5 Intellectually dishonest arguments from Republicans.

1. He's running deficits never before seen in history!
Actually, Obama's biggest expense in the new budget comes from being honest. He included the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the budget. Something Bush & Company never did. They always left it out of the budget and referred to it as supplemental spending. It was dishonest accounting. Something the Bush administration, the banking industry and Wall Street all seem to have done.

2. The era of big government and big spending has returned to Washington.
Bush presided over the largest expansion of American government in history. His reason was 9/11.
Clinton responded to the attack on the world trade center by treating it as a crime, tracking down the people who did it and putting them in jail. All in an era of Americas greatest economic expansion since world war two leaving office with a surplus.
Bush responded to 9/11 by creating the department of homeland security, ran the deficit up faster and further than anyone else in history, and took us from a nation with a surplus to the largest deficits yet.

3. The Democrats & Obama are raising taxes!
Nope. Anyone making less than $250,000 a year won't pay a dime more in taxes. Any family that makes less than $250,000 a year won't pay more in taxes.
Taxes on people over $250,000 will return to the same rate they paid under Clinton. Period.

4. I want to see this President fail.
That is a direct quote from Rush. How is it he and any conservative talk show host jumped down the throat of anyone who dared to question Bush with the usual refrain of, "How dare you question the commander and chief while we are in two wars!"
Well, were still in those two wars of choice. How dare you, Rush for demonstrating a breathtaking brand of hypocrisy!
Ah how the rules change when its not your guy in office, eh?

5. This President is a salesmen for European socialism and will destroy our way of life.
Our way of life destroyed our way of life. What every other thinking person would call greed, the Bush administration embraced and called deregulation or free enterprise. I think you know where that has brought us. Taking tax payer money and handing it over to the banks with no strings attached and no way to trace the cash is called helping an industry to big to fail. But the government making health care available to everyone is called socialism and that is somehow bad?
Consider this, every elected official in Washington enjoys the benefits of FREE health care. So the idea that the government can't provide health care to people is completely false. They already do.

???!

A fully intact Mammoth Skeleton was found in down town L.A.
And they say no one gets discovered in L.A. anymore.
This gives me hope. I wonder who he got as an agent? This also shows that Hollywood is not youth Obsessed. Well, maybe not entirely. Finally Hollywood gets a celebrity with even less meat on their bones than Paris Hilton.

Oh the times we live in Friends!
A-Rod gets dragged before the collective media to admit he used a "performance enhancing substance" but the guy who owns the peanut plant that knowingly sent out products contaminated with salmonella that killed 9 people gets dragged in front of Congress just so he can say, "I take the fifth..."
Why is A-Rod getting all the attention here? He did something unethical sure, but none of his mistakes lead to any ones death.

Meanwhile, everyone continues to hate the mother of eight new babies because she personifies a lot of what is wrong with America. Over consumption, poor planing and aggressive ignorance when questioned about her choices.
She doesn't have a job but set up a web site seeking donations. At least she won't be on welfare folks. Course, it looks like the first things she spent money on was Botox and collagen for her lips.
Nice.
She does look a little like Angelina Jolie if you cut off her face and tried to put it on a much bigger head.
lets hope she's not trying to out baby Pitt & Jolie. Lets hope she's done having kids.
I would like to send out a song on the request line. Its an old one but a good one. Heres the Go-Go's with, "Are Lips Are Sealed."

Its been a surreal few days for me too. First, I lost my wallet. Ever have that happen to you? What a sickening feeling it brings on in the pit of your stomach. I.D., Money, Credit cards, receipts, business cards, notes, phone numbers, photos- all little things that have so much power.
They were all gone. Somewhere between a Starbucks and a gym the damn thing got a way from me. I looked everywhere, called Starbucks even showed up to bug them but it was gone. The money was the thing I was least worried about.
A hundred bucks from the gig last night. I can always make more money telling stories. Oh well. I also had a check in there from another gig. I had already signed it with my account number on it. Shit. I called the bank and waded into the swampy red tape frustration that that was. Christ on a cross! Phone trees are the switch board to the nine circles of hell. They never ever give me the one option I need. They ask for my account number (followed by pound of course) and when I do get a human being they just ask me for the number again?
Look at me. Complaining about phone trees. I am such an old man.
Anyway, I lost my wallet and began the task of laying claim to my identity. At best, its a preemptive strike against the worse case senior. Frankly, I couldn't sell my ID if I had to. Good luck if you stole it dude, but I doubt you could do anymore damage to my credit that I haven't already done.
Everything got taken care of but there is a ethereal sense of loss that comes with life in the digital age. Passwords got changed and numbers replaced, all new things to remember and where do you write that down and keep it all?
Your wallet?
Shit! Shit! Shit! All this just a few days before I was set to fly to a gig in Sun Valley, Idaho. Now I had to dig out the passport in whatever dusty corner it had fallen into. Oh, you can't download a form or do anything via the Internet to get another drivers license. You have to go down there and sign a from in front of them with your birth certificate. Joyful employees they are not down at the ole DMV. Ever have an overworked under paid in fear of being laid off 300 pound government worker analyze the one document that proves you were born? Such a delight! Here is what everyone says who has ever seen my birth certificate says. "Why are there so many blank spaces on this?"
Its true. I'm adopted and for some reason or another there are empty spaces where information should be. The basics are there. Name, place of birth, attending Doctor. But things like time of birth and mother name and a few other little bits of info are simply not there.
I think it adds a bit of mystery to me. I like it. But these moments come up from time to time in life where I have to show this piece of paper and people don't believe it is a legitimate birth certificate.
Its legit. I'm not.
A running family joke was it didn't look like a birth certificate. It looked more like a gift certificate or a Mad-Lib.
Ha. Ha.
I had to take money out of my bank account for the trip to Idaho. I rely so much on ATM's and my credit/debt card that I seldom have more than a twenty in my wallet. Now I was walking around with four hundred bucks in twenties stuffed in my pocket.
I didn't want to be in a situation where something came up and I had no money so that was the figure I settled on.
Walking through Airport security with a bunch of cash stuffed in your pockets makes you crazy paranoid. Well, thats what it did for me. And wouldn't you know it I got picked for some additional screening. Apparently it was my luggage they were more concerned with. The guy watching the screen on the X-Ray was squinting at it the way I use to watch porn on the scrambled channels. Anyone else remember that? It seems crazy that you can sit down in any public library now and type the word pussy into Google and in a micro second be rewarded with ample choices of visual material. We use to have to tune into HBO late late at night on Saturday and see naked bodies rubbing all over each other as the signal was messed up so it looked like you were seeing some movie shot in Picasso-vision.
That could be a breast that might be some bush. Every once in a while the screen would come in completely clear for a second or two and you might get a butt shot.
Of a guy.
Airports have intense energy. All these souls in transit leave some mighty fierce echos. I was also flying on a friends employee pass. That means you fly on standby. There was a chance I might not make it. I hate thinking that. I am anal about being on time and making the gig. This time I was rolling the dice to make the gig profitable.
I made it.
I landed at the small airport in Sun Valley and along with four other people left in the resort shuttle. We were rewarded with the shortest tour in history. The ride wasn't short. Just the tour. This is what it amounted to. Our driver would point to a building and simply say, "Bruce Willis owns that."
That was it.
Good to see that Die Hard money was well spent.
The resort at Sun Valley really is a beautiful place. The e-mail the Booker send out was three pages of warnings that read something like this. DO NOT MAKE TROUBLE! YOU ARE A REPRESENTATIVE OF THIS COMPANY! DO NOT ASK FOR FREE THINGS OR FAVORS!
Christ! I get it. Its a great gig and a great location and you don't want to mess it up. This created an expectation that we would be in some theater with amazingly well behaved crowds who want to see great comedy.
That wasn't the case.
It was in a bar called the boiler room.
Yup. It was essentially just another gig on the road at a bar complete with all the noise and distraction such a setting comes with. The crowd was fun but again, it was the typical bar crowd at a comedy show. Lots of riffing because neither they or I could stay focused enough of the written stuff with all the noise of people coming and going, ordering drinks, shouting out private jokes to each other at the tables and any number of other minor little distractions. It was fun but after all the build up it was something of a let down too.

What is going on? Look at these headlines.

Mysterious fire ball reported over Texas.
Two nuclear subs hit each other in the Atlantic.
First African-American president elected.
Nearly intact mammoth skeleton found in L.A.
L.A. Thinking of Rationing Water for the First Time in Two Decades.
Pirates hold ship hostage.
Stock market fall creates worry of global depression.
Satellites collide 500 miles above Russia.
Face transplant patient regains self-confidence.

These are the kind of headlines you see in Sci-Fi movies set in the not to distant future. Most of these headlines are two weeks old or less. Buckle up friends. The adventure of Americas transformation into something else has just started. What we will be is any ones guess but the fact is we are in decline because we all thought we could have a lifestyle well beyond our means. The rich are blaming the poor, the poor are blaming the rich and the Republicans want to see the president fail. We got it all going on now folks! Race, class, economic downfall and the realization that we can no longer be the super power we always thought we would be.
Did you see the anchor from MSNBC go nuts when he was asked about the presidents plan to buy up mortgages from people who can't afford to keep paying what they were paying? Live on air this guy looses it and says words to the effect of, Lets all stop paying are mortgages!
Didn't we just hand wall street something like a trillion dollars? If we can bail out the people who wrote those shitty mortgages, spent billions on advertising to people who really couldn't afford those mortgages, then we can certainly bail out the families who are living in those homes. Can't we?
And all this goes on against the backdrop of who can be more bipartisan.
Great.
Well, enjoy the warmth at least while Rome burns.
Cheers=)

Ass Holes, Hearts & Hecklers!

Stand-Up comedy has so many variables that come with it. You can control a lot of things but when it comes to people in the crowd you just never know. Friday night the San Francisco Clubhouse was packed on the 5th floor. A party of 40 was also in attendance. Because they all knew each other and traded conversation between themselves the volume of "background" noise at the show was louder than usual. The host went up and started the show hoping to calm them down a little. About five minuets in a guy by the door starting to yell things out. None of the comments really made much sense. But they were loud and distracting. As this played out I sat in the green room with friends when we noticed the volume of shouting had gone up. A lot. I walked out of the green room and stepped inside the show room to pandemonium. I can imagine that the host had gotten into it with this crazy heckler and instead of calming down the heckler only got more intense. Eventually one of the comics on the show went over and asked him to quiet down. His response is classic. "This is a comedy show!"
Why is it that almost every drunk idiot whose choses to yell dumb shit out at a comic say this as some justification for their amazing and galling attitude? One other thing, the comic who went over to this guy is one of the sweetest girls I know. So yelling at her constitutes an act of extreme assholeness on a larger than normal scale. This in turn caused the comic who was working the door to come over. Thats when things went from bad to worse. The heckler was something out of a 80's Bruce Willis movie. He could of been the bad guys side kick or a henchmen. He wasn't that tall but he was obviously muscular. He had what sounded like a New Jersey accent complete with a cold chain around his turtle neck. His date was of course a stunningly hot petite woman. Once again why do ass holes always have hot girlfriends?
When I turned the corner and walked into the showroom I saw the door guy standing a few inches from the red face of this guy throwing a tantrum rarely seen in someone his age. He was being told to leave to no avail. His girl kept trying to reason with him. He kept yelling at her to sit down. Then, the lights came up. By this point the crowd was chanting "GO! GO! GO!" Other audience members came over to where the altercation was going down and tried to help. I stood next to the scene convinced a punch was going to be thrown any second wondering exactly what I could do if or when that happened. The moron kept shouting something like, "You come over here and touch me!" Eventually he left. When 200 people are chanting leave and you refuse, you are a huge ass hole.
Saturday night was Valentines Day. It was a huge success! The show sold out in advance so the Clubhouse smartly added a second show two floors up. This got mildly confusing to people coming in late. They showed up to the 5th floor and got told to go up to the 7th floor. It was a bit like Donkey Kong without the barrels and ape. With three women on the show, a blond, a brunet and a red head, I felt like a Neapolitan of pussy had opened for me! Sweet!
I spent most of the first show breaking up a young beautiful couple in the front row. priceless! Then, after getting the light more than once I said good night and ran up to the 7th floor where I basically walked on and started again. This crowd was a bit more sedate than the first but after awhile we got going and all went well.
Not bad

Sports, Drugs and America! They go together like apple pie and the flag.

First Michael Phelps falls from grace with one photo of him French kissing a Bong. Can you imagine the guy sitting next to him waiting for his turn? Phelps has got to have amazing lung capacity. You would be there all night waiting for Phelps to finish that hit.

Now A-Rod is turned into a public A-Hole with the admission he took “performance-enhancing substances.” That sounds a whole lot nicer than illegal drugs. Any time I see professional sports on TV the number one sponsor for the program is Viagra. If that’s not a performance-enhancing drug then I don’t know what is.

Why are we judging these guys for wanting to perform better by taking something too?

The other most popular commercials I see are for beer. So let me get this straight. Michael Phelps used a drug that is not performance enhancing after the Olympics and got suspended from any competition for three months, lost his multi-million sponsorship deal with Kellogg’s and is no longer thought of as a clean cut all American role model. Is that about correct? But beer, a drug that will make you want to fight a guy for looking at you the wrong way is sold to us over the TV with pretty girls in Bikinis at cool parties around fast cars. Its something of a mixed message when it comes to drugs. The thing with A-Rod and frankly any sport star is to remember is that they have one job in this world-to hit a ball farther and faster than most everyone else on the planet. That’s it. That’s his whole existence. So if he wants to take something that will make his balls shrink to hit that ball a little farther and a little faster in pursuit of breaking records for our entertainment, go for it. Besides, if were honest with ourselves we might admit that we would love to see genetically modified humans grunting away on the sport fields. Hell, make steroids mandatory. That might make me want to watch the three-hour snooze fest that is any Baseball game. Between the roid rage and the incredible displays of super human abilities it would be a game more like Thunder Dome in Mad Max than what it is now.

Don’t we want our sports Hero’s to be all they can be?

Every time I watch TV there is another prescription drug being pitched to me with side effects that sound worse than the actual problems they are meant to cure. If performance-enhancing drugs are wrong for athletes then why are these quality of life improving drugs OK for the rest of us? Coffee is performance enhancing when you need to wake up. Viagra is performance enhancing when you need to get it up. Both are legal and both have side effects that come with long-term use. So go for it athletes. The biggest side effect from taking performance-enhancing drugs seems to be homeruns.

Of Ties and Bongs

Michael Phelps. The most accomplished Olympian in modern history. Turns out the man uses his lung capacity for other things besides collecting gold medals in the swimming pool. The man smoked some pot out of a bong. Someone took a photo of it and it ended up on the front page of a paper in England. Kellogg’s has dumped him from sponsorship and he has been suspended for three months from any swim events. Yeah. That will show him. Give a stoner free time. I wonder what he will do with three months of nothing to do?

I say give him another medal. Any stoner that can do what he has done deserves another medal. I’m not saying it has to be a gold one either. Maybe just a gold foil chocolate one. I think he would enjoy that.

I know he is a role model to kids around the world but you know what? As a reformed pot smoker he’s our role model too.

The former press secretary to the former president is not happy with Obama. Why? Obama does not enforce a dress code in the White House. Bush made it a rule that anyone working in the White House must have a jacket and tie on at all times. Well if you ever needed proof that adherence to petty rules breeds more foolish decisions this is it. Does it make you feel any better about the things the Bush team did knowing that they were all dressed as gentlemen as they made some of the most profoundly bad choices in the history of the presidency? Me either.

Its good to know that while our little war of choice was dissolving into the biggest strategic mistake in modern American history was playing out and during the destruction of our economy by the rich stealing money literally right out of your bank account these guys were more concerned with wearing the right tie.

That is so gay.

I am starting to think the entire Republican Party is in the closet. These are the same people that jumped all over Obama for not wearing a five-dollar American flag pin made in China on his lapel. To them this meant he wasn’t patriotic enough.

If your expressing yourself with Jewelry your gay.

Remember Joe the plumber? Guess what job he has now? It’s still not a plumber. He is being paid as a consulted for the GOP.

Oh that’s rich!

He lied about the taxes he owed.

He lied about his name.

He lied about actually having a plumber’s license.

He’s perfect for the Republicans! If anything the man is overqualified. Course, its not like Democrats paid their taxes either. You gotta love that. The last three Democrats Obama wanted on his cabinet didn’t get confirmed because they all forgot to pay their taxes. They did pay them and the fines too sure. But still, come on guys! If you’re the party in favor of spending tax money on health and education for the people you have to pay your taxes first before that money gets to the programs you want. Head in the game people!

Fake Adds on Facebook

On Facebook recently there have been many adds for debt relief and stimulus checks sent out by the Government. First of all this 100% false. Individuals like you and I are not eligible for these checks. Why? The program does not exist. Look at the photos of people they use. Often times they pick a newsperson sitting behind a desk looking official. You can see where they digitally altered the photos to add hands holding up what looks like a IRS refund check. It was the last add that grab my attention. They have Bill O’Reilly holding up a fake check with his fake photo shopped hands. Problem is, that’s not the biggest flaw in this. They have him on the set of Inside Edition. A show he hasn’t hosted in what, more than 15 years? Perhaps the Government rationalized that going back in time would prevent all this from happening. If that were true none of us would know his name.

Come on Facebook! These are misleading and deceitful adds that play on people’s fear of what is going on.

The Odd Compliment?

Have you ever been told something so outlandish that it renders you mute for a moment? A few weeks ago I walked in to a place and saw a guy I haven’t seen in a while. He noticed my haircut and then said, “You look like a cross between Luke Skywalker and that guy who rapes a lot.”

What?

It’s hilarious in a strange way. When I started to think about it I realized something. When someone has excelled in their field and you cannot remember their name people will probably know whom you are talking about just by saying something like, that baseball player who hit all those homeruns but everyone thinks was using steroids. Almost anyone would say, “Oh yeah. Barry Bonds.”

So when he says, that guy who rapes a lot what he means is there is a guy out there who is so well known for it that by simply saying, that guy who rapes a lot, we would all go “Oh yeah. How is Larry?”

The Luke Skywalker thing was cool but you probably don’t want to hear the word Force in connection with the other part of that observation. Is there a Jedi out there using their powers over women's minds?

"No doesn't mean no."

I know some strange people.

Seriously though how funny weird is that compliment? “Hey haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been up to?”

“Oh you know.”

Luke Skywalker and that guy who rapes a lot! What the hell did I tell the guy who cut my hair?

“I want it sort of like Luke Skywalker in the original film and a bit like that guy who rapes a lot.”

“Oh you mean Larry!”

I’m not sure I would visit a guy with access to scissors who would automatically know who I meant just by me saying, that guy who rapes a lot.

My Morning Brew

Starbuck's has amazing customer service. Sometimes the customer service is too good.
Caffeine is a drug. A pretty powerful drug too. If you think it isn't and you start your day off with a cup of coffee try going without it one morning. On the few occasions when that has happened I am reduced to tears laying on the floor in a fetal position with a pounding headache in about two hours. Cold turkey is not the way to quit anything. I decided recently to at least cut down. That meant I was going to go from ordering a Venti in the morning to the next size down. A Grande. However every time I walked in to the Starbucks they would already start pouring the super tanker of liquid ambition I need to get into a wakeful state. I felt guilty the first couple of times when I would get to the front of the line and explain that I am trying to cut down and instead of this size I wanted the next one down. By about the 10th time though I was starting to get irritated. I would walk in the door and just shout, "I am not getting a Venti anymore!" Considering that the Starbucks shares space with a bank, walking in shouting anything was frowned on. Fine. I would get to the head of the line and just take the Venti waiting for me and pour out what I didn't want. That would sometimes get me dirty looks from other customers. One day a lady was doing the same thing at a second Starbucks memory hole counter. We looked up at the same time and caught each others eye's. She smiled and said, "Did you change your size too?"
I was not alone!
Then it occurred to me that there are a million Starbucks around the city. I will just start going to another one. You know. Start over. Just go to a new one and establish a new routine.
That worked for a while. But when I was ready to make the jump down to the next smallest size again the same old problem started again. Shit! Thanks for being a bunch of Codependent johnny on the spots but can you wait till I make it to the counter?
The same situation played itself out over a month. In the end I just did the same thing. I accepted the larger size of coffee with a smile and drained most of it into the memory hole. Then I thought, well there are other Starbucks still. So I changed local ones again. I got the Tall coffee for a while with no problems. Then, I walked in one day got to the counter and there at the register was a guy who worked at my original Starbucks. Sitting there was a Venti. "Just the way you like it!" The guy said with a friendly smile.
If you work at a Starbucks you can pick up shifts at any Starbucks in the area. Thats how I learned that.
Let me take this moment to once again apologize to you for what had to seem like the most strange reaction to excellent service ever. After reading the proceeding story you might see why I reacted the way I did. I have been under stress recently. What with the economy, turning 40 and still looking for that break in my career, that had something to do with it too. Anyway, sorry.
Here is what happened.
I freaked out. I just wanted to cut down the amount of coffee I was drinking. Thats all. Three months latter I was spending more money on less coffee.
I snapped.
"Dear God Man! I HAVE CHANGED AND YOU DON'T SEE IT! YOU JUST WON'T SEE IT! MY NEEDS AREN'T THE SAME ANYMORE! AHHH!"
Yeah. It must of seemed like I was breaking up with this guy.
Christ. Cutting down on coffee just made me react the way I do when I drink too much coffee.

A Bad Trip Across a Bridge

I was coming back from a gig in Lodi, crossing the bay bridge around midnight when a very unusual situation happened before I could comprehend just what was going on. I had been feeling out of sorts all night. I started to suspect the Denny's burger as the reason. The damn thing sat in my belly like a hot coal. It bothered me off and on the rest of the night. I didn't think too much about it. The less I thought about it the more it would just get better. Right?
Ever drive across the bridge and puke outside the window while attempting to stay in your lane and maintain a shred of dignity? I can now say that I have endured this unique challenge.
Food poisoning. Thats what it was. I had the burger around 7PM and hit the stage around 9:30PM. The show was weird but I didn't really feel anything in my stomach during the show. This is evidence to me that I not only love doing stand-up but that I am also good at it. When I am working I don't feel pain. Do you know what I mean? I have performed with head and chest colds. I have performed with head aches, sprains, broken bones and emotional issues. When I am performing I don't feel any of it. Even after shows where I went up hurt in some way there is a grace period like a high that lasts for at least an hour after the show. Then what ever aliment that is bothering me makes itself known again.
The sudden realization that I was going to be sick and there was no place to pull over hit me at once. I managed to get the window down but with the wind effect and trying to keep an eye focused on the road it was a mess. It happened twice before I made it to the first exit that lets you off near the greyhound station. I figured I could just stop around there. A guy throwing up probably wouldn't look too out of place. Without getting graphic here by the time I got to the end of the off ramp the entire left side of my upper body was covered. The back seat, driver side door and even the inside of the rear window all got it bad too. My cell phone was resting in the door handle. Thats doesn't work anymore. How I didn't hit another car on the bridge weaving between lanes and struggling to keep my eyes open as I was vomiting I will never know. The added adrenaline just set me more on edge when I could pull over. Cars blew past me. I couldn't see anyone but I imagine they could see me. It must of been hard not to notice.
I felt absolutely horrible. I wanted to pull over climb into the back seat and hope I would wake up to find it was all just a dream. A bad dream. Ugh. What a night.
The show was also something of a mess. The place was nice but instead of a stage there was a small area against a wall where a microphone waited. Tables were directly in front of me at waist level. I felt more like a waiter than a comic. There was a large group in back that were loud and drunk through out the show. But they were not the table I got into it with. The table I got into it with was some modern Adams Family family. Two couples, one older and one in their early 20's sat at the table. The kid had a military haircut and five black spiders tattooed on his arm. Of course I ask why? The kid, who is buffed like nuts just smiles and looks at the older guy. OK. Thats a little strange. When I talk to him he tells me he use to be an investigator. In classic cliché fashion he says if he told me what type of inspector he was he would have to kill me.
Game on Jack-ass!
Its all pretty good natured for a while till I talk to his wife. Here is the story I am given. They have been together five years. They met in Sweden. She is from some former soviet state. He is the kind of investigator that use to carry a gun.
When I ask where she is from she is surprised.
"Ow kan U hell I am naught frum ear?"
"Ah. That accent."
She then tells us she can speak five languages. I say what a waste in America where we can barely speak one.
The crowd gives that an applause break.
Ain't that America? I can't help point this out to the crowd that we are a nation oddly proud of our ignorance. That gets more laughter.
Strange crowd out here in Lodi.
I get into trouble when I call his wife his swedish princess. When I call her this he rises a little out of his chair and points a withered finger at me.
"Hey!"
Hey what? Its a compliment to call a woman a princess. Right? I ask the crowd their thoughts. We are all in agreement on this. Calling a woman a princess is a compliment.
He then does something unintentionally hilarious to me that I can't help but point out to the crowd. He puts a hand behind his right ear and says, "What?"
What?
An investigator with bad hearing? How many people are in prison because this guy didn't hear something right? I can see by his face that thats enough. I wrap up and get the hell out of there with my crisp hundred dollar bills sitting in my fat wallet. Another show another success.
Comedy gets treated badly on the road. It is also the one type of entertainment where people feel strange asking other people to quiet down. With no bouncers or even a stage to give a comic a little more credibility you don't feel completely respected. Its the idea that you can just hand us a Microphone and you have a show that bothers me. But I took the gig assuming it was going to be something like this set up. As these gigs go it was actually pretty good.
When I got into my car to leave my head was throbbing like a stereo speaker. I had two hours to talk myself out of being sick and two minuets of complete panic when that didn't work out. Lesson learned. Next time I will stop. Shit. I gotta start taking better care of myself.

Don't Steal Another Mans Horse

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

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

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

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

So what do you do?

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

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

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

Stay Warm While Rome Burns=)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before the New Era of Bipartisanship Starts...

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

Word to your...

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

Stuff on my Mind-

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

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

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

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

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

Drop Words Not Bombs?

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

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

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

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

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

Obama-Ha-Ha!

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

Post-It Protest!

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

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

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

Disposable and passive aggressive. The American way!

Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome 2009

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

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

My New Years Eve turned out pretty good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of Guns and Shoes

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

The Clone Wars

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

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

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

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