Where I am now

Audiences either have no idea who they are coming to see or they are all about the Headliner. If they are coming for the headliner it is obviously because they dig what that person is doing. The crowd that shows up is a reflection of the headliners comic sensibilities. You wouldn't expect a crowd that enjoys Sarah Silverman to show up for Carrot Top. Its apples and oranges.
Lately I have been an Apple for audiences that have come to see Oranges.
Another way of saying it, I have been drowning in a sea of Vanilla expectations.

I have had an embarrassment of riches in Bookings lately. Last month, I had back to back weeks in the city. Cobb's then the Punch Line and now Rooster T. Feathers.
Don't think I am not grateful for those gigs. Its just that I am not a Jay Leno Comic and lately those are the headliners I have been placed with. The problem? Those crowds aren't showing up to hear a guy with long hair pierce their safe suburban outlook on the world. They are not coming to hear social political commentary with Punch Lines. They are coming to hear about the differences between men and women. They are coming to hear wacky stories about married life and impressions of actors doing equally wacky stuff. So, it has felt a little bit like an uphill battle at times. Last night, after a particularly good joke fell flat on the second show, I told the crowd to visit my web site where they could watch that very same joke destroy. Then I told the crowd I wanted to see other audiences and I thought they might like to see other comics. Thats right, were breaking up, crowd!
I am starting wonder if there really is a place for me in the stand-up family tree. It seems there are two main branches. One branch is the heard it all before from other straight white males about the trials and tribulations of married life and every day observations that start with the Senifield type question, have you ever noticed?
Even though the crowd has heard all of this before from any number of other comics, they seem to have not noticed.
The other branch is dominated by the hipsters who all seem to deliver everything in a monotone I don't give a fuck manner. Its not so much about making the audience laugh as much as it is about saying outrageous things that are just this side of ironic but could easily be racist, homophobic or just plain mean.
If I had to pick, I would definitely be closer to this branch.
But I feel out of place with either group. Yes, I have noticed that men do things differently from women. We all have. It's not the 80's anymore. I get it. Lets move on comics. Please?
But pointing out with stereotypes that black guys do things differently than white guys has also been played out. An example of hipster comedy in this case might be that the difference between a black guy and a white guy is that a white guy has a job. Now, on its own that can be a bigoted statement. But when delivered in that flat monotone delivery that screams, Get it? It's ironic! It becomes a "joke."
When a comic does this its not because they believe them. It is to provoke a shock reaction. Yeah. We get it. Under the guise of irony a lot of shitty things get said that are neither funny or ironic. But that delivery. That droll L.A., stand perfectly still at the Mic in a T-shit with some 70's band on it or irreverent saying, has become almost as hack as the white guy in a suit exclaiming with mock indifference that he doesn't get his wife.
I am not saying that I am so original that there isn't a group for me. I am not saying that I am a genius either. But where are the Lenny Bruces, the Bill Hicks, the Richard Pryors and George Carlins? Is there only room for Louis Black and Chris Rock? Why is it such a fight with the crowd? In times that demand a messenger we are flooded with Vanilla. Sure, we have the Daily Show with Jon Steward but live on stage, where are the comics talking with sincerity about the history we are all living in? We are a country at war and drowning in debt. I understand that people want comfort in the known like guys and girls are different, but come on crowds! You have heard all of this before from any number of comics over the years. The other turn is right into the arms of dark ironic comedy where one joke is not connected to another joke. There is no theme or message or anything like depth let alone a coherent act. It is just a litany of jokes designed to provoke a response and if thats laughter, cool. If not laughter, then fuck you!

I have always believed that the best comedy comes from an outsiders perspective. The adopted black girl raised in white suburbs. The Jewish kid teased for being Jewish growing up. The guy whose view of the world is slightly contrary to the accepted norms. The person who doesn't belong or the woman who is fighting for her place in a mans world. The kid who was picked on in school and now has the Mic. Comedy today, like Cable news, has become a refuge for people who only want to hear their own truths reinforced. You want your news with a heavy right twist, you turn on Fox. People want safety in their news and entertainment. They shy away from anything that contradicts their point of view or sensibilities. They don't want to be challenged or reminded of what ever it is they don't want to be reminded of. I understand that. People come out to comedy to laugh. Not to have their views explored. But can't we do both? Can't we stick a finger in the eye of the sacred and have dick jokes in a single act? I think we can. I think there are a lot of comics who get talked out of this for purely commercial reasons. I have witnessed it. I have seen talented comics let go of jokes that fail more often than work so they too could join the ranks of the bland earning good money.
Vanilla.
It can come in the purely bland been done before flavor and it can come in a darker irony laced flavor too. Either way, it is just as vanilla to claim a racist joke as ironic just as a joke about women's approach to relationships being different than a mans approach is also vanilla! Don't kid yourself hipsters, a joke about shit is still just a joke about shit. It is the equivalent of a drinking too much joke from Dane Cook. Each camp has its hack premises. Yet, its just comedy in the end. Right? Its just making people laugh. But man, it feels like a more difficult job lately. Maybe it is the times? Maybe I should be grateful for the Bookings and take the laughs in whatever form they come to me on stage. I just think we are seeing something happening in society. Something that we are only starting to feel at its edges. There is change and where you find that there is also fear. Stand-up comedy, when done as an art and not just as musack in the back ground to sell drinks, can give clues to where we are going. That sounds grandiose. I will admit that. But the best comedy has always been from canaries in coal mines. We are at the edges of social change and pop culture. We can be the reporters bringing back stories from the fringes. We can be the first ones to say something is not right and the first ones to call bullshit. The best comedy has always been rooted in something deeper than what goes on bellow all our belts. After all, when people laugh they are acknowledging a truth. Those are the best punch lines; the truth.

Perhaps I am so reflective because Roosters has inadvertently become a place where I judge myself against the man I was the last time I was here. The hotel and club have become places where parts of my life come to an end and also open onto new chapters. Weird how that happens. I have stayed in this hotel drunk, sober, in love, destroyed by love, the last bay area performance before moving to L.A. and the first bay area club to headline me. Each time I am here it makes me look at where I am. This time around I am here less than a month before I turn 40.
40 is just a number, I am repeatedly being told. Nope. Its not just a number. It is four decades of life on this planet. It is a very adult age. It is a marker on the way to being something I never considered would happen to me; becoming older. And maybe that is some of the problem I have been having on stage inside my head. I am no longer the "kid" in this biz saying outrageous truths to a crowd delighted to see a precocious comic break down what he thinks are the ways of the world. These days I am a man sounding like a kid upset at the world he is getting. I don't know. I only know that I don't want to be vanilla or Ironic vanilla. I also want a bigger career in this business that drives me crazy. I know that from where I am in my life right now, thats not going to happen. Not just because I am a non-entity in L.A. but mostly because of my internal architecture. There are things I need to let go of just as there is much I need to take in. My filter is broken. I am still a kid in the sense that wrong is still so seductive to me. Being told to not press a button only insures I will press that button. All the turns I have taken I have mostly taken so I could say, I didn't take the same easy path as everyone else. Where has that gotten me? Back at Roosters almost 40 and seeing posters in the window for coming acts I think are so far beneath me that it stings my ego. But they went to L.A. and stuck it out. They did the work I refuse to do only because it is hard. I can no longer tell people that my excuse for not pursuing a larger career is that I consider myself an artist. It has always been a cover for my fear. Now, at 40 I cannot give myself the luxury of believing my own bullshit. Who can these days? Change is constant but I have this feeling at the edge of my senses that what is about to happen in society will be as beautiful as it is catastrophic. I want a front row seat at that. I want to be the comic that comes back from the edges of these times and tells the truth with punch lines.
By the way, the last show of the week at Roosters was canceled on Sunday. About ten people showed up. Six of whom were one table directly up front. The average age of this group was about 70. Rarely do I feel good when a show gets canceled but in this case I was grateful.
Oh well. On to the next club and the next and then the next one. Its a ride I know well but I am starting to think its a ride that only goes in circles. I don't want off the ride, I just want to be headed somewhere grander than where I am now.

Things seen and pondered today.

1. A Porn site that markets itself as having, "The most original interracial videos."
Original? Do they go beyond the tired format of blacks on blonds? Do they have a guy with a 12 inch penis who is one quarter black, one quarter Indian, one quarter Irish and one quarter Danish fucking a girl who is part English and part Saudi Arabian?
Actually, they do. My bad.

2. Over the front counter at the cash registers of a Jack-in-the-Box was a Halloween decoration. It was a mobile made of card board shapes. Skulls and grave stones with the letters, R.I.P.
Do you really want the letters R.I.P. hanging over the heads of your customers as they order your product?
It didn't stop me so I guess it doesn't matter after all.

3. A flier distributed in a republican mailer that has Obama's photo at the center of a food stamp surrounded by a slice of water Mellon, a bucket of KFC chicken, ribs and Kool-aid. Oh, Obama's face is superimposed onto the body of a cartoon donkey too. When asked about the racist imagery the woman who made it and sent it out said she was "Surprised it was taken that way because it was just food to her."
Yeah. It was just food the same way that crosses are just burning and those sheets are only white. It's just food. Give me a fucking break.

4. A mother and a her young son sitting out front of a Starbucks having a conversation about God. It went something like this.
"Where is God?"
"All around us."
"What does he do?"
"Answer our questions about everything."
"Oh."
Hey Kid! Thats not God your mother is describing, thats Google. God sees our prayers as status updates on Facebook too. Have a nice day!

Apples and Crumbs

My night ended with a drive by.

As I was getting out of my car I heard a loud thump against the door. Two cars were passing me. I felt a quick sharp sting above my knee. Before I could start to freak I saw the apple core that someone had thrown at me from one of the passing cars.
Nice.
It was the perfect end to a strange night.

I got asked to fill in for one of San Francisco’s best-known political comics, Will Durst. The gig was in Santa Rosa, promised little pay and it was on the same night as the last Presidential debate. Of course I said yes. I drove up with another comic, W. Kamau Bell and listened to the debate on the radio. Who ever you are Joe the plumber, you ruined a lot of drinking games across America when you became the most used expression of the night. A lot of Joe six-packs' must of been pissed.

Some where in the debate a joke occurred to me.
John McCain has already lost. The only reason why he doesn’t know? It was E-mailed to him.
We kind of do need a guy comfortable with 21^st century communication technology. Not a guy who has never used a computer and is proud of it.

The show was being held in a high school theater. If this high school theater was any indication then our schools truly are in need of money. Its not that it was run down or looked like a room in the mansion from Great Expectations, it was the technical issues.
Our host, Nato Green was a few jokes into his set when the spot light just shut off. They got it back on only to have go out again. To Nato’s credit, he rolled with it. The most unintentionally funny thing occurred because of it though. Just as Nato was hitting a punch line, the spotlight randomly came back on. Here’s the thing; the punch line was “Jews.” Just as he said it the spotlight switched on and for a second it looked like something from a WW2 movie. Like the SS just kicked in the door, someone pointed at Nato bathed in a searchlight and yelled, “Jews!”

Did I also mention Tommy Smothers was in the audience?

Apparently he lives in the Napa valley and decided to take a few of his friends to this political show he was told about.
Its one thing to do a poorly lit sparsely attended show in front of a few people, but to find out right before the show started that Tommy Smothers was there added an extra layer of surreal to the evening. This is a guy who got kicked off CBS in the late 60’s with his brother for doing jokes and sketches critical of the Vietnam War. What comedic social political insights do we have to offer this dude?

I followed a comedian whose closing joke is to do an impression of a squirrel eating a cracker in the park. It is very very funny. The problem is if you’re the next comic you get to stand in the crumbs left on stage.
So imagine this folks. I am in a school theater that looks every bit like the under funded public building it is. The house lights are on completely destroying the vibe of a “show.” Tommy Smothers is sitting in the front row looking at me and now I am standing in a pile of crumbs.

The universe doesn’t mess around when it wants to humble you.

The first thing I said was, “Can you guys hear me alright?” I asked because it was hard to hear the other comics.
Tommy Smothers said, “Turn it up.” I smiled at this and just thought he meant, turn up your attitude and bring it! Nope. He meant the volume on the little speaker set at the edge of the stage. I know this is what he meant because a second later he said, “It’s the volume knob.”
Nato rushed over to turn it up as I replied, “I’m being technically heckled.”
Sweet!
Not only do I have a drab theater with no spot light, 12 people in the crowd and a pile of crumbs at my feet, I am now being heckled by Tommy Smothers!
If someone would just throw some discarded fruit at me late at night after I finally get home that would be perfect!

He said it with a smile on his face and after the awkwardness dissipated I followed the example of the other comics on the show and just got to it.
You know what? They were a pretty nice little crowd and afterwards Tommy Smothers wanted to get high with me.
He was about 10 years too late though.
He complimented all of us, shook are hands and told us how cool he thought it was that we were doing this kind of comedy.
That’s pretty cool.
Oh, then it took us another 20 minuets to find our way to the highway due to detour signs leading to no where and on ramps closed for construction.
Then I got hit with an apple core.

Comedy. It is a glamorous life style indeed!

The government privatizes profit and socializes loss.

Here is a sentence ever American should become acquainted with: The government privatizes profit and socializes loss.
What does it mean? Well, consider this. The two arguments against a national health care system from the right are always, it will cost way too much and giving everyone health care is socialism.
Get it? We can’t have health care because here in America we apply the rules of capitalism to dying cancer patients.
Do you know what the 850 Billion dollar bail out of Wall Street is?
Socialism.

We are giving them money for failure while we cannot provide health care to sick people without a company making a profit. But if that company really fucks up and they are really big, they might be lucky enough to receive a check to cover their loss thanks to the American taxpayer.
That is socialism.
We do it for companies but not for people.

Right now we have a government whose interests are aligned with big business. Hey, go look up that description. You know what that definition of our current situation is?
Fascism.
When the government and business merge as almost one single entity you have fascism.
But when those companies go belly up they get the world largest welfare check from us.
America, you are being fucked every way they can think of fucking you and the problem has gotten so big that it now has the chance to bring down the entire global economy.

25 Billion dollars went to the big three automakers too. You didn’t hear about that did you? It looks like a small number when you put it alongside the 850 Billion dollar Wall Street bail out. By the way, that’s how much the bail out was, 850 Billion and counting. Whenever I hear about it on the news, they keep saying 700 Billion.
It keeps going up too. Yesterday they gave AIG; an insurance firm that backed all the ridiculous mortgages another 37 Billion!
Why did Detroit need a bail out? Because they fought change and even though the writing has been on the wall for more than ten years, Detroit insisted on keeping fuel mileage poor and not investing in future technologies. While the rest of the world correctly realized that they needed to start finding new ways of making autos, Detroit happily churned out SUV’s that you can now buy six to eight thousand dollars cheaper than they were last year.
Once again the government has given a check for shortsightedness and failure while most people struggle to repay student loans, make house payments and buy food.
Why?
The government privatizes profit and socializes loss.
You get it? When the big companies make money, they get to keep it. When they fail spectacularly they get more of our money.
It’s a great system!

Oroville Casino Gig

A gig is a gig is a gig. Right? Most of the time they are. Last night I performed at the Gold Country Casino in Oroville, CA. With a casino gig you know that the check will be good but the concern is always how the stage is set up. You know how casinos have those bars by a stage set up for a band? Its great for a band but since the “room” is open to the casino there is a wall of noise like thunder that you have no choice but to yell over. Any joke with subtlety anything that requires the crowd to pay attention is lost to the sound of slot machines, bells and the occasional buzzer sound. In other words, it is a shitty place to do comedy.

I don’t get it. I really don’t. If you are going to go to all the trouble of Booking comics and putting on a show then be smart enough to understand that stand-up and bands have very different requirements for a successful show. Screaming into a mic as I try to get the attention of a room filled with disinterested red necks is not my idea of where I want my career to go. It looked like a NASCAR convention. Every guy had a ball cap on and a sweat stained t-shirt. The casino itself looked like a retirement home. They know who their clientele is. The room I had was beautiful. A huge bathtub built for two and a shower with no door and a ledge to sit on. You know how draining a shower can be. It’s nice to have the option of sitting down. Handrails were all over the bathroom too. You will never feel more lonely than masturbating in a tub big enough for two.

When I asked the DJ whats the big news in town or what the big thing going on lately was he thought about it for a second and then replied, “We have a big problem with meth.”
Yeah. I am goanna pass on that local reference.
The only other thing I was told about the town was that the lake was low. In fact, the girl at the Burger King counter told me this as if it was her fault. Sorry to bring it up.

These little towns in the central valley are like time capsules. I saw a shakey’s pizza place. I haven’t seen one of those in ten or twelve years. I never ate at one. I don’t like to eat at a place named after a symptom.

When I show up at the gig the MC/DJ dude sits me down and tells me the best way for me to succeed at this gig is to “…ignore the audience.”
What?
I am consistently amazed that the guys in charge of these rooms are surprised that they have more bad shows than good.
“If the crowd yells something stupid out. Ignore it and please don’t say fuck you to them.”
Do you know what the signs are for a consistently poorly run show? Telling a comic you just met that the crowds here are prone to drunk yelling and more than a few comics have just said, fuck it and walked off the stage early.
They have done stand-up shows here for two and a half years.

He introduces me as being from San Francisco. When he says it though he says San Francisco with a noticeable lisp.
Excellent.
You should always create a stereotypical hole for the comic to climb out of the second he hits the stage.
I end up doing OK for what it was. People would just file in or come and go as they pleased. At one point I was telling the crowd to check out my site and that I needed to wrap up. The MC/DJ walks up to the stage and motions for me to bend over to him with his hand.
“Dude. You have to do another 12 minuets.”
No shit rhythm killer. I doubt you have seen many pros on a gig like this but walking up to the stage in the middle of a joke is a stupid unprofessional move.

Sorry. But everything about this gig was bad.
From the moron girl who couldn’t use the computer to check me in because she just got her nails done with little pumpkins on them to the MC/DJ’s girlfriend reminding me that she was indeed his girlfriend when I asked her what her name was again. Thanks but no thanks. I was asking to be polite not so I could fuck you. Honestly darling, do you really think I want to hook up in Oroville?
And that’s pretty much how the gig went. I drove three hours, hung out in a beautiful hotel room alone-it’s bathtub for two mocking me-and then shouted jokes over the din of people playing slots to a mostly indifferent audience of rednecks in baseball caps, got back in my car and drove three hours home. It still beats working for a living but these are not the gigs I want to have anything to do with anymore.

Where it went astray

I am a junkie. Of news and ideas. I am taking the unprecedented step of reposting someones elses article. He does a great job of connecting the dots from 9/11 to our current financial crisis.
Enjoy=)
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, October 5, 2008; Page B03

It's widely thought that the biggest gamble President Bush ever took was deciding to invade Iraq in 2003. It wasn't. His riskiest move was actually one made right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when he chose not to mobilize the country or summon his fellow citizens to any wartime economic sacrifice. Bush tried to remake the world on the cheap, and as the bill grew larger, he still refused to ask Americans to pay up. During this past week, that gamble collapsed, leaving the rest of us to sort through the wreckage.

To understand this link between today's financial crisis and Bush's wider national security decisions, we need to go back to 9/11 itself. From the very outset, the president described the "war on terror" as a vast undertaking of paramount importance. But he simultaneously urged Americans to carry on as if there were no war. "Get down to Disney World in Florida," he urged just over two weeks after 9/11. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." Bush certainly wanted citizens to support his war -- he just wasn't going to require them actually to do anything. The support he sought was not active but passive. It entailed not popular engagement but popular deference. Bush simply wanted citizens (and Congress) to go along without asking too many questions.

So his administration's policies reflected an oddly business-as-usual approach. Senior officials routinely described the war as global in scope and likely to last decades, but the administration made no effort to expand the armed forces. It sought no additional revenue to cover the costs of waging a protracted conflict. It left the nation's economic priorities unchanged. Instead of sacrifices, it offered tax cuts. So as the American soldier fought, the American consumer binged, encouraged by American banks offering easy credit.
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From September 2001 until September 2008, this approach allowed Bush to enjoy nearly unfettered freedom of action. To fund the war on terror, Congress gave the administration all the money it wanted. Huge bipartisan majorities appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars, producing massive federal deficits and pushing the national debt from roughly $6 trillion in 2001 to just shy of $10 trillion today. Even many liberal Democrats who decried the war routinely voted to approve this spending, as did conservative Republicans who still trumpeted their principled commitment to fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets.

Bush seems to have calculated -- cynically but correctly -- that prolonging the credit-fueled consumer binge could help keep complaints about his performance as commander in chief from becoming more than a nuisance. Members of Congress calculated -- again correctly -- that their constituents were looking to Capitol Hill for largesse, not lessons in austerity. In this sense, recklessness on Main Street, on Wall Street and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue proved mutually reinforcing.

For both the Bush administration and Congress, this gambit has turned out to be clever rather than smart. The ongoing crisis on Wall Street has now, in effect, ended the Bush presidency. Meanwhile, a month before elections, panic-stricken members of Congress are desperately trying to insulate Main Street from the effects of that crisis -- or at least to pass the blame onto someone else.

But in less obvious ways, the economic crisis also renders a definitive verdict on the country's post-9/11 national security strategy. The "go to Disney World" approach to waging war has produced large, unanticipated consequences. When the American people, as instructed, turned their attention back to enjoying life, their hankering for prosperity without pain deprived the administration of the wherewithal needed over the long haul to achieve some truly ambitious ends.

Even today, the scope of those ambitions is not widely understood, in part due to the administration's own obfuscations. After September 2001, senior officials described U.S. objectives as merely defensive, designed to prevent further terrorist attacks. Or they wrapped America's purposes in the gauze of ideology, saying that our aim was to spread freedom and eliminate tyranny. But in reality, the Bush strategy conceived after 9/11 was expansionist, shaped above all by geopolitical considerations. The central purpose was to secure U.S. preeminence across the strategically critical and unstable greater Middle East. Securing preeminence didn't necessarily imply conquering and occupying this vast region, but it did require changing it -- comprehensively and irrevocably. This was not some fantasy nursed by neoconservatives at the Weekly Standard or the American Enterprise Institute. Rather, it was the central pillar of the misnamed enterprise that we persist in calling the "global war on terror."

At a Pentagon press conference on Sept. 18, 2001, then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld let the cat out of the bag: "We have a choice, either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live, and we chose the latter." This was not some slip of the tongue. The United States was now out to change the way "they" -- i.e., hundreds of millions of Muslims living in the Middle East -- live. Senior officials did not shrink from -- perhaps even relished -- the magnitude of the challenges that lay ahead. The idea, wrote chief Pentagon strategist Douglas J. Feith in a May 2004 memo, was to "transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally."

But if the administration's goals were grandiose, its means were modest. The administration's governing assumption was that the U.S. military, as constituted in late 2001, ought to suffice to transform the Middle East. Bush could afford to tell the American people to go on holiday and head back to the mall because the indomitable American soldier could be counted on to liberate (and thereby pacify) the Muslim world.

For a while, that seemed to work: The Taliban fell quickly, with little need for the U.S. taxpayer to shell out for a larger military. But the Bush team turned quickly to Iraq, hoping to demonstrate on an even grander scale what the determined exercise of U.S. power could achieve. This proved a fatal miscalculation. After five and a half years of arduous effort, Iraq continues to drain U.S. resources on a colossal scale. Violence is down, but expenditures are not. An end to the U.S. commitment is nowhere in sight.

The achievements of Gen. David H. Petraeus notwithstanding, the primary lesson of the Iraq war remains this one: To imagine that the United States can easily and cheaply invade, occupy and redeem any country in the Muslim world is sheer folly. That holds true in Afghanistan, too, where the reinforcements that Gen. David D. McKiernan, the recently appointed U.S. commander, says he needs to turn things around will be unavailable until at least next spring.

Yet there is an economic lesson here too. "We have more will than wallet," the president's father said in 1989 during his own inaugural address. That is again painfully true today. The 2008 election finds the Pentagon cupboard bare, the U.S. Treasury depleted, the economy in disarray and the average American household feeling acute distress. Profligacy at home and profligacy abroad have combined to produce a grave crisis. This time around, telling Americans to head for Disney World won't work. The credit card's already maxed out, and the banks are refusing to pony up for new loans.

It's not surprising that people don't cotton to the idea of spending $700 billion to bail out Wall Street. Nor should they find it acceptable to spend as much as that, or more, to perpetuate a misguided and never-ending global war. But like it or not, the bill collector is pounding on the door. Bush's parting gift to the nation will be to let others figure out how to settle accounts.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."

YOU MUST WATCH THESE SARAH PALIN CHURCH VIDEOS

The Sarah Palin Chronicles. Part 2: Joe Six-pack.

The Myth of Joe Six-Pack.
Enough!
I am tired of hearing the expression used by politicians to show us they understand our problems out here in reality. At its best its just condescending. At its worse its a cynical political ploy to manipulate the hard working typical American to vote for something that is usually against "Joe six-pack's" best interest.
Does anyone think that John McCain is hanging out with "Joe Six-Pack" in any of his nine houses? Give me a break! McCain is hanging out with "John Champagne toast at brunch on the veranda over the Billion dollar bail out." If McCain and the wicked witch from the north get into the White House it will be "Joe four-pack" because no one will be able to afford a six-pack anymore.

When ever a politician uses the phrase, "Joe six-pack" what are they telling us? I'll tell you what there telling us. They want the government to function on a level that someone who comes home everyday and downs a six-pack of beer in front of the TV would understand? Is that really such a good idea? Shouldn't our leaders inspire us to be more? Shouldn't our leaders not talk down to us but attempt to reach for something more than the lowest common denominator?
Sarah Palin is folksy, don't cha know, but I don't want someone a heart beat away from the most powerful office in the world using the same judgement as a guy who drinks a six pack every night.
Do you?
We need leaders to start saying things we need to hear. Not pander to base instincts in troubled times. You want an example? 9/11 didn't "Change the world forever" as you have heard a million times before. We should have a leader who can calmly say to the American people, 9/11 didn't change the world. It just made us a part of it.
Instead, it has been used as an excuse to do everything and anything accept get a permanent monument at ground zero.
I really don't get why that hasn't been done yet. You know why a bare hole like an open wound is still there? Because if there was a building or a monument where the towers fell then it couldn't be used as a back drop anymore to scare the shit out of "Joe six-pack."
Its a shitty truth but its a truth.

In the conservative world Intelligence is equated with being a snob or being elite while gut decisions and no curiosity are seen as a virtue. Ironically, they probably came up with this debate tactic in a think tank staffed with people who graduated from ivy league colleges. It is yet another irony among the stunning universe of ironies that the modern conservative ideology is full of. How the hell they became the party associated with Jesus I guess God only knows. Correct me if I am wrong but I think Jesus is the guy who said we should all share equally among each other.
Socialism!
He was also homeless by choice with long hair. How many Republicans do you see that look like him let alone truly emulate his teachings? To them, he really has been a "profit."

Sarah Palin is a stunt. A gimmick meant to make McCain look like a guy who understands what the average working adult in America goes through everyday. The irony here is, John McCain is married to a woman who will inherit the Budweiser fortune. So he could buy everyone in America a six-pack of beer but instead he decided to give $700 Billion dollars to the guys on Wall Street who just lost "grandpa six-pack" his retirement savings. And yes, I don't think Obama should of voted for it either. In fact, he missed a wonderful opportunity to be a genuine maverick by standing up and saying so.
Now if you will excuse me I have to put this six-pack of root beer in the fridge and put my feet up. This is one tired Joe=)

This guy is a TOOL!

As the economic crisis drags on FOX news is doing what they always do; spinning the bullshit. Listen to this Dude gleefully tell us that the blame for this rests squarely on the poor. Then he broadens that to the Democrats.
It is true that an under addressed part of this whole mess is the idea of personal responsibility. A lot of people bought homes they could not afford. But they didn't just walk into those banks and demand money for a home way outside their price range. First a lot of very wealthy REPUBLICANS lobbied the government to do away with those pesky regulations.
Then those banks started an aggressive marketing strategy based on one of the foundations we all heard growing up; The American dream! That is the goal of every red blooded American who works hard and plays by the rules. Right? Buying your own home. When an inch thick packet of paper work all written in legal jargon is drop in front of you, you ask questions and I bet a lot of those people did ask, "Can we really afford this?" and I am fairly positive that most of the time those bankers said, "Of course you can!"
The President went on TV and directly told the American people that one of the fruits of REPUBLICAN rule was that they were going to make it an ownership society. He gave a speech and talked about doing away with the rules that kept so many poor people from living the American dream. Then the economy started to sour. Maybe it was the failed war of choice against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 for 10 Billion a month. Maybe it was the oil speculators that drove the cost of filling up your gas tank through the roof. Maybe it was the net loss of a few million jobs from the economy. Maybe it was financing our national debt with loans from our biggest trade competitor, China. Maybe it was the government allowing typical banks to merge with investment banks that played fast and loose with other peoples money. Maybe it was the Billions of dollars paid out to wall street hot shots. Whatever the reason a lot of people couldn't make it. They walked away and defaulted on loans no responsible banker should of asked people to sign. Maybe there is enough blame to go around but the poor out number the rich and I feel a day of reckoning approaching fast, Greg.

My Two Cents or: Thats what we all have left

Right now you and I and everyone in America are living in history. This is an extraordinary time to be alive on the planet. We live in a culmination of philosophy, technology and ideology. When they write the History books I think a good title would be, America at the turn of the 21^st Century: The triumph of ideology over common sense.

Consider all that the Republicans have accomplished with George Bush in just under eight years.

They have left the United States Government with the biggest budget deficit ever. Larger than all other Presidents combined!

They deregulated everything resulting in the greatest finical crisis in this country since the great depression. Yesterday, on word that the Government would not bail out rich bankers who already stole your money with more of our tax dollars, the Down Jones suffered its greatest single day drop in history. 777 points down or a trillion dollars of wealth evaporated around the globe. Remember when they talked about privatizing social security? Can you imagine the scope of this disaster if they had already gotten their greedy hands on more of Americas 401k’s and retirement funds? Of course this is a Republican mess. Bush spent more than a few of his rare speeches to America talking about creating an “Ownership society.” He talked about easing regulations on the banks and making it easier for people with bad credit, low credit or no credit to buy a home with no money down.

We have approximately 150,000 troops occupying a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at the price of 10 Billion dollars a month. This is on top of the deficits they already have. The entire Iraq war has been kept ‘of the books.’ When they say they need supplemental budgets passed they mean there are two books. One for all the other stuff they ran up and one for the war.

There are now more independent contractors in Iraq than U.S. service men. They waged this war with a for profit mind set never stopping to think that the money paid to these private contractors was borrowed from China.

Corruption cases involving high level government workers with direct access to the White House has never been higher. The CIA’s number 3 man was just arrested today for steering business to a friends company. He did this by creating fake companies as cover. You know, just like ENRON did when they deregulated the energy markets and stole billions from California with an engineered crisis.

There is a long list of Republicans either in jail now or awaiting trial for bribery, theft, collusion, conspiracy and fraud.

America, you have to wake up now and take a look at what ruling this nation under an ideology and not under the rule of law has done to you. Logic got thrown out the window in favor of making money for a very small very elite group of men whose morality is something like an acid dream from the Old Testament. Yet, John McCain, the “new” cheerleader for the Republican Party wants nothing to change. Everything that Bush has done he wants to do bigger. Course a man his age has a 1 in 4 chance of dying before he makes it to the end of his first year in office. That would mean Sarah Palin would become our President. I have heard no intelligent person raise a cry against this because she is a woman. It is clear from the few interviews we have been allowed to have with her that she is so far out of her depth that it is an embarrassment to all of America that a person with nothing to intellectually offer us in a time of need has been nominated by a major party. When Katie Couric nails you in an interview it might be time to seriously think about what the Republicans want you to swallow. Either a man who has publicly and proudly stated that he has never sent a e-mail, doesn’t really understand how the economy works and sang “Bomb bomb bomb. Bomb bomb Iran” will be President or a person who went to 5 colleges in 6 years who claims foreign policy expertise because Russia is so close to Alaska will be.

Is it so ridiculous to want a leader who is at least as smart as I am? In fact, I want a leader who is smarter than I am. I want a leader who knows what the Internet is. I want a leader who understands what the constitution is. I want a leader who knows what poverty feels like.

Obama is a politician. By definition that means his words should be scrutinized and his promises consider less than meaningful. But when you put him next to John McCain, anyone who is serious about the future cannot logically expect McCain to lead America into the 21^st. Century. McCain has been in Washington as a professional politician for 26 years. He was part of another famous banking disaster in the 80’s known as the Keating five where the U.S. Government bailed out the savings and loan business because five very influential men operated it without regulation. In other words, the last time John McCain didn’t understand how the economy worked it cost the Tax Payer a couple of Billion dollars already.

You can look at this any way you want but it is already pretty obvious that the ideology of a ultra conservative splinter group with in the Republican party did away with rules and regulations so the rich could get richer while the poor die in Iraq for oil that gets idled away in SUV’s in the parking lots of middle America mega churches. The republicans have failed spectacularly. Not just because I say so, but by their own standards. They are the party of fiscal responsibility and smaller Government? Not from where I have been watching these last eight years. They are the party that opposes logic in the face of scientific evidence. NASA, the EPA and officials inside the FDA have all come forward and exposed the level of outright censorship the White House has insistent upon when it came to our environment, our food and drugs and our collective safety as a species on this planet. Think that’s too dramatic? They invented a program where power plants could put more pollution into the air. They named it the Clear skies initiative. They devised a way for logging companies to take more trees from our national forests under a program called the healthy forest initiative. When we first went into Iraq the operation was ironically titled, Operation Infinite Liberty. O.I.L. Like Orwell’s 1984, whatever they tell you means the exact opposite of what they are doing.

Electing Obama President is not an emotional grasp at change. It is the only logical step we as a people can take to change the direction eight years of Bush has put us on. Under Bush, gas prices rose faster than at any other time in Americas history. Under Bush, our money has lost value. Under Bush, we have lost our moral authority as a super power in a very troubled world. I am not waiting for history to pass judgment on the Republicans and the ruins they are leaving us with. You don’t have to wait either. You can vote for change or you can vote for more of the same. We don’t know what a half black Harvard Graduate in constitutional law who was raised by a single mother will do if we reward him with the most powerful office in the world. But I am willing to take the chance rather than stick with what has been done. George Bush and the Neo-Conservatives hijacked America while we were all watching reality TV. They hijacked it, turned it abruptly to the right and just like every business George Bush ever got his privileged hands on, flew it into the ground.

Vote Obama. It is too important to let another out of touch old guy get his hands on this country again. If you want change America you have to stop doing what you have done and try something else. Perhaps we should vote for the President based on the color of his skin. When the color of your hair and you skin match, maybe you shouldn’t be President.

Just one more thing before I sign off on this post. If you want a clear metaphor for where we are as a nation mediate on this. yesterday when all other stocks dropped one company's stock actually rose. The Campbel Soup company. You know how you keep hearing the talking heads keep saying stuff like not since the great depression? Well, get ready for the soup Kitchen folks.

DEBATE PART 1.

Our first Presidential debate! What did you think? I watched it on CNN. They had this weird graph thing at the bottom of the screen. With different colored lines they monitored the opinions of Conservative viewers, Liberal viewers and independent viewers. I didn't know this because I turned the debate on a little late. The first thing I saw was a silent blinking John McCain and a flat red line beneath him. I thought it was his EKG.
The lines would rise and fall depending on how the viewers felt about what they were hearing. I don't know if such instant feedback is good. Can you imagine being one of the candidates seeing this in real time? As a line drops on what your saying you might be tempted to change what you're saying in mid sentence. I see a video sketch coming on!

The Sarah Palin Chronicles Part 2.

I hate Glen Beck.
I hate him so much and his chubby little face on CNN that of course I have to read his articles on line to remind myself of how much I hate this guy and his sarcastic wisdom.
His latest orgy of stupidity and outrage is about Sarah Palin. What a surprise.
He makes the argument that the press have already begun to smear her. One example is an associated press article that went out all over the web with the title, Palin: The Iraq war was, "...a task from God."
He says this is taken out of context. Here are her actual words:
"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
I fail to see how the entire quote makes her look any better. In fact, after reading the entire quote that did appear in the story I am more terrified of a Palin Presidency than ever before. We just had eight years of people leading the government who thought they were performers in God's plan. If this is God's plan maybe we should ask for another God, people who believe in logic or at the very least a plan B. Do we need more Jesus freaks not heeding his words and blowing things up? I don't think so.
The next two months are going to be messy. A lot of emotion that has been bottled up is coming out. The polls might say that Obama and McCain are neck and neck but I have to believe the American people are smarter than voting for the McCain and Bush in a bra.

Wake the Fu*k Up America!

It has been seven years since 9/11 and you know what we don't have?
Osama captured or dead.
A permanent and proper monument at ground zero in NY.
Those Weapons of mass destruction.
A president that gets it.
Oh yeah America, keep voting Republican. It is really working out for us unless you actually like results. Honestly, don't you think all Obama should have to say is that?
If you are behind in a home payment or loosing it to the bank, blame the Republicans. They are the ones that deregulated the safe guards.
if the price of gas at the pump hurt you blame the republicans. A recent report by the government concluded that it was wall street speculators that drove up the price of oil. Most of these wall street investors are also the biggest donors to the Republicans.
If you have a son, daughter, wife or husband who suffers from combat stress and has done more than two tours of duty, blame the Republicans. They are the ones who mismanaged a war we were told would be easy. Remember the Mission accomplished banner?
Go down the list of any social issue. Is it better now than it was 8 years ago? What are the Republican issues? Gay marriage is wrong, less government is good, everyone should have a gun? It certainly isn't fiscal responsibility. Under Bush he racked up the biggest deficit of all the other Presidents combined. Is it Defense? They underfunded the military and sent people into combat without all the equipment needed. Why? To save money and let the contractors do it? Is it a safer world now? There are more independent contractors in Iraq right now than US troops. Independent contractors do not answer to the military chain of command and are immune to Iraqi law. I am sure they are making America look great with those powers.
Do you believe in their platform of smaller government? Under Bush, the US government enjoyed the largest expansion since world war 2. Don't believe it is all about safety either. The department of education, something Bush and friends wants to get rid of grew by 45%! How does listening in on everything make anyone safe? Ah thats right. They told us they would only listen in on calls originating outside the US to a person who has had known contact with terrorists. Well, Bush and family did a lot of business with Osamas family so I guess there is a lot of tape of Bush.
Wake the fuck up America=)

CBS takes down McCain webad, suggests it's 'misleading'

“One of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life," Couric is quoted in the ad.

In the original clip, she was talking about Hillary Clinton; the ad applies her words to Sarah Palin.

Asked about the ad, CBS spokeswoman Leigh Farris said, "CBS News does not endorse any candidate in the Presidential race. Any use of CBS personnel in political advertising that suggests the contrary is misleading."

YouTube's page displaying the ad now tells visitors, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by CBS Interactive Inc."

The ad is still up on McCain's web site.

The Sarah Palin Chronicles

Do you know who Phil Gramm is? He is the guy John McCain goes to for economic advice. Some advice. The meltdown in the housing and credit market can be traced directly back to this man. It is a very rare thing when you can make such grand pronouncements and have it backed up by more than just passion and vague blog postings.
Google Phil Gramm and deregulation.
I am not going to say I understand it all. Not even close. But I do understand this. Take away protections put in place after the disaster of the great depression and you get problems not seen since the great depression.
On Sunday the biggest government take over of a financial institution in U.S. history occurred. Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae hold 50% of all the mortgages in the country. They failed. They failed because Phil Gramm pushed for deregulation in the banking industry. 9% of all homes in America are either in foreclosure or behind on their payment. 9% might not seem like a lot but it's a number not seen since the Great Depression. Do you really want John McCain trusting this guy on anything?

McCain may have just as well nominated Lindsey Lohan's mom for V.P.
After telling anyone who will listen that they are the party of family values they nominate a mother who publicly advocated abstinence only education in schools. The proof of how well that works is her pregnant 17 year old daughter.
But we can't ask questions about this? Give me a break.

Cindy McCain has been quoted as saying that newly nominated V.P. Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is right next to Russia. Is anyone really that stupid? It boggles the mind a little. I have banking experience because I live next door to a bank. It doesn't work that way.

Bush has surrendered in Iraq. How else am I suppose to see Bush announcing troop cut backs? Bush and company have been screeching at us that any announcement of any time table for troop reductions would be the same thing as surrendering to the enemy. Do you know who has been demanding a time table for us to leave? The Iraqi government. You see the surge worked. The whole idea behind it was to give the new government breathing room to put itself together. Well they did and they would like us to leave now. In fact, they would like to know the exact time table of how and when we are going to leave. So I guess they are now the enemy too?

Make judgements but these are just the facts folks.

My Getting Paid Saga

A few people have asked so allow me to fill you in on my efforts to get paid by Last Comic Standing.
Just to recap, NBC claimed some Bullshit about not having to pay us because we were not "professional" comics. Turns out we are. Then it was some nonsense about not being a member of AFTRA/SAG. Thats where the story got weird cause I was made to join AFTRA or I could not have done Live at Gotham on Comedy Central last year. They had all the comics lined up in the basement of Gotham filling out paper work and signing our checks over to AFTRA. Turns out this wasn't a AFTRA Representative at all who I trusted with my paper work. It was a Comedy Central rep whose job it was to bring everything to AFTRA. Apparently it didn't work because a check was still floating around out there for me and AFTRA had me down in their, needs to pay for the next job or else, list. So that answered that. After several phone calls with AFTRA reps in San Francisco, they told me they have the check, will mail me half and then I can pay the rest of the initiation fees over time. Meanwhile I had been calling and e-mailing the producers of Last Comic Standing in an effort to get paid. I finally sent an e-mail explaining that my next step was to get the media involved or even a lawyer. After all, I wasn't the only one having a hard time getting money from these guys. A week latter a FedEx letter showed up with the paper work I needed to fill out to finally get paid. I filled it out and send it back. So here is whats happening now. I am waiting for a check from AFTRA. I am not sure of what the amount will be because frankly I don't trust anyone in this process any more. I don't even get the check. Standard operating procedure is to have the check sent directly to AFTRA first. They take their cut and then mail me mine. Will see.
Some where floating around out there is a nice little sum. Now will see if any of it shows up after jumping through flaming hoops of bullshit just to find out that I owe money to AFTRA for something I did more than a year ago and I might not get any of the money from Last Comic Standing because it has to pay for the initiation fee I thought had already been taken care of with the check I never saw and no one bothered to tell me was outstanding.
Showbiz. You gotta love it cause doing it for the money will kill you.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

God must hate the Republicans right now. The opening day of their convention and a Hurricane slams into Louisiana just in time for everyone to remember Katrina drowning New Orleans.
The Governors from three states canceled their speeches and George Bush pulled out to.
Then comes the announcement that the Republicans have chosen a virtually unknown Alaskan Governor to be McCain’s running mate. In a blatant attempt to grab all those alienated female voters who wanted Clinton, they pick a woman. A woman who happens to have a pregnant 17-year-old daughter. No one has said this inconvenient truth should be exploited for political gain. This is only a big deal for the same reason John Edwards lying about an affair is a big deal. These people set themselves up as more than politicians. They proclaimed family values and high morals as something they live by. Then something embarrassing happens like your 17-year-old daughter gets knocked up just in time to become a poster child for real sex education in the schools. Not the abstinence only program her mother has voted for over and over again. You look like a hypocrite or at the very least ignorant. But none of these are reason to not vote for McCain. Consider this. John McCain is a 72-year-old man who has had several bouts with skin cancer in the last few years. You have to think there is a 50% chance he will die in office and his VP will then become President. Haven’t we seen what being against abortion, for guns and tax cuts for the wealthy can get us? Could we even survive another four years of that philosophy?

She doesn’t think global warming is man made.

She thinks creationism should be taught in public schools right next to evolution.

She has called the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being part of “God’s plan.”

She has far less experience in public office than Obama. There goes that argument for the GOP against him at least.

Do we really want another Dick Cheney for Vice President?

Friday afternoon I was on the phone with my Doctors office waiting to hear the results of a test. It wasn’t a test for cancer or an STD, but it was still a test with a certain amount of fear attached to it. I am waiting on hold for five minuets before it hits me, where is the music? If ever there was a time for music, this is it. No one wants to be alone with thoughts racing around their head as they wait for medical news. At the very least play some Phil Collins. That guy can really use the royalty payments now anyway.

Turns out I am OK. I should eat better and blah blah blah.

For two dollars I saw a new product. It is a plastic thing that hooks onto your belt and can hold a regular size bottle of water at your side. Think of it as an aqua fanny pack. Some see this and think it’s a great idea. People need to drink more water. I see it and think cars should come equipped with cup holders. Not people.

Saturday night I drove to Yuba City, CA. Ever been? There is no easy way to get there. You leave the well-traveled familiar Interstate 80 for tiny 113. Then you twist and wind your way across fields and through peach orchards until you reach the Bowling alley where the gig is held. I did this gig once before. I don’t know that I need to do it again. This room is what I like to call a knife fight. The crowd is almost pre-wired to yell shit. That and they were treated to some decidedly lowbrow stuff long before I got a hold of them. It is a Bowling alley though and quality of content is not something I think they are that concerned with. By the time I got on stage to close it out, they were drunk, loud and stupid. Imagine that? A bowling alley comedy audience in the central valley wasn’t so smart. I spent forty bucks in gas and two hours driving to wait three hours and four comics to do 40 minuets in front of a crowd I probably don’t see eye to eye on anything with. Was this a good use of my time? Probably not. Such is the life of a comic. I have been doing more road stuff again lately because I missed it. I think that phase is over for now. Time to take a shot at the next elusive level again.

Sunday I watched a friend get married. I smiled a lot and thought the whole thing was beautiful in a way I am not use to feeling. Then I felt depressed as shit and thought about my brief time in L.A. The friend who got married has a baby and a job as an apartment manager now. Comedy is still on the list of things he does, but it’s part of a list now.

I have been looking for an agent and manager lately. Enough fucking around in the trenches with the little stuff. I kept looking at everyone at the wedding and realized that out of everyone there I am still single and still gigging as hard as ever. The grass is always greener right? They must think I have all this freedom while I think they have people to go home to that love them.

This weekend was a wonderful demonstration in what if and what didn't happen. What if I had found a way to stay in L.A. instead of returning here? What if things had gone well and I got married? What if? Well, this is what I got. More friends are getting married and each time we get together in a group it seems as though more kids are running around. That kind of shit makes you wonder about life. Have I built anything of value? What is the quality of my life? What do I want and what is important to have? None of these are easily answered questions. The best you can do is show up, kiss the bride and eat the cake that is offered. Such is life. Such is my life.

Metaphor

It can be a dangerous business mixing metaphor with resolve. John McCain recently said he would pursue Osama, “…to the gates of hell!” Doesn’t that just wanna make you climb up on a pick up truck, wave the American flag around and blast a Toby Keith song? It sounds dramatic enough but there is no need to go to such extremes.

Obama has said he would go into Pakistan and get him. For saying this, he was criticized. It doesn’t matter that they are saying the same thing. It doesn’t matter that one is throwing bumper sticker solutions not grounded in reality to supporters. It doesn’t matter that every intelligence agency in the world places him in a tribal region of Pakistan. McCain has said over and over that he would not go into Pakistan to get Osama. Where would he go to get him? Well, to the gates of hell, fagot! That’s where!

Maybe if you look closely at a map of Pakistan, somewhere there is a tiny little region named, gates of hell. If that’s true, then they are saying the same thing.

You can’t use metaphors to stir up the patriotic and then mock the other guy who is saying he will accomplish the same thing in reality. McCain might as well have said, “I will pursue Osama to the forest moon of Endor!” or, “I will chase him into Morodor along side Hobbits and men to bring peace to Middle earth once and for all!”

I would love to write a John McCain speech.

“Today we have Sand-People and Elves standing together. Pod racers from Tatooien and residence of the shire, all-coming together to vote for leadership. As I stand here today on the deck of the Battlestar Gallatica, I promise that we will chase down our enemy no matter how far away or mythical a place Osama is hiding! If Narnia is harboring terrorists, or second life, we shall do whatever is needed to bring him to justice!”

He would have the sci-fi fantasy vote.

"59!"

I don’t understand. On the day that Russia rolled tanks into the country of Georgia, the news talked only about John Edwards having an affair two years ago that his wife had already been told about. He is not running for public office or currently holding one. Besides, did I mention Russia invaded a country?
Now, with all that is going on all I keep hearing about is how offensive the movie, Tropic Thunder is. Like a lot of the people who are complaining about it, I haven’t seen it either. It just reminds me that here in America, we get very upset about words. It’s a pretty nice problem to have. Sorry to say so but I laughed every time I saw a network anchor or reporter refer to the word retarded as, “the R-word.”
The R-word? Seriously?
Do you remember growing up and ever hearing, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me? What happened to that concept? Cause I gotta tell you, most of the world is going to bed hungry tonight and were arguing over words.
Retarded turned into disabled. Then it was special, differently abled and now the correct term apparently is intellectually disadvantaged. Fine. That describes the President pretty well.
At some point I believe America will start to drown in all the real issues we would rather deny. I have invented a scale to determine how close we are to social collapse based on the amount of letters in the alphabet that are used in place of “bad words.”
For instance, I think most people would know what word I was thinking of if I said the
C-word. Then of course there is the N-word and now we have the R-word. Those are just three letters of the alphabet. Granted, those are horrible words used to convey hate, but they are words.
I predicted that when 15 of the 26 letters are used in place of “bad words” we will be exprcing black outs and food riots.
20 out of 26 letters and it will be complete anarchy in the streets with whatever government that’s holding on about to fall. When all 26 letters can also be used to denote foul, racist or derogatory terms, we will start using numbers.
You get cut off by a driver and instead of yelling something or giving the finger, you just yell a number at people. “59!”
“I can’t believe you said that around children!”
My point? Rome is burning while we turn offensive words into single letters. No problem is solved. No war is ended or homeless fed. At least we can take comfort in the knowledge that right now only 3 letters stand in for “bad words.”
Just a note to my Uber Liberal friends, ever consider looking at the context the word is used in? I am just saying, sometimes you have to use the bad word in order for people to know what you are ironically making fun of. In fact, look up the word ironic and then get back to me.

Medford, OR

Every once in a while you encounter a living metaphor. I spent the weekend in Medford, Oregon performing at a sports bar. That's not the metaphor part of this story but its close. Saturday afternoon, the other comic, Dax and I went for a drive. I had met Dax four years ago in the Seattle Comedy Competition. The first thing he said to me when I saw him was, "Are you still in love with that girl?"
I was teased constantly by everyone for having my cell phone always up to my ear talking with Samantha.
"No. I am pretty much a shattered man these days."
Funny how that sentence changes the mood in a room.
I wanted to get an oil change but when we couldn't find a place I settled for a car wash. Ten minuets and five bucks in quarters later, my car was free of the dust and mud a five hour drive put on it the day before. Less than a minuet after we left I pulled up to a light. Dax and I turned to look and there on the corner stood two cheerleaders going through routines as they pointed to a car wash sign.
Imagine that. Just half a block away stood girls in skirts holding sponges ready and willing to clean my car but I had already washed it.
Ah life! How you love to mock me!
You can't turn into a gas station for a hand wash from cheerleaders with water literally beading on your windshield. Well you can if you want to be an Amber alert.
We smiled at the girls who smiled back, all of us seeming to appreciate the irony of the situation. In fact, even the homeless guy standing on the opposite corner got into it. When he saw them dancing, he danced too, sign in hand. It made an affect on a guy riding his bike. He stopped and gave the homeless guy a dollar.
The light changed and we were on our way again.
Medford is a quiet enough little town just pass the Californian border. The shows, sponsored by the local classic rock station, went well. It was a classic one nighter gig. The crowd was rowdy, it was a riff-a-thon from word one and just up the street from us was a town named white city. What is white city? It is a trailer park where people are known for making and selling meth. In fact, more than a few people came up to me after the shows and said, "We call this place Meth-ford. Not Medford."
Nice.
A place with meth and mobil homes could only be named White City if you think about it. That or they should put up a sign that reads, Irony?
All in all the shows were fun and the drive wasn't too bad. My little Honda handles the distance with ease. Once you get up toward Mt. Shasta, the scenery is beautiful too. It wasn't my first time doing comedy in Medford either. Driving around with Dax, I remembered staying at a Red Lion in town for a show that was canceled. The other club in town where comedy use to be done is named, Ground Zero. If it sounds like a stupid name before 9/11 then you have to wonder why they didn't change the name after 9/11. I had worked there about 10 years ago. It stands out in my mind only because I went home with a girl I met after the show. everything seemed to be on track for a fun night when I had to excuse myself from the girls room. I went outside and proceeded to spend the night vomiting in her drive way till morning when the other comic who went home with her friend came and picked me up. Ugh!
I vividly remember making the five hour drive home thinking I cannot drink anymore. As I recall, it still took a few more embarrassing instances before I actually did quit.
Back then all I wanted was to headline these gigs. These days I turn these gigs down more than I say yes to them. Between the cost of gas and the average crowds at these road gigs it just doesn't make sense to put the millage on you or the car. Not for what the average gig like this pays anyway. I took this gig because the pay was better than what you normally get for these. I also wanted to get in with the Booker who books a lot of stuff in the greater Pacific Northwest.
It was only once I was there that I realized I had been here before. That might be the lesson on this trip. Each time I have passed through Medford I have been in an agitated state of mind wondering about my career in comedy and my future. This time was no different. Maybe it's not about finding meaning or deciding where I want to be in comedy. Maybe it is just about acceptance. If I want to make a living at stand-up, the work is out there. Problem is there is a whole lot of other Medford's out there and what is required to make those gigs work is not always what you can justify to your sense of doing art.
Thats the lesson or, if you want to get a car wash, don't turn into the first place you see. There might be high school cheerleaders around the next corner!

Change?

Dear regular readers and those curious enough to stop by,
I find myself at an impasse in life. Turning forty in a few months has me thoroughly freaked out. Aren't you suppose to have an idea about where life is headed by now? Shouldn't you have something to show for being alive on this world after four decades? I don't know. I do know this; I want a new day job. I could survive on comedy but I don't want to just survive anymore. Not at this point in my life. I like having health care. I need a new day job. Something flexible enough to allow me to still take off for gigs when I need too, but also something with purpose. If I could work with kids or in a organization that does some good in this world, I would be willing to work for half of what I make at my day job now. A job that has slowly devolved into number crunching and paper pushing. So I ask you dear reader or fan, got any ideas? I am not giving up on stand-up. It is too much a part of my identity to ever stop, but if I am going to stay in San Francisco and only work the gigs I want, a day job is a necessary evil. Thing is, I don't want it to feel evil anymore.
If you have any thoughts please shoot me an e-mail.
Thanks

Eva 4eva!

http://view.break.com/549769 - Watch more free videos

Well I don't get it. This is the commercial that has been banned by every American network. This is what we think shouldn't be on TV? If we are so worried about kids getting the wrong messages from TV, what does it say about our society when a hot chick's body is deemed inappropriate but Bush can hold a press conference where no one calls him on the lies that fly from his mouth? Maybe if we were a bit more comfortable with sex and treated violence like we now treat sex, we would be a healthy happy culture instead of the confused people we are.
Just a thought.

Black Guys for McCain?

A friend sent me a link to a blog named, black men for McCain. Check it out. Read some of it. How could a black guy be for McCain? I don't know if he knows this, but McCain voted against giving Martin Luther King a Holiday in Arizona. How bad do you have to hate a guy to vote against a day off? McCain is also in favor of what are the Bush Tax Cuts. It's a nice phrase but don't be fooled. The Tax Cuts were only for the richest 1% of Americas richest 1%. Way to go!
How many black males in America are in that category exactly?
A black guy voting for McCain makes as much sense as a black guy voting for McCain. Seriously. What is McCain going to do for the average anyone in this country let alone a black guy? Voting against a holiday for King is about the only thing McCain hasn't flipped flopped on.
He was against off shore drilling. Now he is for it.
He was against the Bush tax cuts because he knew what they really were.
Now he is for them.
He is against gay marriage because he believes marriage is a sacred thing between a man and his wife. Hard to tell if he thinks his previous marriage was sacred. He left his first wife after she was crippled in a car accident. Yeah. You wouldn't want gays messing up an institution like that. They might stay together and adopted the kids straight people are producing with no thought. Dear God!
Now if he hates gay people that much what do you honestly think he thinks about black people?
The guy voted against a MLK holiday!

The Jock

Rarely do I get an answer from the crowd that confounds me. Being a comic that works the crowd you are sorta like a lawyer; don't ask any question you don't think you already know the answer to. This is not always the case of course, but most of the time I am not too surprised by an answer.
Allow me to set the scene. This is a college/private gig. I say partly private because the entire audience was composed of 40 incoming Freshmen from all over the planet. We were in a tiny room that was 20 degrees warmer than just outside the door. The average age was 18. Do you remember being 18? Remember that look you had? No? It is something in your eyes and your body language. I can now identify it as not giving a shit. Did I mention this event was mandatory for them?
Let's revue- 40 kids in a hot room for a mandatory event staring me.
Got it now?
I had never heard of this tiny college somewhere down the peninsula. But it's there. These kids parents were rich enough to send them across the world but not rich enough to get them into the Ivy league schools. But they still exhaled a sense of entitlement.
About half way through the show, I ask a "jock" what he is going to school for.
"Play football." He says.
"Oh. Do you want to play professionally someday?"
"No. I want to get into politics."
That's the answer that had me thrown.
I think a good tackle might make debates a bit more interesting but other than that I don't know how one does anything for the other.
When I tell him this he replies, "It worked for Bush."
OK. That's the reply that got me.
First of all, this kid is 18. Who they hell idolizes Bush enough to follow his lead? Who models their academic career after Bush?
Hasn't he fucked up? A lot?
By the way. When he attended the all boy's school of Andover, he was actually a cheerleader. Google it. I'll wait. Hopefully you get to see the photo of him looking every bit the douche he is holding a megaphone as he readies himself to cheer.
There turned out to be more than a few kids who proudly called themselves conservative.
I don't get that. It's college. I never went but from what I can gather college is suppose to be all about getting laid, high and occasionally staring at a Lava lamp under the influence of Mushrooms communing with God. You don't walk in saying. I am opposed to joy! Not at 18 you don't. Course, I am getting all my info on what college is from movies.
At some point I say to the crowd that Obama scares the shit out of vast swaths of the country because he's black. In one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments I have witnessed in a long time, my statement on Obama was met with a very enthusiastic head nod in agreement from the Jock.
What were the odds a rich white kid named Kyle, was going to be scared of black people?
Welcome to California kid. I would love to see where your head is at in four years.
What caught my eye at first was his gum chewing. He was smacking away on it like it held the antidote to boredom. No matter what I said or implied, he sat there calmly chewing his gum with the erie confidence of the dim. Maybe he has more in common with Bush than I thought.
Good luck=)

Mark David Chapman

John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, was denied parole for the fifth time Tuesday.
The New York State Division of Parole issued a release saying Chapman's request was denied "Due to concern for the public safety and welfare."
Really? Public safety?
He stays in jail at this point because if he ever got out someone would shoot him.

What do you need to convince the parole board that he deserves to stay in prison?
A copy of the of the White Album should do it.
It's not like his life is so bad in jail. Check this out-
For the past 16 years he has received conjugal visits with his wife, Gloria. The visits are part of a state program called "family reunion" that allows inmates to spend up to 44 hours at a time with family members in a special setting.
That is more time than most people get all week with a wife or girlfriend!
The dude shot John Lennon and he still gets to get laid? What is prison for exactly?
He shot a Beatle by the way. John might forgive him and this is the first parole hearing that Yoko did not submit a letter against it but I think most people would be extremely pissed if the guy who shot John Lennon ever got out. Make him take guitar lessons. Tell him that when he can write a song like Across the Universe, then maybe we will talk about it. Better yet, let him out with a gun and a list of bands like Duran Duran and the Eagles. No more come back tours boy's!

Lots going on and yet nothing inspires me to write anything. Oh well. I am sure that the creative juices or my Muse will return any day now. I promise some new blogs soon.

These Modern Times

Ever get trapped in the whose more San Francisco game? Fun, isn't it? It gets played a lot in the Marina at trendy new restaurants and in the mission at hipster cafes and the Sunset in donut shops. Stay here long enough and you will end up playing it too.
I finally found the answer that shuts everyone down instantly no matter what anyone else has said.
"I buy pot on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate park."
Good for you. But my answer is better.
"I am third generation born and raised in San Francisco."
Way to never get out there and see the world. Nope. I still have a better answer.
"I'm homeless."
That does it. That ends the stupid conversation in a hurry. Try it sometime.

In a Walgreen's recently, I came across this odd site. Behind an old woman pushing a shopping cart, a young girl furiously texted.
She had one of those phones with the fold out key board. The young girl was the old woman's helper I think. When ever the young girl looked up, the old woman stopped. Only after the young girl went back to her phone did the old woman move again. For a second though, it looked like the girl had this old lady on remote control.
I literally did a double take.

I understand text messaging is not going away. I use it. Just not on the level some people do. What drives me crazy is when I am having a conversation with a person and in the middle of a sentence, they pull out a phone they had on vibrate. They nod their head at you and throw in a lame, "Uh ha" but their thumbs are pumping away at a tiny key board as I wait for our conversation to resume.
It does. But then, right on cue, another text message must be answered. Sometimes, when I have asked, they tell me they are having a conversation with 3 other people as they talk to me.
What?
Does all the medication people take for ADD make this possible? How can you have any meaningful connection if you are trying to keep three other conversations straight in your head? I can barely remain coherent during one conversation let alone three!
I don't want to sound like the old man here, but is anyone experiencing anything in real time any more? TiVo lets you zoom past commercials. Great.
Texting lets you have multiple conversations in play with a media that is largely hard wired to be passive aggressive. Awesome.
That is what I consider most text messages to be by the way, passive aggressive.
I still think that TiVo is witch craft. How do they stop a live show and then let you pick it up again? What alternate universe do we get shunted off to when that happens? I am only half serious here. I will watch the commercials because I feel like I am connected to other people by virtue of the fact that we are all experiencing this together. It's sad. I know. It's sad mostly that I feel connected to people because I watch the commercials. When I am in a group of people and I am not comfortable, I don't think of commercials or anything like that, it's just that you can imagine what is happening in millions of homes at once when a commercial comes on. I can't explain it. Just know that TiVo is evil and will be found to cause cancer just like cell phones do now but no one wants to know.
Have you thought about that? I asked myself one night what I would do if some giant well researched warning came out that cell phones, the backbone of modern communications, caused cancer. I would keep using mine. I would. People smoke and everyone understands what a hazard that is now.
I already have to go outside to have most conversations on my cell. I can keep the smokers company.
All this communication technology we have built has only succeeded in removing personal interaction. Cell phones, e-mail and text messaging is a way to avoid conversation. Not help it. And when we find that our world is lonely, we sign up for computer dating. Call it whatever you want, but it is computer dating.
We have removed poetry from the world. Do you know what I mean by that? Nothing is allowed to happen naturally anymore. When was the last time you heard of a friend meeting some in public? It's almost weird to hear such stories. Internet commercials for hot girls wanting to meet me flash by in the margins of myspace and facebook, my spam folder is over flowing with pleas from other hot girls that want to meet me. All the girls they use to market these services do not look like they need such services. They are always young hot and sometimes partially dressed.
You can't meet a guy?
I tried it once. It was a long process, but eventually I had a "date." I put it in quotation marks because we were not physically in the same place. It happened entirely with the aid of a camera and our computers. In the middle of the conversation she picked up her phone to text message someone. This is intimacy now? This is what passes for getting to know someone?
The goal of the second date is no longer the blow job. Nope. The goal of the second date seems to be seeing them in person.
"Dude, last night I got to third base with this new chick I am seeing."
"Third base! She sent you a photo of herself on her phone? Damn!"
"If I play my cards right, I might get to see her live!"
This is modern romance now.

No Longer Angry

I don’t know when it happened, but recently I woke up and the anger I had carried around toward my X was gone. I don’t know why either. It just wasn’t there anymore. That place inside me where truths that are too painful for the light of day was simply less heavy.

It just burned out I guess. Anger like that bleeds heat like radiation. It takes effort to maintain. I nursed it. As time moved on and I didn’t, it became the last thing I had that connected me to her. It is so cliché and so ridiculous. I would go on walks where I would deliver a well-rehearsed speech about all of her betrayals. A speech that got better and better every time I gave it alone in the dark, but a speech that would never be heard either. For so long it was just a part of me. I didn’t fight it or question it. It consumed me like a cancer. For a while I was simply a wound. I did not hate her but my anger at her could not be resolved let alone dissolved. So I carried it with me. It became as familiar to me as my eye color or a mole I have had since childhood. Then one day I was sitting in a café on the weekend drinking coffee and I realized something was missing. I could not say what was missing. I just felt different. Only after sorting through the inner architecture did I notice it. My anger had spent itself. It had gone out in the same way it had started.

I remember three distinct times in my life when I woke up on a morning and realized I was in love with someone. Not having that fire inside me anymore felt the same now. It was a revelation, a relief in everyway. Now what? I think I kept the anger for so long because it allowed me to not look at my own shit. It wasn’t really denial; it was just a louder voice at the table inside my head. No matter what was going on, that anger was present. Yelling, screaming, demeaning words at a ghost. That’s all I was doing; belittling a ghost that wasn’t giving me any thought. It didn’t matter how many times someone pointed this out to me. It didn’t matter that I knew that I was inflicted with a disease I did not want a cure for. All that drove me in the course of my day and every choice I arrived at came through that anger. Not a wall or a cloud, nothing like fog or sadness, it was acid. I had done all the crying and was done with that. But the anger would not leave.

She contacted me a few times at random intervals. Always e-mails. When I first responded I told her I was angry. I told her why I was so angry and told her there was no reason for me to speak with her. We weren’t getting back together and I certainly don’t need a friend I can’t trust. She responded with a sarcastic e-mail about my e-mail response to her! She said it vibrated with anger. No shit. What made me more pissed was that she never even thought I had a right to be angry. Then I thought, that whole year we spent back together, she never once sincerely or otherwise tried to apologize for cheating on me. There was the occasional sorry when the conversation strayed toward the topic, but it was always an abrupt sorry. I should have understood; there was no future for me with this woman. Love has a way of blinding you though.

Those occasional e-mails I would get from her always lacked a basic awareness of the harm she had done. I wasn’t looking for some elegant fall on my sword apology, but not once did she ever make the attempt to understand why I would be so angry. My God! We moved in together down in L.A. and with in six months it was over. I was broke, depressed, had no car and now my girlfriend didn’t want me anymore. She was cheating too. Something I found out after the initial shock of being told she didn’t love me anymore and didn’t want to live with me. It was like a movie where the bad shit just didn’t stop happening. The entire breaking up process was dragged out and made more difficult by her. If there was a way to make things more humiliating, she found it. Try figuring out what you can take with you in a rented car while your X girlfriends best friend and Father sit on a couch you bought as they watch you do this. Keep in mind the only reason I had rented the car and was now trying to figure out what I could take and what had to be left behind, was the night before she text messaged me. Even though she had agreed to let me leave my until I could get them, she now wanted everything of mine gone or she would throw it away.
Stuff like that is like radiation. It will keep burning you and burning you from the inside out long after it has happened.

She would hint at the fact that I did not seem angry in that year we were back together. True. I was happy to be back together and since we still lived in separate cities, we agreed to wait till she moved here to do the hard part of sitting down and working this shit out. But that’s the thing. We didn’t sit down and work this shit out. For a year, I held my anger. It was stupid. A good portion of that rage was at myself for being like that.
As time went on all that remained of our romance was white-hot anger. I told her so in her last e-mail. She did not bother to write back or ask why. Then again, I asked her not to contact me anymore. The biggest reason I was angry, the unforgivable sin she had committed besides the obvious one, was her good-bye to me the second time around.

It came down to this. She agreed to move to San Francisco and a month latter she was calling me with anxiety about our relationship. All that talk of someday and moving on had sunk in. She realized that she was moving to San Francisco. Her career would be far more difficult to start in this city. There would a lot of shit to work out between us. She didn’t talk to me about this. I am sure it caused her a great deal of inner turmoil. I say that, because on my last visit to see her in L.A. I found a girl whose size double zero jeans hung off her frame. She had stopped eating again. She was now burning instead of cutting. At night, she would drink wine and smoke with a roommate who made our drama look like a comedy. Every negative behavior she had ever done had come back and then some. Of course I was concerned. Of course I was worried. What could I do?
Here are the two groups of people I would split the world into. One group tells you what they are thinking and gives you some idea of the actions they will take. The other group takes actions and lets you figure out exactly what that means inside them and inside you.
She was the take action type.
Her large brown eyes, now sunken and dull, implored me to stay. She wanted to be taken care of. She didn’t want to come here or deal with all that needed to be dragged out into the light. She was now asking me in action to do for her what she could not do for me when I needed help. At one point, without having directly talked about it, she said to me, I don't want to ask you to stay.
But you did.

She was putting me in the position of having to stay. My feelings for her were now a trap. A trap to get things the way she wanted them. I would stay with her in L.A. to get her healthy again. But I didn’t. You have to understand that after our break up I came back to San Francisco. It was awful. I felt suicidal for at least the first month and remained in a dark dark place for well over a year. I rebuilt myself though. I came to terms with the loss and went about the business of getting healthy. Good things flowed from that. I had a legit job with benefits and the biggest paycheck I ever got on a regular basis. Gigs were coming in too. I had managed to save money, buy a car and make myself relevant again in the San Francisco comedy scene. Now she wanted me to come back to L.A. and help her. I couldn’t do it. It struck me right there in that moment as she silently prepared herself to drive me to the airport. She told me she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave the house and I would have to find some other way to the airport. I knew then. I knew it like you know there is going to be rain. You feel a slight awareness inside. That’s all. This one registered.
After I told her I was going she left the room and called her grandmother. Of course retired rich Grandma would come to town and save the day as she had before. She didn’t even wait with me for the airport shuttle. Only when I gathered my bag to wait outside did she follow me out to the gate. When the van came we kissed good-bye. I think she knew it then too. I did not make the choice to leave out of anger, but I was amazed at her lack of understanding. Did she see the situation she was putting me in? Did she see that I was in this condition and was given no choice when she asked me to leave her life? At the time I was not angry. I was hurt with the knowledge that things had ended again with someone I truly loved. It would take time and a few fumbled attempts at contact from her for that to finally come out in anger. Maybe she wasn’t trying to trap me. Maybe. But after I left she made a rapid recovery. In fact, she would meet another man and decide to live with him when they moved to a new town together to start a life.

The thing is, if I didn’t have what I had rebuilt here, I might have stayed. But I had rebuilt my life. She was asking for so much without even allowing me to be angry at the original situation. How was that suppose to work? We would sleep together in the same bed and on the days we were not in couple’s therapy, she would go to the doctor for help with her anorexia?
A year latter and everything was reversed. Kind of. I wasn’t kicking her out and being unresponsive to talking about things. I wasn’t throwing her away because she was broken. I just needed to have my anger acknowledged. How do you ask a person literally starving them self to death that you need time to be mad at them? It was an impossible situation. There was no way it was healthy for me to stay and no way to keep her in my life if I left. More than anything else, even the cheating, this became the ember that never died out. I have played that day over and over again in my head. I wasn’t going to yell at a sick person.

Writing this, I feel the edges again. You can never hope to close a wound of this nature completely. Just as you wake up one morning and realize you have fallen in love with someone, I woke up one day and wasn’t mad at them anymore. Now what?