LOL!

This is what it has come too?
Our modern society is turning into a bad comedy sketch. In London, people who have been walking and texting at the same time have walked into so many lamp posts that a phone directory service much like our 411 have decided to take action.
They are experimenting with padded lampposts.
Yeah. You read correctly.
Padded lamp posts for people trying to find the right emo-con but instead hit their heads on a post.
LOL!
A study conducted by the phone directory service, found that one in 10 people has been hurt while focusing on their cell phone instead of where they were walking.
The survey found that almost two thirds of respondents lost peripheral vision while texting, and more than a quarter wanted lines on the pavement to create routes for texters to walk while using their phones.
Lines on the pavement? Like were trying to find the gift shop in a hospital?
If I am texting and walking down the street but not on a blue line, will I get a ticket for texting in the wrong lane? How ridiculous are we going to become? All this communication technology available to us and no one seems any more "available" than before we had all this.

The directory service will provide the padding and allow companies to advertise on them.
That's great marketing. Do you really want people to run into a post, look up and associate your product with an embarrassing moment in public? Aspirin might be the best product to run adds for. Or insurance.
How about this; Hey moron, put the stupid phone down and actually communicate with the people around you!
I speak to people less. When my phone buzzes, it's usually a text message. E-mail is easier to send because why not send something passive aggressive that I don't have to be there for to see your reaction. The other day I got a letter. An actual hand written stamp on the envelope letter. My room mates stood around looking at it in awe like the Nazi's stared at the ark at the end of Indiana Jones. This ended better of course. Still, I told them to keep their eyes closed no matter what.

There is a new product for older people who don't want the hassle of "buying an expensive and hard to learn computer." They hook this thing up to their phone and now any e-mail or text their grand kid's send, gets printed out on a large easy to read piece of paper.
We have come full circle.
Still, it better come with an up to date dictionary of terms. What is grandma and grandpa going to make of the letters OMG! printed out in giant letters?

All this technology and the only thing we seem able to do is keep each other at a distance. I am waiting for the day when you can beam a copy of yourself with all your memories and knowledge over to a persons, Communication Room. Something like a digital clone that lives for you in the vast Internet ocean of non-Einstein physics and instant gratification. The Matrix isn't all that far away. Can you see it? I can. At a certain age, you lay down in a sensory deprivation chamber. You are hooked up to the outside world and interact with anyone on the planet in anyway you can imagine. Avatars roaming the uncharted digital universe where anything is possible and everyone is anonymous. Only the poor will walk with actual legs in the actual reality. The rich and famous will live in a new world built exclusively for their whims. People will take vacations entrusting their bodies to technicians for a week as they fly around the fantasy land we are headed for, their bodies nourished intravenously. Maybe even throw some drugs into the mix and you have a future that no longer reaches out to explore the solar system and beyond, but one of intense navel gazing where growing up never has to happen. All you will need is money. That part never seems to change.

A Pure San Francisco Moment.

As much as liberals bug the hell out of me, the conservative mindset just boggles me. I am sitting out side at a café in the city. Next to me, a man reads his paper and smokes. Smoking doesn’t bother me as much as it bugs a lot of people in this city. As long as I am up wind or outside, have at it.My cell phone rings. A friend asks me if I have heard about Charlie, the dog from Iraq. Apparently, it is against the uniform code of military justice to keep a pet on base. But since a bunch of Marines took a liking to him, they contacted the SPCA and with some cloak and dagger nonsense and positive PR, the dog was flown to the U.S. to live his life out in freedom. I wish we could say the same for the people of Iraq.

When I get off the phone I can already feel this guy staring a hole into me.
“My father served in the Marines.”
Here we go.
“That’s great.” I say before going back to my notebook.
In classic San Francisco café etiquette, the people around us go silent waiting for the entertainment to start. Café conversations in this town is what NASCAR is to the south. You enjoy them and find them interesting, but if something goes horribly wrong and it ends with sparks and a crash; cool!
“I don’t appreciate what you said.” He tells me looking straight into my eyes.
“You don’t appreciate what? That you overheard my conversation and a fact?”
His eyes narrow and then in a wonderful display of intelligent debate, he blows a huge cloud of cigarette smoke into my face. I don’t cough. I’m use to it. The two women I have lived with were both chain smokers and most of the places I do comedy in allow you to smoke. I just stare back and say, “I will take your second hand smoke if you take my second hand knowledge.”
A guy a few tables away giggles slightly and a girl not really reading a book since this started smiles widely.
He makes a big theatrical production out of folding his Wall Street Journal up before storming off.
I don’t appreciate what you said.
What is supposed to be my reply to that? Sorry, stranger I have offended without knowing it. Teach me to ignore facts and shape my beliefs to the agenda you are willing to defend in the face of overwhelming proof.
It always starts the same with these guys too. It’s either, I was in the military or my father was in the military or my son is in the military. Great. I have never said anything negative about military service. My brother was in the Army.
Starting a conversation about the war by saying, my father was in the military, is not only a cheap way to attempt grabbing the moral high ground, it is the equivalent of having a discussion on race where a white guy starts by saying, I have a black friend.
I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.
The girl with the book points to the table he was at and says, “He forgot his phone!”
Awesome!
The guy who giggled walks over to it, picks it up and says, “lets call some place like Iran and leave a message that will sound like code!”
You have to laugh at this idea. We all know there is no such thing as privacy anymore. The FBI just said yesterday that they improperly accessed millions of Americans private data on line in 2006. This would absolutely set off some bells in the basement of the Pentagon.
The man returns though.
He rounds the corner just in time to see the kid holding his cell phone. The guy freaks!
“Thief! Stop Thief!” He starts yelling.
The kid, out of sheer panic, slams it back down on the table and walks backwards inside the café. People on the street are looking around expecting to see a purse-snatcher or armed robbery in progress. All they see is a skinny kid looking like he is shitting his pants in the doorway of a café as a man twice his size and pointing at him runs toward a table.
This is pure NASCAR! Everyone can sense there is about to be a pile up.
Then, fate, karma, the Universe, whatever intervenes in a bit of poetic justice.
He trips!
Don’t worry. The guy is fine. He is a smoker so it wasn’t like he was moving very fast to begin with anyway.
Me and a few other strangers go to his side. A guy oblivious to any of the drama that happened a minuet ago offers his hand to the man.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” The man yells.
The potential Good Samaritan first looks hurt then pissed.
“God damn homeless shit!” He says.
You have love that too. In San Francisco, you can be black, gay, transgender or whatever. But the two worse things you can call someone is homeless or meter maid.
As our disgruntled conservative gets back to his feet and sees his phone sitting on the table, he yells out at the complete stranger who attempted to come to his aid. “Faggot!”
Well, you can’t yell that in front of a café in San Francisco and expect no reaction.
Unless you are one.
I can’t be sure, but I think that’s how the gay pride parade starts.
Now, everyone freaks and this stranger to our city realizes what he has just done.
A woman, a lesbian holding a recyclable Whole Foods shopping bag, turns to him and asks, “What did you just say?”
His eyes go wide.
She puts the grocery bag down, puts her hands on her hips and repeats herself. “What did you just say?”
Oh this is far better than anything I could of wished on him.
He starts to stutter. The guy he originally yelled at, the kid in the doorway and a few other café patrons are all looking at him. Meanwhile, the phone still sits on the table by an empty coffee cup and I am smiling like a man about to enjoy an ass hole getting a beat down from a lesbian.
That’s when his phone rings.
Want to guess what his ring tone is?
The mission impossible theme! Seriously. The mission impossible theme!
Oh the Universe has a sense of humor indeed. I tip my hat to you, sir!
I laugh and so do a few of the other people.
“That’s my phone.” He manages to say.
The lesbian picks it up and throws it into the middle of the street. All that softball has really paid off too, because it is out there in the middle of traffic going the other way.
She just smiles that smile of, what are you going to do big man? Besides, there are about 5 or 6 people surrounding him now. What is he going to do?
He just turns and leaves as the small crowd that has gathered breaks into spontaneous applause.
God I love this city!

Let's Just Sue What We Don't Like!

Are you sitting down? You might want to get some smelling salts ready too.
The creator of the weather channel, friend to shut-in’s and the elderly, is thinking about suing Al Gore.
Why?
Not only does he think Global warming is a fraud, but he also sees no reason for people to cut back on their energy consumption.
I’m surprised the Bush administration doesn’t want to sue the Discovery Channel because they think evolution is a fraud.
This could start a bad wave of lawsuits.
Neo-Nazis could sue the History Channel for Documentaries on the Jewish extermination because they think the Holocaust didn’t happen.
Can I sue CNN for the election results if I don’t like them?
Dude, this is retarded!
Go Google Island nations disappearing, or Artic Ice cores demonstrating levels of pollution going through the roof at the start of the Industrial revolution.
Holy Shit, man!
Even if you believe that our warming planet is going through some normal cycle, blasting tons of toxic shit into the air we breath can’t be a good idea. Cutting back on fossil fuel use would be welcomed by anyone with asthma. Oh, and NO scientist thinks this is normal. Sure, you hear names and impressive sounding institutes in the news every once in a while that says the proof isn’t all in yet. When you dig a little into them though, they all turn out to get their funding from oil companies.
When 90% of all the energy created on this planet comes from fossil fuels, it’s not a conspiracy to say that the 5 largest oil & coal companies have a vested interested in telling us they have nothing to do with climate change.
Do you know what happens when you go to the beach in San Francisco these days?
You get a tan.
That’s just not normal.
I’m surprised the Weather Channel isn’t being sued by sleeping pill manufactures. It has to be one of the most boring things on TV.
There use to a local TV station that would broadcast nothing else on Christmas day but 12 hours of a log burning in a fire place.
No lie.
People would turn it on and drink eggnog around it. Isn’t the Weather Channel really just the equivalent of that?
My Dad sits in a plastic lawn chair two inches from the TV inside the house and goes back and forth between the Weather Channel and Fox news. He might throw in the occasional Law & Order episode, but not if it has, “The black guy” in it. When you talk to him, you have to remember that those are the only two sources of information he trusts. It will make any conversation with him make more sense once you know this.
“Dad, you and Mom thinking of moving again?”
“You see how gays want to be married like regular people? My God! It’s 23 degrees in North Dakota. The surge hasn’t gotten enough credit in the liberal media for working. They expect snow in Missouri this week. Who would vote for a guy named, what is it? Barak? Lots of flooding on the east coast…”
“It’s Barrack, Dad.”
“What?”
"It’s Barrack Obama.”
“Mexicans are coming into this country like an invasion. Texas hasn’t had rain in nearly two months.”
“Do you blame the Mex-i-Can’s, for that too, Dad?”
And so it goes at the Klocek Homestead.

You know who else is being sued for 23 Million dollars in a class action lawsuit?
The makers of Airborne.
Turns out, it doesn’t work!
Yup. The Center for disease control thought the claims were exaggerated and started doing tests. Sure, there is placebo effect, but the fact is, it doesn’t do what it claims to do.
I am going to sue the CDC because I think it does. After all, a schoolteacher made it. What better proof do you want? Made by a schoolteacher? That’s how you want to market it? Just because you’re around colds all day doesn’t make you an expert in fighting them. Just like owning the weather channel doesn’t make you an expert at weather.
I bet the guy probably believes he owns the weather.
It always amazes me when rich people are so ignorant. They have the benefit of education and wealth and still remain stupid. Whenever I hear about racism, the going to the rallies type of racism; it’s usually some back wood’s red neck that didn’t get education.
That’s just ignorance.
But to have money and education and still be a racist, that’s real hatred.
You can always spot them at the Klan rallies.
They’re the ones wearing sheets with a 300-thread count.

I don’t know if the guy has watched his own channel, but things have changed.
The people who say, it is a demonstration of mans arrogance to think he can have any effect on the planet are nuts! It is always the same people who want to quote you the Bible too. Something about God giving man dominion over the land an animals. If that's true, we really have done a shitty job then.
There are entire rivers made poisonous by industrial waste that we can't drink from.
The EPA created something named, the superfund just to clean up land contaminated by business.
An enormous island of trash twice the size of Texas is floating in the Pacific Ocean somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been growing since the 1950s. The make up of the trash is 80 percent plastic and weighs more than 3.5 million tons.
Apparently, we are having an impact on the planet ! It has to start adding up eventually. If Jesus comes back soon the first thing out of his mouth will be a cough.
The same people who are against stem cell research because all life is precious, are the same ones who see three legged toads by a power plant and go, "that happens."
Yeah. Shit happens. Like when you spend the last 50 years of civilization pumping the atmosphere full of toxins and expect God to just take care of it. Maybe the reason he doesn't talk anymore is because he just can't see us threw all that shit.
That would explain a lot.

All jokes are not created equal.

A long time ago on a road gig somewhere in Washington State, I was standing in the bathroom after a show when one of the audience members struck up a conversation with me about comedy. As we stood at the sink, more people from the show filed in. At some point, another man listening to our conversation said, “Don’t you think you are taking comedy too seriously?”
I had to swallow the impulse to yell at him. Instead, I asked him, “Do you take your job seriously?”
“I’m unemployed.” He said and left the bathroom.
It is true that you can take your job too seriously. We have all seen the fellow employee that freaks out about everything broadcasting tension in to the general workspace.
But comedy, like anything you do for the money and the love, is a job. You have to take it seriously and sometimes that blows.
I can vividly remember driving to gigs when I did it full time with no other thought in my head than, this gig is for the cell phone bill. Or, this gig is the PG & E bill.
It really sucks the joy out of it.

I have written many times of showing up to gigs I would rather not be at, but because I needed the money I did them. After awhile, you realize how many of these gigs you are doing. You start to see the impact on whatever artistic integrity you thought you had. Playing to drunks who are mad at you because they can’t play Fooz Ball during the show is not exactly the crowd you feel comfortable taking on challenging subject matter.

In a bar in Great Falls, Montana once, I had the experience a lot of us have had. Two guys came up to me at the bar and said they didn’t like what I said about religion.
I don’t remember the joke. It was early in my career so I have no doubt that it was an imperfect attempt at going in the direction I craved.
Bill Hicks, comedy legend and all around idol to any stand-up wishing to expand the definition of comedy, has a classic story about such a situation. After a show, two men approached him in the parking lot.
“We didn’t like what you said about religion.”
He paused, took a breath and asked, “Are you Christians?”
They spit the answer out with naked aggression. “Yes!”
Calmly, right before he walked away he said, “Then forgive me .”

These guys ended up buying me way too many shots of something that night. It ended well. But I remember how upset they were in the beginning. Not at what I had said, but that I had even brought religion up in a comedy show.
This goes to the heart of several issues that fascinate me.
The idea that anything is above being poked fun at is ridiculous. It’s also contrary to what America is supposed to be all about.
I don’t think they had Stand-Up Comedy in mind when they added the first amendment, but I honestly can’t think of a better use of free speech than a talented comic using humor to point out the inconsistencies a lot of people don’t want to see in their "truth". Not just in faith, but on any topic.
Anyone with confidence and dick jokes can make an audience laugh. That’s no secret at all. Hell, the best-written joke will always be blown out of the water with a fart.
What I’m getting at is the, comedy is subjective idea.
Of course it is. I know intelligent, highly skilled people who work as leaders in their industry that love the three stooges. I also know out of work friends who read Noam Chomsky and think Lenny Bruce wasn’t hard enough on society. I personally have a friend and comic that thinks Larry the Cable Guy is amazing! But the plain truth is, not all punch lines are created equal.

Sure a fart is funny, or a song parody or a done to death premise on dogs and cats. But a joke that gets a big laugh on religion or politics is just superior.
It has to be.
In a business flooded by the Larry the Cable Guy-Dane Cook mentality, a joke on tough subject matter that destroys is just better for a hundred obvious reasons.
Judging anything so subjective as comedy is almost an oxymoron. But to say that a guy playing song parodies is in the same category as a guy making you laugh at beliefs you might hold dear is not fair.
But then again, maybe I take this too seriously.
Here are three facts I know are true about comedy:

1.The audience is never wrong.

2.They only laugh at what is funny.

3.People who are in a position of judging should know comedy and know what has been done and what is more difficult to pull off.

I remember doing a few different competitions in my time. I remember losing out to a guy who wouldn’t argue that he was basically doing dating material. That’s not to say that he wasn’t funny or that he didn’t performed it beautifully, but jokes about 9/11 that shed light in places the country was not yet willing to completely look at yet, cannot be judged the same way. Especially if they are both getting laughs.
Did each comic get big laughs?
Yes.
Did the comics push the envelope successfully?
Well, in my not so humble opinion one of us did and one of us didn’t.

If we are going to make comics compete against each other, then let’s put things in proper perspective. Lets be honest about what is artistic and what is pure entertainment.
I would add one more rule to what I know is the truth in Stand-Up.

4.All jokes are not created equal.

It seems funny to me that I will cite the first amendment, yet I write the sentence, not all things are created equal. It's not something we like to hear, the truth, but comics know it. If they don't, they should. Of course the crowd is going to laugh at dick jokes. They always have! I'm not the first guy do strive for something more out of making people laugh, nor am I the best-but I try. It is so easy to go for the easy laugh or the shock value outrageous laugh. To put something out there in front of a crowd that is part philosophy and part punch line, is a little more difficult.

The Bit, I am probably best known for is the pigeon homeless guy one. It's a good bit. It's clean, funny and gets laughs. But the bits I am most proud of are the ones about religion. I think they are personal to my experience yet universal in there logic too. I think that's a great indicator of a quality joke; will people who do not share the same opinion laugh at it? In the final analysis, if it is a well written well performed joke, they will. They have to. It is constructed so well that there is no other response. Jokes are like little mathematical proofs. 1+1 will always equal 2.
That is probably the mathematical equivalent of a dick joke, 1+1. The algebra of comedy is talking about politics, religion and sex without being dirty. That's the real trick.

So if you ever find yourself in the delicate position of judging comedy, remember that anything about dating, or the phrase, being married is weird, is a red flag that screams EASY! But a joke on something you are not use to hearing about, a joke that gets just as big a laugh as, whats up with black guys doing it one way and white guys doing it another, is simply superior. Think of it like this, those jokes have to work twice as hard as those other jokes.
That's why I am all Animal Farm on this issue; not all jokes are equal.

Fix the System

The former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay said he will now be a defence witness for the driver of Osama bin Laden.
This is a career Air Force Colonel people!
Why would he do such a thing?
Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, resigned in October after being placed under the command of torture advocate William J. Haynes. The idea that America would advocate for human rights all around the world while torturing people is bad enough, but the new chief prosecutor has also rigged the system of military tribunals at Guantanamo.
Hey, don't take my word for it. This is a portion of a conversation between the two men reported in the Nation Magazine and ignored by the media.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions."

The guy in charge of prosecuting the people is admitting that the system is fixed.

That is pretty amazing!
You understand what he is saying? Right?
Since we held them without charge and illegally in the eyes of most justice systems around the world, releasing them would be admitting the mistake. Instead of admitting we made a mistake, were going to have fake trials where the men held in cages for the last five years will be executed.
And we have made mistakes.
There is a new book out named, Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.
Murat Kurnaz, was a 19 year old resident of Germany and citizen of Turkey. Pakistan's security forces, looking for people to sell to American intelligence officers for the $3,000 bounty, picked him up shortly after he was married in Pakistan. German intelligence sources and the CIA knew he was innocent in September 2002. However, even after the German foreign minister spoke to Bush on his behalf, he was held until 2007.
Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding and indefinite detention is what Murant, and all the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have had to deal with.
His is just one example.
Australia, England and Yemen have also had citizens released to them from our prison on Cuban soil.
Anyone else see the grand irony of criticizing Cuban for human rights violations while we keep people in cages on the same island?
Look, I'm not saying everyone there is innocent, but terrorist or not, we cannot continue to run around the world and tell people from the business end of a gun that we our about Liberty and justice if were going to do something that would be familiar to Joseph Stalin.
We are suppose to be better than that.
Right?
Ah hell. Lets argue about flag pins some more.

The Lesson We Forgot

Alright class.
Anyone know who President Eisenhower was?
Just for the hell of it, read these speeches and quotes. I know, it's a lot of stuff to read but as you read it remind yourself of a few facts no one debates.

1. He Was the Architect for D-day, the largest combat operation in history that begun the taking back of Europe from the Nazis.

2. He was a Republican.

3. The Military-industrial complex, was his quote given as a warning in his farewell speech to the American people at the end of his Presidency.

4. Think about the stuttering agenda driven speeches filled with fear and hate mongering that have played to the worst of our instincts rather than a true and sincere belief in the wisdom of the American citizen over these last 8 years.

5. A lot of what he warned us about has come to pass.

6. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

I would go a step farther and also say, a people who ignore their nations history will fall for arrogance masquerading as leadership, ignorance disguised as truth, aggression wrapped in the flag, and patriotic fever used as a cheap propaganda weapon against our own best interests.
When we live in a country that thinks, the surge is just a new energy drink, we are ALL in trouble.

Parts of Eisenhower's farewell speech.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Selected quotes.

The substance of peace is a universal appreciation of human values.”
Speech at Belfast University, August 24, 1945

“We must strive for understanding and be ready to do our part in substituting cooperation for conflict.”
Speech for Freedom House, November 7, 1945

“I know of no more sincere pacifists than American soldiers and veterans.”
Speech to the American Legion, November 20, 1945

“To be strong nationally is not a sin, it is a necessity.”
Speech at American Legion Convention, Chicago, IL, November 20, 1945

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Speech at Canada Club, Ottawa, Canada, January 10, 1946

“All must learn that in cooperation there is giving as well as receiving.”
Speech at Canada Club, Ottawa, Canada, January 10, 1946

“Until the peoples of the world understand and respect the interests of their neighbors, the victory will elude us.”
Speech at Canada Club, Ottawa, Canada, January 10, 1946

“I wish we could have an all-volunteer Army.”
Address Over CBS & Associated Broadcast Networks, January 18, 1946

“To remain at peace we must be a strong nation.”
Speech in Connection with Cancer Drive, Washington, DC, April 1, 1946

“In the scientific world the best of yesterday is the obsolete of today.”
Army Day Speech, Chicago, April 6, 1946

“It is the job of the men of the Armed Forces to see that the enemies of humanity cannot again make war.”
Army Day Speech, Los Angeles, April 6, 1946

“Small nations have as much right as large ones to feel secure.”
Remarks at Dinner of Cleveland Aviation Club, April 11, 1946

“The education of the officer never ends.”
Speech for Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College ROTC, April 21, 1946

“We must do all that we can toward progressive disarmament, for which I think we should all pray very sincerely.”
Remarks at General Commission on Army & Navy Chaplains, Washington, DC, April 24, 1946

“The security establishment of our democracy must always remain representative of our way of life.”
American Newspaper Publishers Association, New York City, April 25, 1946

“All must understand that military rank is a recognition of responsibility and not a ration book of personal privilege.”
American Newspaper Publishers Association, New York City, April 25, 1946

“From the time of Washington, American soldiers fighting and dying for this republic have had their inspiration in its championship of liberty.”
Georgia Bar Convention, Savannah, Georgia, May 24, 1946

“The Army of the United States was truly the people of the United States in action.”
Address to Reserve Officers' Association, Chicago, Illinois, June 2, 1946

“The wartime Army of the United States was a mass expression of America.”
>Address to Reserve Officers' Association, Chicago, Illinois, June 2, 1946

“On our future conduct depends the peace of the world for generations to come.”
Address to Reserve Officers' Association, Chicago, Illinois, June 2, 1946

“Soldiers apply an acid test to their officers that only the true leader can survive.”
>Address to Reserve Officers' Association, Chicago, Illinois, June 2, 1946

“War is not only destructive, it is sterile of positive result.”
Address to Reserve Officers' Association, Chicago, Illinois, June 2, 1946

“Our ideal today is a free, prosperous and cooperative world.”
Address to Army Ordnance Association, Detroit, Michigan, June 3, 1946

“The American tradition is to finish whatever we start, however hard the road.”
Material for NBC Address, June 4, 1946

“The freedom of the individual and his willingness to follow real leadership are at the core of America’s strength.”
Address at Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont, June 9, 1946

“The purpose of the United Nations is peace.”
Address at Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont, June 9, 1946

“Every nation is neighbor to all mankind.”
American Alumni Association, Amherst, Massachusetts, July 11, 1946

“Democracy is essentially a political system that recognizes the equality of humans before the law.”
Address to Constituent Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 8, 1946

“There is no strength equal to the strength of an enduring friendship.”
Address to Constituent Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 8, 1946

“The barriers to neighborliness are fear and prejudice spawned by ignorance.”
Address at Veterans Day, Nebraska State Fair, Lincoln, Nebraska, September 1, 1946

“There is no short cut or easy way to lasting peace.”
Address at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, November 1, 1946
>
“The proudest human that walks the earth is a free American citizen.”
Talk at the Commercial Club of Chicago, May 21, 1948

“To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country.”
Columbia University Inaugural Address, October 12, 1948

“The free individual has been justified as his own master; the state as his servant.”
Commencement Address, Columbia University, June 1, 1949

“There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.”
Commencement Address, Columbia University, June 8, 1949

“Misunderstanding among neighbors is perilous in the atomic age.”
Lecture at Columbia University, March 23, 1950

“Far better to risk a war of possible annihilation than grasp a peace which would be the certain extinction of free man’s ideas and ideals.”
Lecture at Columbia University, March 23, 1950

“The gamble of war lures the desperate, for even overwhelming defeat can hardly worsen their state.”
Lecture at Columbia University, March 23, 1950ont style="font-weight: bold;">

“To prevent the crime of war, all nations and all ideologies can unite without sacrifice of principle.’
Lecture at Columbia University, March 23, 1950

“We reject any insinuation that one race or another, one people or another, is in any sense inferior or expendable.”
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

“We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

“To be true to one’s own freedom is, in essence, to honor and respect the freedom of all others.”
State of the Union Address, February2, 1953

“We must be devoted with all our hearts to the values we defend.”
State of the Union Address, February2, 1953

“As our heart summons our strength, our wisdom must direct it.”
State of the Union Address, February2, 1953

“The seeds of hate and of distrust can be born on winds that heed no frontier or shore.”
Address to the Organization of American States, April 12, 1953

“No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.”
Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

“Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.”
Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

“We live in an age of peril.”
Radio Address to the American People, May 9, 1953

“The plain truth is that security is planned, not blindly bought.”
Radio Address to the American People, May 9, 1953

A speech given in 1953 to the news paper editors of America.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point to the hope that comes with this spring of 1953.

Me again class. Remember, he was a man who was in war and knew it's corrosive effect on the human soul and he was a Republican that advocated peace and understanding as the bravest way forward for any Nation.

Last Comic Standing

Last night I had a dream that everyone fell under a spell. One by one, everyone around me became enchanted by it's power. They didn't act crazy or homicidal or anything like that, they just dressed a like, talked a like about the same things and had no interested in examining themselves or this strange force at work in our lives. Like a soft cancer, it settled into every aspect of life. I stood apart from it, fascinated by it's lure and amazed that I seemed very much in the minority. I woke up with it's name on my lips; mediocrity.
Thats right. I tried out for last comic standing yesterday.
If this were a movie you would see me wake up in tangled sheets gasping for air, sweating proverbial bullets. It would fade to black and the words, the previous day would appear on screen.
So lets do it Hollywood style, shall we.

The Day job

The boss from New York received my long e-mail detailing what I feel needs to happen to the gym for it to be maintained properly and for me to stay. It's not a bad job, but I am up against the power of money. They want to rip it all down in two years and build a bright shinning tower to yuppies. Problem is, they want to keep the club going until that day comes. Until that day, no money is being put into the facility.
We have holes in the roof, rust on machines and a membership that is mostly the age of 60 and up. Most of my day consists of members yelling at me that standards have fallen and why are we running out of items like soap?
I want to scream back, we have no money!
It's true. We sometimes have to wait a week to make sure checks have cleared before we can order the most basic supplies.
Yet, it is a good day time gig. I like having health insurance too.
I am not my day job though. No. Instead, I chose to get my identity from a far more intangible source; stand-up comedy.
I have written this many times. You need exposure to get anywhere in that business. Talent is far from enough.
A call comes from Tom, who books Cobb's comedy club.
"You still want to do this Last Comic Standing thing?"
"Sure. Why not."
"Alright. Be down here at 11:30 and will get you on the line up."
"Thanks Tom."
I have just been given a Golden Willy Wonka ticket to avoid the line that wraps around the block. Where maybe two hundred people wait. Some seem normal enough. Some, not so much. There is a woman dressed as a tree, a short man wearing a Viking helmet with a sword taller than himself by 2 feet. What appears to be a few homeless people who have fallen into the line for no other reason than why not, and a lot of undiagnosed mental illness. You can feel an odd energy in the air. I have reeked of it myself in the past and recognize it immediately. It is desire that is mixed with fear. It is desperation mixed with the idea that this could be it. This is not to say that everyone in line is a nut, I have some friends in that line and some very good comics spent the night sleeping on concrete all for two minuets on a giant stage in front of two producers.
I show up and find a few others who have been summoned. With a few of the other, "Invitational's" we go in the back of the club. We are led past garbage cans and rusted gates by people wearing shinny plastic I.D.'s around their necks and walking briskly.
Cameras are everywhere. People are everywhere. We are led down stairs into the catacombs of Cobb's sprawling basement. Giant lights and thin black veils separate the open areas into smaller boxes of light and humming equipment. We are told to keep quiet as we file in to the first of many interviews conducted by mostly bored interns and P.A.'s. You would think all this energy and orchestration was a place to plan an invasion. In a sense it is. This show will be beamed into living rooms across the nation. It is a network show. That gives it a credibility that the internet and cable still have not reached. But it also means that behind everything, there is a force at work molding all who wish to enter.
I have known people who have made it onto this show. It changed their lives.
Thats why I am willing to walk into it. Thats why all of us are here; to change our lives.
Heres how it works.
The first audition is in-front of the producers. They see everyone. The nuts, the new people and us. When I say "Us", I mean professional working comics. Comics who have paid whatever sort of dues you can think of.
After 15 years, cutting in line is the least they should do for us.
After paper work and interviews that will never be seen by anyone, we are lined up in groups. Thats the day mostly. Waiting in one line and being taken by people wearing earphones to another line. We stand in the kitchen and slowly, ever so slowly make our way to the stage. The two acts right before me are a guy dressed as a penguin and a guy who strapped two giant pasta strainers to both sides of his head and is a fly.
I have worked this club before. I feel like that gives me something of an advantage. I know this stage.
When my time comes, another guy with a plastic I.D. around his neck and a earphone radio tells me to start walking up those tiny black steps to the stage.
It might be a stage I am use to, but this is not the usual situation at all. About 40 feet from the stage at the center of the room sits two women behind a news caster style desk. There is a camera on a giant crane that silently moves about like the menacing tentacle of some alien robot probe. There are several other stationary cameras quietly taking in the view and lights that are so intense they feel more like a weight on my face than light.
Nervous? Thrown?
Yes.
I feel a curios rumble in my bowels. This is something other than nerves though. This is the cilium husks I took last night starting to have an effect on me.
What great timing!
I take the mic out and launch into a collection of my jokes I am most happy with at the moment.
They actually smile at some of the punch-lines.
One of the producers stops me around the two minuet mark.
"You were barreling through your jokes. Slow down and be the Joe KLocek we all know and love tonight."
In other words, I am moving onto to the next set of auditions this afternoon. I am not in the big show yet, but I am a step closer.
It is Paige. She is one of the producers on the show.
Heres some odd history for you.
Years ago at the Punchline, we were on the bill together. I was opening and she middling. I destroyed and the next night they reversed the order.
Awkward.
I am still here though and she is making more money than I have seen in my entire comedy career so far.
More cameras get in my face asking how it feels. More paper work and lines and plastic people doing their job without passion or wondering why.
They are parts in the machine I am so eagerly attempting to join in the most audacious way; by being good.
I have time to call the day job and fill them in. What I thought might be two hours at the most is turning into a all day thing.
My phone battery is dying, I have to constantly shit and I keep looking at my little black book of scribbled jokes asking myself what I should do for the next round.

The next round

A few of us make a run for lunch and get above ground to make calls. I eat a burrito and shit again. What the hell is in those pills?
This round, we line up and get to perform for the celebrity judges. One of the guys on the new show, Chuck and the guy from third rock from the sun.
THEY LAUGH!
I get moved onto the next round. A guy who moves with the efficiency of a SWAT team member takes me to the head of more stairs and tells me I will walk down them, hit my mark and Bill Bellamy will interview me. Like a cow going down a shoot to his final reward, I walk down the stairs and when I walk past yet another black fabric barrier, I am blinded by an industrial strength light; Bill's teeth.
He is tall. I don't remember anything other than that. I stand next to him like a prop for less than a minuet answering questions about how I feel. Then, it's out another set of doors where another bored looking person whose job consists of sitting on a stool in the dark and pointing to where the comics who made it, shows me where to exit.
Somewhere on a stair well leading to the surface where no one else is, I let myself smile that genuine smile of accomplishment.
Now I let myself start to dream.
I am on the show tonight along with 16 other acts. I am going to be seen on network TV. If I can get past this night, I am on!
You can't help it. No matter how many times I have told other comics to take it set by set and let it go, I am picturing myself in a sunny L.A. office with a manger asking me what I want to do?
Now comes the business part of this. For those who are performing tonight, we have to fill out a half inch thick packet of paper work. Contract. credit check and background check.
WTF?
I want to tell jokes, not join the C.I.A. or rent an apartment.
It takes 30 minuets to fill out and most of the questions I can only answer with a Not Available.
Then, its back to the car with yet another ticket waiting for me.
San Francisco gives them out like Valentines day cards. I drive back to the day job, where nothing has blown up and what little paper work that sits on my desk can wait till monday when I come back in and pee all over desks and say, I quit fuckers!
I turn right around and head back to the basement where we have been told to be at 6:45 for the 8:00 show.
There we are. I know most of the people on the show. There are also a bunch of people from other cities who apparently already did their first round elsewhere and are doing the show here. Seattle is well represented. A guy from Minneapolis who keeps saying he is surprised that he is not nervous and two hot girls who don't talk to anyone but themselves are also there.
I sit at a table with Larry "Bubbles" Brown, Candy Churrila, Mike E. Winfield, Jason Downs, Drenon Davis, Tony dijamco and the Meehan brothers.
We do what comics do in this situation, alleviate the tension by rifing tasteless jokes with each other.
I think Candy won this unofficial round telling Larry, that his snack of corn nuts smelled like a retards feet.
Ah karma.

The Show

At 7:30, we are still asking each other questions. Can we do the same stuff? How much time are we getting? How do they judge us? Do we get a check if were in AFTRA? What does this all mean, really?
At a quarter to eight, the director and producers come down stairs and fill us in. Paige, gives us the low down. "Congratulations on getting this far. You are the best of the best. There is no set number of people who will be picked. If you hear your name called, you walk down the center to the judges table where you will be handed a red envelope. This is important, don't open it because there is nothing inside."
A handful of us laugh and riff some variation on, just like Hollywood, or just like our dreams, or of course.
I ask about doing the same jokes.
"Do what you feel represents you the best."
The second guessing begins in earnest now.
What represents me the best? Shit! After 15 years you would think I would have this down.
Now comes the pacing, the looking at notes and the last line we will be herded into tonight. Oh, I am 15th in a line up of 16 acts. It dosent bother me. I know I can hold my own in a late slot. I am just not so great with the 3 minuet thing. Ask any girlfriend I ever had. I just don't like quickies. I have been spoiled by all my ample San Francisco stage time and the short forum is not what I do best.
The line winds through the kitchen once again. Slowly, ever so slowly I go from behind a wall, to sitting on a giant stainless steel table to against a wall. Oh, and I run to the bathroom a lot.
A lot.
The "bathroom" that is nearest to us is barely a bathroom. It has a toilet in it, but it also has a mop bucket, drain and a thin coating of every pathogen known to man.
This is the glamorous side no one ever thinks about.
Hand written signs with exaggerated exclamation marks warn you not to flush paper towels in english and spanish. Ever see Trainspotting? The scene where he goes into the dirtiest toilet in all of Scotland? It's like that.
In a situation like this, you look for signs. Everyone is grasping for some positive cue from the universe. When I made it to a cafe before the 6:45 call time, the number I was handed for my order was 1.
Nice.
In the bathroom there is a soap dispenser with the brand name, gojo on it.
Indeed!
I continue to debate with myself right up to the end about what to do. I am also grateful that Mike Meehan is standing behind me with his brothers. Mike has always been a calming influence. He is a zen rock garden in an otherwise chaotic garden of weeds.
Eventually, I move from standing against the wall in the kitchen to standing directly behind the stage on a X made with white tape on the floor.
I am next!
You can hear the roar of the crowd. They are hot! The place is amped in the way that only TV cameras artificially create.
Bill Belamay says my name and it's up the stairs and out into the light and noise of a crowd on fire.
I put my hands above my head and they respond with the typical extra howl of energy. There is no time for give it up to the host, or how are you, or keep it going for the other acts-it is time to kick the doors in and be the Joe Klocek we all know and love.
So thats what I do.
Laughter and applause breaks are my reward. When I say good night and walk off, I have that feeling that is so rare but is the high you chase as a comic. I know it was a perfect set. I can count on my hands when I have had this feeling. I can count on one hand when that has been rewarded however.
These are rare moments; when you can live up to your own expectations. It's all you can ask for. Its a great feeling to have. It tells me I can do this and it tells me if they don't pick me its not because I wasn't funny.
Now comes the hard part, waiting.

The End?

It is almost 11:00PM. It has been a 12 hour roller coaster ride. Kevin Avery, the friend and comic we just roasted last weekend has been given the impossible situation of going up at the end and doing time as we are positioned in two neat rows behind him. Its pandemonium. P.A.'s are swirling around the stage micro managing us, cameras are moving and the audience is growing impossibly wrestles. Kevin, in a impossible situation, does great though. After all, he is a pro.
Now, Bill comes back and explains to the crowd what has already been drilled into our heads back stage already. Then, it begins. A name is called and the crowd responds with a burst of applause. Then, Bill goes silent. He is being told the names on an ear piece at a pace meant to produce theatrical tension that the cameras eat up like rabid wolves. You can feel their lenses lapping up all the smiles and expressions of let down.
It goes like this, "The next comic......to move on, is..................INSERT NAME HERE."
One by one, people are called and go down to the judges table to get their empty red envelopes and bask in the energy of a crowd that looks bored by now. When I look at the audience, I am struck by the unusual number of hot women seated at the tables. I look at a blond in the front row who seems to be flawless. She gives me that little cheerleader wave of the hand and a smile I will be thinking about till the day I die.
Afterwards we find out that a craigslist add was placed for attractive women to attend the show.
Even the audience has been casted!
Then, Bills says the words that send a chill down the spine of everyone left on stage, "There is one ticket left!"
It has to be me. Right?
This whole part of the show is dragged out for about 15 minuets. For 15 minuets my heart feels like a trapped bird and my chest is the cage it is trying to escape from. My mouth is dry and I laugh for no other reason than what else can you do? I am hot, tired and after 12 hours of hurry up and wait and more than anything else in the world, I want this. God, I want this!
For a guy who is so comfortable knocking the establishment constantly, I am always surprised by how much I want that little pat on the head this would mean.
I lick my chapped lips for the thousandth time in a row and shift weight from one foot to the other taking a deep breath.
This is what is going through my head. OK, If I don't get called, It means nothing. I can go back to my life and work at just being happy inside my own skin. Maybe if I had done more of that work there would be that extra spark in my eyes and my name would of already been called. Don't think that Joe! But I will be OK. I will not fall into depression and fuck my life up with the lie that is in the bottom of a bottle or the darkness I can pull around myself like a familiar blanket. I will still be a respected comic in this town. This will be alright. So what. Then again. It could be me. I could be called and move on and that means more face time on that box that sits in every home in America. That means I will have won a lottery like no other. It means people will have to learn how to say my name. It means, it means....
"The last comic......to move on.........is.........."
Not me.
The girl standing next to me whispers, "Now what?"
"We get the fucked off this stage." I say.
I am crushed. Devastated. Ruined.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
We file back into the kitchen. The winers and losers are kept separated. We are not allowed to go downstairs and get our stuff. The cameras are down there now on the shining faces of the winners.
When I ask why we have to wait a P.A. tells me the judges want to come and shake our hands.
I say, "I think it's to give the winners time to go through our stuff."
Tony, my good friend and former roommate looks at me and says, "No regrets."
"Well, one big regret!"
A guy standing next to him laughs.
Tom, the booker and former owner of Cobb's surprises me. He walks right up to me and without a word simply hugs me and says "sorry Buddy."
This is the moment I find I have to keep the tears back. I blink and then Tom, true to form goes into a rant. "I can't believe they are rewarding bad comedy, hack shit and old jokes! I am going to talk to Paige!"
I didn't see anyone else set. I can't say I agree or disagree with him. But here is a curious fact I am sure is sinking like a stake into everyones head back stage; they did pick all the young and pretty people with flawless skin and unnaturally white teeth.
It was casting. Not who was funny.
The only redeeming thing was they did take the Meehan Brothers.
Even they were surprised.
I stood on stage and watched the two judges explode with laughter consistently during my set. I walked off that stage knowing I had the crowd with me from word one. I know that talent, ability and skill will always be trumped by youth & beauty. Hell, I have allowed it to happen in my own life on more than one occasion. Why are we all so willing to give beautiful people attributes they may lack? Because their pretty? Or because they were more funny than I was?
We all just stand there for a few minuets looking at our feet with the knowledge that we are the left overs, the bargain bin of CD's, the pants with one leg shorter than the other.
We are the island of misfit toys. We work. We are funny. But we are what we are and show Biz is what it is too.
But fuck!
So close again. So close to getting in-front of a larger audience where I could take it to the people and end up with a million fans hitting my site in a single night to see the uncensored and undeniably funny that I can create.
This business is so unfunny most of the time.
I excuse myself after shaking hands with the celebrity judges and do what I have been waiting to do all day.
Take a shit.
Then I cry a bit and tell myself not to let it sink into my bones and break me.
I turn to the paper dispenser and take the last 8 square inch of toilet paper.
Of course this is how the night ends. Me in the basement of Cobb's wiping tears on my sleeve and wondering how to exit this situation with grace.
Fuck!

F'ing Parking!

Driving in the city has to be one of the 9 circles of hell. First of all, I drive a stick. To those of you who don’t understand what this means, it means don’t pull right up on my ass when were on a hill!

I swear. Sometimes I think about putting a bumper sticker on the back of my car that simply says, bad with stick-stay off my ass. But I fear this might be greatly misinterpreted in some parts of town. I could start a parade by accident.

We all know the special hell that is returning late at night to your place only to spend the next half hour searching for a parking space. You become Goldie Locks.
That space is too small, that space is street cleaning tomorrow, that space would be just right if that dick weed who parked in front of me would of pulled up a few more inches!

That’s the thing. After you have driven in the city for a while, you look at every possible space, even if you’re walking, and ask yourself, “Could my car fit there?”
The entire city turns into one life size game of Tetris. You can’t turn it off. I will be in a conversation with someone and see a car pull out of a space. All I can think of how much I was turning the corner in my car at this moment. Have you ever just said fuck it? You know the ticket will cost you $20.00, but so would a night in the garage.
I will pay ridiculous amounts of money to park in a garage run by greasy men in stained blue overalls. This is why the homeless don’t get the money they use to. Everyone keeps it for meters or garages. I bet if we lowered the price of parking garages in the city, we could set aside at least one level in each one for a homeless shelter. The homeless get a place with a roof and we get inexpensive parking.

I never remember where I parked in garages anyway. I know I should write it down, but its like Easter when I was a kid. Where did I park that damn car? I think I have a better system than numbers and letters. A system that takes advantage of San Francisco’s uniqueness.
Divide up the different levels and sections by smells.
“Where did we park?”
“Level pot smoke, section over powering stench of urine.”
“That’s right.”
Tell me that wouldn’t work!

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.