Three Gigs

The Sorority Gig

There are some phrases that, during a career in stand-up comedy, you hope and pray to someday hear. "Would you headline a show for 130 sorority girls?" is one of them. I can cross that one off the list now. 130 Berkeley sorority sisters descended on Jack London Square for a show I was headlining. I was outside when they arrived. At first I thought a food court had exploded. The unmistakable sound of young girls' voices, raised to an excited pitch, bounced off cement, a tidal wave of noise and that special brand of hair-flip indignation, that only a pack of 20-something girls can get away with. They filed into the room, all wearing the same thing. A t-shirt with the name of their sorority on it, shorts, and Hawaiian-style leis around their necks. Wow. Nothing says "respect me for the strong independent woman my parents sent me to college to become", like using peer pressure to dress 130 girls, all alike, in an outfit that in downtown Oakland could best be described as "bait".

As soon as they entered the room the decibel level rose dramatically, with the sounds most people make riding a roller coaster. It seemed any question that was asked could be answered with a loud "Woooooo!" Then the sorority chant started.

It sounded like some sort of Lord of the Flies boot camp, except instead of a conch shell, it was a cell phone.

I looked around at the faces of the young comics in the rest of the show. It suddenly dawned on them that this wasn't going to be so great. Then, the guy putting it together sat down at the table and said "Conference time, guys. I've never heard this before but instead of the hour and a half show they asked for they, now want just an hour." The only thing worse than realizing a gig might not go so well is finding out right before the show that your time has been cut.

It made sense that they wanted less time. They'd arrived almost an hour and a half late. Pizzas and plates of chicken wings were being brought out as quickly as possible but we didn't want to start the show till they'd eaten. Performing while people eat usually means the comic will eat it too. So, we waited.

Girls started coming up to us. Almost all of them said one of two things. "Do you work here?" and "Who's in charge?"

The first time we heard it the girl was looking for a Red Bull. She marched up to us and asked, "Do you work here?" Before waiting for an answer she started in "It's been a long day. I need a Red Bull."

"We're the comics," one of the comics said. That didn't matter.

The expression on her face yelled, So? "I really need a red bull," she said one more time. I just sighed heavily, and turned away.

This is how it went. Girls kept coming up to us and asking for more pizza, drinks and whatever else they thought we could get them. Each time we answered with, "We're the comics," and each time they just repeated the first question, blinking at us like wounded deer, from well-to-do families.

And so it went.

The show finally started. And within two minutes, more girls came streaming out.

"Who's in charge?" A group of girls stood in front of the comics who were waiting to go on. This time they didn't repeat the question but they looked at us and one of them said "Could you ask the rest of the comics to do more appropriate jokes?"

We all sort of looked in the open door at the comic hosting the show. Alright, a middle-aged man making jokes about weed and jacking off might not have been the best choice for a host. I'm willing to give them that. What felt strange to me was their reaction to it. Sure, it's a little coarse, and the type of humor that gives stand-up a bad name - but aren't you suppose to be 22? Why are you reacting to this like some 50 year old, Christian housewife, resentful at being exposed to something different?

I watched one girl bitch-out the two servers over the quality of the chicken wings. Their faces were a study in restraint while she worked herself up to righteous indignation over snacks. When I finally went on stage, I had a mixture of indifference and anger at them as a group. The room was pitch-dark, but I could see pools of light shinning up from their laps all over the room, as they texted away during the show. Each joke I set up, and every word I mentioned, created a conversation within ear shot of me. It went like this: I would say a word like pigeon. And then I'd hear a girl say "My grandfather kept carrier pigeons!" A girl in another corner of the room would say "That's gross!" Then another one would chime in with "Becky had one stuck in her hair once." Then the first one would answer "That was a bat!" It was distracting in a way I've never felt before. I also felt old, in that way only a disinterested 20 something can make you feel. One set-up line was greeted with a loud sarcastic "Duh!"

Ah yes, "Duh". Another generation's answer, to the lack of answers, for all the problems my generation is leaving them with. "You do realize," I started telling them, "That Duh, is not a solution to any issues, right? Someday if you're the president and an advisor rushes into the oval office to say, "Mrs. President, the Aliens that just landed want to enslave us because they say we are a primitive and dumb life form', you can't respond with Duh!"

As the clock ticked away, and I spent more time with them, I starting to forget the class issues. (Trust me, watching a 22 year old yell at working people about how the wings she showed up 90 minutes late to eat aren't good enough will bring them up). I started to have fun, and then something caused a loud moan of displeasure to ripple through the crowd. I know it got their attention because most of the little pools of light from cell phones disappeared.

That's when I looked at them and told them to "take the stick out of their asses. You're in college now! You came here to be exposed to things. Well, this is it!"

I finished on my big closer and got the hell out of there, not trusting myself to say anything more to them.

They filed out of the room just as they came in, and I felt an odd wistfulness, mixed with class-based resentment. For them, the adventure is just beginning. They have youth, brains, beauty and all the benefits that an education from a school like Berkeley will give them - and yet, they also have closed minds, like middle-aged bankers who think they know everything. They have no problem talking down to people, over things that don't matter at all. They speak and walk as if they expect the world to only present them things they like, and want. I remember an article I read once about political correctness being taught as a subject in Berkeley. The professor in it said, "Everyone deserves to live in a world where their feelings aren't hurt." Maybe, but that world isn't reality. This is where you grow up and learn to think critically, not bitch out the local wage slave over chicken wings and be shocked when a comic says a bad word. Sure, I'm generalizing. I'm sure I only noticed the few of them with these qualities. At least, I hope so.

The Private Gig

I love private gigs. Mostly I love the money. They pay well. The most common thing I hear when I show up is a story about the last time they tried having a comic. People walked out, the comic was too dirty, the F-bomb was dropped liberally, and the board of directors is extremely nervous about trying it again. I've heard all of this at one time or another, at these small private gigs.

My latest adventure with corporate America took place in Selma, CA. Before you make an Alabama joke, I've already heard them all. Almost no one knew that California had a town named Selma. If I hadn't had a gig there, I wouldn't have known, either. After being there for an afternoon, I think the only difference between the two Selmas might be that civil rights hasn't made it to the one in California, yet.

Selma is located in the central valley, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles. You get there by taking highway 99, or what I now think of as I-5's reason to feel good about itself. Highway 99 is "Grapes of Wrath" country. You see rusted-out trucks, almost completely obscured by roof-high weeds. Abandoned hotels line the route like Aztec temples, peeking out of the jungle. Well, more like white trash temples, I guess. Parking lots are cracked where the plants try to reclaim the asphalt. The signs are little more than faded billboards with ghostly letters. I imagine that you'd have to whisper the names if you were to read them out-loud.

I pull up to the gig. It used to be a "Pea Soup Andersen's". You know, the place with the giant windmill? Apparently they also built one here. "Pea Soup" didn't make it, so Holiday Inn took over. There's a small man-made pond, with a sign in front that says, 'Remember, Swans bite'! Inside, I'm greeted by a 12-foot-tall statue of a raisin. This is raisin country, I guess. Those California raisins are all over the place. The statue looks like a huge purple ballsack. There is a small kiosk with a video screen. It has a single red button beneath it, and a dusty sign that reads, "Hear the story about Pea Soup Andersen's and the Honda car lot". Wow, they are starved for entertainment. I push the button but nothing happens. No flicker of static, or peal of music, just an unsatisfying click noise. I see my fingerprint clearly on the button after I press. How long has it been since anyone pushed this?

The gig is for a company that sells crop insurance to farmers. No doubt they are conservative. I am not too worried about that, really. I am smart enough to avoid politics at these shows. That doesn't stop them from bringing it up to me.

First, there is no stage. I am standing between two tables and addressing the group of 50 or so people, who just finished lunch, at round tables. The man sitting about 10 feet away from me makes a crack about San Francisco. Of course he does. I ask him what he means and he responds "You're from San Francisco. I have to keep you on a short leash."

Without thinking I just blurt out "That is the gayest thing I've ever heard!"

The crowd laughs. He makes a face best described as sour.

Here is where the show takes a turn. Well, here is where it could have taken a turn. If we were at a comedy club, I would have made it my mission to climb up his ass, and retool his thinking; but this is a private gig, so I have to behave. Sort of.

I riff out a bit about him taking me for a walk. There are a few faces around him that suggest I have taken this too far, but so what, the majority of the crowd is laughing. Later on I ask him what he has against the city. He says, "It's fine. It's the people that live there that are the problem."

The crowd takes a sharp collective intake of breath. I know better than to press this any farther. He is at the edge of his tolerance scale. When I finish the show, people come up to me and shake my hand. One woman has blue eye shadow, that she has evenly applied around each eye, causing her to look like a punk raccoon. I bite my lip and shake her hand. A few of them say, "You had to pick on the biggest red neck in the room." I remind them he spoke first, and all I did was hang him with his comment.

A day later I get an email from two women who were at the show. They send me a photo of a pickup truck. We think this is that guy's truck. It has bumper stickers that read, "NRA", "Fire Pelosi" and "Obama's last day".

If only I'd been at a comedy club when this guy started up! The thing I'm amazed at with any of the Tea Party people, is the total and almost complete lack of logic. Sure, you can say it's more about fiscal issues, and it's not about racists with guns, and badly-spelled signs. Sure, you can say with a red face that you want to take your country back, and return it to the way it use to run. What I am shocked at, is that none of them seem to realize that the economic mess they're blaming Obama for now, was created when "their side" was running things - the way they want to take them back to. Returning to what fucked us is not a solution. It's social suicide by willful ignorance.

But it isn't in a comedy club, and I'm not going to say that, because no matter what, I win. I get paid, and he will be bitching about this for months to come, in Selma,CA. Score.

The Cool Gig

I was outside the UCB Theater in Hollywood. There was a young couple holding hands. He had a beard, unruly hair beneath a cap, and a simple t-shirt with some ironic saying printed in a retro font. She was from the school of photogenic teens, who knew everything about vampires. Slim and stylish, dressed in torn jeans, they each moved in a way that suggested hours spent in fascination, staring at their favorite stars on red carpets. They had a practiced indifference to them. They were detached from everyone else around them. In other words, they were cool.

Hipsters in every sense of the word, they didn't walk down the street, so much as stroll upon it, like their every step carried some supreme meaning we couldn't hope to divine.

The squint of his eyes, the pout of her lips, the length of their stride - all might as well be one, big, casual shrug of the shoulder, in answer to an unasked question. It was how they lived their lives, I thought. Los Angeles is a dirty city full of beautiful people, and here was a perfect example of its children. They were young, beautiful, and I could rush past them because I was on the show. That pleased me far more than I care to admit.

When I was on stage, I noticed how beautiful all the girls were, and how handsome the guys were. That's what they were, too, guys and girls. It makes sense. It's L.A. How many beautiful people go there to be the next 'whatever'? Here they were.

After the show, I wandered around to the front of the theater. I was tired and distracted, trying to orient myself with the street signs so I could find my hotel. I heard a male voice say, "You were great, Man!"

I turned and there they were, beaming smiles with perfect brilliant teeth. He held her hand, but the other was stretched out for me.

I blinked and she said "I loved the Admiral Akbar joke!"

She said it in that way where her eyes went wide as she lingered on the "o" in looove.

"Thanks," I lamely said. In my head I was thinking, "I was hating you about two hours ago, now you're my biggest fans." God, I can be such a judgmental prick sometimes.

Squirt Gun Perfect

We're driving home from the Airport. It's late August, a few weeks before the start of school. Heat waves shimmer above the black top in the distance. Huge clouds, that look more like foam on a beach than clouds, appear on the horizon. My Sister Michelle, my brother Pat, Dad, and I, are in the car. He drives slowly home. I am maybe 9, 11 at the most. A lot of my memories of my father are of him sitting behind the wheel of our car. Most of our conversations took place like that. I'd watch the side of his face for a clue to his mood. Smooth and solemn was normal, but crow’s feet spreading across his right cheek were preferred. Today, he's not only smiling, but trying to control his laughter. We're driving back from O’Hare Airport just outside of Chicago. The circumstances of what-for and why, have been lost to memory. More than likely we went to watch planes land. We did a lot of that growing up as a family. We went to Navy Pier in Chicago to see the giant cargo ships. We went to a railroad yard to watch freight trains from a run-down bridge, that we lovingly nick named, "the rickety old bridge". Trust me, this was good entertainment back then. Standing on a bridge held together with little more than warm tar, and a soft blacktop surface, as we watched slow-moving engines shove empty box cars around in the heat, was a perfect day.

We pull up to a stop light. The windows are all rolled down, just like most of the cars around us. That stands out in my memory. You could be at a red light and a complete stranger would be a foot away in the car beside you. They'd turn and smile, or simply just nod. You could hear the radio station they listened to, catch a bit of conversation, or make awkward eye contact - all without glass between the two of you. We tend to think of the world as being a little smaller when we were young. I once went back to my grade school after being in Junior High for just a year. I walked into the gym and was stunned at how small it had become. I think this is different. The scale and pace of life was both smaller, and more open back then. I can't explain it any better than that, either. I fear falling into nostalgia, but I clearly remember a freedom back then that's been traded for iPhones, rolled-up windows, and everyone staring at movies running on little screens. When I imagined the future, I pictured everyone somehow more close, more happy, more perfect. I never saw that all these devices would isolate us in the midst of each others' company.

My sister holds a squirt gun in her lap. It's a square angular thing with the words, "quick fill cap" printed on the side. Super Soakers were still a decade or more away: this model, with a large screw-on cap that could easily be held under a faucet, started the squirt gun arms race that ultimately lead to those, I guess.

We are all struggling to keep straight faces. She raises it slowly to the lip of the window, waiting for the light to turn green. It’s an eternity. A childhood's worth of Christmas morning expectation crammed into a minute. The light turns green; my sister raises the gun slightly above the window, aims at the driver in the right turn lane next to us and pulls the trigger three times before lowering it again. The cars around us move forward, but as we do, we see the driver reach to his neck and then look out the window in bewilderment.

It is supremely funny to all of us in the car.

What makes it more than just funny is my Father being a willing accomplice. At first my sister hides it from Dad. When she gets caught, he does the responsible parent thing of warning her about how someone might crash. 'Course, he says all this with a smile. This was also before road rage stories flooded our urban legends and evening news. This was still completely innocent. At the next light, he points out an open window. When we realize he's giving us permission, a thrill goes through the three of us. Dad is in on it! We promise to only do it at stop lights and not while the car is moving. We pull up to the next light and this time, I'm handed the water pistol. The driver sits shirtless in his wreck of a car, Rush or some 70’s band pounding from the stereo. My Dad can’t do it, so I get in position from the back seat. It will be a tricky shot. I aim just as the light turns green, and try to hit him diagonally through his open back window, from my open window behind my Dad.

“It pulls a little to the left,” my sister advises me. I crouch down. The “target” is air drumming, his head going up and down in time to the music. Again, the wait feels impossibly long. My brother is giggling next to me and my dad is whispering to “…be quiet.”

The light finally flashes green. I aim and squeeze the plastic trigger. The first shot misses.

“To the left!” my sister says, a little loud.

I correct my aim and the next two streams of water hit him behind his right ear and shoulder. Even as we pull away, none of us can help busting up. He goes into a fit, thrashing around to find the source of water. Cars behind him begin to honk. As we pull away, he sees us cracking up. We hear the start of what I can only assume is a "fuck you!" That makes us laugh harder.

For the entire two hour ride this is what we did. Like bank robbers, we perfected our technique. Dad would even slow down to make sure we would hit red lights. He was the getaway driver every time.

When we pull onto the little street we live on, we're disappointed it's over. I didn't know that the moments like this were coming to an end. In a few short years, I wouldn't want to be caught dead with my Father. The ability of fun to stop time, completely, for an afternoon, would happen less and less too. Those massive, billowing clouds that would collect in the corners of the Midwestern summer sky, would lose their fascination for me. Looking at trains, planes and ships would be lame. But for that afternoon, everything felt as if everything was where it should be. It was perfect.

The Impossible Day That Went Perfect

Driving to L.A. has always felt like something out of a fairy tale, mixed with some Mad Max, post-apocalypse epic. There is nothing out here. Around the halfway point between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the weeds in the middle strip of the highway grow tall. Dust just sort of lingers, like a dark smudge where the horizon should be. The power lines stretch off into the distance, like soldiers in formation. Rectangles of green and patchwork quilt sections of brown dominate the landscape. To the east is flat, hot land. It rolls right up to that out-of-focus border of pollution, a dirty wall surrounding an impossibly large kingdom. To the west are mountains, that don't look all that tall. Behind me and in front of me, there’s only the road. In some places they’ve repaved it to a reassuring, hard darkness, with fresh asphalt. In most places, though, it’s still a faded ribbon, cracked and pocked.

Every time a sign rolls by telling me how far L.A. still is, I glance at the dashboard clock. It seems like only time, not distance, is passing.

I have to be in L.A. by 8 p.m. Actually, I have to be at the Improv on Melrose Ave. for a show that starts at 8 p.m.; then I have to run off-stage, jump in my car, and get across town to the UCB Theater to do the “Comedy Death Ray” show that starts at 8:30. Oh, and the day started at 7:00 a.m. in San Francisco, where I got up to drive the two hours to Woodland, CA, for a private lunchtime gig. I have to finish THAT gig, and be in my car by 2 p.m. if I expect to make the first gig in LA on time. In other words, everything has to go exactly as planned, with nothing getting in the way to disrupt things. This includes my baggage around LA, any car issues that might pop up, and shows running long, short, or whatever. The thing that upsets all my finely- tuned plans turns out to be something I didn't even know could break. A cigarette lighter. In the car. My GPS/phone, which is plugged into this cigarette lighter, stops working 20 minutes from the first gig in Woodland. Did you know those things can break? It has to be a blown fuse or broken connection - but I thought those things were pretty much unbreakable. This means all the addresses I loaded are unavailable to me. A friend offers to email me Google map directions. The plan: stop at a Kinko's and print them out. We can't find a Kinko's close enough to the 5 to make that work, so it looks like I’m going to be driving with one hand, holding the Blackberry with the other as I navigate around LA. How could that go wrong?

I haven't performed in L.A. in about five years. The last set I had there was a good one. It was at the UCB Theater. Jeff Garlin, from HBO's “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, asked me to do his show there. Hey, I had even gotten back together with my girlfriend. It seemed like things were going my way. Shortly after that, we broke up again, and I decided, “Fuck LA, I’m staying in SF and that's that!” No matter how good the SF comedy scene has been to me, though, the industry is in LA. With my new teeth and rebuilt sense of self, it was time to show my face in LA again. What better way to accomplish this than doing a show at the Improv built around Bay Area comics? Then I got the crazy idea to do what everyone else does, reach out to bigger names for help getting on shows. I've never done that. I guess I was always afraid to do that, for some reason, but it’s how the business works. I texted Greg Proops and boom, just like that, I’m on

‘Comedy Death Ray” at the UCB Theater in Hollywood, baby! The catch is, I also have a private gig that afternoon outside of Sacramento. I decide to try and pull them all off in one day of driving, soul searching, and testing the limits of my inner acceptance. I mean, if you're gonna try you might as well risk a little sanity too, right?

I like the drive to LA on the 5. I think it’s because I know that for those 6 hours I have no other responsibilities. Most of the ride I alternate between phone calls and rolling the windows down to lose myself in that jet engine sound, of wind filling the car up. I suppose it’s a sort of Zen. That seems like a fitting meditation, approaching a city where the car is everything, and everyone comes with expectations that defy any attempts at being realistic. When I’m 100 miles from LA, the Grapevine is yet to come. When I’m 50 miles out, I’m still descending through the San Gabriel Mountains. It’s 7 p.m.; that sooty, filtered light I think of as unique to LA, obscures the sun, spilling the remaining day like butter across my windshield, as I push 85 m.p.h. to make it on time. This is where the excitement of getting there becomes the mild anxiety of reading directions from a cell phone screen. I’m looking at the names of streets and freeway numbers, and I flash on a hundred movies, TV shows and magazine articles, where these names are mentioned in passing. Arriving in LA is always a curious mixture of longing, and nostalgia for that dream of being a star you can only have, before you actually get to LA. The city is dirty. A hot wind, carrying grit and car exhaust, occasionally moves the candy bar wrappers and Big Gulp cups around the streets, but mostly the air is stagnant. The 70's architecture doesn't go well with the palm trees and mega-sized billboards proclaiming the next piece-of-shit sitcom as the ‘show to watch’. My eyes go back and forth from dashboard clock, directions on the Blackberry and, oh yeah, the road. Scary, huh? I ‘m a menace! At one point I’m on Hollywood Blvd. I pass the theater where the Oscars are held. Traffic is slow. Busses, cars and tourists, paying even less attention to the other cars than I am, all seem purposely put in my way to make me late. I’m squinting at street signs, pushing my foot down on the accelerator darting in and out of lanes, all while looking at the damn clock that never tells me what I want to see. I turn off Hollywood Blvd. I know my next turn is Melrose, and when the realization hits me a new set of concerns crowds into my brain. Will I look like I just drove 6 hours across the desert with red, ragged eyes? Will I be able to get lucky not once, but twice, with parking, so I can make both shows? Last, but not least (and I laugh to myself when I realize I am just thinking of this now), what is my set list?

I make the last turn and there it is, the Melrose Improv. I recall the line Obi-Wan says to Luke, in Star Wars, just before they meet Han Solo, "...you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy..." It's not that bad at all. Walking into The Improv, you bring all your expectations and fears with you. Instead of a metal detector, the doorway somehow magnifies the feeling of “less than”. I’m smiling because I found parking a block up, and tonight there really is no other pressure than having a good time.

I’m up first so I can make the other venue. The host kills, introduces me, and like coming out of a blackout I’m on stage, holding a microphone in a packed, air conditioned room, thick with excitement.

I kill.

That’s all there is to it. Having a bad set or a good set isn't something I think about much these days. I just do what I do. I look up and notice the light telling me to get off is on. It means I’ve gone too long. I’m not use to short sets but in LA, 15 min. is considered long. I finish up, say goodnight, and all at once I’m back in my car with my Blackberry in hand, cursing the traffic on Melrose and wondering if the left turns and right turns in these directions are actually left and right.

I make it over to the UCB about 10 minutes into the show. The host is on and killing. When I walk into the green room, Janeane Garofalo is talking to someone about smoking in the hall. I look at the list and I’m actually up second, after Natasha Leggero who was a judge on “Last Comic Standing” this year). I’m nervous. The place is packed, and the host is telling a hilarious story about a mushroom trip. When I’m introduced, I walk out into the light and for a split second I think, “I want this to go great!” I’m a little too much in my head, but I do great. I’m not prepared to say I killed - but I do great. I boil down some of my best jokes to just the hits; throw in some riffing because hey, they talked to me; and close on a joke involving Admiral Akbar from Return of the Jedi, that gets an applause break. And just like that I’m done.

Anyone who succeeds in show business, succeeds not only because they’re talented performers, but also just talented talkers. I’m great with crowds. One on one is where I shut down. This time I make myself talk to the other people on the show. I ask advice without saying, “Can I ask your advice about something?” I hang out for awhile, shooting the shit, and then like a wave crashing over my head, all the adrenaline washes out of my body, and a profound exhaustion hits me. Christ I’m tired. I have a shitty hotel room close by, and in five minutes I’m standing in the "lobby" of a $60 a night hotel, listening to the man in the wife beater T-shirt rattle off the rules about visitors, and why the health department won't let him keep donuts out too long in the morning. I’m not a comic or aspiring anything. I’m just a really sleepy guy, whose day started at 7 that morning, in a city 500 miles away, with an impossible list of things that had to happen perfectly, for me to be standing here with a sly grin of accomplishment. I didn't get offers from managers, or stage time from comics who have made it into that next level of possibility; but all I wanted was to feel comfortable on these stages after years avoiding LA. That’s when I think, “It happened.” Everything did work perfectly. Sure, the GPS died, but it worked out. I found parking close to each venue; had great sets; and accomplished the most difficult part of this trip for me - talking to people. When I sleep, I’m not even thinking of the dog barking outside my window, or that the air doesn't work, or why all shitty hotel room bedspreads have the scratchy sensation you don't want to think about for too long, before I fade to black.

Heidi's Boob's and FOX's Boob's

While people are worried about a Mosque being built at ground zero, lets take time to worry about some truly big issues. Size G fake boobs to be exact. Heidi Montag, reality TV star from The Hill's has decided to remove her cartoon sized fake breast's almost as soon as she got them put in.

There are legitimate reasons to get implants like an accident or illness and I suppose there is nothing wrong with enhancing your natural assets but lets be honest, size G implants are just airbags that deploy upon self esteem hitting bottom.

She wants to downgrade to something smaller. In her own words she says "... D or double D's."

How out of whack is your sense of proportions when D's or double D's are smaller?

Then again a lot of people recently have their sense of proportions, geography and outrage out of alignment with reality.

Fact number one about the mosque at ground zero, it's a community center with a mosque in it.

Fact number two, it is three blocks from the site of ground zero.

FOX News has made a big deal about where the money is coming from. In classic guilt by association the money comes from a muslim and since muslims were on the planes that crashed into the world trade towers it must be terrorist money and therefore bad. If you follow that logic that means FOX News is evil because the second biggest owner in it is a muslim.

That's a fact. Irony or dirty little secret? You tell me.

In fact, while FOX News continues to scream the question, Where is the money coming from they seem ignorant that a big chunk of the money is coming from the man who is the second biggest shareholder in FOX News. It goes like this; Saudi Prince, Al-Waleed bin Talal owns 7 precent of parent corporation, News Corp. That prince has given money to the American Iman, Abdul Rauf's project to construct a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan. Now that might seem a little removed but three steps away from the owner of FOX News is a lot closer than three blocks from ground zero in Manhattan when you really think about it. Then again, who really thinks anymore when fake tits are also covered as a real news story on the same network?

Among Heidi's complaints about her giant boobs is she can't properly hug her four dogs. Why isn't there a Facebook page raising money to get these poor dogs the affection they need? Come on America! Four animals living in LA eating regularly every day and living in better conditions than maybe 80% of the people on this planet can no longer can get close enough to their mistress to lick her face!

Where is the outrage?

I'm suppose to feel sorry for this woman who explains the problem of having to wear only custom made tops now as "heart breaking?"

Breast cancer is heart breaking. Starving children are heart breaking. People believing a community center three blocks from ground zero is a bigger threat to this country than an economy designed to further the goals of the rich at the expense of the other 90% of us is heart breaking. Someone who needs to pump more silicone into their body than the weather stripping around the windows of an average 70 story building to make up for a personality so uninteresting in any other way is a cry for help but it isn't heart breaking. Then again, maybe it is heart breaking but first we would have to get past those size G personality enhancements to see if it is broken or not.

FOX News implying that the money to build a muslim community center comes from some shadowy source when at least some of that money is coming from the second biggest owner in their own company is hilarious! It is also a perfect example of lying by omission. FOX News knows this! Should we be investigating where they get their money from if we now know that their second biggest investor has also given money to the American Iman who raised funds to build a community center three blocks from ground zero that will also have a mosque in it?

The Pentagon was also struck by a plane on 9/11. To commemorate that tragedy, the Pentagon built a 100 seat chapel maintained by their chaplain office. It is a room available to Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Muslim employees. That's right America! In the command and control center of our military on the very spot where hijackers flew a plane into it on 9/11, Muslims get together during the day and pray!

When you look at both news stories side by side you have to reach the logical conclusion that FOX News has bigger boob's than Heidi Montag's. At least her desperate cry for attention wasn't paid for by shadowy men with ties to the middle east.

Of Confederate Flags and Mud Flaps

When I open the booker’s email, the first thing I see is a short paragraph, written all in capital letters. All caps is never a good sign. It says: “This venue has a Confederate flag prominently hanging above the stage. It is not reflective of the management’s mentality. I have booked many diverse shows there. Have fun.”

Usually gigs don't come with a disclaimer, and certainly not a warning about potential race issues.

When I get there, the first thing I do is look up. The Confederate flag is there, but so is a lot more. Hanging in the rafters is a huge American flag. Bellow that is a regular-sized Confederate flag. On the left and right of the Confederate flag are two smaller, black flags, with those ‘naked women silhouettes’ everyone has seen on truckers’ mud flaps. Beneath all that is a disco ball.

Yeah, I said disco ball.

I see a few people looking at me as I stare at this hanging mobile of mixed messages. What strikes me first is the fact that the Confederate flag is new. Unless you're a Civil War reenactment planner, what use do you have for a new one of those? Besides being a symbol of intolerance to a lot of people, it’s also the flag of the losing side, right? I mean, they did lose. The Confederate flag isn't on any of our stamps; black people aren't slaves. The demographic who likes the Confederate flag seems to be the same group that enjoys chanting “We're number one!” at sporting events and political rallies. That’s funny to me because this flag represents number two. It's the flag of the losing side. There are no big displays of silver medals that I know of. We don't usually hold onto, and proudly display, lottery tickets that were one digit off from making us rich.

I guess I can even understand that it’s there more as a prop for a good old boy bar vibe - but the disco ball?

I never would have put those two together.

You have the women on mud flaps flags that are insulting to women; a Confederate flag that is offensive to African-Americans; and then - a disco ball. I guess they have no problem with gay people?

After the show, I got talking to a woman, and asked if she thought the flag was offensive to black people.

"They don't come in here."

Yeah, because there is a symbol of hatred hanging from the ceiling!

When the show does start, I am standing in the loft area looking at the crowd. The opener happens to be a black guy. He goes on stage, the crowd claps, and everything seems OK. The other comic and I notice something is wrong with the lights. It’s a music venue, so they have a bank of lights hanging above the stage with different colored gels in them. Someone set them up to slowly cycle through the various colors to create a mood on stage when a band is playing. This is weird. All you need for comedy is just a spotlight or plain lighting. Instead, we have this odd effect with who’s ever on stage morphing through all the colors of the rainbow. Whoever set the light board up can't change it. We don't know any of this yet, so my first thought is, “Maybe someone keeps playing with the lights because they've never had a black guy on stage before.” Remember, they never come in there.

Being a San Francisco liberal with an over-developed sense of what is, and is not politically correct, I went into the gig prejudging everything about it. Each comic on the show was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the crowd. They were great in fact! But it all got me thinking about the rise of racism in America right now. Like a lot of people, I assumed with the election of Obama the country had turned the corner on many of those issues. Just the opposite happened. Anything that was bubbling beneath the surface boiled up in rage and misspelled protest signs. But then how much have we dealt with those issues, if the Confederate flag can be seen as “just something to help create the atmosphere of a good old boy bar”? I am grateful they didn't pay me in Confederate money. Those bills are too large for the ATM machine.

WEBSITE!

I have a new website. Same name, Standupjoe.com but new look with new features like a podcast!

It also has a page just for my storytelling show, Previously Secret Information. I am keeping this blog because well, I've been using it since 2004. There will be a blog on the new site so if you like what I write please come on over and join me at standupjoe.

Thanks

Joe K.

Oil & Irony

If you dig into the ground eventually you will find a special thin layer that can be found anywhere on the planet. It contains an element rare to Earth but plentiful in meteors and comets. This is a sort of assassins signature. Scientists believe this is proof that a giant meteor struck the Earth 65 million years ago starting the process of extinction for the Dinosaurs. For a layer like this to be found everywhere it means the rock that hit the planet had to be huge. It also means that the debris cloud it caused must of been large enough to settle around the globe. Something that large must of cut the amount of sun shine down to almost nothing for an extended period of time. No sunlight means plant die. The dinosaurs that ate the plants die and the dinosaurs that ate the dinosaurs that ate those plants also die.

We know from the fossil record that Earth was a lush world when the meteor hit. That plant life was covered in dust and then as the Earth remade itself with regular upheavals like lava flows, earthquakes and glacier movements it was pushed even deeper into the ground. For millions of years under enormous pressure it eventually became oil. Every ounce of oil we burn in our cars or turn into plastic started out millions of years ago as food for the dinosaurs. We could not have the society we have built now without the demise of creatures that lived 65 millions years ago without any of this happening.

If you're like me and delight in irony here is irony on the largest scale I've seen yet. Scientist almost universally place the impact site for that meteor in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, its the reason there is a Gulf of Mexico.

The resource we have gone to war for as a nation and the one thing common to industrialized modern society is now squirting from the site of the meteor that started it all at 65,000 barrels a day.

Bravo, irony! Bravo indeed.

The end of the dinosaurs started here and you have to wonder if ours is too.

How dumb are we? I see adds on Facebook for those cause bracelets Lance Armstrong made popular for cancer research. These are for the Gulf Coast Oil disaster or as the bracelets incorrectly read, stop the spill. Its incorrect because its not a spill. A spill implies it has stopped. The wrist band is made out of plastic. Plastic as in made from oil. You can't wrap oil around your wrist to say you're fighting oil. That would be like dinosaurs wearing stop the meteor bracelets made from meteor. Are we really any smarter than them?

Video Clip.

Time Traveler & Socks

Among the Tea Party Faithful

The first sign of strangeness in Oroville was the name of a Taco place I saw on the side of the road. Joe Bob’s Taco’s. Joe Bob? That is not the name of someone I think of to make a good taco. A noose yes, but not a taco.

I am working the Gold Country Casino in Oroville, CA. it’s the sort of room where subtly goes to die. Actually, it’s the sort of room subtly would be called a fag, beat up and kicked out for starting a fight. Oh, that is the sign of a good show by the way, not having a fight start. Seriously. Afterward the guy who ran it said “Good show. No fights started.” Man, I guess I have higher expectations for shows. That explains why the bouncers outnumbered the “audience” I guess. The audience was composed of caricatures if you called a casting agent and asked for white trash spectators. I felt like the people in front of me kept thinking, this isn’t NASCAR! Now, I am not going for the cheap shot here when I tell you they were fat. It is the only way to reasonably describe them to you. It is the first thing you notice about the people in the casino. You can’t help notice it. They were either morbidly obese or rail thin. Seems like people picked their poisons to be either gravy or Meth. The five people in front of me were not only huge they were also a family. The Mom, smoking a cigarette from the comfort of her electric Lark didn’t so much as sit in the chair as kind of leak all around it. She no longer had a laugh like we might think of one so much as a cough that indicated laughter. Her daughter arrived late. I remember her entrance only because I was stunned at her size and ability to move so fast. A joke I have told for years suddenly took effort to remember because I could not take my eyes off her with the words, she is fucking huge going through my mind like the crawl at the bottom of cable news channels. I wanted to stop and just say those words. Not to be cruel or try to get a cheap laugh but I was so genuinely amazed. In talking to her I learned that her brother, had a bad knee from a childhood incident where they were riding bikes and she said the street was clear thereby leading him into traffic where he was hit by a car. I wasn’t performing in front of an audience. I was performing in front of a reality TV show!

I would say trying to get these people to laugh was like pulling teeth but that would imply they had any teeth left to pull. Everyone’s mouth lived by the same creed as Highlander; there can be only one! Again, I know it’s a cliché but I now know where that cliché went to settle down and raise horribly unfit children. I saw a baby that easily weighed 75 pounds already. It looked like a seal stuffed into a stroller. People would smile and I would notice a few teeth missing here, a dark corner of a mouth there and plenty of jagged grins. I’m sympathetic to this of course because of my own recent dental battles. Being on stage though I thought, there goes those jokes.

The “room” wasn’t separated from the casino either. It was wide open to the sounds of slot machines, ringing phones and even the PA system. I felt like I had to yell everything and when I did talk to them I couldn’t hear them. Being a poster child for ADD on stage in front of slacked jaw hillbillies where I couldn’t say most of the things going through my mind made for a very long 35 minutes. I think my biggest round of applause came from a joke about the evils of tofu. There’s a shocker! You mean you guys don’t like tofu? Another woman, huge said it tasted like a sponge. I couldn’t open my mouth and trust that the right thing would come out.

Here is the sad part. After my set I roamed around the Casino for a while. A few people who were in the show talked to me. What became clear to me was the mentality. This is Tea Party country, folks. Guns for everyone, keep the government out of my healthcare, Obama is going to turn us into Nazi Germany and misspelled protest signs for all! I pointed out to one guy that he has no healthcare now. Making it more affordable to everyone and creating a climate for job growth does not lead to death camps. Besides, it was the republicans who just blocked even taking a vote on extending unemployment benefits. When you state something clearly without shouting do you know what answer you get?
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh as in, shit maybe I have been voting, when I actually do vote against my own best interests.
Then there is the gun issue. Over and over I am told Obama wants to take away guns. Again a little fact goes a long way. One of the first bills he signed into law was making it legal for people to bring their guns into federal parks. Why you would need one I don’t really understand. Its not like a lot of drive bys occur in Yosemite. One of the guys says, “what about wild animal attacks?”
“I don’t know how many wild animal attacks happen every year in a place like Yosemite but lets be honest, from the look of most of you you’re not getting out of the car so I wouldn’t worry about that.”
Another one of these guys now gathered around me in a circle and sucking on a cigarette says, “I’ve seen animal planet! Those Black Bears can reach in your car window!”
There was something about the way he said black that was unsettling.
I said. “Dude, the only thing going through your car window you should worry about killing you is the shit you ordered at a drive-thru. You have better chance of dying from a lifetime of Big Mac’s than a bear attack.”
Luckily, they laugh. That’s the beauty of honest comedy. People laugh for two main reasons, it is funny or it’s the truth.

This entire evening was brought to you by melting pot irony. Here I am standing in front of a Indian Casino with out of work poor over weight white people who blame a black guy for all their problems as Mexicans handle all the work, Asians deal cards and a tribe rakes in the cash while they complain to me about not needing wanting to pay high taxes to support lazy people and healthcare they don't need between bouts of coughing fits from all the years of smoking.

Life of a Comic part, Whatever

I did a gig in a barn. No really, I headlined a show in a barn. They stacked bales of hay to make bleachers for people to sit on. Before the people came in it looked something like an Aztec pyramid built by hillbillies or a massive white trash game of Tetris. The crowd was all from Point Reyes, Ca. If you know west Marin then you know the people there are neither white trash or Hillbillies but instead some sort of hybrid between farmer, activist, liberal and hick by choice who enjoy their pot and wine. I’m pretty sure that’s what the 20-minute intermission was for, to let the crowd step outside the barn and get high. That’s what it smelled like anyway.

It was a benefit for a benefit for a benefit. Let me explain. They wanted to raise money for schools in the area so they thought, let’s put on a concert! Well, that costs money so they put on a benefit to raise money for that. That’s where the comics enter into this. If you want to know the food chain of artists its right there. The only artists broker than musicians willing to work cheap are comics. I wonder if that means they had a benefit to pay us with poets earlier in the month?

In typical benefit show tradition the show was overbooked. It started at 8PM and I didn’t set foot on stage until 11PM. Actually, I went up after the intermission where everyone got high followed by a 3 women burlesque group with fake mustaches glued onto their faces you might of missed checking out their other attributes, a raffle where the deaf women in the front row won free tickets to the concert, another comic and then finally me. Mind you, this was after the first half of the show with three comics already performing. By the time I got to the crowd they were tired, getting loud and most definitely ready to stumble home. Within 10 minutes of being on stage a woman offered me evening lodging in her truck with a dog, a woman applauded for me being adopted and a man far up in the hay bleachers wanted to inform me of the 4^th of July parade in another town. The table of four people up front and at my stage right was faced entirely toward the wall. There were bags of animal feed staked above me and because it is California the “barn” not only had Tibetan prayer flags hanging from the rafters but it also had a café, yoga studio and art gallery attached to it too.

Inside a barn with drunk on wine high off weed well-meaning liberals, ballerina and high heel clad dancers with mustaches I performed because God damn it; it’s for the children.

At the start of June I performed outside at a winery to people either spread out on a lawn or seated in plastic lawn chairs. You would think being June and being in the East Bay it would be warm. Nope. I live by the beach in San Francisco. The beach in San Francisco is not the Bay Watch bikini and babes type of California everyone thinks of who doesn’t live here and knows the truth; it’s cloudy, cold and frequently the last stop anyone needs to be pushed over the edge before going through with their suicide plans. On this day a place that routinely has temperatures 20 to 30 degrees warmer than in the city had worse weather than down by the beach. I ended up going back to my car and getting my emergency change a flat by the side of the road Vietnam style jacket and black North Face beanie. In other words, I looked like the guy you would never pick up hitch hiking. The “green room” for the comics was located in a storeroom for the winery. It held giant casks of wine, boxes of their bottles awaiting shipping on pallets and a few bottles for our enjoyment. At some point for reasons that were never exactly made clear to me a group of underage cheer leaders walked in the room too. I guess they were helping out on this benefit as well. Great, wine and cheerleaders two things I can’t have anymore in life!

When I was in Reno working the Catch a Rising Star comedy club inside the Silver Legacy Casino, I had more than a few nights where I wished I had on film. The week started with the host, a guy who sat behind a piano and his usual gig was performing in an Abba tribute band introduced me instead of the feature act. It was surreal to hear my credits and then a black guy walks on stage. After his set when it was actually my time to be introduced the host prefaced my intro by saying, are you ready for the white portion of the show? I ended up riffing on this for a while and little did I know this would set the tone for the week. When I made fun of Reno and the generally sad condition of the place economically and socially judging from the homeless people, thriving pawnshops and more casinos closed than open a proud citizen in the audience repeatedly said, “I’ve been to Cairo!”

What did this mean? It took me about 15 minuets to figure it out but her logic went something like this, I had said earlier I was from Illinois. Illinois has a town named Cairo that is apparently a shit hole far worse, in her opinion than Reno and since I had insulted her town she was now insulting me with the only bad place she knew of in my home state. Oh, and she was a teacher. Her class must be getting some really messed up geography lessons from her.

So goes the life of a comedian.

Just My Latest Two Cents

Dear Fellow Americans,

Sweeping generalizations and overly dramatic statements pass for insight lately. So let me add to it by just saying that conservatives have lost their minds and liberals have become as effective as nipples on a man.

Somehow conservatives have managed to convince a lot of people that Obama will take America down the same path Hitler took Nazi Germany. That is just hilarious when you consider Bush invaded a country with faked proof, suspended basic freedoms and told the same lie over and over enough that to this day a surprising number of America’s still think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

All Obama has really managed to do is let down a huge proportion of his base. I know, don’t do the work of the right wing by criticizing him, Joe. He is just setting the stage for his second term. That’s what they tell me. Setting the stage for his second term? You can’t use the same explanation rabid Star Wars fans gave for why The Phantom Menace was so boring in the new trilogy.

The conservatives have managed to pull this transformation off before. They have managed to make themselves believe that Jesus is on their side. Do you really think Jesus would of apologized to a corporation after it poisoned the ocean? Better yet, do you think the guy who went around healing the sick would be against some kind of affordable health care for everyone? If Jesus had to vote I think he would declare himself a green or a socialist based on the stories I was forced to read about him as a kid. If I remember correctly Jesus only lost his temper once and that was over money being exchanged in the temple. Considering religion has become a billion dollar a year industry in this country I’m not sure how cool he would be with the corporations masquerading as churches. Do you? You really think he would have been OK with bank bailouts to billionaires while people lost their homes? Yet, the political party of health care isn’t a right, corporations should have less regulations to do what they want and the richest 2% of Americans shouldn’t have to pay taxes claim Jesus as one of their own.

Is it really that big of a stretch for them to turn Obama into Hitler?

When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, more than a few religious conservative leaders claimed it was a punishment from God for numerous reasons. Why aren’t they claiming the same thing now with the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? I am half kidding. Maybe it is national Karma. We did Invade Iraq for oil and now we have it washing up on our shores. And please, don’t tell me Iraq wasn’t about oil. When the country was being looted and their museums, hospitals and even weapons depots were being broken into the one thing American troops were ordered to guard was oil wells. Maybe God or the universe or whatever sense of justice is built into the fabric of things just went you want oil I’ll send you some!

When weather destroys a section of the country it some kind of divine punishment from God but when a company’s negligence creates the biggest environmental disaster in America’s history it is called an act of God?

Its not like we really have anyway of stopping the gusher either. Five CEO’s of Oil Company’s stood in front of Congress and under oath admitted there is no technology available to handle this. That didn’t stop them from putting down in writing that they did.

Anytime your solutions to a disaster sound like prison sex terms, junk shot and top kill, you shouldn’t be allowed to drill a mile bellow the ocean and another mile into the crust of the earth. I’m just saying.

Meanwhile, Obama fired the general in charge of Afghanistan and replaced him with the General who was in charge of Iraq. Great. He replaced the leader of one failed war that has lasted longer than WW1 and WW2 combined with the leader of another failed war of choice that has cost us 20 times what it took to go to the Moon. So what? The story isn’t that he fired a guy who talked shit to a Rolling Stone reporter the real story is why are we still there nine years later?

Afghanistan is irony. It is the world’s biggest producer of heroin and terrorism. Doesn’t seem like those things would go together. You would figure the heroin would mellow them out. It might but the other potent drug they have there is religion. Its like the Puritans landed in Seattle during the mid 90’s.

To win the hearts and minds of the people living in Afghanistan so they don’t feel the need to become terrorists and blow our shit up? Thats why we are there? It has to be hard to win the hearts and minds of the same people who the CIA trained to fight the Soviets. You remember that plan don’t you, America? Conservative patron saint Ronald Regan paid the most rabid religious extremists they could find to draw the soviets into a Vietnam style war. It worked. When the soviets left we did too leaving a wonderfully armed group of religious nuts to figure it out for themselves. You know what they figured out? America used us. All conspiracy’s aside it is a fact when people say the terrorists who flew planes into the world trade towers were CIA trained. Osama and Saddam were American products as much as Coke and Ford are American products.

The plan to win their hearts and minds this time around isn’t to give them guns. This time we are building schools for girls. This only helps the Taliban and Halliburton. It helps the Taliban because instead of them having to roam the countryside hunting down the targets of their misplaced hatred we have done the easy part of getting all the girls together in one place for them. Then, they blow it up. This is good for Halliburton because they have the contracts to rebuild the schools.

The entire gross domestic product of Afghanistan is about 3 billion a year. We spend that in a month over there! At this point it would be more cost effective to just hand the money out to the people there. Seriously, people might hate America but most of those same people want to be American. Do you really think anyone is going to want to blow themselves up after they are pacified with TiVo, Facebook, iPhones, cheeseburgers and Prozac? How willing are you to even step away from Farmville to buy organic vegetables for your health? It works! You can’t put on a bomb belt to blow yourself up when obesity has made it to small to put around your waist. I’m just saying flying over Afghanistan and dropping a billion dollars worth of Best Buy gift cards might be an easier solution to Americanize the population and end that war. Instead of blowing up wedding parties with drones we should be registering them and buying gifts like Xboxes so they can “play” war instead of wage it.

Could we stop with the whole Obama was born in Kenya and is a secret Muslim?

Could we stop with the whole Obama was born in Kenya and is a secret Muslim intent on destroying America thing already? Because if that’s the plot it is unfolding at exactly the worst possible time for any secret Muslim organization. Lets see, we will get a guy born in Kenya because clearly there won’t be any American born radicals, send him to the same Christian church for 30 years just to throw them off, give him the middle name of Hussein, the same name of the leader of Iraq and count on getting him elected as the country fights two failed wars in Muslim countries directly inspired by 9-11?

Brilliant!

If I was a Muslim terrorist organization and I wanted to bring down America I would have an X American President, former CIA chief and oil investor whose son happens to be the President of America at the time invest in a Saudi Arabian family construction business with a son who happens to be a CIA trained terrorist attack America on a day when none of the established protocols for dealing with hijacked planes were followed touching off a war in oil rich Muslim countries where the two families could make profits off fighting, equipping and powering that war and then use that money to make billions more in profit by investing in a stock market that had virtually no regulation and when it eventually crashes pick up billions in stock for almost nothing thereby washing clean all the money made in illegal weapons trade right before the son of that X American President, former CIA chief and oil investor’s son leaves office while the son of the Saudi Arabian family construction business remains free and get everyone to blame the next President who happens not to be white and have a name that sounds suspiciously like the people we are fighting.

That’s what I would do but who would believe such a thing is possible?

Getting Clean

Two days after we broke up I received a package in the mail. It contained the following items.

1. A toothbrush I used a few times at her place.

2. A small sketch I had quickly done to explain stained glass windows.

3. A ten-dollar coin bank in the shape of a robot.

4. A pen.

I added the contents of this package to the shopping bag of stuff she dropped off for me. That held more gifts I had given her like lingerie and a dress. In short, anything I had ever touched or given to her had been removed from her apartment and sent back to me in some Orwell like cleansing of the emotional record. It was a brilliant passive aggressive move. Instead of just throwing the offending items away that reminded her of me she sent them back to me as if to say, there isn’t even evidence that we were together now.

Wow! It really is one hell of a fuck you.

The bag sat in the back of my car for a week. I couldn’t throw it away. It didn’t seem right. I wasn’t sure what to do with the stuff but the thought of throwing it into a dumpster filled me with sadness. It didn’t seem like the proper way to honor the tenderness we had shared. The other option was to put it all in a box and leave that box in the back of my closet. I wasn’t going to do that either. I already had a cardboard box in there from a previous relationship that remained unopened. I wasn’t going to start a mausoleum of dead relationships.

On Mothers day, after I talked to Mom and got an earful of relationship advice I finally got out of bed took a shower and gave myself a task to occupy my mind instead of self-pity. After all, I was the one who finally said this isn’t working. Time to move on.

I drove my car to the car wash. As I went through the car with a vacuum I was faced with the bag again. What do I do with it? I took a breath picked it up and tossed it into a plastic trash barrel. That was that.

That is that is never just that.

Once I started spraying the outside of the car I became focused. At least I could concentrate on the task in front me now. That’s when I looked up and was greeted with a scene that took me a moment to process. A fine mist of water vapor had formed just behind the car and around the trash barrels set out for people to use. The conditions were right that a rainbow had formed over the one I had tossed the bag into. Reaching inside was a homeless man getting the bottles and cans out. In his free hand he clutched a sheer teddy I bought for her no more than a few weeks ago. He stood up and took hold of it with both hands. His hands were huge and encrusted with dirt like two catchers mitts left outside but he held it so delicately as if he understood how special it was. Our eyes met then. He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders with what I took to mean the universal body language of; can you believe someone threw this away?

Just as my mind set to work on finding some grand meaning in this sight he shrugged his shoulders again, brought it to his nose and blew. I guess it didn’t have the desired result because he scrunched it up into a ball and tried again. With great effort he repeated this several times looking each time before balling it up a little more and trying again with greater force. Eventually he bunched it up unceremoniously shoving it into his back pocket.

He looked back into the barrel reached in and this time took out the robot bank. We had a private joke involving robots. It’s a long story but you know how couples will develop insides jokes? This was one of those. When I saw it in the window of a store I was walking past I rushed in and got one.

He shook it next to his ear and sure enough a stray coin rattled around inside. I knew what was about to happen next and shook my head in disbelief. He brought the small white statue up over his head and in one single motion brought it down on the pavement in front of him where it broke into a few large pieces. Having liberated the quarter he smiled and once again looked inside this barrel of treasures.

I always want there to be some grand truth in things like this. I want there to be a lesson a punch line or the revealed face of irony. Not this time. Sometimes it is just a homeless guy blowing his nose on the teddy you bought for a woman that he picked out of the garbage while a rainbow lands all around him.

I'm Not Having a Stroke

I have to learn how to smile. Here is why. For a long time now I have been so self conscience about my bad teeth that I perfected a way of smiling without showing them. I would purse my lips together and will the corners of my mouth to rise. This always took an effort on my part. It meant catching myself in the act of smiling and controlling what is a normal human reflex for everyone else. I'm sure it looked a bit strained too. I wasn't fooling anybody. People would sometimes look at me the same way you look at a person whose nostrils go wide when they try to yawn with their mouth closed.

I just spent $20,000 on dental work. It looks great. Four crowns and a bridge. I have six straight white perfect looking teeth in the front of my mouth and the lower ones will get whitened next week. Problem is, I trained myself for so long how to smile with closed lips that it has become a habit. It doesn't go so smoothly now when I smile. I feel myself doing it the old way and then in mid smile I have to make a conscience effort to open my mouth wide and fight against the taught impulses my face is use to. Even the muscles in my face resist this new natural way. I can see the look on peoples faces when this happens. I think they think I must be having a stroke.

One second I begin the process of trying to keep my lips together as I smile. It's what I am use to. When I notice this I try to correct the problem by saying to myself, smile normal. Its a little like being pulled over by the cops. You sit there behind the wheel saying to yourself be cool. Be cool. Be cool. That usually has the exact opposite effect of you not being cool. Same thing here. Telling myself to smile normal only makes me hyper aware that I am not smiling normal. I'm trying to manage what is suppose to be a reflex. The outcome is a strange and labored response that feels more like doing a bad impression of a smile than an actual smile.

The other day I was at Trader Joe's standing in line. A young girl comes over and says "there is no waiting at my register, Sir." I follow her over.
She looks at me brightly and says "You're the only one who followed me."
In a clumsy effort to be flirty and charming I say "I find that hard to believe" and then smile. Thats where I lost her.
I can see her eyes. They are flattered for a second. Then I smile. It is one of my hyper aware overly thought out smiles. The muscles in my face are confused by this. They must be because this time when I will my mouth open I can feel the left corner of my mouth start to twitch uncontrollably like your eye might if your tired. When I feel that I try to overcompensate with still more effort. I'm sure it looks something like The Joker trying hard not to vomit or something.
All this takes place in a second or two but the result is unmistakable. It must look like I am about to have a seizure or something because her eyes go from embarrassed sweetness with my casual compliment to what the fuck is happening with your face at the speed of light. She quickly looks down at my painfully obvious single man basket of goods, two frozen lasagnas, two frozen boxes of tofu chicken like nuggets and two things of yogurt and stiffly puts them in a bag before flatly reciting my total. I pick up my bag but before I go I want to try and salvage this. I turn to smile and say goodbye or something equally as witty but she has already turned her back and started dealing with the next customers.

I feel a little like an android at this point. I watch people smile and note the ease with which they do it attempting to replicate their human actions. Before I was jealous of peoples effortless smiles now I am resentful. I just spent twenty grand to look at hot cashiers and freak them out?
The new teeth have changed my speech a bit as well. Its not huge but some words are now cumbersome and take extra force to get out of my new alien mouth. My tongue feels oddly large against the backs of these new teeth too like it no longer fits in my mouth. I have become manic about brushing and flossing after every meal. It is a ten minute procedure now that must be done perfectly every time. Can you catch OCD from a dentist? I am in the process of quitting coffee due to the staining. That process is its own ordeal!

The thing I feel most after this is nothing. Nothing, as in I don't feel any different about me. I expected to walk out the dentists door and smile at a cute girl passing by. She would smile back with a look of shared possibilities in her eyes. That didn't happen. Instead I tried to smile at a cute cashier only to have her become horrified wondering if she should dial 911. I guess its an old lesson but changing the outsides doesn't do much to change how you feel on the inside. A little bit sure, but lasting change always comes from the inside out. I am glad I have the new teeth and glad I saved the money to finally take care of it. It wasn't a problem that was going away. It will also help with the career. What I hate to admit is that now the real work has to start again. Shit. If I trained myself how to get around the act of smiling I wonder what tricks I've taught my personality to get around perceived deficiencies? There are no crowns for ego's. Well, they call them sports car but I am not blowing another twenty grand for awhile.

Arizona and Aliens.

Arizona has made being Mexican virtually illegal. Police now have the power to detain and question someone if they suspect them of being an illegal alien. What would give them reason to suspect someone of being an illegal alien? Suspicious dress is one description in the law. I think they had to say suspicious dress because they couldn’t say brown skin. It is also now illegal to pull your car over and offer someone work. This law isn’t about targeting sombrero wearing prostitutes. It is about the Mexicans who come across the border and have the nerve to do the shitty jobs we don’t want to for slave wages.

Meanwhile, NASA has announced plans to look for Aliens in the universe. Do you really think any aliens out there want anything to do with beings that label other beings illegal aliens? We can’t get along with other people who happen to come in darker shades of skin. Creatures from another planet wouldn’t stand a chance here! The tea party protesters lose their shit now over other humans. They can barely spell offensive names now. What are they going to do when they have to protest beings that have tentacles and communicate in bursts of light? NASA is wasting its time.

I am starting to think that crop circles are just warning signs to other advance cultures not to land here. A crop circle is the universal equivalent to a circle with a red line through it or the signs you see along a highway that read, no services at this exit.

We’re going to spend a billion tax dollars to search the stars for aliens and at least another billion to round up illegal aliens and ship them back across the border at the same time. You know what we should do? Let Mexico take over the hunt for alien signals from space. Think about it. When you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you have the radio on seek, what station do you always pick up loud and clear? The Hispanic music one, right? They already have the biggest antenna and they are already broadcasting. We might want to consider that if aliens from another world did show up they wouldn’t land on the White House lawn or hover above Moscow, Tokyo, Paris or Egypt. They might be headed for Mexico City and their new friends. Where would they land all their flying saucers? On their brand new parking lot named, Arizona.