Don't Steal Another Mans Horse

While in the middle of a Riff one night I said a friends joke. I was so guilt ridden about it I called him up from the road and told him. At the time, he was sort of my comedy mentor. We did a lot of shitty road gigs together and bonded on all those eight-hour car rides. He laughed. It was not the reaction I was expecting but I was happy to be out of the woods. He then said something that I have always tried to remember. “It happens.”

All right, you might not want to base an entire philosophy around those two words but you know what, it does happen. It’s not always a clear-cut case of theft so much as it might just be a slip. This can happen when you are riffing with the audience on a subject and bump into someone else’s bit on that subject. That’s what happened with me. Then there are those times when things are a bit blurry.

I recently did a show where the host told a joke I do only in that particular room. It’s a comment on the odd decorations they have up. The joke is specific only to that room. I have done it each time I have worked there. Another comic shot me a look as soon as the joke left his mouth. I shrugged my shoulders. I am almost positive that this is not the only joke of mine that has “slipped” out of his mouth. I say that because before the show this comic asked me if I was the guy who had a joke about this and then he asked if I was the comic that did a joke about so and so. Separately this doesn’t mean much. But there was a moment on stage where he was in the middle of doing a bit. Right in mid sentence he looked over at me and said, “Your bit about this would be perfect here!”

I kind of had the feeling that on the road my bit is being said there. In fact, I think he remembered I was in the room in the nick of time.

So what do you do?

Is this a case of honest mistake or joke theft? About the worse thing you can accuse a comic of in this business is stealing jokes. Someone recently accused me of doing it and it doesn’t feel good no matter how much in the right you know you are. It’s the equivalent of stealing a mans horse in the old west. It gets you strung up from the nearest tree! Yeah. Its that serious to comics.

I didn’t say anything to him. In the end I will always be able to produce more material. I don’t think we will be doing a lot of the same gigs together either. So a few of my bits are out there working when I’m not. So what? The comedy world is so small that ripping off another comic at this level is dumb. Its going to get back to the other comic sooner or latter. Saying a persons joke in front of them after you booked them is also hilarious. I mean, come on Dude. Even if I wasn’t there on this night other comics were. You don’t think that another San Francisco comic would call me later that night to tell me that someone else is doing a signature bit of mine?

Ah well. These are pretty good problems to have while Rome burns.

Stay Warm While Rome Burns=)

Check this out. If you tried to see the Vice Presidents house on Google Maps while Dick lived there you saw an image that was pixllated. The image was blurred on purpose for security reasons. However the White House wasn't the entire last eight years. Kind of confirms where the real power was, eh?
The pixillation was removed the day new Vice President, Joe Bidden moved in.
Things are literally getting more transparent under the new administration every day.
That should of been the first clue that old Dick was up to no good. When you use the same technique the TV show COPS uses to hide the faces of the people in handcuffs to hide your house with you are doing something hella wrong.

How is the fall of western civilization going for you? Just as we were collectively getting over the fear of terrorism it is replaced with the fear of being fired. Stores are closing, automakers begging for loans, unemployment websites are crashing under the heavy demand and banks seem to be getting away with the biggest theft in history.
We are watching the payments come due for our way of life folks.
Money has been the God here for a while. You remember the ending of Fight Club? They blew up the buildings that housed the computers for the credit industry and banks. The idea was simple. Destroy everyones finical records and we all start over at scratch.
Well...

Stores, major ones that we grew up with are going out of business. Its is the most disquieting thing about what ever it is that is going on right now to me.
The best part of the ending of the world so far?
The sales.

When Obama got elected and people saw that I was on the Obama-Ha-Ha tour one question came up over and over. Will you have anything to talk about when Bush & Company are gone?
The guy Obama got to head the Treasury department forgot to pay his taxes for a few years. If you can't see the joke in giving a guy who forgot to pay his own taxes the job of looking over our monetary system then you aren't paying enough attention.
Its the government. I don't know if its for the people anymore but as long as its run by the people there will always be jokes.
I have already noticed something curious going on. When I mention a little fact like this around the water cooler I get a decidedly cool reaction from my fellow liberals. Come on people! Don't cave to the group think that Lord Obama walks on water and cured crippled children with lasers he shoots from his eyes.
He is a politician.
That means by his very nature he should be held to a higher standard. At the very least we should remain skeptical. I'm not eager for Obama jokes but we have to face the fact that they are inevitable. Any time something major happens with the dollar we can just say the guy in charge forgot to file something. He will get right on it. Don't set yourself up Dude. But there is this to consider. This fact was discovered by an internal review. That means the Obama staff found out about it and announced it to the public first. Smart.
Too skeptical?
What are we going to do? I honestly think we are only at the start of this mess. And it really is all the bills for our way of life coming due at once. The entire philosophy of what is called the top down economic policy has failed. We shoveled money up the ladder at the wealthy like never before in history. The idea sold to us was that money in their hands would trickle down on us other 90% in the form of jobs. Well that turned out to be bullshit. What did we learn when we handed 400 trillion dollars to the banks so far with absolutely no strings attached? We learned that they just held on to it. They hoarded it. Thats what the rich do when they get handed trillions of dollars from lower on the ladder. They hoard it. We are about to prosecute Bernie Madoff for his 50 Billion dollar ponzzi scheme. Our economy has operated like one giant ponzzi scheme hasn't it? What does it all mean? It means the system has been rigged against you since the day you were born. I'm not talking Matrix conspiracies here I am just saying that money is power and most of us don't have a lot of either. How do they control us? Ever get charged by your bank for not having money in your account? Can you think of a bigger fuck you then being charged more money for not having money? Its a poverty tax that keeps you down. Its all those little fees and small print charges that eat you alive. If its not that then we give in to the messages being broadcast to spend every where our eyes look and before you bring up personal responsibility in our choices to borrow money ask yourself why companies spent billions of dollars a month on those messages?
It must work some of the time.
Turned out it might have worked a little too well.
I keep seeing these experts pop up on news shows virtually yelling at the American consumer for not going out and starting the engine of our economy by spending on shit they don't need at prices they can't afford. Isn't that how this whole thing started?
For a drug commercial recently the narrator said, "Tell your prescriber about all your medications first."
Prescriber?
If your not getting drugs from a doctor then its a dealer. Or the Internet.
Welcome to the future.
Citizens are now consumers and the people you buy drugs from are perscribers.
Can a real life Logan's Run be far behind for us now?

A little off the topic but you think now that Obama is our president spellcheck can stop trying to correct it to Osama?

Oh, here is a little mistake I probably laughed to hard at. I was watching a show about the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is the Mosque that stands over the rock that Arabs believe Mohammad rose to heaven from. The Christians and all there various offshoots claim it is the spot Abraham almost sacrificed his son to God. The Jews also share this belief and they also think it is the site of King Solomons Temple.
This is the Temple that many believe must be rebuilt before Jesus returns to Earth. In other words, its pretty much crazy central for the big three fairy tale makers. But thats not how the host conveyed it. He said it was ground zero for three major religions.
What an unfortunate choice of words.
Because there is a ground zero and it does represent the coming together of the worlds three major religions already.

I was recently asked by someone to ghost write their status updates on Facebook. I guess I'm funny. At least it won't be weird to refer to them in the third person? Anyone else find that strange? You know that referring to yourself in the third person is a sign of mental illness right?
I have become one of them. I have friendships and relationships that exist no where else but on line. On myspace a woman sent me a message recently that ended with, I miss you.
I miss you? I don't know you.
Its all so weird. Its not about connecting with people so much as it is making us feel better about being isolated. All this communication technology and I feel like we are getting worse at communicating with each other. I have surrendered to the Facebook idea of intimacy. When a waiter tried to sit me between two people he said, "You can meet new people." My response with no joke intended? "If I wanted to meet new people I would of stayed home on Facebook!"

In a recent on line argument with a fellow blogger of another political persuasion, I was told that the death of innocents in Iraq during our little war of choice was all part of God's plan. I gotta tell you of all the excuses I have ever heard for bad shit happening in the world, God's plan is the one that makes me the angriest. This is not FEMA were talking about here Dude. What other plan could you ever get a way with saying this about?
"Hey I saw on my cell phone bill that last month to send 100 text messages 100 people had to die of preventable disease in Africa."
"Yeah thats part of the plan."
No one tolerate that. Why do we let God get away with loving us like this?
Then I asked if the God he was talking about was the same God that told George Bush to invade Iraq and that he would find Weapons of Mass Destruction. And if so was that the same God he believed in too?
He said it was none of my business what he believed in when it came to God.
I said "Exactly!"
You know what guarantees that? In writing? Its not the Bible that proclaims equal rights or even the pursuit of happiness for everyone. Its the Constitution baby!
Lets try to live up to it this time around.
Democracy 2.0!
The Vice President had his house digitally censored on Google maps While the White House remained "disclosed."
Just think of everything we are going to learn in twenty years.
Well, lets all stay warm while Rome burns.
Cheers.

On to the next carrot dangled at the end of another stick.

What is it about an important audition + a camera in the room that make a crowd lame? It is generally regarded as proof of Murphy’s Law, but any time you need a crowd to be good you can almost count on them to be bad. Sunday night I auditioned for the Aspen Comedy festival. It’s not what it once was but it is still a place to be seen by some of the powers that be in this biz. Sunday night at the Punch Line in San Francisco can be an awesome show. Two hours of comics all doing their best stuff in five to ten minuet increments in front of a crowd thrilled to be there makes for some great nights. Last night Rooftop Comedy set up their cameras and taped the show. They are traveling around to different venues looking for comics to put on their stage at the festival this year. Sure enough the crowd couldn’t give a fuck. I watched comic after comic go up with stuff that usually ends with applause breaks get a whimper. I did no better. Jokes I have always been able to count on got a chuckle. When it happens to comic after comic then it is reasonable to conclude that it’s the crowd, not the comics. I know I know. There is no such thing as a bad crowd. Bullshit.

When you audition for something you want to present well-honed material. It’s not really the time or place to Riff. Did I riff? Of course I did! It’s like a sickness with me I guess. First of all the crowd needed a jolt. Second of all there was a huge completely bald white guy in the front row. How can you not mention that? He looked like Mr. Clean or a very aggressive trailer hitch. Take your pick. But when I fucked with the crowd I got a big response. I managed to get most of the stuff in there that I wanted, but it definitely wasn’t the set I wanted to have. I left after my set but I can’t imagine it getting any better for anyone else. By the time I came off the stage it was 9:30 and there were still 6 more comics to go.

Rooftop Comedy is relatively new to the business. They have positioned themselves as the place to go on the Internet for stand-up. Here is the problem though. They don’t pay the comics. They simply mine us for content. Holding the promise of getting a set at Aspen in front of us is the carrot at the end of the stick they use to generate more content for their site. I didn’t sign the waiver either. They will put it up there anyway. They always do. Yet one more set will be badly edited and thrown into the ether of the Internet for a few people to watch. The argument is the same as it has always been. Do it for exposure. Well, as Will Durst said to me the best thing you can say when they ask you to do something for exposure is to remind them that people can also die from exposure.

Last night they got a lot of really good comics doing great stuff in front of a lame crowd for their site. I don’t think many people went home happy.

Last weekend I got to perform in theaters. I was part of the Obama-Ha-Ha Tour. Not only did I get to perform in beautiful venues, I got to hang out with three of the most accomplished Bay Area comics I know. Will Durst, Johnny Steel and the man who put the whole thing together, Dan St. Paul. I really did feel honored to be a part of this show. Politically themed, social commentary comedy thrives when the audience is intelligent and well informed. Needless to say it has been a dying form of stand-up for a while now. This challenged me a little. I had to look at old bits and figure out how to rework them into something other than a dirty joke. I also realized that I didn’t need to rely on some of the more shocking elements in the bits for them to work. Last but not least, it became very clear to me that theatres and not comedy clubs are the way to go. I never thought I would say that. I always thought I would be a die heart club comic till the day I died. What you learn at theater shows is just how distracting a traditional comedy club can be to what most of us would like to be seen as an art. With no two-drink minimum or waitress to serve people, the crowd has to pay attention. It makes for a much better show for everyone. Subtle lines get big laugh and big laughs get turned into a roar. The last night of the Obama-Ha-Ha Tour we were at the Punch Line. Almost sold out, we thought it was going to be an amazing night. It turned out to be the least fun show for all of us. Why? The crowd was ordering pizza, talking over the bill, trying to listen while a table of kids next to them chatted about their text messages.

I love the Punch Line. It is still home. But I can see that if you have something to say and want to really explore the topic you have to find a stage where people are looking for what you want to present. Otherwise, you are little more than musack playing in the background while someone makes a profit on drink orders.

I don’t know if I will get to Aspen this year. I don’t know if I will even try out for last comic standing again. Hell, I don’t know if I will even be invited to try out again. It has to be enough that I was asked to perform. Really, that has to be what its always about anyway.

The set is done and the crowd was what it was. The trick now is to forget it and move on to the next shot at the next thing that could be the thing. The life of a comic is a strange existence. You constantly have to let go of your expectations and do the next show in the hope that it will be better than the last. When you are up there under the lights with that Mic in your hand, you have to be completely there. It’s a game we all play inside our heads. Forget the past but not until you learn something from it. Plan for the future but above all be in the moment. I think success happens when you can perform fully in the moment. Sometimes it seems to happen almost like magic. Other times it is a struggle just to stay focused. Most of the time it is some combination of anxiety and excitement that rule comics. I doubt anyone went home last night and thought, nailed it! Such is the life of stand-up. On to the next carrot dangled at the end of another stick.

Before the New Era of Bipartisanship Starts...

I am walking to my car in a typical parking lot. A man spots my Obama pin. He locks eyes on it, squints and makes a face I have come to realize is the face of a Jackass about to say something stupid.
"You should of voted for your own kind." He said.
My reply?
"I did. An American."
There were a few other words after that but the point was made. As I pulled out I couldn't help but yell, "You lost, Bitch!"
This happened today. Obama's Inauguration.
47 Million people voted for John McCain.
12% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim.
20% still think Iraq had something to do with 9/11.
This guy was one of those people.
It doesn't matter that the 44th President of the United States of America is the first African-American to hold this office. Its not his people. Its not historic for him in the same way it is historic for the rest of us. This guy is your neighbor or boss, the friend of the friend who says inappropriate things at backyard bar-b-cues.
Two minuets after Obama took office I switched over to Fox news out of curiosity. It had already begun. The guy had the job for two minuets and they were already criticizing him.
To this I say- How dare you! In the middle of two wars, how dare you criticize the commander and chief who is busy protecting the troops!
OK. Now the new era of Bipartisanship can begin.

Word to your...

Here is a phrase that is the killer of comedy with an opinion. The death blow to any conversation and the blanket statement that breeds mediocrity in anything it is uttered around. It is usually proceeded by the affable phrase, by the way...
By the way, they would like the comedy show to not have any swearing, sexual, political, racial, religious or otherwise offensive material.
Seriously.
Words. Again, were talking about words. And, excuse me but a week before the Inauguration of Americas first African-American president and I am asked to not acknowledge the history we all share at this moment? It would be bad enough if this were yet another company obsessed with creating a thought free zone for their staff of sterile minded cubicle drones, but this is for a college. College! You know, the place invented by the Greeks to mentor new minds in the way of critical thinking and philosophy.
The gig goes great. I actually end up talking about things that are political, religious, sexual, racial and otherwise offensive if handled improperly. I perform on a beautiful stage in a college theater at 10AM. Oh, thats the other thing, its at 10AM in the morning. Is anything funny at that hour? Actually, an audience of smart progressive teachers is an ideal crowd for me. After the first few minuets get steady laughs, people relax a bit and it goes well.
The whole thing got me thinking about our preoccupation with words and feelings in America.
When did the Land of the free and home of the brave get so intimidated by words? Its no wonder corporate America became a nest for illegal plotting. You weren't allowed to think about anything else.
The thing is, each side of the social spectrum practices censorship. Strangely enough, the right tends to control access to knowledge while the left wants to ban concepts. Racism, sexism- things of that nature. With the right it is military hardware, ancient books- things like that. Both play games. Semantics as propaganda is one. All these terms are designed to obscure the actual meaning or purpose of what there describing.
Land mines are anti-personal deployment devices.
Retarded became challenged.
A man and a woman married with kids is a traditional family.
Homosexual is now gay.
Putting more pollution in the air was named the clear skies initiative.
These are not descriptions of real things. These are slogans. Advertisements for ideas. Brand names for a way of being.
Eight years ago, right after 9/11, being in debt was practically elevated to the same level as flying the flag. Look where that got everyone? Obviously we can be talked into doing something against our best instincts. The entire advertisement business relies on this. And its all done with words. They are the roots that keep everything in bloom. All the shades of meaning and the bright colors of adjectives are all supported by the true meaning in older words. We even call them root words.
We demand others not use certain words.
We ask others to refer to us with these words.
Some words can be said on TV at set times and some words can only be used late at night on TV.
The president weasels out of a question by asking what the definition of is, is?
Words have become our primary concern in this country. You would think that we solved all our other problems. But no, its words and the power we give them that concerns us most these days.
A boy walks into a school with a gun and kills several students and himself. Its the top story on the news for a few days. Everyone shakes their head in disbelief.
No one understands why.
A boy walks into a room with a word on his T-shirt that offends someone and a lengthy legal battle starts. Years drag by as court after court and appeal after appeal all pass some judgement on not just the word, but if a person has the right to show that word in public.
Judges, lawyers, jurors, reporters and public opinion all debate the way to argue with words, the words that can be used in the fight and finally the intent and meaning of the word that brought them all to this point.
I wrote a blog recently about Prince Harry getting in trouble for using racist terms while in war. Everyone agrees that war is bad but in the middle of this mass murder he uttered something so terrible that it required a royal apology. Not for the death and destruction unleashed from the barrel of his gun- for the words falling from his mouth!
A person even posted a comment taking issue with me. In their eyes, it is a just cause to want a world free of racist terms. I agree. But if we slump our shoulders at the inevitability of war and loose our collective shit when a bad word is spoken out loud, we might be in worse shape than anyone wants to admit.
Word to your mother, Bitches!

Stuff on my Mind-

I had to get up early this morning for a radio call in. It was to promote the Obama-Ha-Ha tour I am a part of this week. I was bleary eyed, delusional from lack of sleep and kept hearing voices on the radio say my name and laugh. I have to think this is how Bush felt everyday in the White House.

How does Ann Coulter get on TV to promote her books anymore? In her latest book she attributes much of our nations problems to single Mothers. According to her, single mothers’ raise rapists, burglars and dropouts.
You can also add first black president to the list now too, bitch.

In the past three months ten people I have known directly or indirectly have passed away. People seem to take comfort in repeating the old phrase “God has a plan.”
Really?
Of all the options, God is real but doesn’t care.
God is not real and it is a waste of time to appeal to it.
God is dead.
The whole, God has a plan thing makes me the most angry. If this is how things are suppose to be going then I think it’s a shitty plan. In my own personal life experience this tells me one thing about “God.”
He must have an M.B.A. and work for F.E.M.A.

This weekend I taped a local TV show, completed voice over work on a cartoon for an independent producer, performed at a sober show, opened for Norm McDonald and signed a woman’s cleavage. Half way through she asked me, “is this your first breast?”
These are the moments that make me think, I can see how celebrities go crazy on the drug that is fame!
At this point in my career, I can only get fame cut with a lot of debt, mixed in day job and anxiety.
Man I want the good stuff!

Note to high seas Pirates: Before taking a ship hostage and collecting a three million dollar ransom, learn to swim!

Drop Words Not Bombs?

Every once in a while you encounter a perfect example of societies inability to really understand what we should be upset at.
This is one.
Prince Harry of the British Royal Family is in big trouble. Apparently videotape surfaced of him while serving in Afghanistan in 2006 where he uses the terms “raghead” and “Paki.”
The media went into a tizzy and he was forced to release an apology to anyone he may have offended with his thoughtless use of racist terms.

OK. No argument that the words are offensive. No argument that he shouldn’t be using those terms for other people. But let me get this straight. When you go to war it’s OK to kill people but if you call the people you’re killing a derogatory word, then you have to call a press conference to apologize?
I don’t get it. Is this what Political Correctness has given us after more than 20 years of influence? We have replaced real physical harm in war with words as the cruelest thing you can use on other people.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but use the wrong word and now you have really hurt me! I highly doubt that any of the people killed or wounded in Afghanistan seriously gave a shit about what the white guys were yelling as they pulled the trigger.
Would you?
Do you think that with their final breathes they looked into the eyes of their enemy and said, "Put a few dozen bullets in me, fine. But calling me raghead? Now you have hurt me deeply!"
I don't think so.

This is our greatest weakness. Think about it. The rest of the world has been trying to match our weapons technology forever. They don’t need to. If they want to cause damage to America all they need to do is fly over us with a loud speaker attached to the bottom of a plane and start screaming slurs. America would be brought to a stand still! It would be the top story every night. Think I’m wrong about that? The Prince Harry bullshit was the lead story on the CNN and BBC websites for two days. Beneath it ran news of the war in Gaza. I can’t think of a more pathetic example than that.

The thinking with all this do-gooder Orwell approach to words is familiar to anyone who ever took an office mandated sensitivity training class. When we use hurtful words to demean a person we take away their dignity. When you do that enough times, so the thinking goes, then it is easier to see that group as less than people. When that happens, well, you know history. When we no longer view another group of people as people it makes it far easier to kill them. It sounds nice and it sounds reasonable and we have all bought it. But it doesn’t seem to have ever worked. Talk to anyone in the military. They will tell you that while no instructor or commanding officer directly tells you words like “raghead” are OK, they don’t discourage anyone from using those terms either. Why? Because in war the first thing you have to do is dehumanize the enemy. The simplest way to begin that process is by calling the enemy by a derogatory often racist word.

Prince Harry was really doing what his training for combat taught him to do. It doesn’t matter that his training is in direct contradiction with the dictates of modern polite society. Murder we can accept. Causalities of war we can accept. Calling someone a “Paki” is something we simply cannot. The thinking is of course that by stopping the use of these words we will see everyone as equals and war will become a thing of the past. That is, until we need to bomb them. Then, go for it! Bomb, shoot, destroy-just don't use any racist words while you do it. That would be mean.

Obama-Ha-Ha!

Hey,
If you are looking for info on the upcoming Obama-ha-ha comedy tourn I am apart of, check it out at
Cheers-
www.obamahaha.com

Post-It Protest!

I had a gig in Mill Valley last night. I always do this gig with mixed feelings. Well to-do liberals are a curious bunch. They have Obama pins, Free Tibet pins, Peace symbol pins and every other cause you can think of on their lapels while standing in $500 shoes. Part whole foods attitude and part guilty rich white guy gets you a recyclable brand of condescension to deal with. But all went well with my set. There were no gasps of horror or long awkward pauses like I get with this crowd sometimes. I stepped outside to get some air. On a brick wall someone had left post-it notes that read, End Gaza Siege.
This is the Marin I know!
You want to take a stand on an issue but you don’t want to leave graffiti? The solution? Post-it protest!
Sure, they are protesting but why bring down property values? You can be the rebel that doesn’t leave a mark. Because lets face it, opinion can change but paint shouldn’t have too.

There is something so anal about writing the same phrase over and over again and then placing them on walls and cars like your leaving a note on the fridge to remind the roommates about the phone bill, that I think it violates the sprit of protest. What are you going to tell people if they ask, what did you do to stand up to aggression?
I left post it notes on walls.

I am not making fun of anyone. I am not making fun of the tragedy that war is. War should always be seen as a failure. Not an option. But if someone thought this was a worthy way to enlighten the public and it’s the Bay Area so of course they did, then isn’t this trivializing the issue?
Or maybe there is some Palestinian sitting in a bombed out school thinking to himself, I hope some where in America a socially aware activist has access to office supplies!

Disposable and passive aggressive. The American way!

Thoughts

Ever save up a couple of hundred dollars and your car find out about it? When the check engine light comes on it shouldn’t be in the shape of an engine. It should be in the shape of a dollar sign. A mechanic told me that with all the computers in cars now soon your car will send info about the problem directly to a mechanic who can tell you what the problem is and how much it will cost. Great.
How soon before the car has access to my bank account too? Just send the money to the mechanic.

OK Starbucks. All those people waiting for their drinks and then you put the milk and sugar in a place that maybe two adults can stand side by side in? I don’t care that you sell CD’s, plates, Books and bottled water that will somehow save the third world. Make some space for the reason we go in the place.

I am becoming an old man. I don’t understand most of the technology around me anymore. I swear. I am going to be the old man yelling at kids with jet packs on.
“Get out of my sky!”

I have become more dependant on this technology. My phone contains everyone’s phone number. When I loose that, and I loose it pretty often, so goes my contact with the rest of the world. I was down town recently when I realized I left my cell phone and wallet at home. For a brief second I felt anxious. Almost as if I was stranded on an island outside the normal flow of digital interface. And really, I was. No money is its own isolation. No cell phone and you become other people. Know what I mean by that? With everyone walking around wearing giant sunglasses and ipod ear pods, you become other people. Other people are merely soft obstacles to get around while you chat away with some other person on some other street doing the same thing. Throw in the back ground noise of any city and you start to realize how much none of us live in the moment at all. In fact, we seem to be farther from now than at any other point in our history.

When my car was broken into on Christmas day, I suddenly realized there is someone out there with worse karma than me. All they took were the contents of my glove compartment. That included various guilty pleasure CD’s, Registration of the car, a few maps, some oil change receipts and a wrench. The radio was left untouched. Most of the CD’s were too. Why would you take oil change receipts and not Brian Adams? I don’t have to guess. On a stick-it note in clear deliberate handwriting, the thief left behind his opinion of the CD’s. Brian Adams received a single word- Seriously? A friend suggested I take that to the police and have them dust it for prints. My only response was, seriously?
What would the police say when presented with such evidence? I wonder?

What is the emotional equivalent to the check engine light? Chain-smoking is one. I wonder what mine is? It would be so much easier if we all had one. You could see a person with theirs switched on and know you have to get them help. Course these days with all the economic insecurity the sign would probably be a money symbol.

Welcome 2009

Sometimes we lose sight of our goals. Sometimes they happen while were busy still complaining about where we want to be in life. They aren’t the most profound realizations a person could have but they work. New Years Eve has always been a mind fuck to me. Januarys resolutions become Februarys regrets. Drunks wander around slapping each other on the back congratulating each other for another year. It’s a milestone. A shared moment of contemplation and expectation we all share. This year I was sliding into it like I do with most of these holidays. I was vibrating contempt for my fellow man worrying about what I had not yet achieved in my life. I was walking to my gig for that night thinking of other years at other venues in other times. Some were better but far more were unquestionably worse. Then it struck me, I am headlining a New Years Eve show in San Francisco. I have worked a lot of new years eves in this town. That makes me relatively lucky as a comic. I’ve been a host at all the major venues, Punch Line, Cobb’s and even the Palace of Fine Arts. Last year I headlined a small venue in Davis, CA. It was a great gig. But the prize has always been to not just be on a show in the city, but to be its headliner. It had come true almost without me realizing it. It was a last minuet gig but everything about it was right. The money was good the people I would be working with even better and the venue a place I know well. I said it out loud in my head a few more times. I am the headliner for a New Years Eve show in San Francisco. That is cool. Anyway you want to look at it I accomplished something I had wanted for so long that when it happened it not only happened by sheer luck, but the thrill almost passed me by. It was only when I was about ten minuets away from the gig did I find myself smiling for the first time that day. It wasn’t a cocky feeling or a conceded feeling of thinking I was so great, it was just an acknowledgment that I need to get my head out of my ass and appreciate something I have said I have wanted for a very long time.

So it goes. I spent New Years Eve of 2008 at the San Francisco Comedy College on the fifth floor of their Clubhouse. We had two shows in front of good crowds. I was paid right afterwards, congratulated by happy audience members and made to feel important by all the people at the Comedy College. Not bad. Not bad at all. I didn’t have any resolutions when I went into the night but I left feeling like 2009 was set up great. It taught me that people care about me even when I think they don’t. It showed me how much I can get in the way of myself being happy. So my resolution is pretty simple. I am going to work harder at including the people who care about me in my life. I am going to find a way to remember that things inside my head are not generally the way things are.

My New Years Eve turned out pretty good.

Good Riddance Bush. Or, a trip to my bank makes it all personal

The times we live in! Man, what a mess.
Pakistan and India are on the verge of a shooting war, Israel has launched the largest military assault on the Gaza Strip in 40 years and people want Obama to say something about it all even though he is not the President.
With three weeks left on the job where is Bush?
Vacation.
That’s right! With only three weeks left to go he is on yet another vacation. Don’t you want a government job like that?
While the world falls deeper into destruction, Bush is sleep walking to the finish line. Where is his staff during all this?
Making the Sunday morning talk show rounds where they give interviews proclaiming Bushes legacy will be remembered in part for his peace making.
Seriously.
The world burns but they would rather rewrite history than deal with anything like reality.
Maybe we should just let Bush know he is free to leave any time.
Any time.

Laura Bush, not amused by the shoe-throwing incident, has said publicly that it was an assault. Actually, the shoes never hit him so it is an attempted assault. More importantly though, I wonder what she calls what we did to Iraq? Those weren’t shoes we were dropping from planes Laura. Maybe she doesn’t understand.

I was standing in line at the bank yesterday. As if there isn’t enough anxiety about banks these days, the branch I go to has a giant plasma screen TV behind the tellers so you can watch in line. Great. They always have it on CNN. I’m worried about my account because of a mistake they made and now I get to watch another war and more children with blood on their faces as I wait to speak with a representative. Please pump all the fear and loathing you can into an otherwise normal trip to the bank, Wells Fargo!
I did something very San Francisco. I interrupted a conversation to let someone know I had been offended by a comment I overheard. That’s what I did, but I didn’t clear my throat next to a smoker or lecture someone with a pet to get their balls cut. It was a father and son who were speaking. The father said, “People want to make fun of Bush as a failure, they forget that there hasn’t been another 9/11 on his watch.”
I love this argument! It’s a fool’s refuge.
“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but hear your last comment. Your right, under Bush there was only one 9/11. An event he allowed to happen when he ignored several warnings from foreign intelligence services and of course the CIA briefing titled, Bin Laden determined to strike with in the U.S. To be fair though, he did get that briefing while on vacation at his ranch in Texas and who really wants to do anything when they’re on vacation? Right? I mean, thats where he was when Katrina hit New Orleans, too”
You can imagine how that went over.
I thought this guy was going to have a melt down! His eyes bulged, a vein appeared to throb at his temple and his son just looked at me in a way that suggested, I have to put up with this now for the rest of the day, ass hole!
His reply? Nothing. Just his eyes aimed at me with a cold resolve to come up with the right thing to say. Eventually, he came up with something. It took a few minuets but you could tell he thought he had me! But oh what a familiar Conservative talk show programed response it was!
“What did Bill Clinton do to keep us safe?”
“Well, I can tell you this much. The people who attempted to bring down the world trade center on his watch were all found, put on trial and the mastermind now sits in prison. Under Bush, the mastermind of 9/11 has never been found yet everyone seems to know where he is. When Clinton did send cruise missiles to kill Bin Laden at a suspected terrorist training facility, he was criticized for doing so. Everyone thought it was to distract us from the infamous blowjob scandal. Man I miss hearing about Blowjobs and cum stains as serious news. Now days its Torture, Spying and Billions of dollars lost along with human lives. The music might have been more depressing, but I miss the 90’s”
A few bank employees laughed, the security guard grew more uncomfortable and the son just shook his head before getting his dad out of there.

Look, its not productive to get bogged down in what one President did over another. It’s not productive to start any sentence with Democrats did this or Conservatives did that. But if you can’t look at the shape of the world right now and see that virtually the entire Neo-conservative platform has almost destroyed the economy with unchecked deregulation, left Iraq and Afghanistan more open to terrorist take over than before we showed up to free them and cost America its reputation all around the world as the Good Guys, then your simply not paying enough attention. This whole idea that Bush has been a success because we didn’t have another 9/11 on his watch is complete bullshit.
We had THE 9/11 on his watch!

In fact, the reason I was at the bank had to do with 9/11. To make sure you are not a front for terrorist operations like a charity distributing money to bomb makers, any large deposit has to be verified. They do this by sending the depositor a form. I was sent one because a few months ago I opened a modest CD with them. Did the whole thing on line. A month and a half later, this form shows up. A month and a half later. With lightening speed reaction times like that, how could a suspected enemy ever get money out of the bank in time? Now keep in mind, this is a legal form that will be reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security and was prepared by Wells Fargo.
There were two typos in the document.
Two!
I could overlook these typos. After all, don’t most of us make the simple mistake of spelling health club, hezth club?

In a fit of conspiracy overindulgence, a friend pointed out to me that changing a single letter like that gives the appearance that it is an Arabic word. Maybe not to you and me, but to a computer whose job it is to look at all this information coming in and flag items that appear foreign or suspicious, it might. Think of it as the digital equivalent of racial profiling.

Maybe. I am not willing to go all the way on that one yet. Course, people have ended up on the Governments secret no fly list for easier to explain reasons than that. Sen. Ted Kennedy was on the no fly list. So was a 5-year-old boy. Since the government won’t tell anyone just what the criteria for getting on the damn thing is and there is no official way to confront them if its wrong, maybe my friend has a point. Will see the next time I fly.

I do know that the other typo wasn’t a letter in a word. It was a number. According to Wells Fargo, who was going to pass this information on to an agency that has the police powers of the CIA and the FBI combined, I suddenly opened a CD for $100K!
That’s how they wrote it. $100K.
I wish!
I opened a CD for $10K. Now maybe its just a zero, but at a time when the American public has lost any respect for the banking industry, shouldn’t you be on your best behavior? I mean do you really want to shake any customers faith in you, Wells Fargo? Couldn’t I just simply close my account and walk across the street to another bank? The other thing to consider is that these forms are also sent to my old friend and Nemesis, the IRS. Like every comic I know, I have my issues with those guys. In the last few years I have finally been able to start paying off what I owed them from those years of driving around the country doing stand-up, drunk and ignorant to tax law. If the IRS got an official Government document stating that I had $100,000 in the bank and haven’t finished paying off my debt to them, what do you think would happen to that CD? They would take it in a heartbeat. That’s the law. In my head I could see a series of Kafka like mistakes resulting in my own personal disaster all because some teller at Wells Fargo was having delusions of grandeur while carrying ones.
No thanks.
To me, this brings the decadence, disease of greed, incompetence and ignorance of the last eight years down to a very personal level. Course, anyone with a mortgage payment due, a soldier returning from combat with no VA benefits, a scientist with a good idea or an Iraqi kid missing arms but free to wave an American flag as we drive by in fighting vehicles that aren't properly armoured, also has had the Bush legacy made very very personal for them.

Good riddance Bush; you might have believed in God but it felt like you worked for the Devil.
I do wonder what will happen to Darth Cheney when he leaves.

Of Guns and Shoes

Sometimes you hear a story and your not sure where to place the outrage. This story will challenge any sense of justice you have.
Any.
An argument ensued while others at the Riverview Movie Theatre watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
A man angry that a family was talking during a movie threw popcorn at the son and then shot the father in the arm, according to police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The man was carrying a Kel-Tec .380-caliber handgun clipped inside his sweatpants, police said.
Alright. First of all no one is dead. Laugh and cheer away my friends! I know, its terrible and wrong. A guy was hurt after all and thats never good. But fucking A! How many times have you thought about doing this in the exact same situation?
Me too.
I can't go all the way and give this guy full blown hero status, but I might give him a pat on the back. Hell, I might contribute to his legal defense fund.
Then I saw a photo of the dude.
Oh man. A lot went wrong there! Course, we can deduce that from his lack of impulse control I suppose.
This guy is missing a few pegs on his aggression escalation scale. There should be at least a few more steps between throwing pop corn and gun. Shouldn't there? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story also said he clipped the gun inside his sweatpants.
Sweatpants?
Are you kidding me? This guy gave up. When you wear sweatpants outside in public your just telling the world you know your a fat pig, but you don't care. I bet it had stains on it too. Mustard, grease, bits of cheese. Its a flag that says, I am going to eat what I want so I am going to be comfortable doing it. A man in sweat pants doesn't give a fuck. But here is the thing that cracks me up the most. He's going to a movie on Christmas day, usually the day when they release movies best described with terms like, warm hearted and moving. So he puts on his Christmas sweatpants because maybe hes going to hit a buffet before going to the Theater, but before he leaves the house he somehow goes through a thought process that ends with him bringing his gun. Your going to see a Brad Pitt movie on Christmas! The only reason to bring a gun is to shot yourself. Christ almighty!
I still blame the family for talking during the movie. If you see a guy who obviously loves to eat throw food away from his mouth, he is pissed! Really pissed. Maybe he isn't missing scales on his aggression meter. In his world throwing food at someone is a serious indicator of just how upset they really are. You should expect a gun coming into the situation next. Its like me throwing my Star Wars models at you. They mean a lot to me folks. If you ever anger me to the point where I am throwing those at you, run. The next thing coming out will be a gun my friends.
"Dude, that guy just hit me with a pot pie!"
"That huge guy in the sweat and food stained sweatpants with the worn out elastic ban?"
"Yeah."
"RUN NOW!"
A few people on the Internet have made the comparison between this guy and the guy who threw his shoes at Bush. This really says something about us doesn't it? One guy risks his life to make an elegantly simple protest against lies about a war that never had to happen. Another guy shoots a dude for talking during a movie. They don't exactly add up on a scale do they? Defending the truth or, taking action with a gun against a guy who won't shut up? See my point? But thats us. Thats Americans. In our heads they both did something publicly we all wished we could do. That makes them equally eligible for folk hero status. Its a damn shame the situations weren't reversed. I mean, don't you wish the guy with the shoe had used a gun instead?

The Clone Wars

For the record, I detest blogs about a persons favorite TV shows. It’s down right pathetic. People will analyze every word of dialogue and the meaning behind the placement of props. All these blogs do is loudly and clearly inform the reader that the writer has a life lacking in meaning.
This is my blog about a TV show.
I know. I know. It’s a bad one too. The Clone Wars on Cartoon network. In my defense I am a huge Star Wars fan. I have to watch. Not only to see the missing chapter in the Star Wars saga filled in, but to catalogue just how bad the show can be sometimes. It really can be awful. It can also be really good when they get away from the childish slapstick. The stories range from dark morality tales to light hearted adventures. The Spaceships, aliens and cities all look beautiful. Digitally rendered in bright detail, it is only when the human characters are on screen that it looks bad. While everything else is gorgeous, the people look like puppets missing their strings. They move with an awkward motion when they should be graceful. The battle droids are positively moronic in their speech and capabilities at fighting off Jedi. But the thing that really ruins it for me is a major problem in the philosophy. I know. I know. It’s just a show. Well, it is and it isn’t.
The impact Star Wars had on me as a kid growing up in the flat pampered suburbs of Chicago in the late 70’s is impossible to explain. That first movie was an accidental masterpiece. Truly. At the heart of the movie was The Force. A religion, way of life or maybe even a philosophy-no one really knew. The mystery only increased my hunger for meaning in my own life. As silly as it sounds Star Wars was the first tangible hint that I lived in a much larger world with forces all around me I didn’t have to be blind to.
Then came the Ewoks.
Then came the Prequels with massive plot holes.
Worst of all; Jar Jar Binks. A completely digital creation that seemed made just to annoy the faithful. Lucas seems to have struggled with his franchise. Was it a kids movie or a fable for adults? The second you added puppets was the second it got hard to take seriously.

Its fair to say that I drifted away from Star Wars for many years. The new movies were crap. Painfully acted from a script that held all the excitement of ice fishing, I had been let down enough from something that was so important in my childhood. Then came the clone wars. You have to understand just how mysterious those two words are. In the original movie, Obi-Wan makes reference to a time before the Empire. A time best known to all in the Galaxy as the clone wars. That was it. From that tiny bit of back-story my brother and I managed to spend countless hours awake wondering out loud exactly what happened in that missing era. That’s why the announcement of the new movies subject matter was greeted with such excitement. Finally we would know the story of how the Empire came to be! Finally we would get to see the events of the clone wars!
Then the movies came out.
The entire clone wars turned out to be a single order spoken into a wrist mounted communication device by the Emperor. There was no chase across the Galaxy of valiant Jedi. There was no hunting down or dramatic battles. The clones simply received the order, turned on the Jedi and young Vader to be went from being a mass murder of Sand People to killing children.
That was it? That was the missing piece of the puzzle I waited a lifetime for?

Maybe Lucas knows he fucked up. Maybe someone broke from the pack of yes men that must surround him to tell him how ripped off a lot of fans felt. Where was the epic? Where was the subtle lure of the dark side and young Vader’s slow eventual fall into evil? What we got was a whinny teen in love. What we got was about five minuets of screen time for the clone wars.
Where was the story we had been promised since childhood?

When the Cartoon network announced a new series based on the Clone Wars, I was cautiously optimistic. I started watching. I could ignore the stupid dialogue for the battle droids. I could overlook the crudely drawn people against meticulously created backdrops. But then one night something occurred to me. Something that upset the balance of these myths. The flaw in the Star Wars philosophy was about to be revealed.
The “bad guys” fight their war with droids. The “good guys” are fighting their war with clones. Does that make sense to you? If the Jedi really were a group of warrior monks who protected and worshiped life in all its forms, why would they create a race of living beings for the sole purpose of war? Are the bad guys really so bad when they appear to be more humane than the Jedi?
I know. I know. The fans will remind me that the clones were made in secret from the Jedi. It was all part of a grand master plan to destroy the Jedi. OK. But does that make it better? Are we to believe that after learning of the clones existence the Jedi simply said, lets use this fighting force of human beings anyway? Didn’t anyone on the much-celebrated Jedi council even suggest this might not be in keeping with their teachings? Better yet, didn’t someone say, it’s a little weird that someone made an army for us at just the right time, ha guys?
Its just a TV show. I know. But it wasn’t always.

"Shoes"

Here is a unique situation. Maybe even an only in San Francisco sort of thing. As anyone watching the news knows, President George Bush made an unannounced trip to Iraq. Basically, he wanted to gloat over his presumed victory. You know what happened. An Iraqi journalist took off his shoes and threw them at Bush. With the first shoe he yelled, “This is your farewell, Dog!” With the second shoe he yelled something about Bush being responsible for the deaths of millions. Can't argue with that. After what seemed like an extraordinary delay in response time, another Iraqi journalist stepped in front of him while a few more civilians wrestled him to the ground. The secret service eventually ducked their heads in and took control of the guy. I guess if Bush doesn’t give a fuck anymore they don’t either. I hope Obama has a better detail assigned to him than those dudes. At least this time when Bush was declaring victory he didn’t have a Mission Accomplished banner hanging behind him.

Anyway, I posted a simple note on facebook and on my status update that I was going to send a pair of shoes to the White House. I didn’t think anything more after that. But then, I started to get e-mails both private and on facebook from people who thought I should donate my shoes to Goodwill or some other organization like that. Good idea. But the pair of shoes I bought came from Goodwill. Another person was angry that I would be wasting shoes in these dire times and suggested I give a pair to a homeless person. I don’t know a lot of homeless guys with a liking for 80’s Nikes in size 5. This went on all night. E-mail after e-mail from friends and strangers who thought it was a dumb idea or thought it just wasn’t worth it or of course the bleeding heart liberal response of, give the shoes to the poor! Some e-mails were typical of conservatives. "If that guy would of thrown his shoes at Saddam, he wouldn't of left the room alive, ass-hole!" Hey, no disagreement about that. Saddam was a bad dude. What everyone conveniently forgets is, He was not only on our CIA payroll during his war with Iran, but we were the country that not only sold him those biological weapons he used on the Kurds, we also gave him satellite photos complete with wind direction to make there delivery even more lethal. So please, spare me the shit about how much better the country is now.
A few were with me. Everyone wanted to know why. What was my thinking here? Here is my thinking. A few years ago CBS had a show on the air named Jericho. CBS canceled the show. The fans were not too happy about this. In one of the last episodes to air the hero of the show is sent a note from the bad guys demanding their surrender. The hero sends back a one word response that was also the response an allied commander gave a German commander in world war two when he was asked to surrender; “Nuts.”

This is what the fans did to show their disapproval with CBS for cutting their favorite show. They sent canned nuts to CBS corporate headquarters. In just a few days CBS had thousands of containers and packages filled with nuts. CBS attempting to get the upper hand in the war of PR announced they would be considering the fans wishes but in the mean time they would be re- gifting the nuts by sending them to the troops serving in Iraq.
MMMM, yummy! Because isn’t that exactly what you would want if you were pinned down under machine gun fire all day in 130 degree heat? Salty mixed nuts doesn’t seem like the snack I would pick. Long story short, the show got picked up by another network. If Americans can be moved to action by the death of a TV show why can’t the least we do is recognize just what a total fuck up the President has been these last eight years with an act of civil disobedience like mailing him old shoes? Personally, I am going to send his library a box of them every month till the day he dies.

Ah America. You know what this has taught me? That Americans are willing to let bygones be bygones but if you fuck with our TV shows you will get a dramatic and unique response from us.

Send the White House Shoes!

The shoe guy!

Who would of ever thought that a dude would be in the news about shoes and wasn’t gay? Who would of ever thought that the secret service would be blind to shoes as a weapon? I guess thats why they still check them at the airport.
Just for the record, the guy who threw those shoes was an Iraqi television journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi. He stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurling his shoes at Mr Bush.
Bravo!
I think Mr. Bush needs a clear sign of our disgust that even he can recognize. I implore you all to send a pair of shoes to the White House. No note needed. I think he will get the point.

Here is the address for the White House. Send some shoes, flip flops or combat boots.

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
(202) 456-1414

A Modest Proposal

I can’t watch the news at the moment. Each broadcast starts with the reading of grim statistics on just how bad things are. The message in it all seems pretty clear to me; the way we do business has to drastically change.

I work for a small company. If we are any indication of what passes for normal business then I truly do understand why the economy fell apart. Here is a thought; the economy can no longer be viewed on a natural human scale. Yet, all these companies spend billions on commercials just to tell us they care. They don’t. At my company any big decision has to be decided by at least four other people I have never met face to face. People who are sitting in cubicles looking at spread sheets and making choices based on all those zeros and ones. It takes about three weeks to get an answer to even the most basic questions and in the end they often change their minds in a week anyway. So, we take about a month to stand still. Sound familiar to anyone yet?
People will say to me, you should feel lucky to have a job. I feel lucky to have a paycheck. That’s it. Whatever loyalty I originally had toward the company has vanished in recent months as I attempt to put faces to all those numbers. That’s not something companies want. The number one thing almost every major business in this country seems to have forgotten is the customer.
Were people.
They say in war the only way for a soldier to be effective on the battlefield is to first dehumanize the enemy. When you can do that then you have no problem killing your enemy. Somewhere along the way companies went to war on us. They sold us stuff that was against our own best interest. But so what, someone was making money somewhere and that’s all that mattered. It use to be the mantra of the service industry that the customer was never wrong. Now days the customer is sold something because he doesn’t know whats best for him. That’s the mentality of modern business. The customers’ hesitation is just a minor barrier on the road to getting money out of them.
Where did that get us?
It got us debt. It got us foreclosures on a scale not seen since the great depression. It got us fields of shinny brand new SUV’s no one wants anymore. It got us a war run for profit. It got us lead in our children’s toys and rocket fuel in babies’ milk. It got every last one of us down on our knees and worshipping the Almighty dollar at the expense of any real value.
We all helped to make this current financial climate. They made the commercials and we bought it. Literally. Now, after more than a trillion dollars has been handed to the same people who fucked us over with no strings attached or questions asked, the regular guy is still being ignored. All this talk about jump-starting the economy misses the point over and over and over again and I think I know why. These captains of industry and Wall Street morons cannot conceive of commerce at the human day-to-day level. They are use to transactions in the millions and billions. Surely, the thinking went, if we give the banks the money they stole, lost or invested in questionable practices, then everything could return to normal.
Nope.
A trillion dollars of your money, of every taxpayer’s money now sits in the vaults of banks that for some reason refuse to loan it to anyone. Meanwhile the consumer, the biggest contributor to the health of the economy is being ignored. What if the government used that money to pay down mortgages? What if that money was put into the hands of regular people for rent, gas, food, health care bills, credit card payments and all the little stuff that adds up to the business of living? All these well educated genius keep trying to make changes in the rarefied air of boardrooms. Fuck that. We learned from Regan and the Bushes that trickle down is bullshit. You want the spenders, the consumers, the Joe six-packs to spend hard earned dollars again? If you do, corporate America, you have to get back into the people business. You have to produce a car of value. You have to train representatives to pick up the phone and listen to the complaints. You have to put what really is our money not into the hands of billionaires, but into the hands of the single mother, the senior living on a fixed income, the student overwhelmed by debt, the parents struggling to make ends meet and the typical everyday guy who can no longer afford what were all starting to see were impulse buys and luxury items anyway. Until the MBA’s in New York figure that out, keep watching your hedge funds shrink and those profit reports diminish. If your too dumb to figure out that the health of the economy is run on the backs of the ordinary citizen, then keep doing what you have guys have been doing. It really isn’t working.

While its still mildly funny=)

The auto bailout didn't pass Congress because the Republicans acting against Bush dug their heals in and said no bailout unless the unions cut their wages. The Unions, who are now being made out to be the bad guys in all this said, fuck you! What sort of an economic recovery package asks people struggling to support families to work for less? The CEO of Ford has announced his salary for next year will be $1.00. Your telling me that if we cut all the senior management pay by 10% across the board that wouldn't make a difference? Why is it the people at the bottom are always asked to do with less when it was the people at the very top who did this to the country in the first place?

Meanwhile, the under reported news might as well be called; the death of the Republican party.
Joe the Plumber, moron and self righteous political prop that he is recently said in an interview that he was ..."appalled..." at John McCain for his answers to him about the Bank Bailout. He said he wanted to leave the campaign bus after seeing some of the tricks of the trade on the campaign. In fact he said it made him feel dirty. Way to go Joe! Just as I think we agree on something he proves what a complete idiot he is by saying he voted for McCain because he was more scared of Obama as the President and he thought Sara Palin was, "...the real deal!"
This is a guy who lied about everything!
How much money he makes.
His name.
The fact that he is not a licensed plumber.
He hasn't paid taxes on his property.
Shit, if this guy gets convicted of a crime he is eligible to become a Senator I think.
Why is anyone still listening to this jerk?

Colin Powell, on a Sunday morning interview show said the Republican party needs to "stop shouting at the rest of the world and start listening." He also said we should stop listening to Rush because basically, he is an idiot!
Damn!

But all that is nothing compared with this little gem. In an interview George Bush said he doesn't believe the Bible is literal.
Boom!
I guess he is no longer a Born again then.
When did this little conversion happen? Maybe Bush doesn't think there is a God anymore. After all, this was the dude who basically told the American people that God told him to invade Iraq and that he would find Weapons of Mass Destruction there. Looks like either God lied, Bush didn't hear right or you reach the inevitable conclusion that whatever God Bush believes in doesn't exist.
Merry Christmas everyone! Lets all try and enjoy the death of western civilization while its all still mildly funny=)

Wheres the money?

Just so were clear on all this let me see if I have it down.

The banking industry, suffering from a crisis of their own making, has been handed over a Trillion dollars so far. I don’t know if your paying attention, but every time the news refers to the Wall Street Bailout, they call it the 700 Billion dollar bailout. Well, that’s just bullshit. On the news each night for the last few months you hear that the government handed an additional 20 Billion to this company and 5 Billion to another one, but no one seems to be keeping track of how much has really gone out or where it is going.
Don’t take my word for it. The office of accountability just reported that so far, 150 Billion dollars couldn’t be accounted for.
Can’t be accounted for?
What the hell does that mean? It means it’s gone. Just like the Billions of dollars in cash that was shipped to Iraq, it’s just gone.

Meanwhile, the one industry that does make something in America can’t get a loan for 15 billion dollars.
Amazed yet?
Did you know the Treasury Secretary was the CEO of one of the banking companies that made this mess right before he was the Treasury Secretary? Did you know that legally we cannot ask where the money went or for what purpose it was used? Did you know that they told us it would be for distressed mortgages but right after we handed it to the Treasury Secretary he said, were not going to spend it on that?

The American Tax Payer just got fucked for more than 1 Trillion Dollars and the Government asked for nothing in writing. Nothing! We bought stock in banks whose stock has only continued to fall. Great! People are still loosing their homes but I guess they can take comfort in knowing that their new forced investment is tanking.
We could bailout the car industry 20 times over with what has already been stolen in bailing out the Billionaires! Sure, Detroit painted themselves into a corner by continuing to make over priced gas guzzling vehicles with low MPG, but if they go that’s it for whatever middle class, blue-collar families are left.

Have the oil companies’ loan the car companies the money needed. You can’t have one business without the other. The oil companies keep posting record profits so we know they have the money. Make them help.

Or, have the government announce that the first American company to make a quality car that gets 100MPG will get a few billion and some juicy tax breaks.

I wish someone with balls would stand up and asked what the hell is going on. What happened? Near as I can tell were getting fucked like six different ways all at once on this “deal!”

Socialism finally showed up in America, but it’s Socialism for the banking companies that so far have made the 1% of the wealthiest 1% even more dirty stinking rich while the average person in the other 99% are going broke. And please, don’t tell me people who couldn’t afford houses shouldn’t have bought them in the first place. You had the President giving speech after speech about the ownership society he wanted to create by getting low income and poor families into houses by reducing the regulations on the banks. The banks spent billions selling the American dream to anyone with a TV or a web site or a mailbox. Everyone was told they could own a home. Everyone! Now it’s the homeowners’ fault for believing the bullshit the banker who went through the paper work with them? I don’t think so.

The Worse Comic

Comedy is subjective.
When asked if his language was offensive, Eddy Murphy once famously replied, "If a stadium full of people are laughing then it's not in bad taste."
Thats why its never exactly fair to call someone's act bad. I might not think it is funny, but a packed room in a comedy club that is laughing their asses off might disagree with me.
Arie Spears is bad comedy even if his Mad TV fans were laughing. In fact, it is hard to know who to be more angry with; Arie Spears or the crowds that laughed at his shit. Every comic doesn't have to be a genius or even have jokes that are amazing. But using shit that you didn't write that appeals to nothing but the lowest common denominator is beyond cheap.
Heres the thing, you don't have to use your stand-up to teach, but you certainly don't have to maintain every ignorant stereotype about groups of different people either. A lot of bad stand-up does just this. This dude was the worse Headliner I have worked with in a long time.
He opened his set each night with one of the oldest, been done by a thousand other comics a hundred times, hacky setup's; "White people laugh differently than black people."
Ugh.
He then tells the crowd that we are all a little racist. That too much bad history has occurred in America for it to ever end. Maybe. Thats a pretty defeatist attitude. Besides, we just voted a black guy into office as the President. I think there has been some progress. But none of that sets the mood for his act. An act where he says, I can't see the black people in back. Smile.
Give me a break.
I hate it when a comic dresses up old jokes in social commentary or some heart felt emotional plea only to follow it with the same old bad punch lines you have heard before.
At one point he tells us that when white people watch the news and see black people doing crazy shit we don't say, oh African-Americans. No! According to Arie, when white people see black people doing crazy shit on the news we say, those dumb niggers!
When you look at the crowd you can see who is laughing loudest at this blanket statement.
Its white guys who do say this.
They give each other a slap on the back or a quick high five and trade knowing looks. Arie has to know that this type of joke is cheap. His contract states that no other black comics should be Booked on the bill with him. God forbid another African-American comic would do similar stuff or even go the other direction by making fun of this lingering racism in polite society. Aries act gives the crowd permission to keep being dumb. He never challenges the crowd to look beyond the simple black and white differences we have.
A lot of bad history might have happened here but perpetuating it with bad jokes that tell people its OK to be racist isn't going to help.
In Aries world, all Mexicans are all illegal. Women are bitches and gays are immoral. Yup. That last one is particularly interesting. He tells the crowd that he knows he is in San Francisco, but to him this town is just one giant male shower in a prison. The last time he was here he dropped $200 bucks on the ground but was too afraid to bend over and pick it up.
Not only are these jokes really old and extremely hacky, but he uses this as a set up to explain to the crowd exactly how he feels about homosexuality. He thinks it's wrong. The reason he thinks its wrong is that he has too much respect for women. Right after that he does a joke where he says, why does it take you bitches so long to cum?
Yeah, that sounds pretty respectful.
Comedy is subjective.
What one person thinks of as funny another might be offended. Between using old jokes that I have heard from many many other comics and premises that rely on ignorance for them to work, he has to be one of the worse comics I have ever worked with.
Seriously.
Not a single thing coming out of his mouth was his, intelligent or unique in anyway. He is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with stand-up. He can put butts in seats because he has a degree of fame but he is NOT a stand-up. He is a TV performer doing this to make money and could care less about quality or art.

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Merry Hanukkah, from the White House!

The president and the first lady invited leaders of America's Jewish community for a Hanukkah reception at the White House next month.
One small problem.
The message reads that the couple "requests the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah reception," written beneath an image of a Clydesdale horse hauling a Christmas fir along the snow-dappled drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Oops!
Why did they let the guy who invaded the wrong country send out the Hanukkah invitations?
Actually, They didn't. Or at least they blamed it on Laura's people.
When reached for comment, Laura Bush's spokeswoman, Sally McDonough, said the White House usually prints separate cards, but in the waning days of the presidency, there had been an oversight.
"Mrs. Bush is apologetic," she said. "It is something that just slipped through the cracks."
In other words, they just don't give a fuck anymore.
It's interesting to note that the Bush White House not giving a fuck isn't that much different than the Bush White House at war. You know, when they really care about something.
Mistakes happen. Details fall through the cracks. Laura's people will take care of it.
Wait till the Easter cards go out to the Muslim leaders.

WWjD?

These are troubled times and the world looks for answers. Now is the time to ask yourself, What Would joe Do? Well, I can tell you. God, if there is one, sees our prayers like status updates on Facebook. I will listen! I can respond. Ask me anything. I will apply the vast storehouse of knowledge that is me to your unique and special problem. joe is not just a person or a way to think; joe is a philosophy!
So go ahead. Truly ask yourself, What Would joe Do?
Its not hit spellcheck. Am I right, people?
Maybe that explains it all? God only speaks to people who have learning disabilities. Dyslexia might of been the way of at least one scribe along the way.
And look people, if Jesus was gonna comeback he would of done it by now. God sent his only son to Earth to die for our sins. Shit! You think that isn't gonna give him issues? What are those Thanksgivings like? I mean, I still resent my dying Father for making me shovel snow for a neighbor once when I was eight.
Let me get this straight. This dudes Dad had him sent here to be murdered in a horrific way to make up for something that by definition he created when he made our nature and this is the guy who is love and forgiveness?
I don't think so.
Anyway, got a little off message there.
WWjD
It will change your-life;)
Yeah!

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."