce Willis owns that."
That was it.
Good to see that Die Hard money was well spent.
The resort at Sun Valley really is a beautiful place. The e-mail the Booker send out was three pages of warnings that read something like this. DO NOT MAKE TROUBLE! YOU ARE A REPRESENTATIVE OF THIS COMPANY! DO NOT ASK FOR FREE THINGS OR FAVORS!
Christ! I get it. Its a great gig and a great location and you don't want to mess it up. This created an expectation that we would be in some theater with amazingly well behaved crowds who want to see great comedy.
That wasn't the case.
It was in a bar called the boiler room.
Yup. It was essentially just another gig on the road at a bar complete with all the noise and distraction such a setting comes with. The crowd was fun but again, it was the typical bar crowd at a comedy show. Lots of riffing because neither they or I could stay focused enough of the written stuff with all the noise of people coming and going, ordering drinks, shouting out private jokes to each other at the tables and any number of other minor little distractions. It was fun but after all the build up it was something of a let down too.

What is going on? Look at these headlines.

Mysterious fire ball reported over Texas.
Two nuclear subs hit each other in the Atlantic.
First African-American president elected.
Nearly intact mammoth skeleton found in L.A.
L.A. Thinking of Rationing Water for the First Time in Two Decades.
Pirates hold ship hostage.
Stock market fall creates worry of global depression.
Satellites collide 500 miles above Russia.
Face transplant patient regains self-confidence.

These are the kind of headlines you see in Sci-Fi movies set in the not to distant future. Most of these headlines are two weeks old or less. Buckle up friends. The adventure of Americas transformation into something else has just started. What we will be is any ones guess but the fact is we are in decline because we all thought we could have a lifestyle well beyond our means. The rich are blaming the poor, the poor are blaming the rich and the Republicans want to see the president fail. We got it all going on now folks! Race, class, economic downfall and the realization that we can no longer be the super power we always thought we would be.
Did you see the anchor from MSNBC go nuts when he was asked about the presidents plan to buy up mortgages from people who can't afford to keep paying what they were paying? Live on air this guy looses it and says words to the effect of, Lets all stop paying are mortgages!
Didn't we just hand wall street something like a trillion dollars? If we can bail out the people who wrote those shitty mortgages, spent billions on advertising to people who really couldn't afford those mortgages, then we can certainly bail out the families who are living in those homes. Can't we?
And all this goes on against the backdrop of who can be more bipartisan.
Great.
Well, enjoy the warmth at least while Rome burns.
Cheers=)