If I were President

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Follow the Leaders

Looks like John McCain is going to be the Republican nominee for president. You have to respect a man who was held and tortured for 5 years in a Vietnam prison. But the dude is old. The word cain is in his name to remind you of that. It's great to watch the republican party pull itself apart debating if he is conservative enough though. He insulted the religious wing of the party by once referring to TV evangelists as agents of intolerance. I think he got that one right. He is soft on immigration too, according to them and the worse sin; he voted against the Bush tax cuts. Just a quick reminder on that scam. Those tax cuts were only for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. In fact, if you put his record up against Hillary Clinton's you won't see much of a difference.
All republicans do the same thing, invoke the name of the mighty Ronald Reagan. For a conservative, Reagan was something of a mystery to me. Consider that he left office 8 years latter with massive debt. He cut and ran in Lebanon after more than 200 hundred Marines were killed in a suicide attack on a base there. He also granted amnesty to million of illegal aliens. I don't know why he is seen as a towering figure of conservatism with a record like that, but he is. Oh yeah, for some reason he gets credit for the end of the Soviet Union. Part of how that was accomplished was to fund the covert war in Afghanistan. I think we all know how that worked out for us in the long run.
Obama is my candidate. He has to be yours too folks. What does it say about the worlds largest democracy if we pass the highest elected office back and forth between two families? Any place else that would happen in the world and the word Democracy wouldn't be used to describe it. No, it's time for real change.
We know the next President will be a Democrat. We know this because Wall Street tells us so. For the last 25 years the party that received the most money from Wall Street became the party that won the White House. At the moment, 57% of the money donated from fortune 500 companies has gone to Democrats. Will it be Hillary or Obama?
What Obama has going for him is that he dose not have a record the republican smear machine can go to town on. Lets face it, no one in Washington is clean, but you have to be mighty dim to think Hillary doesn't have more than a few skeletons in the closet. Whats Obamas major fault? His middle name is Hussein? He doesn't have enough experience? Well, look at the people who have had plenty of experience and where they have led us?
America is in decline. The Empire has turned a corner and for anyone who wishes to notice them, the signs are every where. You want to know how bad the economy really is? In New York, merchants have begun to accept the Euro. The dollar is so weak that New York is being flooded by European tourists. It's a bargain for them to come now. The best solution the government can come up with is to send everyone a $300 check? Honestly, to anyone seriously struggling, 300 bucks is not going to do a lot. But at least the money is finally getting into the right hands. By doing this, the Reganites are admitting that the whole trickle down theory of economics is a joke. You remember that concept, don't you? Give the rich more money and they will hire more workers, build more plants and keep the economy growing. Well, it didn't work then and it didn't work now. In fact George Herbert Bush, our current presidents dad, referred to it as Voodoo economics. Now that were seriously screwed, they want to actually put money in the hands of the masses. Guess what? When my check arrives it goes right into the bank and stays there. Thats what the rich did with their tax breaks apparently otherwise the idea of actually giving checks to everyone in the country wouldn't be on the table.
By the way, when the Pentagon submitted it's budget, it declined to place a number, any number on the amount of money it needs to keep the war going. They actually have asked for a blank check.
Guess who has received the most amount of contributions from defense contractors? Hillary. You really think she's going to pull the troops out right away?
Follow the money folks. It will tell you everything.

Valentines Day.

Valentines Day.
Buying cards for all the girls in class. Remember that? God I hated that. You would go to the local Walgreen's and buy one of those 30 packs of cards that had bright red hearts or Kittens on them. All I ever did was write, Happy Valentines Day.
Joe. That was it. I never got a card that said anything other than the same thing. Not even an X or an O. Once, in 6th grade I did get a card from a girl in class that said more. However, on closer inspection it turned out she had put the wrong card in the envelope with my name on it.
All it said was, "Your good at kick ball!"
Hey it was the 6th grade. That was pretty much the equivalent of getting engaged back then.
Then there was the candy hearts with those short romantic sayings on them. You could eat about ten of those hearts before your mouth felt like chalk and your stomach became coated in the sweet sick flavor of cheap candy. I have always thought that these little self-esteem messages printed in candy ink would look pretty good on antidepressants. The best thing about this holiday was that it took time out of class. I was always in favor of anything that did that. We had about 30 minuets where we handed out our cards and candy to each other. We sat down at our desks and opened the cards. Occasionally, someone got more than just the required bare minimum message. They turned red and when recess came, we teased them mercilessly.
Looking back on it all, I see it for the socialization that it was. Getting us ready for dating, I suppose. Or rejection depending on what your cards said. From first grade on you learned to buy something for this day. Maybe that was the real lesson after all.
I remember being jealous of anyone who got a card that said something more. But at the same time, I realized that this jealousy had something to do with wanting girls to notice me. It was about 4th grade when I started noticing that my throat got dry around a few girls.
What was that?
Did that mean I liked girls? I wanted to say something to them, but my throat would just close shut in a heart beat. Maybe I was allergic to them? It wasn't unheard of. There was that episode of the Brady Bunch where Jan became allergic to Tiger, the family dog. If it could happen with a person and a dog, why not a person and a girl? That was my reasoning capabilities at the time.
I didn't tell anyone about my diagnosis.
By 6th grade, I knew I wasn't allergic to girls. I also knew that I did indeed like them for being girls. 6th grade is also about the time that you start writing a bit more than just a quick Happy Valentine's Day on those cards. It seemed way to possible to be made fun of if you wrote something truly honest. No one I knew ever just wrote, I like you. Maybe they did. It's not like I was hanging out with the cool crowd. That seemed like you would be setting yourself up for drama.
Now I can see the start of what was later in my life to be called intimacy issues.

7th grade I was sent to a private Catholic school. They didn't do the cards at all. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it had something to do with the idea that romance and all it could lead to wasn't an idea they wanted in our heads. Still, girls would leave lunch period with roses or those big red velvet box's of chocolate tucked under their arms. They were always the ultra-hot ones too. That was a fun social experiment for anyone with self-esteem to watch.
A handful of girls walked away with prizes for their beauty while the rest of us chewed on candy hearts and sharpened our dagger stares. I remember a guy getting a huge thing of Roses one year in 8th grade. I'm not sure who looked more red, him or the roses.
Is there a holiday with a bigger mind fuck attached to it?
If you don't have a date your a looser. If you do have a date, your broke.
There was a famous study done some years back. The biggest fear of most American men is not having enough money. The biggest fear of American women is gaining weight. Have fun on your date kids! A date sparks the number one fear in both sexes. A man leaves with less money and the woman leaves with more calories.

Wide Grateful Eyes

Comedy.
I'm talking the lifestyle of it now. The sweating out the 2 days the Booker says it will take for the check to reach you. The loan here the bet there, maybe an odd job every once in a while-you get by. You do all that for stage time. You learn to go with out but brag about how much time you have. Then, a phone call.
Am I free tomorrow?
Sure.
I'm opening for who? Where?
It's the sweetest thing, that call. Unexpected work at just the right time. It's a nice high to ride for a while. It gets people off your back too. Know what I mean?
The money's good. The place is the State street theater in Modesto,CA.
Oh Modesto. I have made so much fun of you!
Drew Hastings is the headliner. Big on the Bob and Tom circuit.
His manager calls. Politely and professionally he stresses the word clean several times.
I get it.
Twenty minuets. It's a God damn bank job. Easy in, do the job, get the cash and roll.
It's sweet. That comedy life style high. I once rode it. The closest I have ever come to anything like spiritual, was during that time. It also hit a considerable bottom and a nice bounce at the end. All in all, it's a roller coaster your gonna ride. You have to. On stage, people laughing at what their suppose to, when there suppose to. It's spectacular! Of course you want to get on that ride. You couldn't talk anyone out of it.
But there are times when you sweat it out. The money is short and the days are long. It's easy in summer, you can hang out at cafes all day and night. Winter, you feel homeless. To kill time you ride Muni buses grateful for the ones with heat.
Then, just when you need it, that sweet call comes. Whatever it is they want, I'll do. It's not selling out. It's paying rent.
Thats cool. Handing over a check paid for entirely on telling jokes. It feels a little like stealing but mostly it feels great!
Then it's lean again. Guest sets, Sundays at the Punchline, various one nighters, but always right there on the edge of making it.
Up and down up and down. Lots of lonely walking in Golden Gate park and hanging with friends at cafes. We were all riding that same ride. Not necessarily together, but we were definitely on it at the same time.
Days would go by with nothing but conversation in front of the Blue Danube Cafe at 4th and Clement. Everyone of us broke but cocky. Some of them smoked, others drank, most got high, all of us had visible issues. Yet, it was comfortable somehow. It was being part of something. A part of something that understood and talked the jargon.
Most importantly we believed in the same myths. Like a little tribe.
We would fall in and out with each other over small personal loans and our opinions of each others acts. When we weren't falling in and out with each other over petty insults, we got crushes over the counter girls at the Danube.
Those were the days. Living on comedy and feeling like a God for it. All of us were in poverty, reclusive and competitive. We lived for the high of the new joke and those sweet calls that kept our whole crazy life going. If it wasn't for the one dollar pork buns you could get up the street, I'm not sure how I would of made it.
Sure, this is all looking at it with the romance of nostalgia. It's a powerful thing. It's not like the scars ever fade, you just stop noticing them. Then it's easy to coat it in a layer of blurry warmth. Those days of living purely on comedy weren't awful, but they also weren't that great either. It felt like more was possible though. Of course, even a tiny sum of money from a gig felt like winning the lottery back then. Maybe thats all it was? From where we were, up was the only option. Up is still the direction I want to go in, but it's no longer the only direction available to any of us.
I miss those days. I truly do. The myth we all bought into then was that of being discovered. All your troubles were solved if you were discovered. We got over that too.
Tonight, I am in Modesto,CA at the State Street Theater opening for Drew Hastings. The call came yesterday as I was sitting at my desk looking at my mostly blank calendar for spring. It brought me back. It brought me back to those days when I didn't expect such calls. There was a stretch there for awhile, when the sweet call that meant I could survive for another month would come with startling regularity. To me, it felt as if the Universe was unfolding with me in mind. It really did. Instead of anxiety when I was down to that last Twenty dollar bill in my beat up wallet, I relaxed and trusted that I would be taken care of. I always was.
I think it was when I began to question when that call would come or not that I slipped from the palm of the universe to just another guy feeling entitled to something he didn't really understand.
Never underestimate the power of being grateful.
Thats when it dried up on me. When I stopped being thankful for those calls and started wondering when they would come.
The truth is, I would never go back to those days. They were way to hard. I think thats why we banded together in our little groups. All we would do was drink coffee and silently hope we would get a call for work before the other guys. There was also genuine warmth for each other too.
The road, the romantic notion that you can drive around the great expanse that is America and make money telling jokes to strangers, is gone. Oh sure, it can still be done, but the pay has remained what it was when I started. No cost of living raises for comics living out of their cars.
It can still be done, but it's so fucking hard when people don't know your name.
These days, I am grateful not just for those times, but for living threw them too. What made it all worth it was the precious stage time we all craved.
This show, tonight in Modesto, it's for who I was. The struggling comic getting by on equal parts denial and faith. Thats right. I just dedicated a show to myself. Myself from those days. I would of walked into this gig with wider eyes back then. I suppose, out of everything I recall, thats what I miss the most; walking into every gig with wide grateful eyes.

Memory Hole

For about two years after 9/11, I kept a stack of news paper clippings related to it and the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The stack grew to eventually take over two shelves of a book case that sat by my bed. One day the thought hit me, what are the karmic consequences of having all that information a foot from where my head is when I sleep? When I first started clipping the reports, articles and editorials and keeping them, I didn't really know what to do with them. Or why for that matter. I felt a little like Richard Dreyfus in Close encounters of the third kind. I just knew I should hold onto these tangible examples of something going horribly wrong. It was evidence.
When I decided to move the pile of paper onto a shelf in a closet, I started to go through it all. As I did I started thinking about the classic book, 1984. If I just held onto these papers, then I had prof it was said. In 1984, whenever the government altered the historical facts, they had every reference to the contrary removed from the public record and thrown down a burning "memory hole."
A quick idea came together. Why not use 1984, and these clippings in a solo performance show?
Why not indeed.
The show was performed once in Chico. I held a shoe box of press clippings and pages from 1984.
It got laughs and nodding heads from the crowd.
The shoe box got placed on a shelf in my closet and somewhere along all the moves during the last few years, I lost it.
Well, it has returned. Not as a show, but as a data base for all the lies told to push us into war with Iraq. Click the link bellow. It will take you to the public integrity web site. The have put together a list of untruths spoken out loud by top Bush officials in the lead up to the war. Not only that, but they have crossed referenced them against official documents. In most cases, they have intelligence reports telling officials that they were wrong. However, days after receiving those documents, bush and company said almost the exact opposite of what those documents said. In short, they have demonstrated an orchestrated and sustained use of propaganda for the purposes of creating public consent for war.
A conspiracy to lie us into it.

Memory Hole

What Makes the World Go Round...

Money.
I have paid way to many damn parking tickets in this town. I swear. There ought to be a statue of me standing in front of a parking sign with my shoulders shrugged and my eyes squinting as I try to figure it out. They can cast it from my melted down car. Between insurance, tickets, gas and the need for a new transmission, I am going broke like every other American I know. You can keep the car San Francisco. I am going back to Muni. Oh sure, it's completely unreliable, there is a good chance of catching some communicable disease and you have to wait outside in the cold for it. But it's cheap. Cheaper than loosing that game of parking late at night and not thinking of what day of the week it will be tomorrow.
Now that our economy is tanking and there is all this talk of helping people out, I have an idea. Tax amnesty.
The U.S. Government can't account now for 30 Billion dollars that was shipped to Iraq. First it was a few million that went missing. Then there was the 12 Billion they actually sent in one hundred dollar bills. They wrapped them in plastic and placed them on shipping pallets, loaded the money into the back of a C-130 and by the time the plane was unloaded and ready to take off again, that money was being distributed in Iraq. No receipts, no paper work, no accountability. 12 Billion gone one day, another one Billion someone lost track of and a new grand total now of 30 Billion the general accounting office says has been sent to Iraq, we just don't know who got it.
This is the same Government that tells me I owe $2,000 more from 2006. The same government that is working on an economic stimulus plan to help the poor and middle class just kicked me in the balls.
Why do I owe the IRS $2,000 more dollars from my 2006 tax return? Even my tax accountant says I have to pay it because I failed to send in all my w-2's. Sorry. Somewhere during the half dozen moves that year, a very emotional break-up, therapy and pursuing what everyone likes to call "my dream" I lost track of things. It's no 12 Billion worth of sloppy paper work, but I would think you would be willing to cut me some slack because I am exactly the type of person you say your about to help out with tax relief. Well, give me some fucking tax relief!
I know it sounds ridiculous that I'm complaining about two grand. But this is exactly the type of thing politicians don't seem to get. You guys ship off Billions of dollars to Iraq for a war of choice and now you want to sweat the little guy for what, the cost of two machine guns? Thats going to tip the balance. I hope my name is on one of them. "This gun paid for by Joe Klocek's lack of record keeping. Enjoy."
Between parking tickets and the IRS, I can't afford to live!
Does anyone in the business of Government get this? From where I'm standing, were all living bellow the poverty line.
You get a tax break if you have kids.
You can write off tuition.
You can claim deductions for almost anything.
I am a single male with no dependants, no health insurance and I make people laugh for a living. That has to be worth something. Where is my write off for being a guy that makes people forget their problems for a while?

People are worried about on line child predators. We had more to fear from our toys in the 1970's than anything else. Shrinky Dinks. Anyone remember them? Essentially it was putting several pieces of plastic in your oven to shrink them. Yeah. Thats right. Putting plastic in a oven! That was considered a safe toy back then. Were worried about toys from china painted with lead? We put plastic in ovens! It's a miracle I'm alive.
How about a tax break for living threw the 70's? I have a bad feeling were all about to go through it again.
I remember when OPEC raised the price of oil so much, that gas stations had to ration gas. There was even a system for determining if you could get gas. If the first number on your license plate was even, there were specific days you could go to the station. Well, the Government can pass any type of economic help policy it wants, but if the price of oil keeps going up, were all still fucked. Bush went to Saudi Arabia recently. It was his first ever visit to the Kingdom. You want a sign from God how it went? First of all, the temperature dropped into the low 40's and even snow fell on parts of Saudi Arabia for the first time in 40 years. A U.S. President visits and a freak cold snap happens at the same time.
The Prez, basically went with hat in hand asking for the oil prices to be lowered. The reply, nope.
Soon as he left, the country once again returned to normal weather.

I keep trying to learn how everything fits together. The world of money is interesting to me. In a weird sort of way, money has tied the world together in a way no peace maker ever has. But it's not a good relationship for everyone. When the Fed cut a percentage rate by a quarter of a point, the stock exchange in India rebounded. Our government makes a small cut and a country half a world away rallies.
The housing crisis is really a credit problem. Banks gave people money to buy homes. The amount of interest they had to pay on those loans was ties to the whims of the market. When the bottom fell out, the cost of lending and borrowing money went up. Not to mention all the people who could no longer afford to keep their homes. Remember, we haven't seen this many people loose their homes to banks since the great depression. So it's bad. CitiCorp, one of the biggest financial companies there is announced it lost 10 Billion dollars in one 3 month quarter.
Damn!
As the dollar looses value, the euro is on the rise. For foreign investors holding dollars, it is a lot wiser for them to buy euros. Problem is, this sets up a downward spiral. The actual value of a dollar buys less at exactly the time when the price of key products like oil, are on the rise.
As oil prices rise, the cost to ship products also rises. This gets passed on to you and me as higher prices. So we spend less. Less money floating in the economy means the economy slows down. When that happens, it has a ripple effect across the planet.
Since were buying less, orders to factories drop off. People get laid off. It is a down ward spiral that were all stuck in.
So here is my idea.
It's a little radical and slightly odd, but hear me out.
First, we get rid of credit. More on that latter.
Next, we assign a universal value to products that sustain individual life. Things like heating and cooking oil get a fixed price kept low by the Government. You think this sounds like Communism? Do you realize that the U.S. pays big farming companies not to grow certain crops? It's call a subsidy. We also give tax dollars to oil companies in the form of subsides.
I could use one. I bet you could too.
We put a stop to that shit right a way. No more of our money being pooled and given to companies that are already making a killing off of us anyway.
So things like bread, heat, water and oil all get a fixed price so everyone can afford to live.
Here is why we get rid of credit cards.
IT IS A SCAM! The second you buy anything with credit, you have to consider how long it will take you to pay that off. If you keep a large balance on your credit cards as most Americans do, anything purchased is actually costing you about four times what you bought it for. It is easy to loose the value of money when your not actually holding money. Thats why I say we go back to only having cash.
But lets make it easy to have cash. It would be difficult to pay for a large item like a car with a lot of money. A stack of five dollar bills that adds up to ten thousand dollars weighs a lot. Inflation, recession, depreciation also changes the value of our currency. To encourage people to have cash and to spend it at a time when the economy needs it, we make all money out of Shrinky dinks!
Think about it. When the value of a dollar falls and you need to have more cash in your pockets, we make that easier by shrinking the physical money! Eventually, how ever low the value of the dollar goes, all that shrunken money will kick start the economy going in the right direction again. Plastic is a petroleum product. So we will still be doing business with Saudi Arabia. That should make them happy, were happy and all I can do now is wait for my Nobel Peace prize in economics to show up in the mail.

More

More.
It is Americas unspoken promise to all who live here and the reason people from all over the world risk everything to get here. More is the promise America makes to any and all that will sit still long enough for the commercial. Everyone wants it. More money, more food, more sex, more love, more respect, more success, more understanding, more time. More.
It is what America is all about.
It is our greatest strength and our biggest flaw.
Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not the same thing as more. Trust me on this one. If more is on the table, then happiness is not. You will always chase after the next big thing, the new and improved product or that promised deeper high rather than be content with what you have. In the pursuit of more, we have also created some problems.
We have more crime than any other western industrialized nation. We have more pregnant teenagers, more people in prison, more bankruptcy's and more people without any health coverage.
We have more social problems than a lot of countries do yet about half of Americans say this is a Christian nation.
LOL!
I always wonder how that squares with Christians. When I have asked, they blame our troubles on the fact that not everyone is a Christian. Iceland, Holland, Norway; all these countries are relatively agnostic and have almost none of the same problems on the scale we do.
How do you explain that?
I think I have part of the answer.
What makes us crazy is more. The pursuit of more. The idea, the dream of getting more of what you have. In some bizarre move, the Gospel of more is now being preached not in TV commercials, but in churches. Mega churches, they call them. Usually in the suburbs, mostly white middle class people attend them. The message they are getting; more is what Jesus wants you to have. Jesus wants you to be wealthy.
OK, lets forget for a moment that the only time Jesus lost his temper was at the money changers in the temple, but I can't seem to remember ever reading anything in the new testament where he said, turn the other cheek and get a Lexus. Do you?
These mega churches and the emphasis on worldly success is now the biggest growing religion in America. Of course it is! People are being told what they want to hear in a society that runs on plastic disposable income. If God wants me to be rich, who am I to disagree. And if you don't attain riches, it is because your faith is weak.
What a wonderful scam.
Jesus died for your sins. Not your investments.
How did this happen? How did religion and making money become the same thing?
Everyone not only wants more, but they want permission to have it too. I can't think of anyone better to say it's OK to buy that boat while kids starve in Africa than God.
It's Muzak.
You know those instrumental watered down versions of songs you hear? Thats what American Christians have done with the New testament. You can still pick out some of the original lyrics, like Jesus and sin and life after death, but they have put it into a new and dangerous context.
America is about to change. You can feel it as well as see the signs everywhere. Who ever becomes President next will preside over a nation in decline. We reached for more and because we thought God gave us the permission to do so, we have so overextended ourselves in the quest for more oil, more power, more control and more security that we have broken the bank.
How about that? Not only have we become morally bankrupt, but we have also become economically broke too.
The entire Iraq war is on credit. All of it. It doesn't even show up on the budget. Thats a little scary because the budget is already a Trillion dollars in debt without factoring in the expense of our little war of choice for more oil.
More More More.
We are the new Roman empire.
They, just like us, maintained military bases all over their world. They built roads to maintain control. We built the Internet. They were renown for their cruelty in sport. Do I need to keep listing the comparisons?
They too had temples and God's that demanded monetary sacrifices. They too had poor, war and the faith that their might derived from a supreme moral force that blessed them in all their endeavours.
They crumbled.
They crumbled because they too fell for the idea that more was their birth right. Rome became known as the first Christian empire too. All the legendary debauchery you see in movies didn't really come into the form we see until Rome became christian. There is an interesting phenomenon we fail to see here. When morality is made law it becomes the very thing that makes sin so damn appealing.
Remember buying beer before you were of legal age? You remember that thrill? It goes away after 21 doesn't it? Why? Because half the high of getting fucked up is in knowing that it's against the law.
More and wrong are the two biggest factors in bringing us down. We have laws for everything in this country. In the land of the free, nothing is. Now think of Amsterdam. You can legally buy and use drugs, look at prostitutes in windows and walk the streets with a beer in your hand.
Try any of that here and your busted, jack! You tell me who has more actual freedom. Amsterdam has a crime rate far bellow Americas. Yet, they are not a Christian nation with our superior morals. How do they offer sin so casually and suffer none of the social ills we do? I suspect it has more to do with a difference in philosophy. While we fill the next generation with promises of more, a selfish national philosophy, most of Europe grows up with a very different idea of society. We want more for ourselves. Everything about American society is about satisfying the desires of the individual. That is a very modern and what I believe to be accurate definition of capitalism. Then there is socialism. It's right there in the titles of our governing principles. Social-ism. They are a people who realize they are part of something greater than any one person. They realize they are stronger together than apart. They have more vacation time, more real personal freedom, and health care.
Capitalism is based on money. More money, more power. More money, more chances. More money, more control. Now that churches are getting into the act, capitalism is becoming more than just an economic system, it is being made into the model of how we should conduct out lives.
How can a system that is designed to enrich the individual first and maybe the rest of society second become a religion? The answer to that is simple. Like Atkins all meat diet, we are being told we can have it all. Not only can we have it all, but God wants us to become wealthy. I don't know about you, but if your sole reason for joining a church and attempting to communicate with God is to get rich, God might not be listening. You can't treat Heaven like an ATM machine and God as the supreme teller. If religion is to have any credibility in the spirit, then it can have nothing to do with money. They represent very different ways of living. But here in America, we have a special relationship with money and God. After all, his name is on our money. Maybe that confused some people.
In the 60's, people took to the street to fight for more rights, more education, more peace and more opportunity.
In the 70's, we all just wanted more. It was not so much a decade in American history so much as it was one long national black out. Our desire for more comfort gave birth to a plastic disposable culture.
The 80's came and more became the real word behind every advertisement and every song on MTV. people were waking up from the disco and cocaine 70's to find the corporations turning more into a boardroom mantra.
The 90's, at least the first half, were a little different I think. grunge music surprised everyone. It was a legitimate self made movement that the establishment didn't see coming. But at the height of the 90's Disney unleashed the mindless easy music of stars like Britney Spears.
If ever there was a poster child for the dangers of more, it is Britney Spears.
Today, we live in the 21st Century. A time that has long been dreamed about. Technology was to be almost indistinguishable from magic by now. We would all be going into space and the world would find balance. Thats what was imagined anyway. Instead, more has been raised from a selfish cry to a way of life that is to be admired. More is now a religion. The religion of America.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens to the idea of more in the next few years. economically speaking, we have nothing left. If our national spirit has become tied to closely with more, then we are indeed in a lot of trouble.

Tiger Attack!

I was out of town and happily out of touch with everything when the tiger attack happened at the zoo on Christmas day. When I got back into town it was all anyone was talking about. Even my sister in Illinois called me to ask about it. What could I say?

"A tiger at your zoo jumped over a wall and killed some kid."

"I don't have a zoo?"

At first, all we heard from the police was, we are looking into stories that the tiger was taunted.
When I was talking to a friend about it he said, "Who doesn't taunt the animals when you go to the zoo?"
Ah, a lot of people actually just look at them.
Then he went on to tell me, "Monkeys will throw shit at you if you taunt them too much."
Alright. I suppose that might be true. In the grand scheme of things, I think I would prefer some monkey shit to a tiger bite. But years later a story about how a monkey threw shit on me is not gonna get me laid like a tiger attack story.
The tiger had to get across a moat and over a 12 foot wall where he mauled two men and killed a third one who went for help. Damn!
Maybe they didn't do anything to the Tiger. Maybe it just sat there year after year looking at kids making faces, throwing food and yelling crap. Maybe the tiger just had it and snapped. Who knows. It's a wild animal.

The zoo is in trouble because apparently the organization that sets standards for animal enclosures says the S.F. zoo's tiger wall was only 12 feet high. It is suppose to be 19 feet.

Oops.
For those of you who think walls actually stop anything, think again. The U.S. wants to build a 700 mile long fence on our border with Mexico. Forget for a moment that our border with Mexico is more than 2,000 miles long and they could simply walk to where there is an opening. The estimated cost for this wall is a few billion dollars. Give or take. I don't know about you, but it seems a lot cheaper to me if we dig a moat and put tigers in it. Then it won't be a matter of illegal aliens sneaking into America. Then it will be the highest rated reality show of all time! And if they get across the tiger moat, their in! Thats exactly the tough independent daring that we want in this country. Anyone can sneak across the desert at night and climb a wall in the middle of no where. But a winner deals with tigers in a moat successfully to become a citizen.
Tell me you wouldn't watch that show. Of course you would!
There should be immigration attorneys and job placement specialists to greet our new members of society on the other side.
Tiger moat! Think about it people.

This makes anything you will ever see on American Gladiators pathetic.
In Florida, the Immigration authorities have adopted a policy for dealing with Cubans attempting to enter the country from the sea. The policy is called, wet foot dry foot. That means, if the Cost Guard or INS finds a Cuban still in the water, they get sent back. If they find them with just one foot firmly on the beach, they get in.
Hows that for the most high pressure hokey poky game ever!
You put your right foot in. You put your left foot out...
That might be how the entire tiger attack started.

Information & Bulletins

The other day I read a bulletin on Myspace. It was one of those bulletins that implores you to forward it to everyone you know. The subject matter? Barrack Obama.
It was a collection of half truths and lies specifically designed to place doubt in peoples heads about Barracks personal history. FOX news is fond of saying Barrack is a Muslim. Fact is, he's not. It also went on to say Obama refused to put his hand over his heart at a campaign stop when people sang God Bless America.
Wow! That's your proof? I'm sold.
A photo shown without any context can have any caption attached to it. Hell, we can photoshop most anything now.
The part that cracked me up the most was where the information supposedly came from.
Snopes.com
Ever been? It's not a bad site actually. They track down the source of Urban Legends and assign a truth value to news stories. Some facts are completely false and get a red dot next to them. some facts are indeed the truth. They get a green dot next to them. Others are a bit more complicated, but you get the idea. The bulletin tells you that everything in it was easily found at Snopes.com. Problem is, if you actually bother to hit the site, you see that everything the bulletin presents as fact has mostly been given a red dot. In other words, it's false.

We no longer have one central location where the truth is kept. You can find a source of information depending on your political point of view. You believe global warming is an important issue, you watch CNN. You believe there is a war on Christmas, you watch FOX. Problem is, we can't even agree on what facts are anymore. There is even a conservative version of wikipedia. No more is there a single source you can point to and say, Here. Your ideology determines where you get your information from. I think this is a little dangerous. How many times have you been in a heated discussion with someone about politics and when you state a well proven fact they just look at you and ask, "Where did you hear that from?"
As soon as you say where you heard, saw or read it, they spit the name back at you and say, "Figures."
We can't even talk about the issues anymore because everyone has their own set of facts from their own trusted sources. It's dangerous. Getting information from a source that tells you want you want to hear leaves more ignorant than before.

In the bulletin, it went on to say that the Muslims want to destroy the country from the inside out. They don't call Obama a radical Muslim outright, they just place a wild accusation next to his name and weak minded lazy people who don't bother to check sources think the information is true. Besides, if the radical Muslims truly wanted to destroy America, they would find a way to keep Bush President forever. Think about it, he has done more to benefit the cause of radical Muslims than Osama has. After all, we know where Osama is hiding. We just don't bother going after him for some reason. Bush and Saddam had a few things in common too. They both hated radical Muslims and did everything they could to keep them out of their countries. It was only after our invasion of Iraq that Al Quedia got inside the country.
Now that might sound like my take on things, but it is a fact.

Myspace is great if your a 13 year old girl who wants to find just the right sparkle font to spell your name in. It's a lousy source of information. Course, the entire Internet is a lousy source of information. Thats the problem with the information super highway, it's just content. Information is not facts. Information is not truth. Information is just content. Unfortunately, there is no pop up warning telling you what your about to read is fabricated. It just has capitol letters yelling at you to forward it to everyone you know.

Thinking out loud.

How is it that the candidates actually talking about the issues are the "fringe" candidates? What is it about Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul that makes them "unelectable?"
Hilary cried!
News for three days everywhere.
Pollsters got it wrong in New Hampshire Primary.
Still news!
How about this.
Republican members of the 9/11 commission say they feel lied to. Those C.I.A. interrogations tapes you hear about every now and again, well the 9/11 commission now says that they should have been given those tapes. After all, they did subpoena the U.S. Government for all and all related information on anything and everything related to the the attack on 9/11.
Something like is what we use to call news.
Do you think Britney is Bi-polar? Dose Hannah Montana use a body double during concerts?
This is the stuff thats news now.

I am voting for Obama, but even I have noticed his language becoming more purposely vague. It's politics. It's human nature. It's fucking high school is what it is.
Hey, any of you. How are we getting out of Iraq?
Do you realize a national energy policy is the same thing as our defense policy these days?
If John F. Kennedy made getting to the Moon a national priority that was accomplished in 8 years, why can't we do the same thing with pollution free energy production?
Maybe we should embed a few reporters with the peace movement too. Just a thought. If journalists are willing to ride in tanks through the streets of down town Baghdad, why wouldn't they want to get high and fuck up traffic in San Francisco every once in a while?
Every week one Billion dollars is put on credit to pay for the Iraq occupation. Imagine what we could do with that. One Billion dollars a week!

Life goes on. Not only do we face the prospect of continued war at the cost of life and national treasure, but now we have to deal with T.V. shows not airing because of the writers strike. Put that up against the headlines of any other nation.

Ethnic cleansing with machetes in Africa.
Girl, 18 to be stoned for being raped.
Writers strike. No new episodes of desperate housewives.

You want to see America go nuts? Lets see what happens in the next few months. Dan Rather once said that the only thing that makes Americans truly upset is when traffic gets messed up. That and having our national narcotic suddenly relegated to reruns and B list reality T.V. shows. Jesus! We might have to talk to each other or something.
Can you imagine what we might talk about? Maybe the issues that only the crazy people are talking about?
How do we get out of Iraq? What really did happen on 9/11? Is the economy headed down?
You know, issues. I would like to hear all the people running for for our vote to speak intelligently about these issues. I would like it, but I know it ain't going to happen either. It will be more talking heads on the news dissecting minor events for days at a time while no one gives us answers.
I don't know who the next President will be, but I feel sorry for them.

Meanwhile...

I have been wanting to get outside more after spending time at my friends cabin. I want to go hiking, camping and even canoe a river or two. I have been wanting to do these things and I kept seeing commercials about it, so I finally went ahead and did what all those people in the commercials did; I got herpes!
I can't wait to get back to the great outdoors!

Here is how I think I sold my Dad on the idea of electing Barrack Obama for President. The White House is entirely paid for and maintained by public money. Dad, put another black man into public housing.

Did you see the footage of the Iranian speed boats moving around our ships? I understand that it is a potentially dangerous situation. The U.S.S. Cole lost 18 sailors and had a hole blown into the side of it when a small boat pulled along side it at a port in Yemen. But when you look at this video you see our war ships bristling with weapons and all kinds of detectors. The Iranian boats look like supped up versions of the paddle boats they use in the It's a Small world After All ride at Disney World. This is the major threat to world peace? I don't see it.

Marion Jones has been sentenced to prison for lying to prosecutors about her steroid use. Damn! OK, lets talk about steroid use in sports. After all, it seems to get more attention than anything else. So what. Thats my take on the whole damn thing. So what. Barry Bonds is taking shit and you have to be an idiot not to know that. again, so what. The U.S. Air force routinely gives it's pilots speed for missions. Thats not an urban legend or some Internet myth. The U.S. Air Force does indeed give pilots amphetamines. It helps them to stay alert on long bombing missions. In other words, it is a drug given specifically to enhance their performance. If U.S. fighter pilots are allowed to use drugs to enhance their performance, I don't see why an athlete can't risk their own health by taking steroids so they can hit a ball farther.
I have mentioned the Air Force drug thing before. At first people just refuse to believe it. No way! Thats what they tell me. I suggest they do some of their own research with sources they will believe. They always come back with an open mouth. I don't believe it but it's true.
You shouldn't be surprised. The history of drugs in modern warfare can be traced back to the Nazis. They invented amphetamines. It's a big part of the reason why the Nazi invasions of other countries was referred to as a blitz. people just didn't understand how whole armies could move so fast for so long. Turns out, the Nazi military utilized the drug to great effect.
Back then, they were using meth and calling themselves the master race. Now days, you use meth and your white trash. It took 50 years, but there is your profile in drug abuse; start out as the master race taking over the world and end up in a trailer outside of Modesto with 12 cats and a "lab."
Fact is, the U.S. Military is using a drug invented by the Nazis to make combat more efficient.
Nice.

Ghosts of Vietnam

Read this story!
When your reading it, keep asking yourself what we will find out about the Iraq war 40 years from now. I'll tell you this much, the people who keep trying to sell me on the whole 9-11 inside job conspiracy theories, sound less crazy to me.
The worse thing one nation can do to another is wage war on them. The biggest sacrifice a nation can ask of it's citizens is to fight in a war. What if it turns out that war never needed to be fought?

Remember, we know for a fact that the Iraq war was started with "faked" intelligence. What will we find out when Bush is gone?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - North Vietnamese made hoax calls to get the US military to bomb its own units during the Vietnam War, according to declassified information that also confirmed US officials faked an incident to escalate the war.
The report was released by the National Security Agency, responsible for much of the United States' codebreaking and eavesdropping work, in response to a "mandatory declassification" request, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said Monday.
From the first intercepted cable -- a 1945 message from Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh to his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin -- to the final evacuation of US spies from Saigon, the 500-page report retold Vietnam War history from the perspective of "signals intelligence," the group said in a statement.
During the war, North Vietnamese intelligence units sometimes succeeded in penetrating US communications systems, and they could monitor American message traffic from within, according to the report "Spartans in Darkness."
On several occasions "the communists were able, by communicating on Allied radio nets, to call in Allied artillery or air strikes on American units," it said.
"That's something I have never heard before," Steven Aftergood, director of the FAS project on government secrecy, told AFP.
But he said that probably the "most historically significant feature" of the declassified report was the retelling of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.
That was a reported North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers that helped lead to president Lyndon Johnson's sharp escalation of American forces in Vietnam.
The author of the report "demonstrates that not only is it not true, as (then US) secretary of defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was 'unimpeachable,' but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that 'no attack happened that night,'" FAS said in a statement.
"What this study demonstrated is that the available intelligence shows that there was no attack. It's a dramatic reversal of the historical record," Aftergood said.
"There were previous indications of this but this is the first time we have seen the complete study," he said.

Tears of a former first lady

So what if Hillary got emotional talking about what this election means to her. I don't know about you, but I want my leader to be human. I want to hope that any leader of this country would shed a few tears from time to time. I seriously doubt anyone is crying in the White House now. The only thing about Hilary getting emotional was that it seemed more about her thinking she is next in line to be President and less to do with what she thinks this country needs.
Just my two cents.
What makes me angry is Bill Clinton's comments about Obama at a rally last night. He raged at the media for not being tougher on Obama and called Obamas run at the White House a Fairy Tale.
Wasn't Clinton the guy who ran for President on a platform of kicking the bums out? They had an official song too. It was Fleetwood Mac's, Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.
Sorry to break it to you Clinton's, but Obama is everything you guys were. America elected you because you were the candidate for change. Remember? What is starting to bug people is this attitude in the Clinton camp that the White House is rightfully yours. This is not a kingdom with a throne. It is suppose to be a free and open election by the people. Just put your message out there. If we like it, then you have the vote. But don't tell us some people are ready and some people are not ready for this. That just stinks of elitism. We have had 7 years of being ruled with fear, arrogance and religious faith. Even the Republicans are bending over backwards to tell us they are for change. Everyone knows we need it. So go ahead and cry. Be human Hillary. But don't ever start thinking that you deserve the White House just because you have already been there as the first wife or even that you have been a Senator. Thats just not how it's suppose to work.

After 9-11, you couldn't say a negative thing about Bush. Slowly, very slowly people started to see just how incompetent and foolish his leadership actually was. That gave way to the idea that anyone could do better. More and more people came to believe that about Bush. Thats why Obama is such a rock star right now. He has reminded America that we should never again accept such a low standard in leadership. Electing Obama is not about just anyone else doing a better job in the White House, it is about putting someone in there that has hope. That might sound childish, but after 7 years of faith based leadership.

Thats what change is suppose to be all about. Right?

Quick Sand Set

Comedy.
Some nights it's magic. It really really is. Then other nights, it's Sunday at the Sacramento Punchline in front of 20 people who don't seem all that clear on why they are there. Thats what last night was to me anyway.
The two acts before me both came off stage with a look on their faces like they wanted to jump off a bridge. It's not that the crowd was bad, they weren't heckling or talking among themselves, they just sat there silent and unmoving. Of course my ego thought, I will get up there and deliver some classic Klocek and everything will be alright.
Nope.
Course, classic Klocek wasn't even there either. I felt like my brain was stuttering while I was on stage. I had felt weird all day. Let me tell you this, you want a free cheap magic carpet ride, forget to take your anti-depressant one day and see what happens. It felt something like not having that all important cup of coffee at the start of the day. I am a caffeine junkie. I admit it. You know your a junkie at anything when you no longer take the thing to make you feel better. You take it so the withdrawal doesn't kick you in the teeth and rob you of any will to live. If I don't have that morning cup of giant super tanker sized Starbucks, I get head aches and a profound feeling of impending doom slicing threw my head like a cold rusty knife.
So thats how I felt on stage.
Bad crowd, meet comic in withdrawal.
The crowd was like an old car; they just wouldn't turn over. No sustain with the laughter either. it's not the size of the crowd that matters. Insert joke here on size. For what ever reason though, this crowd just wasn't coming together.
Sometimes you stick to jokes. Sometimes you know they aren't biting on material so you shift to crowd work. Once you open that can of worms, there is no going back.
In front of me is a table of four teachers. we have some fun for a while and I think, this is going to be fine.
That when the crowd and I met Carlos and Felecia.
They were the only table directly up front. I don't remember what I said to get them talking, but once they did start talking I instantly regretted opening them up.
Here's what we learned in a very quick amount of time. This was the first time they had been together after a separation of a month.
She is a bartender. He works at some water processing plant.
They broke up because Carlos failed to mention something about a fiancee.
Thats what Felecia tells me only to be quickly corrected by Carlos who says, "X-fiance."
Felecia, turns to Carlos and says, "Then why did I have to go to Court then?"
The crowd and I both smelled blood in the water, so I continued to ask questions.
"What are you hoping to get out of this night Carlos?"
"Anal."
Lets pause here a moment, shall we.
Anal. Thats his public answer on the night of his reconciliation date.
Carlos is also a guy who speaks almost exclusively in well worn catch phrases. After anything he says, it is followed by either, true story or no lie or it is what it is.
"So here, in public you announce that you want to do her in the ass?"
"No lie."
Since the show failed to gain any momentum and my set is floundering for a direction, I decide to keep with this. Far more interesting to me than a guy who keeps announcing is desire to fuck his maybe girlfriend in the ass, is the table behind and to the left of them. There is a guy who held up his fist and went "Yeah!" when I mentioned Vegas.
Now, he keeps shaking his head. I look over at him and ask him how is it you can cheer all the perversion that Vegas is but your grossed out by the idea of anal sex?
He simply shakes his head and says, "Move on."
Here is where I always fight to keep my composure. Because what I want to say to this little prick is, fuck you.
Fuck you because what other entertainment can you say move on too?
Fuck you because maybe you looked around and noticed the empty chairs outnumbering us 3 to 1 tonight.
Fuck you because, your a guy and you never thought about giving a girl anal?
For a moment it becomes a little tense.
"You don't want to hear about ass sex?" I ask.
Now he goes into the classic young guy mode of thinking his manhood has been challenged. He crosses his arms and says, "Tell me about anal sex then?"
What the hell happened to this show?
I have a young couple train wreaking to my left, a guy in front of me who is now repeating catch phrases before Carlos does and now I have this little shit looking me in the eye saying, fuck you with his body language, but saying, "Tell me about anal sex" as some sort of threat. The thing that keeps me from unloading on the guy is his girlfriend. She is smiling brightly and enjoying herself. I almost think about pointing this out and saying, "Looks like someone is not getting enough attention in the rear section."
I'm glad I didn't.
The show becomes an on going joke about the fucked up couple and ass sex. You know, quality stuff. When I get the light it is almost like a blessing. Still, I am looking for that big closing laugh that just doesn't seem to be coming. My mind is feeling more and more like cement and my last thought before I leave the stage is, I still have to drive an hour and a half in the rain to get home.
Comedy.
A few minuets latter I am sitting in the office with the club manager getting paid. When I look down at the check I think, I got paid to struggle uncomfortably for 40 minuets. Paid well as a matter of fact too.
That puts a few things in perspective. Still, the money is a conciliation prize. There is nothing better than to get into your car and have that great show feeling.
Besides anal sex that is.
No lie.
When I walk out to my car, the table of four teachers is standing in front of it smoking and talking. They are very kind with polite compliments. Then, one of them says he remembers seeing me here last valentines day.
I hate to admit how fragile a comics ego can be, but when he says this with a smile on his face I say back to him, "See, you know I can do good shows too."
Comedy.
It just always amazes me where a crowd will draw a line and where the laughter will come from.
I actually got pretty good laughs when I talked about religion for awhile. It is always an odd phenomenon when the crowd disappears on you. They are there for one joke and then silent for the next two. They laugh at some anal jokes and religion jokes, but then go quiet again for no reason that I can figure out. You try every trick in the book but sometimes it just doesn't matter what you do.
It was the classic quick sand set.
The more I thought, this ain't working, the deeper I got into a riff that I couldn't follow; anal sex.
Once you go that dirty that fast in your set, there is no going back.
The other problem was, I was thinking. If you have to stop and think on stage, your dead. Simple as that. You can't think. You have to trust that your funny and have fun with whatever comes out of your mouth or theirs. Tonight, I am stuck in the mess that is my head.
Comedy.
It is shows like this that make the good ones all the more sweeter.

Obama and what 08 really means for us

I just want to say that I am so happy Obama won in the first serious primary of the year. I am also pleased that Hillary came in third behind John Edwards. I hope this trend continues. I hope the country continues to endorse a candidate who seems to represent change and turns away from the expected front runner that Hillary is. She is Republican lite. She has had private lunches with Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX. She voted in favor of the new Bankruptcy laws that make it more difficult for anyone to climb out from under crushing debt. Remember, the reason why most Americans go into bankruptcy is over unexpected medical bills that insurance would not cover. As someone who attempted to create national health care when her husband was president, she knows all this and still voted for the tougher laws. Why? She is just as much a part of the corporate structure as any other politician. Lets not forget that she also voted in favor of giving Bush unlimited authority to do with Iraq has he wanted to. And before you say, hey it was just after 9/11 and everyone voted for that, just remember that Obama voted against that little piece of history.
What is troubling though, is that the republican winner in Iowa is former Baptist Minister and Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee. Come on America, it's time to get smart again and stop voting for people who wear their religious beliefs on their sleeve's. The dude said in a national debate that he thinks the Bible is a literal description of how the earth was made. In a world where competition for resources and the education of future scientist's will decide the fate of nations both economically and intellectually, can we really afford to have another leader that wants to turn back education to what was commonly thought to be true during the dark ages?
I don't think we can. I think Bush & Company did a lot of damage to the soul of this nation. I fail to understand how you can call yourself pro-life when you started a war. A war of choice for Bullshit reasons and told the country that a "higher father" gave you permission to do it too. Did that Higher father also give the go ahead for torture? Did that higher father also tell you it was OK to shred the Constitution? Did that higher father explain to you that Muslims and Christians have the same God?

Surprised?

Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in the same God kids. It is only the interpretation that we disagree on. Since God doesn't seem interested in talking to us all together at the same time to clear up any misunderstandings, it is left to us to fight it out in his name to see who is right.

Yeah, that sounds like a God that really cares. "You kid's figure it out. I'm busy."

When you lose your job in 20 years because China graduates 3 times as many scientists as we do, and one of them figures out the next great technological leap forward that leaves us in the dust because we were arguing among ourselves if intelligent design should be taught in science class, will you pray to your silent God for another job?

Someday, all of humanity will regard religion the way most of us think about Astrology now.

I hope.

Obama says he has a religious faith too. But he doesn't make it the sole reason to vote for him. Thats all Huckabee has. His record as Governor is not so good. Raised taxes and all that. But if America wants to elect a leader based on religious belief, then you can't be surprised when you watch your children work harder than you did for less. Thats the direction we are headed in. I fail to see how a man believing in myths is going to change that. We need compassion and understanding, true. But you don't need to have religion to have those qualities. We also need intelligence back at the highest levels of Government. Not ancient superstitions and a belief in a God who is supposedly powerful enough to create everything we see but cannot make everyone believe in him. Sorry, but thats a pretty piss pour God in my book. You made the entire universe in 6 days but a massive majority of the people on this planet don't think your real?

Why is that?

Free will.

Great answer. I have always laughed when people use that as a reason. Saying there is evil in the world because of free will is making the people who don't agree with you evil. How convenient then that the people we will fight are evil.

It's what referred to as, circular logic. You don't agree in my version of what I think is the absolute truth, so not only are you evil, you can now be punished for your lack of proper belief. Thats what "their" side does and thats what "our" side does.
My question then is, who created free will?
Blame God then. But you cannot be angry at someone for exercising their God Granted free will when they say there is no God.

Alright, I got a little off track. Seriously America, it is time to grow up and grow out of the need to be right and the need for a God. Has it helped us? Since having Bush, a self proclaimed born again Christian in the White Office, he has done the exact opposite of what he claims his beliefs are.

Social assistance programs have been cut across the board.

Help with heating bills for the elderly; cut.

Veterans administration rehabilitation programs in a time of war; cut.

Health care for underprivileged and financially struggling families; vetoed twice.

If Jesus is your personal lord and saviour, then I gotta tell you I don't think he would be too happy with you for cutting back on helping people while you throw his name around as a campaign slogan for continuing a failed war of choice that seems to have no other purpose than to drive the price of oil up.

Get smart America!

Most Europeans profess to either be atheists or agnostics.

They don't go into debt over health care bills either.

They don't feel the need to maintain military basses all over the world at a massive expense.

They also lack the rate of crime we have. They have much higher rates of literacy, lower rates of infant mortality and test twice as high as Americans do in history, math, science and number of languages spoken.

Under Bush, more Americans fell bellow the poverty line at a rate far above any other President this century. Home forecloses are at a rate last seen during the Great depression. Meanwhile, this self proclaimed believer in Jesus sticks to the mantra of the powerful by saying Government should not be responsible for helping people. They want to privatize all such assistance. All you have to do is look at New Orleans to see how well that works.

The dollar, once the international standard in all monetary transactions, has never been weaker. India just announced that because of the falling power of the dollar, it will no longer accept it at tourist attractions.

Saudi Arabia freak out economist when they said they might want to inventory their oil in euros rather than dollars. The euro is valued at almost twice what the dollar is. You understand how changing to a different currency makes them money? If it takes two dollars to make one euro, than just writing their inventory in euros will double the amount made when they sell that barrel of oil. In fact, even Canada has a higher rate of exchange right now. So even if you want to look at Bush as a strict economic conservative, he is a utter failure. I didn't even mention the fact that the entire Iraq invasion has been put on the national credit card. You understand that right? We borrowed money from China to fund this mess and because of that China now has more of a say over our economy than we do. Shit, all you have to do is look at the items on any Walmarts shelves to see who is making products. Fact is, this cannot continue. We cannot keep living in a country that makes nothing but shitty movies and jeans and expect the middle class to be happy with college degrees as they wait on tables.

Anyway you want to look at the last 8 years is up to you. But I am fairly confident that history will look very clearly at these last 8 years and see it for what it was; a take over by men with agendas for more powerful men with agendas to attain power and profit at the expense of the people. I have no illusions that Obama will turn everything around, but it sure beats the hell out of more insanity.

You want to believe in Heaven, Hell and Jesus as your personal Lord and saviour, go for it. But shut up and let the adults get busy fixing everything that kind of thinking has broken. If your right, then I am going to hell. If I'm right, we all go somewhere when this life is over. I don't know about you, but compassion for everyone sounds like something Jesus might of said. Besides, the only time he got mad was in church.
Who do you think he will be more pissed at if he ever comes back?
Me, saying I don't believe in him but I believe in the humanity of doing good, or you, condemning all non believers to eternity in a lake of fire because we didn't show up each week to put money in the basket.
Well, I guess we will never know.
Obama 08!

08

Happy New Year.
Sometimes, for no reason that I can put into words, I will go on line to check the weather in the Montana town the X now lives in. The worse the weather is the more I smile. What is that? Pettiness? Perhaps.
New Years has such a built in mind fuck to it. We change the calendar and suddenly we all think about where we were last year and what we want to do this New year. So thats what I did. I thought about being with her last year and thinking how good it felt that things had been settled and we were moving forward with our plans to have a life together.
None of that happened.
I spent last year mourning the loss of that life. I say mourning but in reality I was sleep walking last year. Good things happened too. I got to go to Japan and tell jokes to our troops. I got to go to New York and film a short set for Comedy Central. But in each of those instances, I felt so alone.
That sucked.
Even alone a man should be able to enjoy his accomplishments.
2008 will be an interesting year to be alive in for all of us. The nation will elect a new president after 8 years of this born again nut job using white out on the Constitution while he continues a plan in Iraq that so far has only benefited his oil company pals.
I will turn 40 years old too. Not a big deal to the rest of the world, but it's a pretty big deal to me.
Why?
To tell you the truth I'm not sure. But I know this. I know 40 is a number you can't do anything with to make it seem smaller. There are no mind tricks you can play on yourself either. 40 might be the new 30, but it sure as hell is not 20 anymore. 40 also seems like a time when an adult settles into whatever it is they are doing with their life. So what am I doing with my life?
I am a stand-up comic. Something I take a great deal of pride in. Something I love very much. But I gotta tell you, after 16 years of being a comic and not having achieved some of the things I see people who have been doing this for 3 years get, I have to take another look at what I am doing. And maybe, maybe the answer is as simple as throwing in the towel. I don't know. I know that as much as I love being on stage, it doesn't matter. I don't say that in a poor me sort of way, I say that in acknowledgement of a industry where fame is not an indicator of talent.
2008 is my farewell tour.
2008 is my victory lap.
2008 is going to be my last year in comedy.
I think.
I sent a bulletin out on Myspace with words to that affect. I was amazed at the amount of responses it got. Amazed too at the kind words people had for me and their insistence that I do not quit just yet.
It is all very kind but the truth is I am also tired. Tired of the I.R.S. jumping on my tax return every year. If churches don't have to pay taxes then I don't think comics should either. We bring joy and understanding to people too. It's pretty easy for those ministers who preach that God wants you to have wealth when they don't have to pay any taxes. Seriously, why rake me over the coals for another two grand when 12 billion dollars of 100 hundred dollar bills were shipped to Iraq and no one knows where that money went. Go after those guys. Not the little guy telling jokes to a nation weary of such incredible news.
I am tired of dealing with Bookers who not only don't know whose who in the world of stand-up, but treat all comics like they are a dime a dozen. Not only that, but they treat their shitty one nighter crap gigs like its the holly grail of stand-up. Sorry dude, but for what your paying and the class of people your rooms attract, I can only laugh when you say with a straight face that I should be cleaner in your room.
I am tired of crowds who are too stupid to understand the comedy tools of irony, sarcasm or just a well written joke.
I am tired. I have spent the last 16 years of my life pursuing this dream at the expense of everything else in my life. The one time I dared to make comedy second was also the time when the woman I moved in with cheated on me. I am not doing that again anytime soon. I have to ask myself if a few hundred bucks a gig and the feeling that I killed is worth the cost to the rest of my life. I am not sure about that answer anymore. Usually I would not hesitate to answer with a firm, hell yea it's worth it! But not anymore. After 16 years of living with the expectation that success is just around the corner, it might be time to let that go. Not just that expectation either, but the whole damn dream with it. This may sound dramatic. I don't mean it to be. What do you do when your career is not where you want it to be but you have put so much time into it your not sure how to even let go if that is the right thing to do?
Life. What a bitch.
I am tired of everything my eye lands on somehow reminding me of her. I know I know. It's a God damn song lyric it's so cliche.
I am tired of thinking about moving back to L.A. or trying New York or even crossing the ocean and going to London. Would it make a difference? Who knows. Should a 40 year old man take his small savings and make that big of a jump? probably not. I am closer to 50 now and farther from 20. Yet I keep living like I am in my 20's.
I don't know where this blog is leading. I sorta feel like I am thinking out loud on this one.
Here is what I know. I know that I am a very good comic. Not great or the most original, but I'll tell you something that I don't think is cocky. I could be great. I believe that. If I could be on quality stages night after night to perfect my craft more, I could become one hell of a comic. I also know that in a business where youth is king, turning 40 is not so healthy.
I know that they key to getting clubs to book you is to have name recognition. I might give a hell of a show, but I am not the reason the crowd is showing up. How do you market in this age? I have asked the people who seem to do pretty well in that department and so far all I have learned is that they either don't exactly know either or they feel like giving away a secret like that will somehow hurt their career.
So thats that. There are the facts and feelings I am starting with this year. One positive note about quiting is not caring what comes out of my mouth on stage anymore. It might seem like I already do that, but I hold a lot back sometimes. Granted, no one wants to see a show and then watch a heated argument about religion break out. Course, that is a lot of fun for me.

Coast Guard Gig

The Coast Guard is definitely a part of the U.S. Military.

Thats what I learned at the Red Lion in Eureka,CA Saturday night. That, and it's a long drive on the redwood highway. Beautiful, but long.

I left San Francisco at noon and pulled into the parking lot of the hotel right at 7PM. I could of made better time, but the fog slowed me down to a crawl.

Private gigs make me nervous. Always have. Always will. I am the outsider coming into their house. I have to watch the language and it has to work. You can't write off a bad performance at a private. You only have this one chance to give them a great show. Before everyone of these gigs I always entertain the idea of just not showing up. How about that? A 7 hour drive just to turn around. Money has already changed hands though. I am committed. Besides, what sort of a pussy would I be?

There use to be a gig at a Sweetwater restaurant in a mall up here. I remember driving hours for less than a hundred bucks and the knowledge that I had to turn around right after the show. Back then, it didn't suck. It just felt like paying dues.

After you pass the little town of Wilits, the road goes from a well lit multi lane highway, to a two lane road that twists threw the Redwoods.

I have been in the city too long.

Thats what I keep thinking as I pass small houses with smoke drifting from stone chimneys. I always wonder if I could be happy in such a place. I wonder what the kids do for fun and how I would make a living.

Eureka is another town I use to come to for gigs or pass threw on my way to other ones. As I drove in, I no longer needed the directions. I remembered from years of driving exactly where the Red Lion was. I never performed at this one, but I am no stranger to doing a gig in a Red Lion Lounge.

There are only a few one nighter Booker's in the country. Sure, there are a few small time guys throwing together gigs here and there, but there really are only a handful of people who have decided that booking comics across the Greater Pacific Northwest in dive bars and red neck hang outs is the way to go.

One of these guys is a dude named Tribble. He's still doing it. The big joke use to be the more you work for him, the less you make. Sad thing is, it was true. If you were doing four shows in a week, you earned $175 as the headliner per show. If it was 5 shows, it was $150. The joke was, you could end up owing him money on these runs.

Last time I was doing "Tribble Runs" Alanis Moreset was huge and everyone dressed as a lumber jack. They still are dressing that way in Eureka by the way. In fact, a guy like me with a 70's hair cut fits in pretty well in Northern Cal.

I like that. I like that it feels like 1974 up here. Normally that might be something I would mock. Thats what I do after all. But this time, on this trip, it was comforting. I really have come a long way since those days. For one thing, my car is insured. I have no outstanding tickets either. Best of all, I am making a nice chunk of change on this gig.
In other words, it's not a Tribble gig.

I remember always passing through this town. I remember sitting at a cafe writing in my journal about being broke and more than a little nervous about the condition of my car.

I remember walking from a little motel to a Greyhound bus stop with my life savings in the jacket of my coat.

$135.00

Course, after the Bus ticket home and cheap sandwiches, my net worth dropped a bit more. Thats how it was back then. I was eternally broke. New comics ask me advice about the road all the time. The more removed I get from it, the less valuable those experiences seem to me. On the face of it, that statement might sound negative, but when I really look back at those times I can see how badly I treated myself all in the name of getting stage time.

Thats really the only way to say it too. I treated myself badly when I made the choice to accept 5 hour drives and pay that was unbelievably low.

Now days, I sometimes get a raised eye brow when I quote people a price for a show. If it's too high, then fair enough. But trust me, I have earned that price and you will have a great show.

The thing about these gigs that also makes me nervous is the physical set up. Often times they just want you to stand in the corner of a room with no microphone.

Nope.

They had a Mic set up for me with an additional sound system. But when I was introduced, I was standing behind a table podium. Not very stand up.

I walk around to the front.

When I did this, the people who were very stiffly seated at the traditional round banquet tables in front, actually pull back a little. There is now nothing between them and I. A man in a suit and tie is sitting less than 6 inches from me. The thing I find funny and continue to find funny during the show, is how uncomfortable this makes him!

He is a helicopter pilot that use to be in the Navy. Carer military man. When I ask his wife where they had moved from, she names a island of the coast of Washington State.

"Whats the biggest difference living here?" I ask.

With a bit of steel in her eyes she says, "Liberals and Hippies."

That makes me laugh.

I ask the man if this is as close as he has ever been to a guy with long hair.

He stutters a bit and just says yes.

I find this all hilarious! They are genuinely freaked out to be next to a "liberal."

If we were in a comedy club, it would of been a very different show. But, this is a private gig, so I play nice. The show goes well too. There are a few young guys at the table on my left. I don't know exactly what it is they do in the coast Guard, but the one guy is very happy about getting out in two months. He is the designated driver for a few other guys at the table. But I see him sipping from a pint glass of beer. WTF? When I ask him how is it that a designated driver can be drinking, he simply responds, "I am drinking it slow."
Well there you go.
He has already told me that when he gets out he is going to be a Sheriff.
"I can't wait to get pulled over by you for drunk driving. Have you been drinking tonight? Yes. But it's OK. I drank it slow officer."

The show is going into over time. Always a good thing. It means they are a good crowd and I am having fun. Thats when a woman from the back of the room pipes up.

"Is this your only line? The coast guard?"

She had spoke up earlier. We found out she is a dental assistant. At first I think she says Dental Hygienist, but this is taken as some sort of an insult by her. I guess The dentist does the tough stuff, the hygienist cleans teeth and she hands him stuff. So really, shes just a caddy. Besides, in a town where teeth are as rare as conservatives, how hard could her job be?

When she asks that question, is this your only line, I find it so preposterous I almost go into full comedy club mode on her ass.

"Well this is a party for the coast guard. Not dental assistants who can't shut their big mouths!"

There is always someone. Always a drunk person or a moron with a head full of a drink that wants to get into it. I don't mind. But really? Why are all the jokes about coast guard people? You can't figure out a theme going on here darling?

At one point, a drunk guy just walks up to me and puts his hand around me. Its a funny moment and he doesn't mean it in any aggressive way, but thats the thing with these gig. It always feels like it could turn bad in a heart beat. Thats also the exciting part too. I think the crowd gets that. I think they enjoy the verbal tight rope act of a man riffing with a crowd. it's funny and I am good, but just like a tight rope walker, seeing me fall would also be kinda cool to them.

Another guy also surprises me when I turn and he is standing there with a beer in his hand.

"I bet my friend that you are David Spades brother. Are you?" He manges to slur with a beer in his hand.

"Yes. David Spade is my brother. Thats why I am at a Red Lion in the middle of no where."

That gets a big laugh. Thats also when big mouth dental chick shouts out again. I don't know what it is she says, but my response sort of finishes the exchange for the evening.

"That girl has more warning flags than the coast guard."

During the show, I ask people if they were ever in the military. It is only when I ask that of a guy who looks like George Lopez do I get the answer, "You know. I always considered the Coast Guard part of the Military."

He said it with a smile, but what he really said was, fuck you hippie! We are in the military!

I mentioned this. Without the fuck you part of course. I looked back at the uncomfortable helicopter pilot and his wife and thats when it hit me; this is how I would be in church.

I think the crowd liked the show. The dude who booked me tipped me generously. But it was only when I was back in my car did it really occur to me what different worlds were in that room. Stiff backed career military dudes trained for combat, but freaked out by me.
You have to love that. They gave an oath to fight for their country and uphold the Constitution. Well, when I am standing in front of a crowd with a microphone, I am the living breathing beating heart of the first amendment.
Thanks for keeping it safe for me Coast Guard.

The Drive Way is Lava

A fan asking for more blogs. Even the cynic inside me can see that as a compliment. Thanks.
Comics always freak out when they feel like they haven't come up with something new in a while. I sure feel that right now. I have almost become split in two. The stage Joe riffs. There is rarely anymore written pieces. A few. At the start. Then, it's all "whats your name?"
Blogger Joe, plays with an idea or two. He rants away about the politics of the day and attempts to put into words what he really hopes other will recognize as the truth too. Right now, it's all so grim. I guess it is a little overwhelming. The news feels so overly processed to me lately. They are talking about torture in the same easy tones they tell you about tomorrows weather. Something wrong.
Conservatives constantly screamed that because of Clinton's blow job in the White House, they had to explain what oral sex was to their children because it was said on the news so much.
First off, you guys were the ones who told the news casters! If you didn't want to have to explain something you find disgusting to your kid's, then you shouldn't of spent millions of dollars and 4 years to find out he had one.
But now, with a President who ran on the slogan of restoring integrity to the Oval Office, we have to explain to kids what torture is.
You tell me what is more disgusting?
Once upon a time I asked a friend if he thought I had a "problem with pot?"
He didn't even pause. He just smiled and said, "People who don't have a problem with pot don't ask if they have a problem with pot."
Point taken.
Countries that have to ask what is torture and what is interrogation already have a very big problem.

Then, there are the attempts to "support the troops." Honestly, I know some very hardcore lefties out there, but I have never once heard anyone say anything negative about the troops. On the other hand, when ever the Democrats insinuate they will cut off funding for this war and bring the troops home, they are called American haters while their patriotism is questioned.
You tell me who has the troops best interest at heart. The people who sent them there with little or no plan, or the people who want this war of choice to end?
At Starbucks the other morning, I noticed a new sign at the counter. "Support our troops. Send them coffee."
Seriously?
I don't know about you, but if I was regularly waking up to 120 degree heat, wearing a minimum of 50 pounds worth of field equipment while being shot at by people, I don't know if coffee would be the first thing I would wish for.
How about a Popsicle? Maybe a snowcone or just a cup of ice.

They actually taped some of the first enhanced interrogations.
Enhanced?
Were not talking about the directors cut of a DVD here, were talking about making people think their drowning to get information out of them. It's called Water Boarding. Sounds like a sport that stonners are into. Maybe that information saved American lives. Maybe. But this is the same administration that tried to make heroic posters out of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.
They lie.
They lie about everything. It is their first natural response to any question.
Lie Lie Lie!
A judge specifically told the CIA, the NSA and the Bush White House not to destroy any evidence pertaining to mistreatment of prisoners being held in Cuba. They destroyed the tapes -you will love this-because the men were not questioned at the Naval base in Cuba. They were being held in a network of secret CIA run prisons in Europe.
Get it.
It's a big game to them. You said only people held in Cuba.
It's such a kid's answer! It's like playing a game with your friends in the neighborhood. There is a safe zone, like the driveway. There are danger zones, like the row of hedges are lava. You can only walk on the grass to get to the secret place where you grab the flag.
Thats what there saying.
So as long as America doesn't torture on American soil, were not a country that engages in secret torture in secret prisons. It happens someplace else so were safe!
The people held in Guantanamo Naval base in Cuba, are classified as enemy combatants. This is a new term created by the Bush White House.
They have no right to look at the evidence against them.
They have no right to legal council and if they do get a lawyer, the Government tapes the conversation.
They have no right to a trial.
In other words, Bush is saying that these people can be picked up any where in the world and held indefinitely with no rights to a lawyer, a trial or knowledge of why they have been detained.
And were sending people to their death in Iraq for what reason now?
Freedom!
We can do all this to them because according to the way the CIA plays the game, Guantanamo is not American soil.
But it is!
Any American base is considered part of America.
Were the only country in the world who feels it necessary to change the rules on this.

Maybe we should make them sit in the middle of down town Baghdad and drink a big steaming cup of coffee. Oh wait, thats how we support our troops.

Stuck in the toliet

A man spent four days trapped in a toilet after the door handle broke.

David Leggat, 55, was unable to raise the alarm after becoming stuck in the toilets at Kittybrewster and Woodside Bowling Club in Aberdeen. (I found this story on the BBC. You know these are English names)
Mr Leggat had no mobile phone or food, and used tap water for refreshment and for heat.
He was only released when cleaner Cathy Scollay arrived and heard his cries for help. She told BBC Scotland: "He said, 'I have been locked in for four days.'"
Mrs Scollay added: "I went in to work as normal and a voice shouted out. I could not take it in.
"The handle had broken. He was a bit shaky, and was as white as a sheet."

So many questions? How sad is it that no one even missed the guy?
"Hey, wheres David?"
"Last I saw him he was going to the bathroom."
Even worse, they clean the bathroom every four days!
Must be a delightful establishment.