Barack Hussein Obama!

Here is something amazing we have not witnessed in modern political memory; Republicans apologizing for a smear attempt on a Democrat.
Seriously. How afraid are they of running against this guy?
The Republican National Committee put out a press release showing Barack in flowing white robes. To a lot of the ignorant Americans out there, wearing anything that looks like that says you’re a Muslim.
Muslim = terrorist. Barack Hussein Obama! You just know he is a Muslim terrorist with a name like that and look at what he is wearing!
The press release included this statement “…growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel…if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.”
When was the last time you heard any other politicians middle named used?
Hell, when was the last time any one old, white and Christian gave a damn about Jews?
I can just picture a smoke filled room somewhere in the basement of the white House where a bunch of guys sat around and decided to put aside their own anti-Semitic feelings and use it as a way to bring down a black man on the rise. But they got caught. By their own people!

The press release now includes a clarification that reads: "This release originally referenced a photo of Sen. Obama and incorrectly termed it to be “Muslim” garb. It is, in fact, Somali tribal garb; hence, we have deleted the photo. Also, in order to diffuse attempts by Democrats and the Left to divert attention from the main point of this release — that Sen. Obama has surrounded himself with advisers and received endorsements from people who are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel — we have deleted the use of Barack Obama’s middle name."

Wow! You see whats going on here? The Republicans usual tactic of hit & run is leaving a foul taste in the mouths of their own people. It is such a childish and stupid thing to pull off. It insults their party members more than anyone else. Because what was the thinking here? We will show him in what the typical uneducated American thinks of as Muslim wear, always use his full name because it includes the name of a former enemy and then incorrectly identify what he is wearing as Arab garb.

So this is what they have on Obama so far.
He is not patriotic enough because he doesn’t wear a flag pin.
He is not patriotic enough because he didn’t put his hand on his heart when the Star Spangled Banner was sung. FYI, you don’t have too. It’s the pledge of allegiance that you are supposed to do that for.
His middle name is Hussein.
That’s it!

The whole Circle

I saw the whole circle last Sunday night at the Punchline.
Kevin Avery, a friend and comic is doing it. He is making the move to L.A. Since we love him and wanted to wish him well we did the only logical thing; roasted him.
You know how these work. You have seen them on Comedy Central. One by one, a select group of comics went up and made fun of him. It was excellent!
I had the weakest set by far. Felt bad about it too. I didn't riff. I should of. I had some good jokes on paper, but they got lost along the way to my mouth. That freaks me out a little. It has happened a few times with me lately. Everyone else seemed to come up with some gems. Me, not so much. I know not to dwell on it. I know it is best to not make a big deal about it and move forward. It will pass. Always has.
Still...
Here is the circle of life as lived in San Francisco Comedy.
One day, after you have built up sufficient courage and tried out your jokes at open mic's, you come to the Punchline and introduce yourself.
The Punchline Baby!
It has to be in the top ten of best comedy clubs in the nation. It is Dave Chappelles S.F. home club. It was the stage that propelled some of the most talented and amazing comics on to stardom.
We all want to put our foot print on that kind of history.
The hope is the same for everyone. It was the same hope I walk in with more than 15 years ago. You hope to hear something like, "Thanks for showing up. Were glad to have you. Sure, we will get you up on stage as soon as possible. Whats that? Oh, your really good. Great! Will get you up sooner then!"
By the way. Thats not how it ever happens kids.
As people filed out, I was standing next to Molly. A kid came up to her, tattered note book clutched in his undoubtedly sweaty palm, and with all the confidence of a weak cup of tea, introduced himself.
I had to smile.
Molly listened politely as she always does if your not crazy, and told him it would take about ten months before he set foot on stage. You could see what little bit of hope he was holding onto drain from his face.
I remember.
We were all there once. I smiled not because I enjoy to see a young comic feel crushed, but this was the circle completing itself just as it always has. One of us leaves and another one enters with expectations and the indestructible pride of youth.
Good luck kid.
You are entering the center of San Francisco comedy scene.
The San Francisco comedy scene! Not some open Mic where people do their clothing. Not some space in the corner of a bar. The Punchline.
We are the best comics in the country. I still believe that. We put a premium on originality. We police each other to stay fresh and avoid what has been done before. We have produced too many comics to mention who stand head and shoulders above the pack of wannabe's.
First lesson; you have to swallow a daily dose of rejection to be build up an immunity. It ain't easy. But you learn to swallow it down like cold medicine. Just don't make that face when it's happening.
Look around the back of the room on any Sunday night. You will see a hundred or more faces all looking at the stage like a dying man dreams of water. They are all convinced of two things.
They could do better than the person on stage now.
They will get on next week.
A hundred or more people! Your funny? Great. Now get in line.
It sucks. It's hard and it is a gut wrenching blow to your self-esteem. But its a system. No one ever put it down on paper or probably gave it much thought, but it's the system we all came up in.
You know what though? It filters out a lot of the hobbyist and wannabes. It serves a purpose. And believe me, if this is going to stop you from trying to be a comic, you might as well get out now. It will only get tougher along the way. Just like the people who stuck with it.
Thats the circle of comedy in San Francisco.
Good luck Kevin. I will miss you.
Welcome new kid. Hang in there.

LUCKY?

This is Youssif.
A year ago, he was a victim in a terrorist attack on Bagdad. He got lucky. He got flown to America to be treated for his third degree burns and mangled body.
Why?
Because 6 years after we invaded the country it still did not have adequate hospital care. You also have to wonder about all of the other children in Iraq who were not so lucky enough to become little propaganda tools. Strangely, those kids are the ones injured by American Bombs.
Thats how the worlds most cruel lottery works.
Get injured by one of their attacks, and if you are under 5, we will take care of you.
Get injured by one of our attacks. Well, thats collateral damage and we feel bad, but thats just the nature of war.
Here is another dirty little secret of the Iraq war.
It has become the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the creation of Israel nearly 60 years ago. According to U.N. estimates, there may be as many as 3.7 million Iraqis made homeless inside and outside the country by the violence. Some are being compensated by their losses if the U.S. military is responsible; most flee with nothing.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, acutely aware of criticism over America’s closed-door policy for Iraqis, is working on a plan that would permit up to 20,000 Iraqis into the country.
Why would we have a closed-door policy do you suppose?
Oh yeah. We invaded the wrong country for 9/11 (can never be said enough) and any Iraqi coming here might not be so grateful as a five year old boy receiving free medical care.
They get screwed twice.
First when we show up to insist on democracy from the barrel of a gun, and then again when we refuse to allow them to leave the ruins for the fabled land of opportunity.
But you people go ahead and wear your little flag pins. Scream bloody murder when Obama's wife said this is the first time in her adult life that she is proud of America.
Clearly, we are not all as lucky as little Youssif.
After-all, he gets free health care.
Just like the Senators and Congressman who made the choice to get us into this disaster.
Perhaps the solution for those millions of uninsured American kids is to ship them off to Iraq, hope they get wounded by one of their bombs and if they are cute enough- you win!
To cynical?
Frankly, after doing that comedy tour of Marine bases in Okinawa, Japan, it looks like all we have is children fighting this dirty little war.
Shouldn't you have to be able to grow a real mustache before we ask you to make the ultimate sacrifice?
I don't know.
Have you been on YouTube lately? You can see a lot of uncensored footage of the war. I think we need to stop calling it a war too. from what I have been told by people returning and the footage you can see on line, shooting gallery might be a better description of things.
I think Youssif deserves everything he is getting.
Help, that is.
But when he grows up and looks in the mirror as a young man, you have to wonder if he will think it was all worth it. Hell, you have to wonder if any Iraqi thinks it is worth it.
If 70% of Americans think it was a mistake, what do you think the poll numbers would be like over there?
To dangerous to ask I suppose.

This Just In...

Oh Hillary.
You really are making history. It has to be the first time ever that a white woman complained that a black man doesn't have enough experience.

What is it to be patriotic?
Is it being in favor of endless war, going around our ideals and laws to tap phone calls without a warrant and torturing people with simulated drowning?
Or is it wearing a flag pin on your lapel?
Cause I gotta tell you tell you conservatives, using jewelry to express yourself is pretty gay.
The kids call it bling. I call it dumb.
Do you know where most of those U.S. flag pins come from?
China.
Those yellow ribbon support the troops magnets too.
If you want a strong America, buying anything from our chief economic rival is against your best interest.
Great. You have a little pin on your suit that is suppose to tell me you are more American than me. Check out the label in side my shirt. I looked to make sure it was made here. You see what I am getting at?
Conservatives want to criticize Obama for not wearing a $2.00 pin on his suit. Yeah. Thats the major issue we need to deal with right now. I know if I was about to loose my home due to the mortgage crisis and my son was on his third tour of duty in Iraq, I would want to see a politician wearing the right pin. Otherwise, how would I know I don't believe in what he believes? I might have to listen or even go on the internet. No. Far easier to just check and see if he has a little American flag made in china on his lapel. That way I know he is the bad candidate for president.
Head in the game America!
The label that says my shirt was made in America can't be seen by anyone else. I don't feel the need to wear it on the outside to make a point. I just do the right thing rather than allow myself an attitude of superiority for wearing something that turns out to be bad for our country.

A priest a kid and a raffle all get together at a winery.

My latest gig adventure sounds like the set up to an old joke; A priest a kid and a raffle all get together at a winery.
Thats what I had to follow.
Private gigs really are the bread and butter of a comics life. I love playing a club with no restrictions on content and language, but in all honesty its those lucrative privates that pay the rent most months.
Lately, it seems that when ever I have a gig that requires me to drive more than an hour, the skies open up and God sends a flood that would even make Noah say, Holy Shit!
I drove up with a rare combination of person; a friend and the Booker.
He drove.
I was grateful for that until we got in his 1987 Toyota death trap pick up. With all the cold and rain the windshield defroster was more a theory than a working device in his truck. While we got pelted with gusts of wind and curtains of rain, I spent most of the white knuckle ride craning my head forward so I could look for an address threw the tiny hole of clear windshield in front of me.
What is it with me and Napa? Every time I come up here the news is telling people not to travel unless you have to.
I am at Down Town Joe's in Napa next month.
I can predict now that there will be a major storm on that night.

All we know about this gig is its a benefit for a local school and they want material on the Oscar nominated movies. It is being held at a winery and all I am required to do is 10 minuets.
This is the classic bank job gig.
We go in and do the thing. No one gets hurt and were gone with the money before anyone can look up from their banquet style rubber chicken.
Driving an hour in the rain to do ten minuets might seem silly, but the money was OK for how short they wanted the set. It felt like we were in some boat race. Get up there as fast as we could, round the buoy and head home with the prize money.
But there was just one wrinkle.
The school, was a private Catholic school.

There was indeed an Oscars theme. People are dressed up as stars and movie characters. In fact, we walked in on a red carpet and were greeted at the door by two beautiful people holding fake microphones. They are playing the part of interviewers on the red carpet. Its a nice touch. Too bad the parking lot has turned to mud. The red carpet looks like the nicest welcome mat I have ever seen covered with muddy foot prints and smears.
Once we get in, the Booker and I are thinking the same thing, we should of asked for more money.
Its a very elaborate party they have set up. In a main room, there are a hundred or so round banquet tables. They are about 30 feet from the stage, the floor is concert and here is my favorite part-the room is ice cold. Sure, they have 4 of those giant heat lamps scattered among the tables, but unless your inside the 20 foot circle of warmth, forget it. How do I fully impart to you how cold it is in this place? How about this. Standing "back stage" I can see my breath.
Thats how cold it is.
You know, if I sat down to design a worse format to attempt stand-up comedy in, this is probably what I would of come up with.
Lets review-
Concert floor. Lousy for acoustics in a giant hall.
Check.
Freezing cold temperature to make everyone want to end this thing quickly.
Check.
Round banquet tables to insure that at any given moment half the crowd has their back to me.
Check.
Going up while people are eating.
Check.
Before I go on, lets have a priest right out of central casting complete with a thick Irish accent go up and lead everyone in the lords prayer.
Check!
Then, lets have a kid go up and read his winning essay titled, Blessed. Its an ass kissing ode to how great the school is.
Check and F'ing mate!
Were not done yet.
When the kid reads the essay he mentions all the fun things you can sign up to do. Like math Therapy.
This just begged to be made fun of. But considering the average age of the room was 60 and they gave off that mix of religion and closed mindedness, I thought I would let that slide.
Math Therapy though?
"My mother won't give me the love I need doctor."
"Go to the board and work out this long division problem."
I know my bank account could use some math therapy.
Right before I am introduced they have a raffle where someone wins $5,000
They just gave away five grand and how much am I getting for this gig?
Here is the other very important little fact that dawns on us. No one in this crowd saw any of the Oscar nominated movies.
There will be Blood?
You mean the movie that mocks a preacher and kills him?
Juno?
A movie about a teen age girl who gets pregnant after having sex?
Need I go on?
Maybe they saw No Country for Old Men, about a psychotic hit man killing like most of us breathe, but the joke I have written for it sure ain't gonna fly with this bunch.
I thought no country for old men was about John MaCane.
These people are going to vote for this guy!

People always wonder why I charge what I charge for what they see as a simple gig. This is why.
I have 45 minuets to rethink what will work and what will not. In other words, here comes the riff gun once more folks!
Yet another reason that riffing is a genuine skill and not a cheap trick.
OK. So I am following a priest, a kid and a raffle. Big deal. Lets do this.
By far my biggest laugh came when I found the table that the owner of the winery was at and I said, "Nice place you have here. One suggestion; heat!"
10 minuets went by and that was that.
As we walked out with our cheek, a big guy in a white tux came after us. I had mentioned I was from Illinois in the act. Right before we hit the soggy red carpet to make our clean escape, he started yelling "Illinois! Hold on a second!"
The Booker and I trade glances of, our we about to get killed? The man is towering. Way above my height and I am guessing by what he said, more than a little drunk.
"I lived in Illinois until I married into this 3rd generation Napa wine thing."
I swear to God. That is an exact quote. The love might be lost when you start referring to your wife as "thing."
"You did great! We thought you were very funny. It has to be hard doing comedy for a bunch of people who can't admit they have dicks. How do you think your children got here. Men have dicks and women have pussys. Get over it."
OK. At this point, were just sorta stuck there. Inching our way slowly toward the door, we are trapped in this mans gravitational field. Besides, how do you respond to that?
"We should have you up at the house sometime. We have Sammy Haggar and Cake come up. You could join us. We have a lot of acreage. You could come up and goof off."
Alright?
Dude, if you know Sammy Hagar, why was I hired to work a benefit for a school up here? Then, were out the door and back in the death trap for a ride back to the city. We laugh about the gig and the Booker is very complimentary of my performance, but I know it could of been so much better if the set up was actually set up for a live show.
I have done church gigs before. That was not the problem. It is this mentality that comedy is something you put in a corner and press play on. Like I am a human Muzak station.
All in all it went pretty well though. Easy money? Not really. Man i was dancing for those ten minuets!

Dear Ralph Nader

Dear Ralph Nader,
Of course it is a free country and you are allowed to do what you feel is best. No one argues that point. Just by the very fact that Hillary and Obama are politicians should make any rational person more than skeptical about their plans for change. You are correct in stating that. But this is more about math than anything else. Fact is, a vote for you is a vote not going to the Democrats.
True.
They have more than screwed up and it is mystifying as to why they cannot seem to stand up to Bush. Time and time again, they have voted right alongside their Republican colleagues to fund the war and sign legislation into law that is tantamount to taking white out to the constitution.
I am with you on all of those issues.
But as I said, it is a numbers game. You know and I know that you cannot win the White House. Lets face facts. A vote for you then is a vote for the Republicans. Not change. That is just a fact Mr. Nader. The more votes you pull from Moderates and undecided voters, the less votes the Democratic Nominee for President will get.
I believe the nominee will be Obama. Hillary is republican lite with a voting record virtually identical to John McCain’s.
At this point, I seriously wonder if you are a secret paid operative for the Republican Party. A sort of Manchurian candidate activated around elections to sabotage the Democrats hopes.
A lot of people not only blame you for Al Gores loss in 2000, but by extension, they blame you for the war in Iraq. Whatever faults Al Gore had, it is pretty certain that 9/11 and its aftermath would have been handled very differently.
You have argued that Al Gore was responsible for losing his own election because he ran a bad campaign. There is some truth in that. But consider, if you were not on the ballot in Florida, perhaps a lot of that confusion never would of happened. Perhaps the count would of overwhelming gone to Gore. Two years after the Supreme Court upheld the, stop the recount order, the New York Times went back and counted all the votes.
You know what they found?
They found that Gore won the popular vote in Florida.
History has already made it clear that Al Gore was elected President by a slim majority of the American people. The majority was so slim because you thought it would be a good idea to enter the race for change. Well, we now have another man who speaks a lot about change too. He has reenergized not just the Democratic Party, but also the whole process of politics. He may not have all the right answers to your valid questions, but in my opinion, he is better than Hillary Clinton for the job and by far he is better for this country than any conservative nominee the Republicans choose to endorse.
If you want change as so many people do, make yourself available to Obamas campaign. Offer your wisdom and knowledge to him as an asset, not as a competitor who will only diminish the chance of getting someone in there who isn’t a bible waving war loving nut job. Head in the game man! It is pretty clear that a vote for you is a vote to keep us in Iraq, “for a hundred years or more” as McCane has said. Do you want that? You’re a smart man and you have to know this. You just have too. So why would you do this? Is it your ego? Is it a misplaced sense of justice? What is the reason?
In many interviews you have said that the best thing to effect change is to get third party candidates elected at the grass roots level. School boards, Mayors, then up to Governors and Senators. When a solid base of alternative party members controls the mechanics of government, then electing one to the highest office in the land will be possible.
Why don’t you follow your own advice? 4 years since your last run and what have you been doing? Were you out there organizing a third party to strategically win public office at the grass roots level? Nope. You were raising money for yet another kamikaze run at the White House. Come to your sense Mr. Nader. I think you are a great American who has saved lives by pushing for and getting laws passed to insure safe products for Americans.
You have much to offer America. But not as President and certainly not as the Republicans best weapon to stall any change.
Just think about Ralph.

This is Your Ego On Comedy

With comedy, you’re either up or you’re down. Not a lot of room for shades of gray. It’s all about ego. My ego, your ego and most importantly, the ego of who you have to work with. So what happens when you put two comics on the same show and one of them doesn’t think you should be there?
This is what happens.
I drove up with another comic to do a college gig.
College gigs!
Can there be anything better than a young cute girl telling you how funny you were with that new confidence they have of being away at college for the first time? I don’t think so.
Comedy, like so many other things in life, has its own Darwinian rules that everyone in it understands.

1. To move up the food chain in a show you have to make it hard on the guy following you.

2. If you can’t close the show because of what the guy in front of you did. You shouldn’t be the headliner.

3. If the headliner asks you to not do something it is always because they are afraid to follow it.

Even a comic who has been doing this for 6 months gets this. We didn’t make the rules, but we all live and die by them.

On the way up the guy headlining the gig ask me if I could not do so much crowd work. You know, that thing that I am known for. Its like asking Barry Bonds to not hit home runs, or George Bush to not stutter or Aqua man to not be lame.
I sort of smiled thinking he wasn’t serious. He goes on to explain that he doesn’t think its all that special of a skill and in the long run, it is material that will get you noticed.
That’s when it occurs to me that he is serious. We go back and forth on the subject. He thinks crowd work is a crutch only to be used when the crowd isn’t with you.
That is an argument for a whole other blog. I will say this however.
If crowd work were easy, everyone would be doing it.
Crowd work is the most important skill to have for the success of a live show. Period.
He is right though about material. You cannot audition for something without quality jokes. Not riffing.
But this is a live show in a college. Not riffing would be dumb. Besides, its what I do best and what I enjoy most. He tells me that all that means is, I have to write more.
No argument there. We all do. But whats going on here is pretty clear.
The guy doesn’t want to have to follow me.
He is low key. I am higher energy.
I am great with crowd work. He is Ok with it.
I am a headliner in my own right and it is only due to a series of Booking mistakes and coincidences that we are on the same bill tonight.
He has the major credits. I do not.
That means I am opening because his fame is what will be putting butts in seats.
That’s just another rule in comedy we all have to make peace with.

4. The guy with the biggest draw is the headliner.

I get it. I really do. I could be a complete dick and do what I want, or I could be cool and do what he is not so humbling asking me. But as a comic I have to tell you, this is a pretty chicken shit move from a world traveling headliner to ask me to be less than the best I can do so he can look better.
In a last effort to convince me he tells me that not only do I have great material, but also that he is scouting for talent for a big tour coming up.
I wasn’t laughing anymore. Especially at this little nugget of bullshit.
You see there are some talented and well-known comics out there who have no problem lending a helping hand to comics who have not had the luck they have had. These comics are gold. Greg Proops asked to work with me at the Punchline in San Francisco later this year. Why? He knows that I am very funny and he likes the challenge of following a strong performer.
That’s a class act all the way folks. He not only dropped a well paying gig into my lap, but he did it so he can stay sharp by challenging himself.
That’s pretty fucking cool anyway you look at it.
The comic I am working with tonight, the comic that is asking me to tie one hand behind my back so he can look better, the comic who wanted to car pool so he could get me alone to ask me this has a reputation of NEVER helping other comics. No information, no recommendations no help from his position of privilege to those of us struggling in the trenches.
I bit my tongue.
The last thing anyone wants is a pissing contest before a show. I certainly don’t want to hit the stage with resentment. The crowd will smell that a mile away and I will bomb all because one person’s insecure ego is bruising mine.

The place is packed. In fact, they have to open up more room and bring more chairs in. Before the show even starts people are coming up to him and asking for photos with him. Cute girls look over and smile.
Yeah. Its bugging the shit out of me. I admit that. I am standing off to the side thinking how many times I have come up here to do shows in front of 40 or 50 kids who wonder into the show not knowing who the hell I am. The whole reason I am opening tonight is because they forgot to promote a show I was headlining last year. They called a few days before the gig and canceled. Since we had a signed contract for a set price they had to find a way to make it good. A few days later they e-mailed asking if I would open for this guy at the price I was to get for headlining my own show. Sure. Money is money and I know the gig will pack out because he has major credits.
It is eating me alive inside. I admit that. There is not a comic alive who has been doing it as long as I have who wouldn’t bristle at being called "the opener."

I promised myself I was going to be more positive this year. I also feel the energy in the room. I get to revel in that first. I get to set the bar high. I get first crack at a crowd that is pumped up. It is in these moments when you can hand the crowd more than what they expected.
A young lady goes on stage and introduces me.
With in two minuets I have my first applause break. Not once do I look down at anyone in the crowd and ask them their name or what they are studying. Not once do I engage in crowd work. Instead, I stick to material and destroy the room. Not with cheap stuff either. That’s another rule in comedy.

5. The cheap way to make it hard on the next act is to go all dirty.

I did my stuff on Politics, America’s love of drugs and religion. In short, I kill with quality. I end on an applause break and say thank you very much.
You want to know what getting high feels like? Its standing in front of someone else’s adoring crowd and they won’t stop applauding for you. That’s getting high. And I did it with the standards the other act asked for.

In comedy, you are either up or down. No gray. Remember?
When I come off the stage shaking hands and saying thank you to people, I reach the back of the room where I plan on standing and watching what happens next. Truthfully, I want to see him bomb. My ego is screaming inside my head, “Follow that Motherfucker!” There is not a comic alive who wouldn’t be thinking the same thing.
One of the kids who works in the promotions department sheepishly comes up to me with the headliners car keys and says, “He wants you to go out to his car and bring more CD’s”
He knows it’s a kick to my ego to be asked this. In 30 seconds I go from exceeding the crowds expectations of what the opener is suppose to be like to becoming a roadie for a guy who has treated me like an open micer since we got in the car together.
I smile, take the car keys and walk out into the clean clear air of the evening.
Am I muttering out loud to myself about how this is bullshit and when will my break come?
Fuck yes I am!
I’m pissed! Who wouldn’t be? I’m not some fucking brand new guy in comedy who will only be to happy to be treated like a monkey. I am a headliner with a comedy central credit and the ability to crush a room when others have already tried and concluded that the crowd is dead.
But none of that matters right now.
I am standing there with the fresh smell of rain and the cool air upon my face staring into his trunk at a box of CD’s. Did some malicious shit go threw my mind?
What do you think?
As I am standing there contemplating what to do the thought occurs to me to call a friend. No reason to fight all your battles alone.
He tells me, “Be the better man. Act with integrity. Have gratitude for what you have not attitude for what you don’t. Pain is pain and you have a choice to either let it consume you and ruin the high of a beautiful set, or let it go and be content that you were paid well to have to tell jokes.”
That’s exactly what I needed to hear.
I grab a stack of CD’s and slowly walk back to the show.
Did he have a hard time following me?
Does it really matter at this point? I want everything this guy has. I want the career, the cute girls giving him looks, the money, the fame and the fans. But I also want to be happy.
After the show, a guy came up to me and said, “I thought you were better. You were genuine.”
Some nights, all you need to hear is one person telling you that to know you succeeded.

How to save America discovred at an Open Mic

I did an Open Mic last night.
Five minuets of furry!
I miss doing open Mics. It wasn’t so much about the performance end of things that I miss, it was the hanging out with friends and trading ideas, Punch Lines and information on all things comedy. We were a little tribe of people that moved like nomads from stage to stage. We thought nothing of driving an hour to Sacramento or San Jose for the chance at 7 minuets on stage somewhere in the corner of a dark bar in front of a handful of down on their luck drunks.
Those car rides with friends were some of the best times in my life. Hanging outside an open mic and dissecting jokes on a summer night in San Francisco was as good as anything could be. It didn’t seem that way at the time, but it really was a great time in my life. Not just because everything was still new and we didn’t have a clue about what we were up against, but because we all had the same thing in common.
There is not that many pure open mics around anymore. Now days, a lot of what is called an open mic is really more of a showcase where some people are pre-booked and a few known people will show up and get squeezed on. A true open mic is a great place to see a lot of undiagnosed mental illness, bad jokes from people with low self-esteem and the occasional cry for help with Punch Lines.
We wanted to try out jokes, but we also wanted to have fun with each other too. That’s what made the whole crazy process worth it. Messing with a friend on stage was cool. A lot of great jokes came out of those situations.
That’s what I was reminded of last night.
A friend went up. She was wearing what I am told is a very hip outfit. But to most of us, it looked like she had put her shirt on backwards. All the buttons were on the back. She went up on stage and anticipating a confused look from the small crowd, she opened on telling us, “My shirt is not on backwards. This is fashion. The gays dressed me.”
Well, I looked at the host who seemed up for fun and asked him to zip up my hooded jacket backwards. Of course, as I walked to the stage people started to laugh. I stood there a moment and said, “I’m not wearing my sweat shirt on backwards. She dressed me.”
This is the true spirit of open mics. Having fun with the people your going through the experience with. No ones feeling were hurt and the crowd quickly understood the whole idea of, this is all experimental and we get to have fun watching. Cool!
I tried out some stuff, got some laughs, talked politics with a friend and went home with a smile on my face. What could be better than that?
While I was on stage with my jacket on backwards, it suddenly occurred to me that this way of wearing it should catch on in America any day now. With the hood right bellow my chin, its like having a feed bag right in front of your face. Now, my hands are free and I can eat as I point at others that are different from me. I am truly surprised the idea has not caught on yet! Can you imagine people walking around malls with a feedbag in front of their fat faces filled with Cinabuns and hot dogs on a stick? Corporate America would love this idea! With your hands free, you can hold two bags instead of one bag of useless shit at 20% interest on a card you probably shouldn’t have! In fact, I think this is the way to stimulate our lagging economy.
Feedbags!
I think I have stumbled onto the way to save America. All I had to do was get back to my comedy roots.

Signs

There is a thin line between Web M.D. and a web site to create hypochondriacs. Do I really need to have that much information available to me? The commercial for Web M.D. ends with a guy saying, "I used web M.D. so much, I got carpel tunnel."
Is that the best way to sell your product? By saying it's used so much that it creates physical problems?
And oh my God that is stupid irony!
Your a medical web site and your injuring people? The only way you would get Carpel Tunnel is by constantly checking it. You know, like a hypochondriac!
Know other product could get away with this.
"I love to drive the new Prius so much that I feel asleep at the wheel and crashed."
Nice, ha?

Alright, it is easy to make fun of dumb stuff. I am not immune.
There is an oil change place right on the corner of my block. I am about 6 months and 4,000 miles over due for one. Driving in complete denial is fun. First, you have to scrape that sticker they put in the corner of your window off. I can still see the outline when the sun comes directly threw the wind shirld of the damn thing. I feel guilty about it so what I do is give my car the "good" gas. You know, 91% Octane instead of the usual 87%. Somehow in my mind, that makes up for the lack of actual care.
It's the emotional equivalent of my father not being able to give me love so instead he let me eat all the cereal I could on weekends.
"Do you want more frosted Flakes, son?"
"How about a hug?"
"...We have some captain crunch around here too."

I know I have mentioned this before, those Diamond shaped yellow signs that just have a deer on them always make me laugh. There is the deer and then under it it says, for the next 12 miles.
I laugh because in my head its saying, for the next 12 miles, shots of Jagermister are permitted.
Then there are the signs that got put up in places of business because problems kept happening.
At a Quiznos, I noticed a sign by the register that simply said; how to order.
Was that a big problem for people? Were they walking up to the register.
"can I help you sir?"
"AAAAHHHH."
"Do you need help ordering sir?"
"DAAAHHH"
"hey, you guys in back. Get on web M.D. and see what wrong with this guy or make me a sign on how to order!"
Have people become so dumb they can't order from a sandwich shop menu?

Dirt?

This is an excerpt of a FOX news story from their web site.

Senator Obama's ties to a former leader of the violent left-wing activist group the Weather Underground are drawing new scrutiny. As an Illinois state senator in 2001, Mr. Obama accepted a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the group that bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the 1970s. Mr. Ayers wrote a memoir, "Fugitive Days," published in 2001, and on the day of the September 11 terrorist attacks, he was quoted by the New York Times as saying: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

For starters, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States spent 9/11 at the White House with family friend, George Bush. The ambassador is the same man who invested in Bushes failed oil drilling business in Texas. Considering that 14 out of the 19 Hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and they to bombed the Pentagon,I would like to see those connections come under new scrutiny. Also, if your Ambassador of Saudi Arabia, a country that gets its wealth exclusively from the export of oil, why would you invest in a oil drilling operation in Texas if it wasn’t a favor to Bush senior? Can anyone say, Pay off?
I am not condoning any act of violence in the name of change. You know, like bombing the wrong country for 9/11. A $200 contribution from a man who hasn’t blown up anything in more than 30 years seems a lot less harmless to me than maintaining a close family and business relationship with the ruling family of a country that finances radical Muslim teachings all over the world. My God, our President and his Dad, a former President, did business with Osama’s family before, during and after 9/11!
I am guessing there was a lot more than $200 that changed hands.
Is the best dirt you guys can come up with? Whats next, video of Obama toping off his gas tank? A waitress who now says Obama once tipped her 10% on a lunch?
This Presidents family considers the royal family of a country that won't allow women to drive, vote or hang out at a Starbucks in the company of a man as friends!
Give me a break.

Blowing the Dust of the Soap Box.

America.
Terrorists don't seem to be the biggest threat to our Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness lately. It wasn't terrorists that killed the people at Northern Illinois University.
It was an American who was taking medication for serious emotional problems.
Somehow, he was allowed to buy guns.
Great system all you gun nuts have shoved down our throats. lets allow anyone to get their hands on a device that is designed for no other purpose than to kill.
Brilliant!
Terrorists are not the biggest threat. More people get killed every year with a gun than were killed on 9/11.
Every year.
Why?
It is the insistence of people who can't properly read the second Amendment. Thats why.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Tell me, what militia was he was buying those guns for? If you own a gun and your not part of a well regulated militia, you are in violation of the intent and spirit of the second amendment. Period.
Instead of blowing billions of dollars to not find Osama, lets give every member of the NRA a lesson in how to read.
We have more guns per person than any other nation on the face of the planet that dares to say it is at peace.
Then, were shocked when shit like this happens.
My sister, Theresa and my nephew Ken, go to that school. They are alright. My sister was on the way there when it all happened. She is seriously upset though. I am a news junkie. I have seen this thing over and over in our news. But I never ever once thought that it would touch my life in any way.
No one ever does. Do they?
America needs to take a long hard look at its self. There are way to many people who can't seem to read.
Bush demands congress pass the, Protect America Act.
What sort of a tiny dick moron falls for this name? It's a preemptive attack on anyone who would choose not to sign it. That way, the people who want it can say, "You don't want to protect America? What kind of a bad American are you?"
The Protect America act is nothing but a gift from Bush & Company to the Phone companies that illegally tap your phones. Sure, it happened right after 9/11 and we all wanted to find out who was responsible. Even with all that intelligence streaming into a basement of the pentagon, we still attacked the wrong country for 9/11?
Excuse me if I have no confidence in our government to do the job of protecting us by listening to phone calls and reading e-mail.
They either got it completely wrong when they started listening in, or its obvious they used one tragedy as cover to conduct a covert operation that was highly illegal.
The Bill or, Protect America Act, grants the phone companies immunity from prosecution. Now why would they need immunity? Only people or companies that have done something wrong need protection from the law.
You see, its illegal to tap our phones without a warrant.
They didn't have one.
Ever hear of the FISA court?
Better yet, ever hear the press conference Bush gave a few years ago when all this came out? he told us that we should not worry because anytime the government listens in they have to get a court order from FISA.
He lied.
But heres the thing, he didn't have to lie.
FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
It was set up in the 70's for just this sort of thing. A spy or terrorist might call someone in this country. The government should know about that. Lets say there is an immediate threat. Then what?
This is the easy part. If the government thinks there is such a threat, they can tap the phones and go to the FISA court 3 days latter.
Get it?
They can listen in and then go get the warrant.
So why would Bush and Company lie?
Fuck, who knows with these morons. They lie like most of us breathe.
Point is, if a court finds that the president went around the constitution and the law, the phone companies who cooperated without a warrant could be prosecuted and sued for their part in breaking the law.
They have wrapped so much bullshit in the flag that its hard to truly see how much they don't give a shit about us.
And believe me, they care less for the people fighting on the front lines of this phony war on terrorism than anyone else.
You think thats a pretty bold or ridiculous statement? Well how do you reconcile this little piece of information with all that God bless the troops crap they so freely add to every thing they say.

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the so-called MRAPs, according to the study. Stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.

After Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared the MRAP (pronounced M-rap) the Pentagon's No. 1 acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities.

The vehicles weigh as much as 40 tons and have been effective at protecting American forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents. Only four U.S. troops have been killed by such bombs while riding in MRAPs; three of those deaths occurred in older versions of the vehicles.

The study's author, Franz J. Gayl, catalogs what he says were flawed decisions and missteps by midlevel managers in Marine Corps offices that occurred well before Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld in December 2006.

Among the findings in the Jan. 22 study:

• Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by IEDs in late 2004 and early 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less-sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees, even those with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.

• An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.

Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.

• The Marine Corps' acquisition staff didn't give top leaders correct information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of Hejlik's MRAP request and the real reasons it was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving "inaccurate and incomplete" information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not hotly pursued.

• The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps' vision as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.

The MRAPs didn't meet this fast-moving standard and so the Combat Development Command didn't want to buy them, according to Gayl. The study calls this approach a "Cold War orientation" that suffocates the ability to react to emergency situations.

• The Combat Development Command has managers — some of whom are retired Marines — who lack adequate technical credentials. They have outdated views of what works on the battlefield and how the defense industry operates, Gayl says. Yet they are in position to ignore or overrule calls from deployed commanders.

An inquiry should be conducted by the Marine Corps inspector general to determine if any military or government employees are culpable for failing to rush critical gear to the troops, recommends Gayl, who prepared the study for the Marine Corps' plans, policies and operations department.

There you have it America. We have laws to protect the people who feel it is your patriotic right to bare arms. Even if you can't bare the demons in your head.
We have a president that has ignored the constitution on such a grand scale that it is stunning. In an effort to protect the Companies that went along with this, he is telling us that American lives are in danger now. Unless these companies get protection from the law, he cannot protect us.
What?
I don't know about you, but if it came down to protecting lives or the bottom line, I would chose lives.
Then you have the whole thing about the Marines. What do you make of that?
Remember the press conference with Good old Rumsfeld? A soldier asked why they didn't have armor on all their vehicles. His answer, "You go to war with the army you have. Not the army you want."
I think this is the place in our countries life where we have to stop and ask every one, do we want the country we have, or do we want to go into the 21st. century with the country we want?
I for one am tired of turning on the news and hearing about yet another disturbed man killing with a gun he got because idiots can't read the constitution.
I am tired of turning on the news and hearing the stuttering arrogant voice of Bush using patriotism to explain why yet another law must be ignored, broken or changed so he can have what he wants.
What he wants is power. Thats all.
History will look back at this era and it is my firm belief that it will judge these last 8 years as a time when the spirit of America almost died. Not from the terrorists on the outside, but the combination of arrogance and ignorance on the inside.
Just remember folks, a terrorist can not write laws that are against your best interest.
A terrorist cannot slash a budget for the care of returning veterans of this war.
A terrorist cannot ignore the economy to the point of people loosing their homes in numbers not seen since the great depression.
A terrorist cannot deny you health care based on your financial situation.
A terrorist cannot decide to spend billions of dollars to enrich oil companies. And last but not least, a terrorist may be able to kill our fellow citizens, but as long as we allow guns to be available like candy, we will do a much better job at it then they ever could.

Bullshit!

Dear Democratic Party leaders,
You are the party that passed voters’ rights laws.
You are the party that made civil rights law.
You are the party of the underdog, the under privileged and the average citizen playing by the rules.
Now comes word that super delegates could decide the election. From what I can find on line the Democratic Party rules do not use the term "superdelegate". The formal designation is “unpledged party leader and elected official delegates".
That clears it up.
What your telling us with a straight face is, elite party members will decide who the nominee for president will be. Not our votes. You understand how this looks, right? Even if Obama overwhelmingly wins the popular vote, it will be the job of less than 1,000 elite Democratic Party members to decide who the candidate will actually be. Obama could win state after state in the primaries, but still fail to get the nomination.
How can that be?
The Party that has screamed that the will of the people has been ignored for the last 8 years is telling us that our votes can be ignored and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.
This is Bullshit.
Listen guys, if you pull this shit, you are no better than the Republicans. Plain and simple.
State after state, Obama is not only winning the delegates, but he is overwhelmingly winning the popular vote of the people too. Clinton and Company seems to think they are entitled to becoming the next President. Even if that means defying the will of the people.
It’s not that I don’t respect Clinton and think she could do the job, it’s that there seems to be a huge disconnect between her speeches about taking back America for the people and actually listening to the people. And the people are saying Obama. They are not just saying it they are screaming it!
In every state that has held a primary so far, they have broken records for voter turn out. People are climbing out of the woodwork to declare a vote for change. Change, Madam Clinton. Change, as in; we do not want any more games played with our votes.
The Republicans stole the last two general elections. That is the party line of Democrats. So whats the difference between stealing an election and using obscure party rules to win an election?
Don’t blow this. If the people chose someone besides Clinton, you must respect that. It is the core value of the Democratic party that the common mans vote is just as important as any elite member. Everyone counts equally. Right? The leaders MUST acknowledge the will of the people. Even if it’s not what I want personally, that’s how the system has to work.
Wolf Blitzer was interviewing John Kerry on CNN. The state Kerry represents voted in their primary and 57% to 41% they picked Clinton over Obama. However, John Kerry, has said that as a Superdelagate, he will be voting for Obama. Hey, I want to see Obama win too, but not at the expense of what the people want. Not at the expense of further diluting the constitution. Mr. Kerry, you are the peoples representative. Maybe you forgot that. But the people told you who they wanted and you picked someone else. That too is Bullshit. Lets call it by what it is.
I got an e-mail from someone saying they would respect my thoughts more if I didn’t swear so much in my posts. Listen, if your not swearing about this kind of thing, then you don’t care enough. Because the only word that properly describes what all this super delegate nonsense is about is Bullshit. Plain and simple. We have all had enough of it.

If I were President

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Follow the Leaders

Looks like John McCain is going to be the Republican nominee for president. You have to respect a man who was held and tortured for 5 years in a Vietnam prison. But the dude is old. The word cain is in his name to remind you of that. It's great to watch the republican party pull itself apart debating if he is conservative enough though. He insulted the religious wing of the party by once referring to TV evangelists as agents of intolerance. I think he got that one right. He is soft on immigration too, according to them and the worse sin; he voted against the Bush tax cuts. Just a quick reminder on that scam. Those tax cuts were only for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. In fact, if you put his record up against Hillary Clinton's you won't see much of a difference.
All republicans do the same thing, invoke the name of the mighty Ronald Reagan. For a conservative, Reagan was something of a mystery to me. Consider that he left office 8 years latter with massive debt. He cut and ran in Lebanon after more than 200 hundred Marines were killed in a suicide attack on a base there. He also granted amnesty to million of illegal aliens. I don't know why he is seen as a towering figure of conservatism with a record like that, but he is. Oh yeah, for some reason he gets credit for the end of the Soviet Union. Part of how that was accomplished was to fund the covert war in Afghanistan. I think we all know how that worked out for us in the long run.
Obama is my candidate. He has to be yours too folks. What does it say about the worlds largest democracy if we pass the highest elected office back and forth between two families? Any place else that would happen in the world and the word Democracy wouldn't be used to describe it. No, it's time for real change.
We know the next President will be a Democrat. We know this because Wall Street tells us so. For the last 25 years the party that received the most money from Wall Street became the party that won the White House. At the moment, 57% of the money donated from fortune 500 companies has gone to Democrats. Will it be Hillary or Obama?
What Obama has going for him is that he dose not have a record the republican smear machine can go to town on. Lets face it, no one in Washington is clean, but you have to be mighty dim to think Hillary doesn't have more than a few skeletons in the closet. Whats Obamas major fault? His middle name is Hussein? He doesn't have enough experience? Well, look at the people who have had plenty of experience and where they have led us?
America is in decline. The Empire has turned a corner and for anyone who wishes to notice them, the signs are every where. You want to know how bad the economy really is? In New York, merchants have begun to accept the Euro. The dollar is so weak that New York is being flooded by European tourists. It's a bargain for them to come now. The best solution the government can come up with is to send everyone a $300 check? Honestly, to anyone seriously struggling, 300 bucks is not going to do a lot. But at least the money is finally getting into the right hands. By doing this, the Reganites are admitting that the whole trickle down theory of economics is a joke. You remember that concept, don't you? Give the rich more money and they will hire more workers, build more plants and keep the economy growing. Well, it didn't work then and it didn't work now. In fact George Herbert Bush, our current presidents dad, referred to it as Voodoo economics. Now that were seriously screwed, they want to actually put money in the hands of the masses. Guess what? When my check arrives it goes right into the bank and stays there. Thats what the rich did with their tax breaks apparently otherwise the idea of actually giving checks to everyone in the country wouldn't be on the table.
By the way, when the Pentagon submitted it's budget, it declined to place a number, any number on the amount of money it needs to keep the war going. They actually have asked for a blank check.
Guess who has received the most amount of contributions from defense contractors? Hillary. You really think she's going to pull the troops out right away?
Follow the money folks. It will tell you everything.

Valentines Day.

Valentines Day.
Buying cards for all the girls in class. Remember that? God I hated that. You would go to the local Walgreen's and buy one of those 30 packs of cards that had bright red hearts or Kittens on them. All I ever did was write, Happy Valentines Day.
Joe. That was it. I never got a card that said anything other than the same thing. Not even an X or an O. Once, in 6th grade I did get a card from a girl in class that said more. However, on closer inspection it turned out she had put the wrong card in the envelope with my name on it.
All it said was, "Your good at kick ball!"
Hey it was the 6th grade. That was pretty much the equivalent of getting engaged back then.
Then there was the candy hearts with those short romantic sayings on them. You could eat about ten of those hearts before your mouth felt like chalk and your stomach became coated in the sweet sick flavor of cheap candy. I have always thought that these little self-esteem messages printed in candy ink would look pretty good on antidepressants. The best thing about this holiday was that it took time out of class. I was always in favor of anything that did that. We had about 30 minuets where we handed out our cards and candy to each other. We sat down at our desks and opened the cards. Occasionally, someone got more than just the required bare minimum message. They turned red and when recess came, we teased them mercilessly.
Looking back on it all, I see it for the socialization that it was. Getting us ready for dating, I suppose. Or rejection depending on what your cards said. From first grade on you learned to buy something for this day. Maybe that was the real lesson after all.
I remember being jealous of anyone who got a card that said something more. But at the same time, I realized that this jealousy had something to do with wanting girls to notice me. It was about 4th grade when I started noticing that my throat got dry around a few girls.
What was that?
Did that mean I liked girls? I wanted to say something to them, but my throat would just close shut in a heart beat. Maybe I was allergic to them? It wasn't unheard of. There was that episode of the Brady Bunch where Jan became allergic to Tiger, the family dog. If it could happen with a person and a dog, why not a person and a girl? That was my reasoning capabilities at the time.
I didn't tell anyone about my diagnosis.
By 6th grade, I knew I wasn't allergic to girls. I also knew that I did indeed like them for being girls. 6th grade is also about the time that you start writing a bit more than just a quick Happy Valentine's Day on those cards. It seemed way to possible to be made fun of if you wrote something truly honest. No one I knew ever just wrote, I like you. Maybe they did. It's not like I was hanging out with the cool crowd. That seemed like you would be setting yourself up for drama.
Now I can see the start of what was later in my life to be called intimacy issues.

7th grade I was sent to a private Catholic school. They didn't do the cards at all. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it had something to do with the idea that romance and all it could lead to wasn't an idea they wanted in our heads. Still, girls would leave lunch period with roses or those big red velvet box's of chocolate tucked under their arms. They were always the ultra-hot ones too. That was a fun social experiment for anyone with self-esteem to watch.
A handful of girls walked away with prizes for their beauty while the rest of us chewed on candy hearts and sharpened our dagger stares. I remember a guy getting a huge thing of Roses one year in 8th grade. I'm not sure who looked more red, him or the roses.
Is there a holiday with a bigger mind fuck attached to it?
If you don't have a date your a looser. If you do have a date, your broke.
There was a famous study done some years back. The biggest fear of most American men is not having enough money. The biggest fear of American women is gaining weight. Have fun on your date kids! A date sparks the number one fear in both sexes. A man leaves with less money and the woman leaves with more calories.

Wide Grateful Eyes

Comedy.
I'm talking the lifestyle of it now. The sweating out the 2 days the Booker says it will take for the check to reach you. The loan here the bet there, maybe an odd job every once in a while-you get by. You do all that for stage time. You learn to go with out but brag about how much time you have. Then, a phone call.
Am I free tomorrow?
Sure.
I'm opening for who? Where?
It's the sweetest thing, that call. Unexpected work at just the right time. It's a nice high to ride for a while. It gets people off your back too. Know what I mean?
The money's good. The place is the State street theater in Modesto,CA.
Oh Modesto. I have made so much fun of you!
Drew Hastings is the headliner. Big on the Bob and Tom circuit.
His manager calls. Politely and professionally he stresses the word clean several times.
I get it.
Twenty minuets. It's a God damn bank job. Easy in, do the job, get the cash and roll.
It's sweet. That comedy life style high. I once rode it. The closest I have ever come to anything like spiritual, was during that time. It also hit a considerable bottom and a nice bounce at the end. All in all, it's a roller coaster your gonna ride. You have to. On stage, people laughing at what their suppose to, when there suppose to. It's spectacular! Of course you want to get on that ride. You couldn't talk anyone out of it.
But there are times when you sweat it out. The money is short and the days are long. It's easy in summer, you can hang out at cafes all day and night. Winter, you feel homeless. To kill time you ride Muni buses grateful for the ones with heat.
Then, just when you need it, that sweet call comes. Whatever it is they want, I'll do. It's not selling out. It's paying rent.
Thats cool. Handing over a check paid for entirely on telling jokes. It feels a little like stealing but mostly it feels great!
Then it's lean again. Guest sets, Sundays at the Punchline, various one nighters, but always right there on the edge of making it.
Up and down up and down. Lots of lonely walking in Golden Gate park and hanging with friends at cafes. We were all riding that same ride. Not necessarily together, but we were definitely on it at the same time.
Days would go by with nothing but conversation in front of the Blue Danube Cafe at 4th and Clement. Everyone of us broke but cocky. Some of them smoked, others drank, most got high, all of us had visible issues. Yet, it was comfortable somehow. It was being part of something. A part of something that understood and talked the jargon.
Most importantly we believed in the same myths. Like a little tribe.
We would fall in and out with each other over small personal loans and our opinions of each others acts. When we weren't falling in and out with each other over petty insults, we got crushes over the counter girls at the Danube.
Those were the days. Living on comedy and feeling like a God for it. All of us were in poverty, reclusive and competitive. We lived for the high of the new joke and those sweet calls that kept our whole crazy life going. If it wasn't for the one dollar pork buns you could get up the street, I'm not sure how I would of made it.
Sure, this is all looking at it with the romance of nostalgia. It's a powerful thing. It's not like the scars ever fade, you just stop noticing them. Then it's easy to coat it in a layer of blurry warmth. Those days of living purely on comedy weren't awful, but they also weren't that great either. It felt like more was possible though. Of course, even a tiny sum of money from a gig felt like winning the lottery back then. Maybe thats all it was? From where we were, up was the only option. Up is still the direction I want to go in, but it's no longer the only direction available to any of us.
I miss those days. I truly do. The myth we all bought into then was that of being discovered. All your troubles were solved if you were discovered. We got over that too.
Tonight, I am in Modesto,CA at the State Street Theater opening for Drew Hastings. The call came yesterday as I was sitting at my desk looking at my mostly blank calendar for spring. It brought me back. It brought me back to those days when I didn't expect such calls. There was a stretch there for awhile, when the sweet call that meant I could survive for another month would come with startling regularity. To me, it felt as if the Universe was unfolding with me in mind. It really did. Instead of anxiety when I was down to that last Twenty dollar bill in my beat up wallet, I relaxed and trusted that I would be taken care of. I always was.
I think it was when I began to question when that call would come or not that I slipped from the palm of the universe to just another guy feeling entitled to something he didn't really understand.
Never underestimate the power of being grateful.
Thats when it dried up on me. When I stopped being thankful for those calls and started wondering when they would come.
The truth is, I would never go back to those days. They were way to hard. I think thats why we banded together in our little groups. All we would do was drink coffee and silently hope we would get a call for work before the other guys. There was also genuine warmth for each other too.
The road, the romantic notion that you can drive around the great expanse that is America and make money telling jokes to strangers, is gone. Oh sure, it can still be done, but the pay has remained what it was when I started. No cost of living raises for comics living out of their cars.
It can still be done, but it's so fucking hard when people don't know your name.
These days, I am grateful not just for those times, but for living threw them too. What made it all worth it was the precious stage time we all craved.
This show, tonight in Modesto, it's for who I was. The struggling comic getting by on equal parts denial and faith. Thats right. I just dedicated a show to myself. Myself from those days. I would of walked into this gig with wider eyes back then. I suppose, out of everything I recall, thats what I miss the most; walking into every gig with wide grateful eyes.

Memory Hole

For about two years after 9/11, I kept a stack of news paper clippings related to it and the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The stack grew to eventually take over two shelves of a book case that sat by my bed. One day the thought hit me, what are the karmic consequences of having all that information a foot from where my head is when I sleep? When I first started clipping the reports, articles and editorials and keeping them, I didn't really know what to do with them. Or why for that matter. I felt a little like Richard Dreyfus in Close encounters of the third kind. I just knew I should hold onto these tangible examples of something going horribly wrong. It was evidence.
When I decided to move the pile of paper onto a shelf in a closet, I started to go through it all. As I did I started thinking about the classic book, 1984. If I just held onto these papers, then I had prof it was said. In 1984, whenever the government altered the historical facts, they had every reference to the contrary removed from the public record and thrown down a burning "memory hole."
A quick idea came together. Why not use 1984, and these clippings in a solo performance show?
Why not indeed.
The show was performed once in Chico. I held a shoe box of press clippings and pages from 1984.
It got laughs and nodding heads from the crowd.
The shoe box got placed on a shelf in my closet and somewhere along all the moves during the last few years, I lost it.
Well, it has returned. Not as a show, but as a data base for all the lies told to push us into war with Iraq. Click the link bellow. It will take you to the public integrity web site. The have put together a list of untruths spoken out loud by top Bush officials in the lead up to the war. Not only that, but they have crossed referenced them against official documents. In most cases, they have intelligence reports telling officials that they were wrong. However, days after receiving those documents, bush and company said almost the exact opposite of what those documents said. In short, they have demonstrated an orchestrated and sustained use of propaganda for the purposes of creating public consent for war.
A conspiracy to lie us into it.

Memory Hole

What Makes the World Go Round...

Money.
I have paid way to many damn parking tickets in this town. I swear. There ought to be a statue of me standing in front of a parking sign with my shoulders shrugged and my eyes squinting as I try to figure it out. They can cast it from my melted down car. Between insurance, tickets, gas and the need for a new transmission, I am going broke like every other American I know. You can keep the car San Francisco. I am going back to Muni. Oh sure, it's completely unreliable, there is a good chance of catching some communicable disease and you have to wait outside in the cold for it. But it's cheap. Cheaper than loosing that game of parking late at night and not thinking of what day of the week it will be tomorrow.
Now that our economy is tanking and there is all this talk of helping people out, I have an idea. Tax amnesty.
The U.S. Government can't account now for 30 Billion dollars that was shipped to Iraq. First it was a few million that went missing. Then there was the 12 Billion they actually sent in one hundred dollar bills. They wrapped them in plastic and placed them on shipping pallets, loaded the money into the back of a C-130 and by the time the plane was unloaded and ready to take off again, that money was being distributed in Iraq. No receipts, no paper work, no accountability. 12 Billion gone one day, another one Billion someone lost track of and a new grand total now of 30 Billion the general accounting office says has been sent to Iraq, we just don't know who got it.
This is the same Government that tells me I owe $2,000 more from 2006. The same government that is working on an economic stimulus plan to help the poor and middle class just kicked me in the balls.
Why do I owe the IRS $2,000 more dollars from my 2006 tax return? Even my tax accountant says I have to pay it because I failed to send in all my w-2's. Sorry. Somewhere during the half dozen moves that year, a very emotional break-up, therapy and pursuing what everyone likes to call "my dream" I lost track of things. It's no 12 Billion worth of sloppy paper work, but I would think you would be willing to cut me some slack because I am exactly the type of person you say your about to help out with tax relief. Well, give me some fucking tax relief!
I know it sounds ridiculous that I'm complaining about two grand. But this is exactly the type of thing politicians don't seem to get. You guys ship off Billions of dollars to Iraq for a war of choice and now you want to sweat the little guy for what, the cost of two machine guns? Thats going to tip the balance. I hope my name is on one of them. "This gun paid for by Joe Klocek's lack of record keeping. Enjoy."
Between parking tickets and the IRS, I can't afford to live!
Does anyone in the business of Government get this? From where I'm standing, were all living bellow the poverty line.
You get a tax break if you have kids.
You can write off tuition.
You can claim deductions for almost anything.
I am a single male with no dependants, no health insurance and I make people laugh for a living. That has to be worth something. Where is my write off for being a guy that makes people forget their problems for a while?

People are worried about on line child predators. We had more to fear from our toys in the 1970's than anything else. Shrinky Dinks. Anyone remember them? Essentially it was putting several pieces of plastic in your oven to shrink them. Yeah. Thats right. Putting plastic in a oven! That was considered a safe toy back then. Were worried about toys from china painted with lead? We put plastic in ovens! It's a miracle I'm alive.
How about a tax break for living threw the 70's? I have a bad feeling were all about to go through it again.
I remember when OPEC raised the price of oil so much, that gas stations had to ration gas. There was even a system for determining if you could get gas. If the first number on your license plate was even, there were specific days you could go to the station. Well, the Government can pass any type of economic help policy it wants, but if the price of oil keeps going up, were all still fucked. Bush went to Saudi Arabia recently. It was his first ever visit to the Kingdom. You want a sign from God how it went? First of all, the temperature dropped into the low 40's and even snow fell on parts of Saudi Arabia for the first time in 40 years. A U.S. President visits and a freak cold snap happens at the same time.
The Prez, basically went with hat in hand asking for the oil prices to be lowered. The reply, nope.
Soon as he left, the country once again returned to normal weather.

I keep trying to learn how everything fits together. The world of money is interesting to me. In a weird sort of way, money has tied the world together in a way no peace maker ever has. But it's not a good relationship for everyone. When the Fed cut a percentage rate by a quarter of a point, the stock exchange in India rebounded. Our government makes a small cut and a country half a world away rallies.
The housing crisis is really a credit problem. Banks gave people money to buy homes. The amount of interest they had to pay on those loans was ties to the whims of the market. When the bottom fell out, the cost of lending and borrowing money went up. Not to mention all the people who could no longer afford to keep their homes. Remember, we haven't seen this many people loose their homes to banks since the great depression. So it's bad. CitiCorp, one of the biggest financial companies there is announced it lost 10 Billion dollars in one 3 month quarter.
Damn!
As the dollar looses value, the euro is on the rise. For foreign investors holding dollars, it is a lot wiser for them to buy euros. Problem is, this sets up a downward spiral. The actual value of a dollar buys less at exactly the time when the price of key products like oil, are on the rise.
As oil prices rise, the cost to ship products also rises. This gets passed on to you and me as higher prices. So we spend less. Less money floating in the economy means the economy slows down. When that happens, it has a ripple effect across the planet.
Since were buying less, orders to factories drop off. People get laid off. It is a down ward spiral that were all stuck in.
So here is my idea.
It's a little radical and slightly odd, but hear me out.
First, we get rid of credit. More on that latter.
Next, we assign a universal value to products that sustain individual life. Things like heating and cooking oil get a fixed price kept low by the Government. You think this sounds like Communism? Do you realize that the U.S. pays big farming companies not to grow certain crops? It's call a subsidy. We also give tax dollars to oil companies in the form of subsides.
I could use one. I bet you could too.
We put a stop to that shit right a way. No more of our money being pooled and given to companies that are already making a killing off of us anyway.
So things like bread, heat, water and oil all get a fixed price so everyone can afford to live.
Here is why we get rid of credit cards.
IT IS A SCAM! The second you buy anything with credit, you have to consider how long it will take you to pay that off. If you keep a large balance on your credit cards as most Americans do, anything purchased is actually costing you about four times what you bought it for. It is easy to loose the value of money when your not actually holding money. Thats why I say we go back to only having cash.
But lets make it easy to have cash. It would be difficult to pay for a large item like a car with a lot of money. A stack of five dollar bills that adds up to ten thousand dollars weighs a lot. Inflation, recession, depreciation also changes the value of our currency. To encourage people to have cash and to spend it at a time when the economy needs it, we make all money out of Shrinky dinks!
Think about it. When the value of a dollar falls and you need to have more cash in your pockets, we make that easier by shrinking the physical money! Eventually, how ever low the value of the dollar goes, all that shrunken money will kick start the economy going in the right direction again. Plastic is a petroleum product. So we will still be doing business with Saudi Arabia. That should make them happy, were happy and all I can do now is wait for my Nobel Peace prize in economics to show up in the mail.

More

More.
It is Americas unspoken promise to all who live here and the reason people from all over the world risk everything to get here. More is the promise America makes to any and all that will sit still long enough for the commercial. Everyone wants it. More money, more food, more sex, more love, more respect, more success, more understanding, more time. More.
It is what America is all about.
It is our greatest strength and our biggest flaw.
Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not the same thing as more. Trust me on this one. If more is on the table, then happiness is not. You will always chase after the next big thing, the new and improved product or that promised deeper high rather than be content with what you have. In the pursuit of more, we have also created some problems.
We have more crime than any other western industrialized nation. We have more pregnant teenagers, more people in prison, more bankruptcy's and more people without any health coverage.
We have more social problems than a lot of countries do yet about half of Americans say this is a Christian nation.
LOL!
I always wonder how that squares with Christians. When I have asked, they blame our troubles on the fact that not everyone is a Christian. Iceland, Holland, Norway; all these countries are relatively agnostic and have almost none of the same problems on the scale we do.
How do you explain that?
I think I have part of the answer.
What makes us crazy is more. The pursuit of more. The idea, the dream of getting more of what you have. In some bizarre move, the Gospel of more is now being preached not in TV commercials, but in churches. Mega churches, they call them. Usually in the suburbs, mostly white middle class people attend them. The message they are getting; more is what Jesus wants you to have. Jesus wants you to be wealthy.
OK, lets forget for a moment that the only time Jesus lost his temper was at the money changers in the temple, but I can't seem to remember ever reading anything in the new testament where he said, turn the other cheek and get a Lexus. Do you?
These mega churches and the emphasis on worldly success is now the biggest growing religion in America. Of course it is! People are being told what they want to hear in a society that runs on plastic disposable income. If God wants me to be rich, who am I to disagree. And if you don't attain riches, it is because your faith is weak.
What a wonderful scam.
Jesus died for your sins. Not your investments.
How did this happen? How did religion and making money become the same thing?
Everyone not only wants more, but they want permission to have it too. I can't think of anyone better to say it's OK to buy that boat while kids starve in Africa than God.
It's Muzak.
You know those instrumental watered down versions of songs you hear? Thats what American Christians have done with the New testament. You can still pick out some of the original lyrics, like Jesus and sin and life after death, but they have put it into a new and dangerous context.
America is about to change. You can feel it as well as see the signs everywhere. Who ever becomes President next will preside over a nation in decline. We reached for more and because we thought God gave us the permission to do so, we have so overextended ourselves in the quest for more oil, more power, more control and more security that we have broken the bank.
How about that? Not only have we become morally bankrupt, but we have also become economically broke too.
The entire Iraq war is on credit. All of it. It doesn't even show up on the budget. Thats a little scary because the budget is already a Trillion dollars in debt without factoring in the expense of our little war of choice for more oil.
More More More.
We are the new Roman empire.
They, just like us, maintained military bases all over their world. They built roads to maintain control. We built the Internet. They were renown for their cruelty in sport. Do I need to keep listing the comparisons?
They too had temples and God's that demanded monetary sacrifices. They too had poor, war and the faith that their might derived from a supreme moral force that blessed them in all their endeavours.
They crumbled.
They crumbled because they too fell for the idea that more was their birth right. Rome became known as the first Christian empire too. All the legendary debauchery you see in movies didn't really come into the form we see until Rome became christian. There is an interesting phenomenon we fail to see here. When morality is made law it becomes the very thing that makes sin so damn appealing.
Remember buying beer before you were of legal age? You remember that thrill? It goes away after 21 doesn't it? Why? Because half the high of getting fucked up is in knowing that it's against the law.
More and wrong are the two biggest factors in bringing us down. We have laws for everything in this country. In the land of the free, nothing is. Now think of Amsterdam. You can legally buy and use drugs, look at prostitutes in windows and walk the streets with a beer in your hand.
Try any of that here and your busted, jack! You tell me who has more actual freedom. Amsterdam has a crime rate far bellow Americas. Yet, they are not a Christian nation with our superior morals. How do they offer sin so casually and suffer none of the social ills we do? I suspect it has more to do with a difference in philosophy. While we fill the next generation with promises of more, a selfish national philosophy, most of Europe grows up with a very different idea of society. We want more for ourselves. Everything about American society is about satisfying the desires of the individual. That is a very modern and what I believe to be accurate definition of capitalism. Then there is socialism. It's right there in the titles of our governing principles. Social-ism. They are a people who realize they are part of something greater than any one person. They realize they are stronger together than apart. They have more vacation time, more real personal freedom, and health care.
Capitalism is based on money. More money, more power. More money, more chances. More money, more control. Now that churches are getting into the act, capitalism is becoming more than just an economic system, it is being made into the model of how we should conduct out lives.
How can a system that is designed to enrich the individual first and maybe the rest of society second become a religion? The answer to that is simple. Like Atkins all meat diet, we are being told we can have it all. Not only can we have it all, but God wants us to become wealthy. I don't know about you, but if your sole reason for joining a church and attempting to communicate with God is to get rich, God might not be listening. You can't treat Heaven like an ATM machine and God as the supreme teller. If religion is to have any credibility in the spirit, then it can have nothing to do with money. They represent very different ways of living. But here in America, we have a special relationship with money and God. After all, his name is on our money. Maybe that confused some people.
In the 60's, people took to the street to fight for more rights, more education, more peace and more opportunity.
In the 70's, we all just wanted more. It was not so much a decade in American history so much as it was one long national black out. Our desire for more comfort gave birth to a plastic disposable culture.
The 80's came and more became the real word behind every advertisement and every song on MTV. people were waking up from the disco and cocaine 70's to find the corporations turning more into a boardroom mantra.
The 90's, at least the first half, were a little different I think. grunge music surprised everyone. It was a legitimate self made movement that the establishment didn't see coming. But at the height of the 90's Disney unleashed the mindless easy music of stars like Britney Spears.
If ever there was a poster child for the dangers of more, it is Britney Spears.
Today, we live in the 21st Century. A time that has long been dreamed about. Technology was to be almost indistinguishable from magic by now. We would all be going into space and the world would find balance. Thats what was imagined anyway. Instead, more has been raised from a selfish cry to a way of life that is to be admired. More is now a religion. The religion of America.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens to the idea of more in the next few years. economically speaking, we have nothing left. If our national spirit has become tied to closely with more, then we are indeed in a lot of trouble.