Worth Our Salt

People who eat health food are always trying to get me to eat some healthy version of whatever it is I am enjoying. It's always the same pitch. "This is just as good as your chips." Or, "It tastes just like those!"
Wrong.
It never tastes like potato chips are suppose to taste. They know this. Thats why as a last resort they will tell you, "It doesn't taste like cardboard at all."
Bull Shit!
Now I know it tastes like cardboard. Its the same thing as a cute flirty girl at a bar whispering something the location of her tattoo and then issuing the blanket statement, "I hope you don't think I am being a tease?" Well now I do.
If you say it, you are being one. Same as if you tell me the health food store chip doesn't taste like cardboard.
It does.
In a final effort they will attempt to sell you on it's healthy properties and it's amazing flavor. Careful health food people, this is where you can drop the ball hard. For instance, I was recently asked if I wanted to try a healthy alternative to the lay's potato chips I grew up with. After we went through all the above steps mentioned it came time for that final pitch.
"It has flax seed oil to keep you regular and it has delicious spices!"
It tastes good and it's good for you!
Desperate attack.
Flax seed oil is like fiber and bran mixed together in a potent natural colon cleanser. The "spices" were the real thing, just organic varieties of peppers, oregano and paprika.
Alright, what the hell. It has tasty spices and it will help me shit. Well, thats exactly what it turns out to do perfectly; it helps you shit spices. Hot, burning on the way out spices.
Excellent!
Put that on the outside of the bag.
Look, if a diet rich in fast food has made things painful, this made it burn. Sorry to put that in your head people, but I am writing this as a public service.

American food has always been safe. Healthy? No. But you knew where you stood with something. The goal was always to make things look the same and taste easy.
Wonder bread.
It brings a smile from childhood to your mouth doesn't it? The real wonder is calling it food at all. They tell you on the bag that it is fortified with vitamins and minerals and you think, how can this be bad? The reason they add those vitamins and minerals is simple. To make wonder bread they have to render edible food virtually devoid of any nutritional value. So before they finish making it they have to pump artificial versions of those good things back into the bread. Umm!
What you get is a white, bland, doughy bread that is little more than a condiment delivery system.
If you had wheat bread back when I was a kid, that was excuse enough to get beat up during recess and called a faggot!
We have come along way indeed.
Then there is that other marvel of modern science I grew up with; American Cheese!
Flat, orange squares pressed out perfectly and stuck to plastic, they were a 1970's main stay in any school lunch room. Stick one of those onto a slice of wonder bread and you have yourself the quintessential American snack; grilled cheese sandwiches! Um um good! Bland, but good.
If you ever wanted more flavor, you could always add a dash of Ranch dressing. But lets not get too excited.

I think you can tell how open we our to others as a country by what food does really well. For a long time the typical kid ate American cheese sandwiches made on wonder bread and potato chips for lunch. You could just as easily use peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for this example too.
Bland? Sure. A little boring at times? Yes. But you knew what you were getting and the message to the world was easy; we will remove flavor, nutrition, taste and anything that makes you stand out to create a uniform easily digestible unit of food.
Conform to our ethnic palette cleansing!
Resistance is futile!
Then, somewhere in the 80's, salsa hit the Midwest!
Suddenly, flavor was actually flavorful! Then came curries and more exotic spices in jars with strange labels. Some of the words weren't even in American.
What!?
As immigration became an issue in our modern culture, our culture began getting alternatives to boring bland casseroles, meat-loafs and hot dogs. It was an exciting but dangerous time to be shopping for food in America. That divider bar at the grocery store wasn't just a bar anymore; it was a border!
Just exactly what was that Taco version of Hamburger Helper doing north of our border?
As I was weaning my taste buds away from ranch dressing and cheetos, the health food thing went mainstream. Now even exotic foods from different parts of the world could have the joy sucked out of them and sold to us on the merit of being good for us. Being American, we fell for it of course.
What makes something healthy now?
It's organic. That means it was grown with out pesticides or fertilizers. Most of the time.
It has added vitamins and minerals.
It has no flavor because as well all know anything that tastes good has been chemically engineered in a factory somewhere. You want something to taste good? Then you need Red Dye #5!
Funny thing is, most health food labeled "Health Food" simply isn't.
It's not made from organic sources nor is it free of added healthy sounding stuff like "vitamins" and "minerals."
In other words, were back to wonder bread, only now; it comes in Wheat!

It's not enough to just be food anymore either. If your a snack food, you gotta have a web site baby! Cheetos has a site with games, health advice for kids, a break down of the ingredients for parents and even a cheesy fact of the day. Thats where I learned that the first true cracker was made in Massachusetts! Oh sure, you can get a pun from the inside lid of a yogurt, but they don't have the graphics's a web site has.
Lets not forget the most famous American snack food ever brought down from the Heaven's for mans mass consumption. Of course I speak of; the Twinkie!
When contemplating the Twinkie, with its golden sponge cake and vanilla cream filling, it is tempting to think it is the peak of perfection. But you would be wrong my friend! The fried Twinkie is where its at!
Every culture fries food, but in America we fry just about everything to delicious perfection. There is nothing that a vat of boiling animal fat can't make better.
Nothing.
You want to see the great American melting pot in action?
He's the immigrant working the fry station at McDonald's.

You want to know everything about us? Go to Wendy's, Burger King, Jack in the Box or any other number of cookie cut out fast food places. What do you learn? We want it hot. We want it fast. We want it cheap. Flavor? Yeah, there is ketchup and mustard.
That was it for a long time. A side of ranch would get you looked at weird and a request for salsa might get your ass kicked as a Communist! Taste is almost a second thought to fast food. They know it will be desirable because no matter what progress they have made to coming up with healthier Whoppers and more nutritious Big Mac's, its still the fat, salt and marketing that drives us to them with open mouths like moths to a flame. We mistake speed for quality. We take flavor, any flavor and blow it up to its most basic description. Food is now spicy, hot or fiery! Lets not confuse things with talk of different peppers or types of spices from regions other than here. Too confusing! If I see flames next to it on the drive through menu then I know what I'm getting. Besides, if it gets too hot, I can just dip it in some Ranch.
Ah Ranch!
Is there nothing your pudding like consistency can't drown into submission? Maybe America isn't a melting pot. Maybe its more like a blob of ranch dressing. Everything and anything it touches is over powered by its white, friendly and mild flavor. You can put up a fight, but it will just be there, always tasty and always good with new things.
The statue of liberty shouldn't be holding a torch anymore. It should be a waitress holding a menu in one hand and a side of ranch dressing in the other. Why? We don't make anything anymore. We have become a service industry nation. We are all waiting on each other, tipping each other and secretly dropping each others orders on the floor when no one is looking.
Think what you will about this, but remember that the phrase, as good as his salt, came from Roman Guards. They were paid in salt. Might not sound like much but salt was not only a form of currency, it could preserve food for long trips. The better you were the more salt you got. Hence the phrase.
Are we worth our salt these days?

Viva Viagra!

A friends girlfriend is a Bra fit specialist.
Score!
She touches other girls boobs all day. Technically, when he is with her then, it counts as a three way. Right?
I wish I was even half kidding about this. This is the male mind at work. Or at least, this is my mind at work. Christ, when do you grow out of this shit? The average American male is said to have a sexual thought every three seconds. Every three seconds? Are you kidding me? I am so above average then. How does anything get done?
I have a theory about our current economic collapse and the rise, excuse the pun, of erection aids and organic penis enlarger products.
Viagra first appeared on the market in 1998.
The Clinton years!
American prosperity!
The Internet and alternative music!
Good times!
Now jump forward to the post 9/11 America. On line pharmacies sold more Viagra in the months that followed 9/11 than at any other time in the drugs history. It is literally as if everyone at once said, fuck it!
Even the most casual Internet user or late night TV viewer has noticed an increase in commercials for anything having to do with the size or function of a mans dick. For the last several months if you clicked FOX news on line, a quarter of the page was taken up by a woman with photo shopped exaggerated sized eyes and a caption that said something like, never let another woman make you feel inadequate again.
I thought Fox news already had enough big dicks over there but I stand corrected.
Go on Facebook, Myspace or your spam folder and you can see add after add for various all natural penis enhancement products or different versions of Viagra. The reason the economy fell apart seems pretty clear to me now. Every guy was getting something to make his dick bigger, harder, ejaculate larger loads, improve stamina, prevent premature ejaculation and so on and so on. Of course the economy fell apart. No one was doing any work accept the people filling these orders.

Prayer Booth?

I lifted this off the FOXNews web site. They are desperate to feed their regular readers something, anything now that their side went down in flames this election.
Enjoy-

New York City officials this fall launched an art project called "Public Prayer Booth," which features a modified phone booth rigged up with a flip-down kneeler. Passers-by, if they're in the mood, can bend to their (padded) knee and say a prayer — a private moment in a very public atmosphere.

To cover the story, NPR sent reporter Margot Adler, a Wiccan priestess and author of two books on paganism. Lo and behold, she happened upon the president of the New York City Atheists, Ken Bronstein, an outspoken opponent of public religious displays.

"I just happened to be walking by at this exact moment," Bronstein told Adler. Then he denounced the display of what he called a "supernatural situation" on city property. Bronstein said that it was inappropriate for the public sphere and had to go.

"You know, if they want to put it on private property, that's where it should go — but not in public space," said Bronstein.

Critics are calling the radio report a biased assault on religion — one that's being supported in part with public funds.

"There are serious efforts under way right now to erase religious expression from the public square," said Father Jonathan Morris, a Catholic priest and FOX News contributor. "I don't understand why these groups would be so fascinated with taking this [religious expression] away."

NPR vehemently denied that its coverage was opposed to prayer or organized religion.

"There's no bias in this story and to imply that there is because of a reporter's religious beliefs is absurd," said Anna Christopher, an NPR spokeswoman. "[Adler] spoke with several different people with several different viewpoints on the booth."

Adler said traffic was sparse by the booth and she had trouble finding someone who took it seriously enough to pray there, but she interviewed a woman named Francesca Richardson who lives on disability payments and stopped to say a prayer. Adler compared her to Avery Williams, 7, who said grace for her ailing pets.

"Well, my gerbil died so we prayed for him, and my dog had a very bad leg so we prayed for that too," said Williams.

Asked whether their reporter was taking snipes at the faithful on the government dime, NPR was adamant that she wasn't and explained that only a minuscule amount of its funding comes from the government.

"Less than two percent [of NPR's budget] comes from competitive grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts," Christopher said.

"There's no disrespect for religion at all. Our reporters are able to separate their private practices ... and their standards as journalists, and in no way does [Adler's] religious affiliation affect that."

Religious groups were enthused about the project, saying it provided an opportunity to discuss religion in the public sphere.

"Any respectful artistic expression that gets us thinking about spiritual realities, respectful artistic expression is good," said Morris.

The public flare-up is just what Dylan Mortimer — the 29-year-old artist who created the installation — was hoping to stir up with his work. Religion is "just one of those topics you don't bring up at the dinner table," he said. "My hope and my dream would be that there will be a respectful way to engage in dialogue."

On that front, Mortimer's work has been a smashing success.

"Some people love them, some people use them sincerely in prayer, some people use them jokingly. Some people laugh at it, some people are offended, some people have put graffiti on them," Mortimer told FOXNews.com. "All of those reactions are totally valid."

Mortimer's installment, which is set to come down later this month, is sponsored by New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation as part of its 40-year-old Art in the Parks series. Asked about the controversy over the artwork, the city said it stood by Mortimer's piece.

"[Mortimer] is working independently and his work raises questions about religion in the public realm, but he does not take a position on it," said Christina DeLuca, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. "As he says, the goal is to spark dialogue, and we hope New Yorkers receive the work in this spirit."

Of Pianos and Ass Print's...

The Vatican has officially forgiven John Lennon for his comment, “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus!”
That only took 42 years.
Lennon should feel pretty good about that. It took the Vatican 360 years to forgive Galileo for making the crazy suggestion that the Earth went around the Sun.
The Catholic Church is big on forgiveness. Just not in peoples’ life times.
I can’t imagine John Lennon, where ever he is and in whatever incarnation he is in, caring that much about it.
When he said it to a London newspaper in 1966 it caused a huge backlash against the Beatles in America. Radio stations held public burnings of their albums. Protests broke out and kids willingly tossed Beatles albums onto pyres. There is something hilarious about the whole episode; people burning songs about love because one of the writers of those songs made an off handed comment about being more popular at the moment than another guy who talked about love.
You gotta love that!

My hero in civil disobedience has been captured! For the last year and a half someone was going around the town of Valentine, Nebraska committing acts of vandalism. Sort of.
He would smear K-Y jelly or lotion onto his ass and then press his ass to the windows of buildings leaving behind an imprint of his behind. In one brazen attack, every window in a hotel had fallen victim.
Awesome!
I don’t have a clue why this guy did what he did. For all I know he might legitimately be nuts. All I know is that the cops couldn’t catch the guy for a year and a half! The town is in a small corner of the state and has a population the size of an average skyscraper in down town San Francisco during a workday. For those reasons alone, he is my hero!
Maybe he got some sexual pleasure out of it. Maybe it was his way of protesting something. Maybe he just did it because it is a small town in the middle of nowhere and he was bored. Doesn’t matter what the reason is; you have to admire his ability to evade the police with his pants literally around his ankles.

Then there is this mystery. Police in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods. Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune. If for no other reason other than it adds a bit of wonder in an otherwise gray feeling time, I love this! It’s not easy to move a piano so the cops think that who ever did it had help. No reports of a missing piano or any pranks have been reported so somebody moved this thing out into the middle of snow-covered woods for some reason no one can figure out. Listen, on a shitty Monday when the news is nothing but grim reminders of just how badly greed is working to unravel the American dream, a strange and romantic scene like a piano in the middle of snow covered woods makes me smile a little thinking there are still souls on this planet who are motivated to act out in ways sublime and beautiful. If they find a butt print in lotion on the bench in front of it I will die with a smile on my face when the time comes.

The Near Perfect Weekend Gig

Thursday night I get a text message from the Punch Line Booker.
"Are you available this weekend to headline the Punch Line?"
Yes.
I don't know much about the headliner who had already been there for two nights. I don't know much about the reasons why he couldn't finish the week either. Thursday night, after a performance that suggested no turmoil inside the man, he left the stage, walked out the door and ran from the club.
A few hours later after managers, excuses and ego's were dealt with, I'm getting a text for the gig. Good for me, sad for him. Comics are not the most stable lot. No secret there. But to be at a point where you are about to blow up big and not be capable of emotionally handling it is sad. I feel for the guy, I really do. But I wish I was in a position to blow off choice gigs in great cities and then have my managers explain it away.
Whatever the reasons, it was now my weekend. Friday and Saturday night at the San Francisco Punch Line! It really doesn't get batter than that.
One small hiccup in the whole thing. Months ago I agreed to headline a benefit for an organization in Oakland that gets Athletic equipment for kids. I can't cancel. My Karma couldn't take the hit. Lately when ever I get a Booking in the city, I can almost depend on another call coming in with a show for that same night. If you hear me complain about being stuck in San Francisco, you have my permission to tell me to shut up. If you are double Booking yourself on a weekend night regularly, you really can't bitch about your career so much.
Here is how it worked.
I should be going on at the Punch Line's first show at about 8:45. I come off stage at 9:30, make the 20 minuet or so walk from the Punch Line to the Comedy College about six blocks away. I go on there at 10:00, do my set till 10:30 and when I come off that stage, I turn around and make the easy walk down hill to walk in the Punch Line at 10:45, right when I should be going on for the late show.
I learned two things during this marathon. One, I am desperately out of shape and two, I could of just walked. No show ever starts on time.
I made it!
All the shows were a hit. Some sets I liked better than others, but nothing to out of the ordinary. All in all, a pretty good weekend. I get my check after the Saturday shows and as I make my good byes I get accused of stealing a joke. It's something I have never been accused of before. It is also something that you better be sure about saying. Calling a comic a joke thief is about the worse thing you can say to a comic. Any time these things happen the people and the jokes in question are never around to end the debate. In this case however, they were. Here is the extra ridiculous part of this story. Its a dick joke. Thats all. In fact, its a jacking-off joke. A joke that I gave tags to the comic for.
Think about this for a second. IF I was ever going to steal a joke, something I have never done or been accused of doing, do you think I would do it literally in front of the other comic standing behind the bar during my set? Even I don't have balls that big.
It started simple enough. I was talking to a guy in the front row. I asked him if he was married and in one of the most unintentionally funny things I have ever seen, he looks at his hand for a ring first and then responds no. If you can't remember if your married or not with out having to look for a ring on your fingers, your in trouble! No way I was going to let that comedy gold go!
When I riff, I like to create a personality sketch of the person I am talking too. Then, I can talk into the Microphone as that person. When it works, it kills! When it doesn't, it means the crowd is dumb. Tonight, it works. I go off on this dude being asked if he is married and having to look at his hand every time. From there it's not a far stretch into masturbation jokes. In the middle of that I reference the joke in question. Actually, I just mention the product the other comics joke is based around. I referenced it because I know the guy is there!
When I finish my set I go up to him and ask, "Did you see that?" I didn't ask because I thought I was in trouble. I asked because I hoped he saw it. I think it is cool when comics throw some part of my set into their act when I'm in the room. Other comics like it too. He smiled and said yes and that was that.
That was that is rarely the end.
As I made my good byes his girlfriend confronts me about it. She is strident. She insists I stole it. The bartender looks at me as well. Before this scene goes any farther I realize, hey the guy is in back. Lets ask him what he thinks even though I already know. I go into the back and ask, "Did you think I stole that joke from you tonight?"
"No."
"Then talk to your girlfriend because she does."
His reply, "Punch her in the face."
I think that means I was right but I will pass on the face punching.
All this just reminds me that a lot of people who are around comedy are not comics. They don't get it. They are never the ones on stage but always the first to have "notes" for you. They don't understand the concept of tossing inside jokes over the head of the crowd to the one or two people who will get them.
It bugs me. At the very end of a near perfect weekend the person I made a point of going up to for a quick chat and a good bye tells me I stole her boyfriends joke. Wonderful!
I head home with this burning a hole in my head. I am pissed! How is it that at the very last second an entire found money weekend can get fucked up by one comment from one person who has known me for years? Such is life. Because as this thought is eating me up I realize, fuck them. It was a great weekend. The guy whose joke it is doesn't think I stole anything. End of story.

Union Square

I went down to Borders Book store today. I have become addicted to a series of sci-fi books so I had to pick up the next three. Thats how they get you! Its the Borders right by Union Square. They have the Christmas tree up waiting to be lit. Every where you looked people were milling around holding their bright colorful bags and Starbucks cups. The economy might suck right now, but you wouldn't know it from the crowds. This might be my class issues acting up, but most of the people I saw holding a purchase projected a sort of immunity from the current events. They looked like mannequins that had come alive in a Gap store window and rushed out to walk around in the November sunshine with credit cards and ultra brite white smiles. Of course every woman had on large bug eyed sun glasses and knee high boots. The men were confident and well dressed in jeans that cost more than I make on most private gigs. They held hands or cell phones that they will gladly replace for the newest cooler model when it comes out in a week or a month. Doesn't matter when, they will buy it. These are the people we hate but want to be. Young, well off and attractive. They match the people on billboards and in window displays. I could see people checking out each other and the flash of envy in their eyes as they looked from advertisements to other people and back again to themselves in the windows reflection. Everyone was trying to look like the people they saw in commercials.
All of this, this spectacle of mass consumption mixed with self-esteem based marketing began as a simple remembrance of Christ's birth. How weird, ha?
Into this scene walked a protest. The first sign that this idyllic capitalistic outing was about to be interrupted, were cops cars driving the wrong way down crowded streets. No sirens blaring or even lights flashing, just a cop car trying to get around a cable car filled with over weight tourists in shorts and Pier 39 sweat shirts. Then I could hear the shouting. It wasn't a large group but they made up for that in volume. Holding signs that read, No More Fed and, Don't Bail Out Billionaires, they chanted slogans and moved steadily up a sidewalk bordering the square. People turned their heads toward the commotion. I slowed down and finally came to a stop to watch the soft collision between ideals and consumption. This is the best time to watch peoples faces. Eyes squinted of those who didn't wear sun glasses. Lips tightened on the faces of the living mannequins. Everyones pace slowed a bit as they took in the protest. It was an intrusion into their shopping sprees. Impolite and frivolous, was the impression I got from the shoppers. The protest represented ideas they did not enjoying having to consider. Especially today when they were going about the collection of the latest things, the freshest fashions and the newest gadgets. Happiness avliable at a special marked down sale for the holidays. Precisely why the protest marched around Union square in the first place, I thought. Some eyes seemed embarrassed. The message of the protest made a few guilty. Other eyes were glazed over with the plastic smiles of the disinterested. A few were simply confused as to why people would ruin this wonderful day. I didn't talk to anyone so all this is guess work. But eyes and body language tell a lot if you let it. To me it seemed as if the shoppers were simply angry that people would make a big deal out of something they couldn't do anything about anyway. After all, they were helping the economy by going out and buying. What were these people doing? Screaming slogans and bothering people with fliers? For what? A few of the living catalog people actually shock their heads. The gesture was beyond condescending. It was a wave of the hand a dismissal of what these people were yelling. From where I was standing I thought both groups lived up to the stereotype the other group had firmly in their heads about each other. The kids, wearing faded jeans that actually got that way from use were forcing fliers into the manicured hands of women wrapped in burberry scarfs. It might as well have been an alien encounter for both sides. The kids were aggressive, vocal and just as set in their thinking as the people who treated them as a mild upset to be discussed over drinks later that night. Faces turned to masks and sunglasses became a shield to not see the out stretched hand holding a flier with Ron Paul's name on it. After living here for so long and either seeing or participating in these types of marches, I doubt the effectiveness of such actions. The people you are trying to reach react as if you shit on their living room floor. The people doing the reaching out have nothing but scorn in their eyes for the women in fur coats and the men who bought those coats for the women they see as accessories. Each side has contempt for the other. All this was going on around the giant tree, sullen and dark with strands of unlit lights sunken into its branches. Our economy depends on people spending more money than they really have. Its a hell of a system we have created for ourselves. What is bad for the individual is good for the economy as a whole. But it caught up with us finally and everyone present in union square today shared that now familiar general anxiety over what comes next. No mater how much money was spent today, its not enough. No matter how right the yelling kids holding up bumper sticker slogans might be, the approach might just turn more people off to the concepts then on. All in all, it was a very San Francisco day. The rich and articulate poor did the dance around each other that has gone on for all of recorded history. Whatever change is going to happen I doubt either side will have much control over. Things have gotten beyond what the system is set up to handle. Once, I thought ripping it all down was the thing to do. I held signs and locked eyes with men in suits hoping to project some understanding into them. I am not a suit these days, but I did buy two books and a magazine at a national chain store. I was participating in the system I have never had much love for too. Apathy, I suppose is my philosophy of choice these days. Frankly, I would love to see the rich suffer. Problem is, to really cut them deeply you and I and everyone else who struggles over decisions like buying food or paying down the credit card, would have to be reduced to great depression style poverty before they ever felt a sting.
Merry Christmas and happy stock market returns.

Powerful Ignorance Vrs. Facts.

Punch Line gig this weekend!

I don't know the whole story yet, but these things happen. The Headliner for this weeks show at the Punch Line will not be there. I kinda got the feeling from the Booker that something happened.
Long story short, now I am the Headliner for this weekend at the San Francisco Punch Line.
If your in town or hanging around, come on down! See me in my natural habitat.

Two shows tonight and tomorrow, 8PM & 10PM
415-397-PLSF
444 Battery St. (Right behind the Cinema)

Time for a Yard Sale on the White House Lawn

Well, I don’t get it. Course, it’s the news so who really does understand what is going on anymore. Car makers show up in Washington on private jets asking for money and pirates, or being one is starting to look like a legitimate career opportunity.

But lets get to the important news story of the day.

Chimpanzee adopts two tiger cubs at Florida Animal Park.

Where are the backers of prop 8 on this? If two men pledging their love and life to each other is an abomination, then different types of animals raising entirely different species of animals must be a huge concern to them. I mean, it’s a slippery slope right? First it’s monkeys raising tigers and everyone thinks, “that’s so cute!” But where does it end people? Did Noah have couple swapping going on aboard the ark? I don’t think so. We must put a stop to this insidious inter- species family before they have a chance to corrupt our traditional family pet values! Next thing you know it will be dogs sleeping with cats, birds nesting with snakes and a lion lying down with a lamb. Oh wait. That last one is OK because it is mentioned in the bible.
So new rule, or old rule I guess. Animals cannot enter into sacred relationships with other animals unless those animals are lions or lambs.
Some animals are just more equal than other Animals.

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was not only the longest serving Senator in U.S. history, but he was convicted of multiple felonies and sentenced to prison this week.
Here is the fun part-
He narrowly lost his re-election bid after a weeklong recount. The people of Alaska almost voted in a man they already knew had been convicted of ripping them off.
Wrap your head around that.
First we get brain dead caribou Barbie running as the V.P. candidate and now we get this.
What the hell is going on with Alaska?
It’s become the new Florida.

Bail out the auto companies?
What do you think? I’m sure we will get our money’s worth on this deal just like we got on the last giant bail out where the massive amount of money is now being used for something other than the stated reason they told us it would be used for.
Why would anyone doubt this?
Lets just keep handing out money to business that not only fails, but aggressively fights anything like, regulation, modernizing and making something of quality people actually want to buy?

Yesterday, I got a letter from the California state franchise tax board. They took another look at my return for last year and decided I owed them an additional $68.73.
Fuck!
You have to be kidding me, right? Every giant inefficient scam that calls itself a business in this country is getting a welfare type hand out from government, but California is going to grind to a halt if I don’t cough up an additional seventy bucks? Sorry, but I have swallowed enough bull shit for one year. These companies might be too big to fail, but I am too broke to help them. besides, the state of California is rapidly becoming a bricket anyway.

You ever get hit up for change by a homeless guy who is wearing better shoes than you are? Wall Street and now Detroit are dressed up in Armani suits with a cup in their manicured hands asking us, the American tax payer to give till it hurts because they fucked up so bad and stole so much money from everyone that now, unless we give the people who already fucked us over more, they will go out of business and bring down the economy.
Its not a bail out they want, it's a fucking threat!

I understand that between the big three automakers almost 3 million people are employed. Add to that the dealerships and parts manufactures and it doesn’t take a genius to see that losing them would be a bomb going off in the already weakened economy. We either hand money over to companies who fought against the production of fuel efficient vehicles, or we pay for the employees’ unemployment benefits and possible retraining.

Wake up America. The “dream” we have all been working for and sold on was set up with a financial myth that a handful of very rich people benefited from. Meanwhile, Fox news and its cast of yelling liars have never been more irrelevant or more off the mark. They called Obama a socialist, a communist and scared the dumb half of the country into buying record amounts of guns with the explanation that the Democrats were going to take them away any day now, but they never mention the fact that the government pretty much nationalized the entire banking system. So much for good old capitalism. I might be a little off on this, but that sounds a lot like the way Fascism starts. Doesn’t it?

America is about a month away from holding a yard sale on the White House lawn. Frankly, that’s what the Bush administration did for the last eight years anyway. You wanted something and had the money, it was yours! I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that congress is looking for the receipt for the Louisiana purchase. Maybe the French will give us our money back. Look what happened to the south anyway. It’s where we have the biggest illiteracy rates and gun purchases! I doubt the French will take it back. It would be like returning underwear you wore for a few years.
"What is this mark?"
"It's called ignorance. Sorry. We tried to wash it out but you know, you can't mix colors."

Hey Russia, you want Alaska back? We will throw in a Mary-Kay cosmetics saleswoman as the governor for no extra cost!
How about a bake sale for the Department of Education? As long as California gets to make the brownies, I think that might make us some money back. Actually, lets see if Mexico wants to buy back a little bit of what use to be theirs!
Wall Street has pretty much operated as a casino, I say give Manhattan back to the Native Americans and let them run it like a casino. Those turn a profit. And I don’t mean beads either, people!

40

A friend gave me a giant birthday card. On the front were drawings of Star Wars space ships and the words, "A long, long, long time ago..." When you open it, the Star Wars theme plays.
The message inside the card reads, "...you were born."

I didn't think I would live to see 40. I really didn't. It wasn't a death wish or anything, it was just a thought I never questioned. Then, came my life of always wanting more. Eventually more leads to the inevitable; no more. As in, you can't do that anymore or, you can't eat that anymore. Man, thats the truth! I can't have cheese anymore. I never thought that one day I would look at Vodka the same way I look at pizza. "If I eat that, I will be fucked up inside for a few days."
Food hang overs!
No one tells you about these things. Well, they do, you just don't listen when your young because youth is isn't just another age, it's another world.

No one says what they mean and nothing is called what it actually is anymore. No one wants to say anything negative. It started with Starbucks in the 90's. Small became Tall and we thought it was cute. The stock market no longer fell either, it experienced corrections. No one had problems too. We all started having issues.
Once I hit 40 all my tall issues had corrections.

I would say I am doing a little navel gazing lately only I can't really see my navel these days. I have the typical spare tire. What a lousy phrase that is. A spare tire is something that comes in handy in an emergency. 20 extra pounds around my middle isn't going to do anyone any favors when my car gets a flat on the side of the road. When you open the trunk and see a spare tire you go, "Thank God!" No one is saying those words when I take my shirt off.

We use to say that my Father remembered nothing. Driving around town he would point out the window at a store and say, "I remember when there was nothing there."
Now, me too.

George Bush- "Say, Obama. Is it true what they tell me about black guys?"

Wait Long Enough

There is a report I read briefly on Yahoo that asked the question, Are Victoria Secret bra’s causing health problems?
Yes. Yes they are. Four-hour erections in some cases have been reported.

I am all for a free press. Still, should the news be telling us what Obama and his family’s Secret Service code names are? Kind of takes the secret out of the secret doesn’t it?

Ever read, The Secret? It seems that our entire economy was based on the philosophy of thinking that a combination of wanting and thinking hard enough about wanting something would translate into real dollars.
Isn’t this the kind of thinking we tell our kids to grow out of?
“You can’t just wish for something. You have to go do the work!”

This month, two friends of mine lost their Fathers to long health battles and two women I cared about a long time ago contacted me. Strange.
My Father is in bad shape. When people ask what he has the most honest response simply is, “He’s old.”
There isn’t any one major thing wrong with my Dad. It is time taking its toll on him. That and the complications on top of complications that came with a botched gull bladder operation performed at the V.A.
We see it all the time with older people. One fall or one medical procedure gone wrong marks the beginning of a downward spiral. Frankly, I am amazed that my Dad has been able to hang on as long as he has. His body no longer does what you and I take for granted. He is almost entirely confined to live inside his mind.
When I think about that, really think about it, I get claustrophobic.
I have never really lost anyone close to me. These friends who just lost their Fathers have been devastated by their death. Is it selfish to keep thinking, how will I be when this happens to my Dad?
It keeps going through my head.

Then, the women contacted me the same week I will turn 40.
Its not like I want to have a middle age crisis, its just that the universe seems intent on bringing one to me.
One was an X-girlfriend. We moved in together as starry-eyed young lovers when I was 19. The other girl was a girl I was simply afraid to make any meaningful moves on even though the mutual attraction was obvious.

With the X, I realize that time will eventually heal all. When we broke up it was hard. I carried that grief around with me for a few years. I tried to get back together with her several times, but she was not having any of that. When I heard her voice on the other end of the phone yesterday, I felt no tug at my heart or any pop-song longing for what was.
Time.
Eventually, it does seem to do what no amount of drinking could ever accomplish.

12, maybe 13 years ago, she showed up at my job. The X, I lived with. She was different in a way I could not immediately explain to myself. Long story short, she became bi-polar along with other emotional issues and was placed in a mental health hospital by her parents.
That was the last time I saw her.

With the other girl it was all my fears. She was too perfect. She was cute, smart, and sweet and always looked amazing in no matter what she had on. I was completely convinced that even though all the signs she was giving me were green lights, I would fuck it up. Now days I think of it as a sort of middle age crisis at the age of 25. I had been in love twice before meeting her and each time the relationships ended in spectacular failures. I just didn’t want to go through anything close to that ever again with a girl as incredible as her.
Today she is married, still looks great and is proud of the successes I have had in comedy.
Shit.

I can’t say if it truly is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. But I do know the regret of never having acted on feelings is a sting that outlasts anything like the embarrassment of being turned down.

When I think about the women I have known I don’t stop to consider the insults, petty jealousies or out right bull shit two people might inflict on each other. Today I think about the ones I could have had something with but convinced myself otherwise.
Lesson learned.
Its not a long list, just a few names really, but the idea that my life could of gone in another direction if I had done something differently is a powerful form of self inflicted grief that is hard to shake. Its difficult to say where nostalgia ends and unproductive thoughts begin. Actually, it’s not hard at all. I can honestly say this is a question I was born with. Any one who was ever adopted knows this question well.
What would my life be like if another family had gotten me?
What would I be like if things had worked out with that job, that girl, that show, this day?
Its a branching chains of dominos.
I can’t know anymore than anyone else could. If there were a machine that could show you what your life would have been like if you turned left instead of right at an intersection in the road, would you look into it?
I don’t know if I would now. I use to think I completely would with no hesitation. Its not like I don’t love my parents, but there is no way I am the product of an X-Nun and an accountant. We were challenging on each other when my parents raised me.
Tomorrow I turn 40.
Please, hold the shit about; it’s just a number and all that crap.
People only say, it’s just a number when it’s clearly no longer just a number.
40 means waking up takes a bit longer. There are mornings when I think of my Dad and my chest seizes up for a second as I consider what the passage of time will do to me.
40 means the guitar that sits against the wall of my room will probably remain something I do. Not something I am known for.
40 means the, “Your still young. You have time to figure it out” comes to an end. 40 means the people around me who are younger look at me to know shit when life becomes serious. How should I know? I will ask. Your old, they reply. Before I can respond with sarcasm or protest, I remember when I was their age that 40 did indeed seem old to me.
Shit again.

Wait long enough and time heals the broken heart from relationships. A little longer and what if, becomes a wound all it’s own. Longer still and the body you live in starts a process that seems designed to strip a person of their dignity.
My point?
I don’t have one really. I am just marking the passage of another year and the set of ironies and incidents that have gone into making it memorable.
Cheers=)

Sarah Palin-
"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing,"
I really couldn't put it any better.

Camouflage Christmas

Check this article out!

MIDLOTHIAN, Va. – When 10-year-old Austin Smith heard Barack Obama had been elected president, he had one question: Does this mean I won't get a new gun for Christmas?

That brought his mother, the camouflage-clad Rachel Smith, to Bob Moates Sports Shop on Thursday, where she was picking out that special 20-gauge shotgun — one of at least five weapons she plans to buy before Obama takes office in January.

Like Smith, gun enthusiasts nationwide are stocking up on firearms out of fears that the combination of an Obama administration and a Democrat-dominated Congress will result in tough new gun laws.

"I think they're going to really try to crack down on guns and make it harder for people to try to purchase them," said Smith, 32, who taught all five of her children — ages 4 to 10 — to shoot because the family relies on game for food.

There are a few ways to look at this I guess. Hey, just like he promised he is stimulating the economy even before he takes office. The other way to look at this is, I hope the secret service has an arsenal on hand to protect our nations first black President. I don't know if you noticed or not, but the places where more guns are sold are also the states that didn't vote for Obama.
Obama will have the secret service. That means like most black people in D.C. he will be constantly surrounded by white guys with guns.
Comforting?

OK. Who, in 2008, relies entirely on hunting for their food? What white trash little boy asks for a "new" gun for Christmas? What do the parents teach these kids?
"Mama. Whats Christmas all about?"
"Jesus was born into the world! We rejoice at his message of love and peace for all mankind!"
"Can I have a machine that is designed for the sole purpose of killing?"
"Of course you can, Baby!"
I don't remember, did any of the wise men bring ammo as a gift?

The oldest kid in this article is 10 and she is buying guns for all of them? Yeah. That seems a lot safer than letting gay people take the same 50 50 shot at marriage as any of those little white trash rug rats will have when they grow up. That is, if they make it through another camouflage Christmas without incident.
I would hate to be Santa coming down the chimney of that house!
House.
Ha! I mean trailer.

What Do We Do About Gay Chickens?

So let me get this straight, California voted to give chickens cages where they could stand up, turn around and stretch their wings but basically shoved gay people back into the confines of the closet? Irony on top of ironies, prop 8 was mostly funded by the Mormons, a religion that allowed for multiple wives until relatively recently in modern history. Hey! If it was OK for a man to have many wives, I think it might be OK for a man to pledge his love to another man as his partner. Besides, this shouldn’t be seen as a moral issue. It should be a legal one. After all, religious or not, any marriage that ends doesn’t end in a church, it ends in a courtroom.

If the Mormons could wake up and join the 21^st century by putting an end to bigamy, why can’t they see prop 8 for what it really is, state sanctioned bigotry. Come on! There even spelled similarly!

I guess the big question now is, what do we do about gay chickens?

Notes on the day after History

-Today I saw a homeless man selling copies of the Chronicle for $3.00. I am just guessing here, but I think he took a bunch from a rack when they came out early in the morning. What a smart thing to do! The front page declaring Obama's win will be a collectors item. If you tried to find a Chronicle in a rack after the election, then you know they were empty pretty early.
Sure enough, one by one I watched Marina Chicks, Castro boys, Button down business men and Hipsters all willingly purchase a copy for $3.00.
See. Obama has been elected President and already he's putting people back to work.

-Listening to Air America radio in my car, a conservative caller still arguing after a landslide victory about "Obama's socialism" commented, "...it's capitalism first and if you can't make it on your own get out of the way or you will get rolled over."
I think thats why they lost.
Another conservative was quoted on CNN as saying, "I don't know how we lost."
Your shitting me, right?
I don't know, maybe it was the 10 Billion dollars a month occupation of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Maybe it was the economic melt down created by the conservative delusion that all business should have no rules or regulations placed on them to maximize profit. Perhaps it was the choice of a nearly brain dead X-beauty queen whose every public utterance made George Bush seem like a professor of linguistics. Maybe it was John McCain, a millionaire with 7 homes and 12 cars saying, Obama was a bad candidate because he wanted to "...spread the wealth." Maybe it was the failure of hunting down and bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice. Perhaps it was the lack of any weapons of mass destruction ever being found or maybe it was the arrogance of a man who spent precious minuets in one of his few press conferences stuttering a "no" to the question of, what mistakes have you made and what would you do different? Maybe it was the idolization of Joe the plumber; a guy who lied about his name, lied about making the money he said he did, lied about being a dues paying union member with a licenses to be a plumber in the state of Ohio, and on top of it all- hadn't even paid his taxes! There is a lien on his property. Or wait, I know! It was probably the home mortgage industry bankrupting America and the predatory lending unleashed on us under the guise of creating "The Ownership society."
Any one of these things might have been the reason why the Republicans lost. Take your pick sore loser.

-History gives rise to phrases that slip into the mainstream as metaphors. My fathers generation had, "If we can put a man on the Moon then we can..."
I predicted ours will become, "If we can put a Black man in the White House, then we should be able to..."

-Fox TV gave new four year contracts to its pool of loud mouthed ass holes. They are sharpening their knives and taking aim at Obama just as they did with Clinton. They will be the persistent buzz of an annoying fly by your ear. They will say outrageous spiteful untrue things like never before because their world, the world of old rich arrogant white men is ending. These are the same people whose morality allows for the public shamming of a President who got a blow job in office but cheered for a war where millions are dead. Yet, they will tell you with a straight face that they are pro-life.
Seriously, guys?

-Got news for everyone.
As long as we remain the richest empire with the deadliest military in the history of the world, we will have enemy's. A lot of enemy's. Irony is, most of our enemy's are of are own making. Saddam Hussein was as much an American creation as Coke. Our homeless are relatively rich if you look at what most of the worlds population calls life. We are resented and admired, held up as a beacon of hope and renowned for the devastation it requires to keep this luxury life style going.
And we are a nation that loves to party.
75% of our money holds enough traces of cocaine that drug sniffing dogs have to be taught to ignore it like back ground static.
To the majority of the planet, everyone here might as well be Paris Hilton.

-Truth is, to keep us living the American dream, a great many people in a great many nations have to do a lot of the heavy daily toil the statue of liberty promises to free people from.
So you can see how we might look silly in the eyes of the world when we talk about human rights and freedom.
America has a national flag, a national bird, and national holidays. But we aren't a nation.
Were an irony.

-If America was started in defiance of the established powers that be so all people could be free and equal, then asking tough questions about our country cannot be un-American. So stop with the ra-ra were number one bull shit for a moment and see things as they are, not as we want them to be. On the list of things like live births, murder, educational standards, life expectancy and our own quality of life surveys, America consistently comes in behind countries most of us only know as punch line's. Question is, do you want to accept things as they are or do you want to change them? If you want to change then lets agree on what work needs to be done. Also, lets stop making private matters of morality into things that are legislated. Wasting time arguing over gay people and the legality of them having the same basic rights as any other married couple isn't useful. Besides, what are you preserving with so called, Traditional marriage?
An institution that fails 50% of the time?
What else do we hang onto in society that ends up not working half of the time?
A gun that worked half the time wouldn't be acceptable. A condom that worked half the time wouldn't be useful either. Let gay people have the same opportunity to fuck up each other as you or I have.
If its a religious issue allow me to point out that if you insist on following social laws write down in a 2,000 year old book that has been edited, transcribed, rewritten and translated incorrectly at times in history, then you can't say, we don't follow the rule about stoning people to death anymore because thats barbaric, but were still following the one about gay people.
What we need, what we all want is the dignity of a job that allows us quality of life. How do we insure everyone actually does get what their promised by the constitution? You know, Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The black and white, Democrat or Republican approach to this has been either, less government is the way or more government is the way.
They both miss the point.
The right question is, where should government be involved to better the quality of its citizens lives and where can that promise best be served without government involvement?
I heard a man say, "Good government should function so you don't notice its even there." Government for the people and by the people implies the people have a duty to be informed. That means participation beyond casting a ballot every few years. It means paying attention and yelling Bull Shit when the government says something like, we are invading a country for your protection.
The last eight years of George Bush were a monument to petty personalities, primitive beliefs and staggering greed. He told us we were at war but asked nothing more of us other than to go out and shop. He told us we were in danger of having our way of life and liberties taken away, yet it was Bush and company that removed civil liberties and manipulated us with fear to do it.
They made war into just another business and waged business like it was a war. How else would you explain oil companies record breaking profits and the complete collapse of the banking industry?

-I bought a copy of the $3.00 Chronicle and put it in a box in my room. It is a time capsule now. The real reflection of the times we live in is not the front page with a beaming proud Obama claiming his landslide victory, it is the news stories between the pages that tell us of our days. Those are the pages that will remind us more than anything else why Americans voted for hope this year.

Signs of the Times

Signs that things have become desperate-
TD Ameriatrade, an online brokerage house, is offering new customers 30 days of no fees on any trade and they will give you $100.
When they start selling the stock market to you the same way they sell cars with rebates, we might be in trouble.

Signs that advertisers aren’t doing a good enough job picking slogans-
Virginia Madison is the new spokesperson for Botox. The tag line for the commercials; Freedom of expression.
Freedom of expression? Are you shitting me? Wouldn’t a more accurate tag line be, freedom from expression?

Signs that things are really bad-
Yesterday I bought a toaster and I got a free bank.

Signs that I must change-
Having sex recently I felt something I have not felt in a long time.
My abs.

Signs that the Obama team moves faster than McCain-
A bumper sticker with a slogan that comes directly from the second debate. With Obama's symbol filling in for the letter O, it said; That One!

Check this out!

The Best Phrase In Human History!

I have invented one of the most useful sayings ever. Perhaps one of the greatest phrases ever. It is endlessly helpful in a variety of social situations. It can be utilized as an out. It can be feigned as a human busy signal. It can calm an argument and prevent misunderstandings. In other words, it is a magical spell!

This is the phrase: "I know you are talking but I can not understand the words."

Try it the next time someone is talking to you from another room. It comes in handy when a person insists on starting a conversation when one of you goes to the bathroom. You know when you just hear the unmistakable sound of language but the words are muffled?
"I know you are talking but I can not understand the words."
Say it loudly in a clear flat tone. You will hear sudden silence and then a loud, "OK!"
End of problem.
It may seem like a simple magic incantation to stop the buzz of conversation that you will not know a thing about when asked, but it is more. It is a peace maker.
Hostage demands?
"I know you are talking but I can not understand the words."
Terrorist threats?
"I know you are talking but I can not understand the words."
Holidays with the family sitting around the table talking politics?
"I know you are talking but I can not understand the words."
If ever there was a first message to broadcast to an incoming alien transmission, this would be it. After they translate it they would think, what a smart race! What a perfect thing to say!
Anyway, it is a very useful phrase. Try it.

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."