The Zen of Funny

Adult?

2008-07-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

At some point I have self destruction in every relationship I have been in with a woman. I fell apart and wanted to be taken care of. Thats one theory I have been told. I prefer to think they were all two timing whores. It's not pretty language but it's an easier myth to buy than to see my part in things. Besides, what do those guys twice my age and a wall full of degrees know anyway?
My guy is a decent man. He doesn't remember in detail, but I can't decide if it's bad memory, being too busy, or he doesn't care. I think he cares but he is too busy. We talk. He writes prescriptions for sleeping pills and anti-depressants. I tell him about my quest to become an adult. Thats literally what we talk about. It kinda feels like that might be common, but there it is; I don't feel like an adult.
It's not what I thought it would be. I never felt it happen. It is probably a dumb thing to reveal. Did you feel it? What was the moment or action that brought it on? Did it feel like that, like a switch flipped or something just seemed right? What is it? I didn't feel it. For better or worse degrees, I have not grown up. Not in the way I imagined. Instead, this feels like some strange land I wondered into by mistake as I was just walking along. Things are familiar yet the colors are drab. Wonder is scarce and responsibility is heavy. I am a child in a mans body. A broken body, slowed down by years of that someday I will eat right diet and late night food. Still, I thought it would be different. I thought things would be easier because I would be an adult and adults know how to handle stuff. Nope. Turns out I am not alone in this feeling. Adults don't know any better than kids, really. Adults just have more stuff that can go wrong and more pressure to get things right. At some point I think you realize that school was complete bull shit. The book stuff comes in handy and socializing is important, but everything we were taught about sharing, respecting others and playing fair is not how the world operates. Sure, you can be the good guy and do all those things. I am not saying people don't. I think most of us live in a world of compromises. Nothing is ever black and white. Nothing. There are shades to every choice and every choice leads to several other branches that lead to still more doors. Maybe thats not right either. It feels like possibility becomes a precious resource that starts to dissolve over time. And here is the thing I know about me; I know what the right thing to do is every time. I really do. Sadly, I only chose to do the right thing about 45% of the time. I am not talking stealing or breaking store windows in anger, I am talking about those little white lies we all use to navigate our way in social situations or the short cut you take at work and hope people don't notice. It's the difference between sitting down at the computer and working on my act or downloading more porn to what I can only imagine is a very sticky hard drive at this point in my computers life. Being an adult seems to take place between what is said and what is not said. It is knowing how to read what takes place in that intersection that makes you a successful adult. At a certain point you realize the things you wanted to have or do are not going to be. I am never going to be a singer song writer now. For a large portion of my life there was a vague idea that was always present inside me that ultimately that is what I would be. I had the guitars, had 60 or so songs and even recorders. I haven't touched my guitar in about a year. When I think of that, it makes me sad. All those years I spent driving around doing comedy from one shitty location to the next shitty location, I would not have survived if it wasn't for my guitar. Countless hours were spent in run down hotel rooms writing songs I couldn't play for anyone. Instead, I just told jokes rather than really tell people what I felt. But that dream, that idea that I would eventually over come that brand of stage fright and start to play in front of audiences never came to be. Each new years that came and went carried with it the resolution to try and play at a open Mic. It never happened. I never did it and now the guitar sits in the corner as a symbol of something I can't think about for too long or I feel the trap of regret spring on me. That becomes a regular emotion, regret.
What are you suppose to tell children? You can't sit them down and tell them that life is not going to be the adventure you think it's going to be. When parents give you the realistic speech, as it came to be known in my house, it doesn't register. I didn't think I knew better than my parents, I just knew I didn't want what they had. I thought that would be enough. I thought that alone would create a life different from what their lives had become. My life is nothing like my parents, but like them, I have invisible baggage that is not always easy to claim. Everyone must. That is part of growing up. Life is not bad or boring for me, it just isn't the shape I thought it would be when I had the luxury of not knowing any better. Not knowing has saved me from being crushed. Sometimes. Not knowing has also launched me into whole decades that turned out to be vast detours I had to back out from. Stand-up comedy was one of those. Not knowing how hard it was going to be and not knowing the amount of self I would pour into it, prevented me from ever thinking realistically about it. I still think there is a chance I could be a star in it. I don't know, maybe that idea will someday rest with the guitar in my room. Until it does, I will keep doing it though. Too much of my identity is wrapped up in it now to ever really stop. Drugs. That was something I had to back out of more than a few times and still don't fully have the entire situation under control. By that I mean, the craving to be else where without actually moving makes drugs a powerful force in every adults life. This is San Francisco. I can't go a day without smelling pot drift across my path somewhere. The very first time I smoked pot I thought to myself, now I understand why there are drug addicts. That scared me enough to not try it again for a long time. When I did pick it back up again in my middle 20's, it lead to doors I have since tried to never knock at again and profound grief in how it dissolved me. Pot really was a gate way. I told a friend once that what I liked most about it was the way it made me feel like a kid. It did. When I was a boy, I loved the borders of paintings and pictures. I could sit and look at them in books or on school walls and what really fascinated me was the implication of everything that happened outside the frame. We were only looking through a small square window into another world. When I first got high, I felt like all that went on just past the picture frames was coming into focus. Its a weird way of explaining it I suppose, but it was a potent sensation I reached into again and again only to come back with empty hands. Cynicism became a shell I lived in. Still do to a slightly lesser degree, but like a hermit crab, I wear it on my back and scurry awkwardly into it when trouble shows up. Hard to say what exactly built such a thick insulating shell, but I don't blame any one person or event for it. Maybe it is like an emotional calcium deposit that naturally builds up over time. The thing that seems the hardest to resolve as an adult are the loves that ended. When i look at my early 20's, I see a man who was heart broken over the loss of a girlfriend. That feeling, more than anything else defined who I was for a very long time. What replaced her was another loss. What replaced that girl was all my reaching into borders. That blew a few years. When I met Sam, I had resolved myself to being alone. I wasn't sad at this thought or mournful anymore. I felt strangely OK with the idea and felt a certain comfort even freedom in it. You know when you hear, don't look for love and you will find it? This is the state of mind I think people are talking about. It wasn't that I had given up, I finally felt comfortable with who I was and what my situation seemed to be. That felt very adult. That was also the moment a beautiful girl showed up in my life who continues to haunt me with what if. What if, what a fucking useless wish what if turns out to be. You beat it and beat it and the very thing you don't want to see again just falls out with all the shrapnel of any bomb going off in your face. More than any other expression, what if seems to be where much of my adult life has unfolded. After all the self help books, therapy, programs, girlfriends and professional successes, what if is a living thing that you can only hope to diminish. One part of this has dropped away from my thinking. The idea that anyone or anything is "normal" now seems ridiculous to me. Normal is societies greatest lie. It is a standard that we are all pushed toward as children but come to find out later in life is a convenient myth. Normal doesn't exist. I doubt if it ever did.
Somewhere in all this is an adult. Maybe only in age, but I am an adult. Funny, I didn't think it would feel like this at all.

Runway

2008-07-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - John McCain and Barack Obama vow to reform the nation's defense procurement if elected president, yet each is unwilling to take a firm stand against the skyrocketing cost of a plum White House perk: the new Marine One helicopter.
The project is now projected to cost $11.2 billion.
The fleet of helicopters cost $400 million apiece. The British have bought the same base model helicopter for $57 million each.

Wow! I did a little research. That $11.2 Billion is for 22 helicopters. When ever the president is aboard one of them, it is called Marine one. It is usually accompanied by two or three as decoys. The most common flight it makes is from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base where the president boards Air force One.
It takes ten minuets.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just build a runway for Air Force One next to the White House?

Media

2008-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

I have heard the question asked by more than a few people. Is Obama receiving fawning press coverage while McCain gets little more than a notice? Yes. Obama is a rock star. He is young, energetic, compassionate, able to speak with clarity and has the ability to give people hope. McCain, no matter how valiant his service to this country was, is yet another old white guy who will do everything his predecessor did to see that the rich will get richer and cruelty is rewarded with power. Period. Obama is no saint. No one comes out of Chicago politics without learning the game very well. But to make a bad pun, the comparison is black and white. Of course a young man who is half black and running for the president of the united states of America is going to get a lot of press coverage. You know why? Because he is the liberal Regan. Regan was a great communicator. He was funny, always had a smile and knew how to speak to a crowd. Sound familiar? America has not had a charismatic young leader since Kennedy. If you think the press is not going to follow him around and make a big deal out of his slightest utterances, than you don't understand the American media where a celebrity announcing they are going to have a baby often times trumps real news.
What I have noticed about the coverage of McCain is that the press seems unwilling to point out when he makes a mistake. The latest was a interview where he talked about the danger along the Iraq Pakistan border. Iraq does not border Pakistan. A country by the name of Iran, sits between the two countries. If anything, the media seems unwilling to be critical of his statements out of fear that people will think they are pointing out his age. Fine. Call him out on his policies. Call him out on the huge issues he has changed his mind about and ask him why. Call him out on the fact that his campaign has had to fire lobbyist after lobbyist when their conflict of interest is brought to the attention of the media. The fact is, Obama has yet to make a major misstep. When he does, the media will be all over it. There is nothing we value more in this country than the fall of a star. It will come. Until then, he is just that; a star. Obama is more than politician or leader. He is the agent of change in a time when no one particularly knows how to change. America has some very hard choices to make. No one is telling us this yet because the leaders are scared by what they see too. The fact is, we are headed into a decline of Americas power.
Story after story comes in from people traveling every where that the dollar, the currency of the planet, is no longer being accepted by the road side merchants in India or the small shops in Cairo. The dollar is no longer respected or strong enough on the global market to be of any value to even the people on the fringes of their local community. Prices for basic items are going up. Our military is fractured and over stretched. The writing is on the wall for anyone who wants to see it. If we are to maintain anything like the power and prestige we once had on the world stage, it is going to take some dramatic changes in policy. Change, as you might have noticed, is not something we do well here. We have all been conditioned to trust that the next generation will have it better than the last generation. Maybe not this one. Education standards continue to fall. Well paid jobs in industry and technology are getting harder to find for even the best educated Americans. We have sat transfixed by reality TV as the machinery built to grant everyone life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been dismantled. It has been taken a part by men in power to give those who already have a lot, more. Deregulation has driven prices up, not down as they told us it would. We might not have faced any more terrorist attacks on home soil, but an entire generation of adults will come home from Iraq damaged in ways we scarcely understand. Money will not be there for all their issues. Help will be rationed and only the worse who act out will get attention. In every way, they too should be thought of as victims in a terrorist attack. I do not think Obama is a saviour or anything more than a politician. However, he has shown the capacity for greatness in a time that needs a leader that can inspire us to change. John McCain is the total embodiment of all that rests in the past. This is not his fault. It is just not his time. One more rich white guy with all the privileges and lack of understanding for anyone else is not what we need in the White House right now. We need to hear how bad it is along with a solution. We need to be able to trust that leader and allow him to push us toward difficult changes. Do you really think McCain is that man?
It's easy to lavish Obama with praise. He is a phenomena. The press is reflecting what the population feels for him. I don't know if that means he will be able to guide us onto a new path or even how much worse things will get. If anything, the media seems more determined to not let us know the true state of things. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness might be a right to all in the Constitution, but those three things are in short supply lately. The Constitution has never faced a more scornful administration for the rights it grants every citizen. You might have the illusion of being safe from a terrorist attack, but the leaders who remind you every chance they get that they are responsible for that are the same leaders who deregulated the banks. Last time I checked, it wasn't Al Queda taking peoples homes in record numbers, it was the banks who have politicians on their boards that are forcing people out of their homes. Gay marriage is not responsible for Americas big three automakers refusing to update their technology and are now paying for it with inventories filled with gas guzzling SUV's and nothing to offer Americans who want a cheaper more green alternative. Burning the flag has not kept American troops under hostile fire in a war that has been based entirely on lie after lie for an agenda that will benefit a handful of petroleum companies. Believing in God has not kept our educational standards from falling lower and lower in a world we are told we must compete with in a global economy.
Stop voting against your self interest America. Being for or against abortion will not fix the system of money lending we created to destroy the middle class. If you are truly pro-life, then end our billion dollar a day experiment in empire and bring the troops in Iraq home. We are hated and shot at everyday while we are there. No good can ever come from that. Every stray bullet we fire and each child harmed in a normal bomb dropping operation spawns a hundred more sworn enemies of America. This is how we created Bin Laden. If Iraq is doing anything, it is making a thousand more of him that your children will have to face. Not us. Not today.
I don't know what Obama can do to turn us from a dreary path. I have no illusions that he is anything but a man. But I have concrete belief in the fact that McCain will only continue a slash and burn attitude toward the dying middle class. McCain will be another out of touch guy use to money and power who will take America away from what it was set up to be. That I believe.

Soapbox moment: The Surge

2008-07-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

The surge is not a new energy drink. It is in fact, a polite term to describe an escalation of American troops in Iraq. Obama has just said he thinks it failed. Violence is down in Iraq and the whole point of the surge was to give the Iraqi government room to sort its self out with out factions taking to the street. It seems to have worked. Right? If we understand the surge to be a political move more than a military one, the surge has still failed for a number of reasons that go unreported in the American media.
Without using names no American can pronounce, lets just skip to the chase on this one. Iraq has three groups. Sunnis, Shias and Kurds.
Saddam was a Sunni. All the leaders under him and the vast majority of those who belonged to his ruling party were Sunni. When we stepped in, we got rid of every Sunni in power.
The Shia's were always a majority of the population in Iraq. Under Saddam, they were treated as less than second class citizens. Guess what America? Iran is almost entirely Shia. What years of war and thousands of years of fighting had not been able to accomplish, we did for Iran when we got rid of their opponent. Nice of us to help Iran out on that one, ha?
Why am I telling you all this? So you understand the situation. When that conservative family member who gets information only from Rush or Fox news starts vomiting the talking points they want you to have, you will have easy to check facts and an even more interesting question as to why we don't know these things.
We are told that the situation in Iraq is getting better. That the surge did it's job and the government of Iraq is finally getting stuff done. Nothing could be further from the truth. Violence has all but stopped. True. However the government of Iraq has never been more fractured. The Kurds in the northern part of the country are cutting their own deals with oil companies for exploration and development. They are operating like an independent nation. The Sunnis, who were always a minority walked out on the last government meting where everyone was to vote on a bill that would give America control to negotiate oil leases for Iraq. The shias remain in power and friendly to us because we put them there, but thousands of years of culture and other similarities are hard to break when the center of the Shia Muslim world is right next door in Iran. Thats right America, we gave Iran what they have wanted forever, a Shia Muslim government in Iraq.
In other words, we have pushed ourselves and all interested parties into a stalemate. A stalemate we created because until Iraq agrees to let us stay as long as we want and lets us decide on how to develop their oil resources, we will continue to tell the American public that the situation in Iraq is not stable enough for out troops to go home.
You see whats going on now? It's blackmail on a huge scale. We want their oil. Period. To think this was ever about something else is beyond ignorant at this point. The Iraq government said they want a time table for us to leave. This is coming from the leader we installed. Not hippies in America or Al Quedia forces we allowed into the country when didn't pay attention to the borders. Yet, we continue to say the time is not right. Until we get an agreement on the oil and the permanent bases that now dot Iraq, we are staying in force. That has been what has been going on for the last year now. The extra troops sent over in the surge were not to help stabilize the fledgling government, they were there to keep down the overwhelming decent among all groups in Iraq for the deal we want. Right now, we are just waiting for a signature on a contract that has been unsigned for more than two years.
Look folks, if you want to look at it from the perspective that we freed them, then you have to admit staying long after they have asked us to go makes us seem like an occupying army.
Being angry at Iran for helping their Shia brothers makes us look almost retarded when our actions have never made it easier for Iran and Iraq to communicate directly with each other. The Kurds, who everyone has fucked over in history, have decided they are going to pretty much do their own thing with or without the rest of the country. Meanwhile, 7 years after we invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban, they are still attacking U.S. forces. In fact, last month we had more troops die over there than in Iraq. If you think the surge has worked, then you just are not paying attention to the news you can get outside of America. Lets be honest here, we are not telling the Iraq's that we are staying until all power plants and hospitals are rebuilt. We are not telling the world that until Iraq's museums have their cultural treasures back, we are staying. We are very precisely telling Iraq that until we get exclusive rights to develop and profit from their oil reserves, we are staying. We are staying at a staggering cost to us tax payers and staying despite the overwhelming emotional toll it is taking on our dangerously over stretched armed forces.
So you tell me, what was this war all about and why are we still there?

Stockton, CA

2008-07-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Ever been to Stockton? It is one of those small cities that have seen better days in the Central Valley. I am sure that San Francisco is used as a punch line for many a gay joke told in bars around Stockton. It is only fair to report that Stockton, like Modesto is a punch line for ignorance out here. That’s the beautiful thing with comedy sometimes. You go out to a location with one idea in your head and come back with another.
I was hired to be the comic at a fundraiser for a woman running to be a city council person. I am not the first comic I would of thought of to do this gig but the Booker told me I was the first comic he thought of who could handle the gig. That’s a flattering thing to hear. Well, the money was OK too and I am always up for a challenge.

Ever try to get to Stockton? There are two main routes and I apparently took the more scenic one. Each road I drove on lead to a road narrower than the last. Eventually I was out in the delta twisting across two lane highways that connected islands. I even crossed a drawbridge. I didn’t know we had those anymore.
I found the place, walked in and immediately felt out of place. I had on a blazer, but I went with the 80’s comic style of a T-shirt underneath. Mistake! The crowd was white, rich and old. You know, pretty much the exact opposite of what I would call my crowd. I have done gigs like this before and they go great. I can play on being the outsider and them being rich. Not this time. The thing about a private gig/ fundraiser for conservatives is that laughter is a sign of weakness. That and there are not a lot of rich, old white dudes who are known for having a great sense of humor. Think John McCain and you will have a pretty good idea of who these people are.

My opening act, for lack of a better description, was the Sheriff. My front row was comprised of the Booker, the Sheriff, the candidate and her husband. I now know what the Berlin wall must of felt like when East Germans looked at it. I started well. One joke fell flat. Into the void the candidate who hired me said, “not funny.”
Sweet, ha?
What can you do? I still have 20 minuets, haven’t got the check yet and I will be damned if some politician in Stockton is going to win a battle of wits with me. But, it is a private gig. It’s there house and their rules and blah blah blah.
Ever try to work the room when half the room has hearing aides? It’s not so easy. The sheriff’s name is Sheriff Moor. Now come on? With a name that sounds like gay porn you don’t expect a comic to not say something? Actually, I was under contract not to say anything. I got the whole speech before the show from her supporters about how open they are and how they believe in freedom. Thats great. I wanted to tell them, really? I got handed a list of subjects not to bring up. Politics was the first thing on the list. Followed by religion, sex, drugs and abortion. What comic would show up with 5 minuets on abortion for a private fundraiser in Stockton? I don’t know, but I am writing some stuff for next year now.

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Right?
I left the gig without getting the check. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t great either. I knew I would see the Booker when I returned to work his regular room that weekend.
Saturday night comes around and as I wait for the show to start who do I see walking into the show room? The Sheriff, his wife, the candidate and her husband.
Great!
About 10 minuets into my act, I turned to look at the table. They were up front of course. They all turned out to be good sports. I broke down how impossible the other gig was and thank God they could see me in my natural habitat.
After the show, I talked to them again. Like a lot of people, it is hard for them to separate their public face from their inner desires. A fundraiser is no place for jokes because someone is going to be offended. Hell, it happens in a regular show too. But once they were free of holding themselves up in a respectable way, they just laughed at all the stuff anyone would laugh at. I also learned that I did much better than I thought I had at the first gig. I must have. Other wise why would these people come back? A few other people were in the second show from the fundraiser too. They also enjoyed both shows and were curious to see me with no restraints. The lesson? Don’t beat myself up so much and have fun. After all, I am a comic.

Then came Monday.
Getting on local radio has become almost impossible for a local comic. They want the big name. I managed to get myself on Live 105 because they had talked about my performance on Last Comic Standing. I sent the producer an e-mail and they agreed to have me on. It didn’t hurt that I could plug a comedy show sponsored by the Onion at the Punch Line. I got down to the station early in the morning, excited, yawning and over caffeinated. Like Stern, you get introduced as you walk in and sit down. Soon as I took a chair they went off on Cobb’s. The PR staff and these guys had been in some war for a while now. I got a front row seat for it. It was awkward. I love Cobb’s. I have nothing to do with any of the PR stuff. I am just a local comic looking for some airtime. That’s all. So I sat there hoping this wouldn’t be my entire segment. After a few minuets, they dropped it and I started getting some solid laughs. They kept me on for half an hour. I think that means it went well. Eagerly I checked my web page to see how many hits I got. The sad thing is, I got hits, but only about 400. I just don’t know. I don’t know what you have to do to get people to check you out and come to a show. There are so many gifted local comics that are screaming in the dark. People go to a big name show and leave disappointed while quality locals play in front of crowds of 30.
Well, at least I know I am big in Stockton.

The Bad Commercial

2008-07-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

I enjoy bad TV commercials. The kind where you can sit around and drive trucks in and out of the logic they have set up. Sometimes the commercial is just dumb and other times it leaves me with questions. When I can sit around and dissect something that is only on for 30 seconds, it means I have too much free time. Still...

Yellow Book Commercial.
A woman is getting married. Looking in the mirror as she tries on her wedding gown, she notices that on the small of her back is the name Mike. It's a tattoo that is hard to miss for it's size and cursive font. It's the future in this commercial, so she goes to a wall sized visual phone book and looks up tattoo removal. A man comes on and asks, "What can I do for you?"
The girl turns around and shows the name tattooed on her back.
The man asks, "So. When do you marry Mike?"
The girl says, "Umm. Tom."
"Oh!"
Let me get this straight, you are getting married to a guy named Tom, and this just now has become an issue? How much does this new guy really know about you? You have a guys name scrawled out in some 12 year old girl's Myspace font right above your ass and he never mentioned anything to you? Either you have not had sex yet, he hasn't done you doggy style or he is the biggest idiot that ever lived.
"Hey. When I was pounding you from behind last night, I couldn't help but notice another guys name looking back up at me."
"So what? You got to fuck me, right?"
"Well, yeah. But were getting married and I thought it might be nice if you at least don't wear a backless gown so as you walk down the isle toward me at the altar, everyone sitting down doesn't see another guys name above your ass when you walk past them. Cause that sorta makes me look like an idiot."
"Whats the big deal, George?"
"It's Tom!"
"Whatever..."
At least this is the back story I think happened.

Terminix commercial.
We see a bug climbing over rubble. A voice over tells us, "experts say that bugs could someday rule the world. Not if Orkin can help it!"
The commercial ends on this stark visual; a twisted blackened tree stands by a road that leads to a modern city in ruins. The very last thing we see is the Terminix van, a contrasting white, driving toward the fallen city.
What kind of moron decides to keep killing bugs after an apocalypse? The world is gone, Dude! We don't need a bug man anymore. You have gas in a clean van. Let it go, man. Let the bugs go.
Is it comforting to know that in the event of society being destroyed you will still have a guy out there killing bugs for as long as he can? There is commitment and then there is crazy. This is crazy. What Terminix is telling you is, our people are so brain washed that even if the world goes boom, we will still do our job. I don't know if I want a guy like that in my house. Do you?

I drive a lot and my other joy is the bad radio commercial. Kaiser seems to just pour these things out. They don't run it anymore and I like to think it's because someone pointed out the flaw in it. Basically, the commercials tells you how much they care about their patients and how much they believe in prevention over anything else. It ends when the comforting female voice says, "We believe laughter really is the best medicine."
God damn! Here is a giant HMO telling you that they think laughter is literally the best medicine. How nice. Don't go to the emergency room if something is wrong, go to a comedy club instead and be sure to laugh really hard!
Laughter is seldom thought of as a medicine. Laughter is pretty fun and very enjoyable, but I don;t think it cures things like cancer and broken legs.

Tattoo You?

2008-07-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Have you heard this story? A woman wakes up after surgery and finds the doctor has placed a temporary tattoo on her in a decidedly private place. It's true. Now of course she is suing the Doctor, the Hospital and maybe even Miami Ink.
She goes in for a herniated disc. She is on her stomach for the surgery. The next day, her husband comes to the Hospital to help her dress. Thats when they discover a red rose tattoo below her tan line and well bellow her navel. Got the place in mind?
Thats not the best part yet.
The Doctor doesn't understand what the big deal is!
He has done this to other patients and is thought of as a fun loving jovial guy. I bet. He sounds like a riot. What woman wouldn't want a man that waits till your knocked out before turning you over and adding a little welcome mat to your front door? Sounds great.
He doesn't understand what the big deal is? I don't want to go in for some simple operation and come out with a scar and a barb wire tattoo around my arm. (Thats like a members only jacket from the 80's that doesn't come off people. Barbed wire around the bicep; very 90's.)
The woman freaked thinking someone had come into her room while she slept after the surgery. The police were called, she was checked out for any signs of rape. It was only when the Doctor heard about everything going on did he walked into the situation and explain.
Oh no, it wasn't anything like that at all. You see, after the operation I simply rolled her over, opened her hospital gown and applied a temporary tattoo to my patient. Thats not weird. Is it?
Yes. It's a little weird.
Now the hospital is asking if any other patients of this Doc have had this happen and did they also feel violated. Cha-ching! I know I would feel violated! Bring on the lawyers.
Seriously though. You go to the hospital and find the Doctor who operated on you put a tattoo on you? "Hey, check this out. I got some Japanese fish tattooed on my arm in the hospital. That is so not what I went in for!"
It's the Doctors reaction that is the funniest. His whole, whats the big deal attitude? really Dude? You don't get that? You put a red rose tattoo right above a woman's vagina after you operated on her! In the history of creepy, this gets its own special award for being creepy.
A lot of people get tattoos when they go through something traumatic. After this woman wins, I wonder if she will get a tattoo of the Chinese symbol for money?

McDonald's, Gay Rights and a Very Happy Meal Indeed

2008-07-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

OAK BROOK, Ill. — A Christian group that opposes same-sex marriage launched a boycott of McDonald's because of the fast-food chain's support for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

McDonald's probably gets sued the way you and I breathe. You also can't prevent everything with a warning label. After the coffee spilling incident, thats how most companies get out of being taken to court. How would you handle this one? What warning label do you put on the side of a Big Mac so people will be able to handle gay rights? So what. They gave some money to gay people. It's not like McDonald's started putting butt plugs as toys in happy meals.
"Daddy, this looks like what you and Mommy keep under your bed!"
It's not like the Golden Arches are suddenly a double rainbow and everyone wears assless chaps to work in the Playland.
"Who wants to jump into the room of colored balls with me?"
They just gave some money to a group that helps Gay Business owners out.

Warning: A portion of the money you have spent with us today will go toward making leather straps and rainbow flags in San Francisco. If you are closed minded and eat here often enough that this is an issue for you, try Burger King instead. But have you seen their guy? His face is plastic, never speaks and has a cape. I don't know what he's selling, but I wouldn't want my kid around that robo-homo. Would you? Stay with us. Get fat. I bet you think gay people look at you and this bothers you. Have you seen yourself? You have eaten at McDonald's three times a week for the last twenty years. No one wants to fuck you, Dude. If you can't get a girlfriend, then a man who spends money on make-up and gym memberships is not going to give you a second look other than to say, "Ahoy! Check out that beached whale getting his order super sized!" Not eating with us will help you and let's face it, Were McDonald's. We can loose the entire nation of Canada and Americans will still line up at our drive thrus to hand us billions to give them health trouble. It's cool. Take your business else where if you like. We will be fine homophobes.

That would be my warning label idea. Probably not McDonald's.
Eventually the protesters will just go back in. Maybe they will realize that for years they have been saying to a teenage boy behind the counter one of the gayest sentences ever uttered; "I want a Big Mac with everything on it."
Really. Is there a more gay phrase?
That has to be code in at least one bar around here. If not at a bar, then it has to mean something in the craigslist personals. By being homophobic, they are actually going to do something good for their bodies. Well, you can't have everything. Nutritional awareness and a healthy work out program for the body, or hatred for those who are different eating away at your soul like the cancer it is?
Tough call. You know, you could have it all. Crazy, I know! What if you stopped eating at McDonald's, worked out and opened your mind? Too bad there is no machine at the gym to work on that. Actually, it's not a machine. It's called the steam room.
Build up to it. Sit with a towel around you for five minuets next to a naked gay man. Next week, try seven minuets. Eventually you can build your tolerance up to not giving a shit what gay people do at all and you can still get a milk shake every once in a while. But don't say Milk Shake while you are in the steam room. It could result in a misunderstanding and we would have to start all over again.

First Amendment. Good-Bye.

2008-07-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Hope you recognized that. It is the first amendment. Commonly thought of as the right to free speech. In the grocery store, two men were talking. One of them turned to me and said, "Excuse me Sir. Is the first amendment the one that is about free speech?"
"Yes it is." I answered.
I felt a little dumb. I knew there was more to it than free speech so I went home and googled it. Sure enough, there is indeed a lot more to it.

-The government cannot legally tell you to belong to any religion and it cannot legally tell you to not belong to a religion.
Seems straightforward enough. The idea, so we have been told in the writings of those who crafted the constitution, was to keep religion separate from government. Remember, these were people from Europe. They had seen what hundreds of years of religious dispute could do. They also thought anyone should be free to worship as they please. Today, we have the office of faith based initiatives. Religion in government. Any time anyone asks me what is so bad about faith and politics mixing I point to two events every Christian, Jew and Muslim believes happened.
1. The crucifixion of Jesus.
2. 9/11
So we lost that part of the first amendment already.

-It then goes on to tell us we have the rights as Americans to say what we want, that the press is free from propaganda, and we can gather in groups for whatever causes we believe in.
Well, you pretty much can say what you want. Thats what the Internet is for. It is also a very easy way for "them" to keep track of "us." It's not like we lost the right to free speech, we have just lost privacy. But thats the fourth amendment. It got killed when the president started telling congress he could wiretap anyone he deemed needed wiretapping and didn't have to tell a court, a judge or congress what and why he was doing it.
But I digress.
The press, under the careful yet sometimes ham fisted control of Bush, got lazy. They took what the White House said at face value and didn't ask the follow up questions they should have. Intimidation, no comment, lies and half truths pushed the story the way the administration wanted it told.
Examples:
Under Bush, conservative radio hosts were paid by the department of education to say how good they thought Bush was doing with education in Black Communities. Retired generals hired by the TV news to be "experts" were given Intel by the Pentagon they wished to disseminate.
In other words, the free press became a tool of the government to tell the story the way they wanted. You can't trust anything in the mainstream media as impartial and you can't trust anything on the Internet as fact.
Anyone who has been to a protest in the last ten years knows that you cannot simply demonstrate in front of the leader who is there to speak. The police set up what is called, free speech zones. These are small caged areas out of view of any of the intended targets of the protesters.
A free press and the right to peaceably assemble; gone.
Whats left? The right to petition the government with redress to grievances. Yup. You can still write a letter that starts out, You Bastards!
We still have that America. You can still send an e-mail to an elected official.
Yeah!

Republican Song

2008-07-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

OK, it's Florida. No one should be surprised that anything shocking and political comes out of that State anymore. It would be one thing if it was a Republican billboard. It's not. It was put up by one man with a mission, Mike Meehan. Among other things, Mr. Meehan wants to warn the good people of American that voting for a Democrat has dire consequences. What better way to show that then using 9/11. An attack, for the record, that Bush ignored all warning signs about.
But thats not really what this tasteless Billboard turns out to be. It's an add for his website. A website that exists so you can listen to and buy a copy of his song. I always thought if the Republicans had a song it would be a march. You know, something with a goose step rhythm to it. I haven't listened to it, but here are some of the lyrics I got from his page:

The Democrat secular progressive move,
political correctness is killing us too.
They want to take the money from the hard workin man,
and give it to the lazy folks that don't give a damn.

You can see now why he went with the twin towers instead of just putting these words up on a Billboard. It's a commercial for his song. Thats it. Thats all it is. He using 9/11 to get people to his site so they can buy his undoubtedly shitty little tune. Oh, and the guy is no genius when it comes to grasping foreign affairs either. On CNN, he said, "I believe 9/11 could of been prevented if we had a Republican president at the time."
You fucking moron, we did!
He also went on to say that Clinton, should of done more to catch Osama. Yeah. Like the time we bombed a milk factory with 40 something cruise missiles and the Republicans screamed, he is diverting attention away from Monica Lewinsky! You mean like that?
Turns out, Clinton was going after Osama. He also did something Bush has yet to do, catch anyone who plotted a terrorist attack. All the people who participated in the first attack on the world trade towers, were found, tried and convicted where they now sit in prison for their crimes today.
After thinking about this for awhile, here is the Billboard response I would put up next to Mr. Meehans commercial:

Irony is a Cluster Bomb

2008-07-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

Irony is like a cluster bomb. Sometimes the exact people you agree with become the very people hurt by the joke. I don't always have to get the joke to get that it is a joke too. Understand?
What I am talking about is the cover of The New Yorker. Obama and his wife have been given every cartoon fear the right thinks about them in a cover illustration meant to demonstrate how ridiculous those fears are.
Anyone old enough to remember when All In the Family was on TV? It was a show about a loud mouth, racist man who was watching his world change and lashed out in cruel words rather than be part of that change.
It was a comedy. It was an ironic comedy.
It was meant to demonstrate how ignorant Archie Bunkers mentality was. His character said some truly awful things. The kind of things that would get a network sued now days. In fact, when Cartoon Network began to air them again, they had to put up a disclaimer. In one generation, the comedic tool of irony was destroyed in the name of Political Correctness.
It's not good enough to say, that is dumb. It's not always enough to simply say, they use bad words. You can't always tell people what is dumb or bad.
But you can show them.
Irony has always been a dangerous tool. Either stand-up, illustrator or author, it has a way of back firing on you.
Tom Sawyer is considered an American classic. However, every few years a school makes the news for trying to ban it because the N word appears in it. Thats the thing with irony and truth; you have to actually use the words of the people you want to make fun of. You have to hope your audience is smart enough to understand you don't mean those things.
Tom Sawyer was considered trash when it was published. Not because it had the N word in it, but because it was written as people spoke out in the street. Language that was course and unrefined was put into the dialogue. People thought it was a scandal that an author would resort to actually writing the way people spoke. Imagine that.
It became a work of art because later generations understood that Twain captured a time in America as it really was. Racist thoughts and all.
The cover of the New Yorker might not be funny to you, but I can tell that it was meant as a joke. Twain was just telling the truth and he landed in trouble. Archie Bunker was a comedic device designed to demonstrate how ignorant his thinking really was to a nation bleeding with change. The cover of the New Yorker is an attempt to show how foolish all those rumors about Obama really are. Thats all.
Maybe it's a failed joke, but the audience it was intended for are the same ones voting for him. Ah Liberals. Once again we create our own issues and waste time on them. Once again we have proven to be the good little self deputized thought police that Orwell envisioned. Instead of going after all the failed old ideas coming from McCain, lets worry about offending ourselves.
Great idea!

Show Biz

2008-07-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ever since Last Comic Standing aired, I have been waiting for my check. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's money I earned that hasn't arrived yet. Larry "Bubles" Brown also appeared on the same show with me. He recommended I call a guy in the local AFTRA office. I did. He gave me the name of a woman in L.A. Just as I was about to call, Robert Mac, who also appeared on one episode called me. He told me the woman I was about to talk with would tell me that I would have to prove I was a professional comedian by sending a resume for me to get paid. Amateurs did not get paid.
I see.
Dear fellow comedians working your way up the chain. This is how it is. It never stops and it never goes away. One dick leaving the scene is replaced with a bigger one. This kind of petty, self-esteem diminishing, passive aggressive excuse for doing business never stops. The money gets better and the stakes higher, but this kind of petulant, we didn't know you were a professional shit, never goes away until you are famous enough to surround yourself with people who tell you all your choices are correct. How else do you explain Eddie Murphy making, Meet Dave?
The woman in the AFTRA L.A. office called me back today. She asked for a web site and if I had anything on it that proved I was a pro? Ah, there is the first video clip of me being introduced on Comedy Centrals, Live at Gotham. Does that count?
Yes, she tells me, that will work. Then she lets me know that the Producers will now have seven days to scrutinize my "claim" of being a professional. If they find that I am, I will finally get a check for appearing on the most rigged show since the Bush 04 election. If they decide I am not a pro, there by saving the show enough money to buy lattes for all the A.P.'s on one special day, then at least I still have the experience of standing next to Bill Bellamy.
This could be a whole new reality show to pitch; Trying to get paid from appearing on Last Comic standing. Each week, we watch as another comic gets kicked in the self-esteem one more time by being asked if he is a pro or not after 15 years. Then, he has to go through hoop after flaming hoop to get the carrot at the end of the stick.

Not gonna fly

2008-07-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

ALBUQUERQUE - John McCain says the troop increase strategies used in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan, and that he knows more than Barack Obama about "how to win wars."

McCain has told a town hall crowd in Albuquerque, N.M., that the U.S. military effort in Iraq is working. He argues a similar approach — more troops, more counterinsurgency programs, and more coherent military organization would arrest the growing violence in Afghanistan.

The Republican nominee-to-be charges his Democratic opponent, Obama, is offering misguided military plans for the region before he's even set foot in the country.

McCain says more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan, particularly the southern part of the country where the Taliban is strongest.

First off, McCain doesn't know more about how to win wars. Obama was 6 when McCain was shot down over Vietnam. Not a war I would bring up when trying to prove I know how to win one. Please, no passive aggressive e-mails about McCain is a national hero. No one is disputing his service to America under unimaginable conditions. General Wesley Clark did say in an answer to a direct question that, "being shot down does not qualify anyone to be President."
That doesn't seem like such a horrible point to make. Especially if you are using Vietnam on your resume to be President and your counting it as a win.
How about McCain's revolutionary idea on how to win in Afghanistan? You know, send more troops! Why does the Taliban have any strong hold in that country after 7 years of being there? Oh thats right, troops were pulled away from Afghanistan and the search for Bin Laden to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Perhaps if we allowed the military to conclude operations in Afghanistan, like all the commanders on the ground said we should do, then we wouldn't need to think of Taliban attacks as seasonal. So even though the military has been stretched to the breaking point and units in the field that have been told they are going home have had their tours extended three and four more months now, McCain wants to send more US Troops into a country where the only thing that has changed since America took control 7 years ago is that heroin exports have gone up more than 100%.

All In Our Heads

2008-07-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

IndyMac is open for business today. If you don't know who they are or why it's a big deal that they are open, then you are lucky. They are a bank that specialized in mortgages for credit challenged individuals. The next time someone on the right says we should not bail out people who are loosing their homes because they got themselves into the mess, remind them of IndyMac. The government just stepped in to bail out a business that got it's self into trouble with questionable practices.
The federal government locked the doors Friday afternoon. No one could get their money. It is the second largest financial institution failure in the history of America.
Thats really saying something when you factor in the great depression and the 80's disaster with Savings & Loans.
Accounts $100,000 or less are insured by the Federal Government. Anything over the $100,000 mark, and you might get half of that. Might.
Last week, Phil Gramm, senior advisor to the John McCain election, was quoted as saying that we are not in a recession. In fact, he said it was all in our heads by saying we are in a "mental recession" and America has become a "nation of whiners." Good to know that McCain is surrounding himself with the same reality based group of experts that Bush had on the payroll.
I don't know if Gramm is aware that we just had the second largest collapse of a bank in America or that gas prices have risen faster in the last eight years than at any other time in our history. I don't think any of this is in our heads. Do you?

A Car Accident

2008-07-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

I have a day job. I like health care and I hate the "road."
The other day, I am in the normal routine. A member and friend was sitting in my office talking to me. Then, as they say in novels, there was a great crashing noise! Any chance to break up the regular day with the promise of something that starts out with, there was a great crashing noise, I'm going with the great crashing noise story.
Thats what it was!
A smashup like I use to envision with my matchbox cars as a kid. Just a little past the intersection, a SUV was on it's back. Black, shiny, like a beetle upside down, broken window glittering on the pavement around it.
I ran directly toward it.
It only occurred to me latter that this had just happened. We literally heard the accident and now, seconds latter, here was the result.
After thinking about my boy scout reaction, I realized more than anything that I was just fascinated. My first impression was how still everything was. I never thought that about a car correct side up. It seemed like it should radiate cartoon like lines or something to imply the action that just took place. It didn't. Being upside down was evidence enough of what happened.
I bent down and placed my palm on the passengers door. It was hot. It had been in the eighties most of the day. Any car would feel hot if you laid your hand on it. This whole thing was so out of the ordinary that every normal reaction seemed heightened, reinforced by how not ordinary this was.
I tried the handle. It didn't budge. The roof was crushed slightly into the frame of the door. I went to the back door next. It opened. Everything was upside down. Seat belts hung in the air useless. The driver, a man whose name I never got, was on all fours crawling out. I remember not smelling anything. No gas, no engine fluids, nothing. I thought, that makes it safe. Right?
I looked around to see if there was anyone else inside the car. Nope. Then I backed away to the curb to see the man who just crawled out. His expression was human. Everything I have come to think of as mellow dramatic, eyes wide and mouth open in shock, this guy was doing. But I realized that what has made them so mellow dramatic is that I have only seen the expression on actors faces. I can't remember the last time I was around a situation where people made this face for real. This was real. This wasn't an episode of Law & Order.
His eyes were lost. You could tell he was getting all this information. It was going in, but he hadn't reacted to it yet. He was in shock. There was too much to process. People were yelling at him, "Are you OK!?"
No reaction. Just blinking.
A fire truck was pulling up. They were out of the truck and rushing to the upside down car at an impossible pace. A firemen yelled, "Don't move your head!" I assume he was talking to the driver. I thought, that is a sentence that wouldn't bring you comfort if it was a cop yelling it.
And that was that. He was unhurt. Not a scratch on him.
He had tried to beat the light. In doing so, he caught the edge of another cars rear bumper moving through the intersection. This seemed to abruptly pull his front tires in one direction. Being a small SUV, it was top heavy. True to all warning reports, it flipped over. The front door guard who saw it all told me latter the car flipped twice.
Amazing.
I felt like a little boy again. Is that strange? Like a lot of kids, I had matchbox cars and hot wheels, growing up. I honestly played with them a lot in a sandbox we had in the back yard. Isn't that sweet? Can't you just picture it? Me, in a tree shaded back yard, sitting in a sandbox making speeding engine noises and holding shinny little cars. They were made with actual metal back then. You could feel their weight and the sun made them warm when you picked them up. The wheels were real rubber too. None of this all plastic shit like now days. That made the cars more tangible to me. They had real weight. Real presence. The fine detail stood out. It wasn't blurred like it came out of some mold in a factory with the small parts not properly cut out. Even though it did. The molds were better then I guess.
I spent many summer days sitting there staging accidents on mountain roads. I would dig the sand into piles with a little shovel our father had left there for us. Once in a pile, I would use the side of my hand to smooth out roads that followed the contours of my pretend mountains. The sand that I uncovered was still cool to the touch. It had been hidden from direct sun by the benefit of it's depth. Using my hand to carve out the roads in a long slow gesture and feeling the cooler sand take shape under my palm was the most supremely satisfying feeling ever. I would make and remake these roads for hours.
You couldn't push the cars along the sand roads though. The sand was too loose and the wheels sunk in. I had to hold the cars just above the surface and pretend they were headed toward each other. It was going to be a catastrophe. On these mountain roads, twisting and turning, you had to be careful. It wasn't the accident I was interested in. It was the change from ordinary to extra so. Thats what every kid wants to see. Thats why all modern super hero movies end on a city street with spectacular collateral damage. The wanton destruction of buildings and cars is cool, but I think what we all like is how exactly opposite that scene is to our daily lives. Same thing with this car accident outside my work. It was different.
Later, alone in the office, I felt my hand tingle. What if it had been a broken bleeding body inside instead of a confused man crawling out? I didn't want to see that. My hand tingled because touching the warm surface of the car brought the vivid memory back of playing with cars in the sandbox. I could remember how contend it made me feel when the little cars were hot from the sun. They were hot like real cars got hot. If they shared that in common with real cars, it made them more real to me. Sculpting those narrow roads really was satisfying. The texture of the sand, the flow of my hand cutting into the mound, the feeling of individual grains compressing to the shape I saw in my head and the contrast in temperature all made sense. A kind of sense, in fact, I have not found as an adult.
Strange. A car accident brings on a memory from such a slender connection. We are wired in ways that are hard to navigate. I don't mind this one though. This one brought back the childhood sensation of feeling satisfied. Can you remember the last time you felt completely one hundred percent satisfied? I can now.

That Conversation again.

2008-07-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

We have all seen the mixed message car. The bumper stickers and license plate holder have sayings on them that conflict in philosophy. Yesterday, I saw this.
The Jesus fish, I 'heart' the U.S. Army, and Go Army as Bumper stickers. Last but not least, the Peace symbol in camouflage.
Camouflage?
Why hide Peace? Why disguise it? Like you would hide in a bush waiting to jump out at someone with Peace?
If we have learned anything over the last eight years, it's that Peace cannot survive in a Bush.
Then, add in the Jesus fish and army stuff and you have a four wheeled contradiction. How else can you explain it? I don't get it. There were a lot of armies back in his day and I don't recall most of them doing good things in the Bible. Do you? How did we get Jesus enlisted in the United States Army?
My friend says, "Why do people keep getting to use his name?"
Like it was a trademark issue or something that the courts and yet to resolve.
"Yeah. Why is that?" I sagely replied.
"People attach his name to everything."
I pondered this for a moment. I am an agnostic. That means I believe that their might not be anyone ignoring our prayers.
The polite thing to do at this point is to write something like, if you are a Christian and serve in the Army, thats cool. So there that is.
Is there a passage in the Sermon on the mount that mentions anything about making war? If there is I can't see it.
Jesus does not salute.
Is Jesus copyright protected? Is he considered intellectual property? Does someone own his image? These are the big questions.
How can I make money on Jesus?
Not saying that the Church and people with sincere belief have not done a lot of good, but everyone can name a few periods in history where his name has been attached to some horrific episodes. When the good stuff did happen, it was when Jesus was alive. When he showed people what he could do. They killed him.
So mixing the Symbols for Peace, Christianity and the Military seem a little strange. Or very American.
I beat up Jesus a lot in my blog. Not him really, but what has been done to his name. Jesus was not white. If he was, that might explain why he had such a hard time in the Mid-east two thousand years ago. Jesus is also not unique. Don't freak out yet if you are reading this with contempt. What I am saying is, the whole saviour for our sins, rise from the dead and even his birthday were all key elements in other cultures myths before his time.
In what is now Iran, the Persian people once believed in a God named Mithra. He was crucified to take away the sins of the world and was said to have been born on December 25th.
Tibet, also had a man known as a God and Saviour, Indra. He to was nailed to a cross, his mother was a virgin, he had to die for mans sins, he rose from the dead and was believed to be eternal.
These are just two examples. Almost every major culture has had the appearance of a 'Jesus.' Makes you think. Hmm?
My friend in the car happened to be a Christian. Don't ask how we get along. We manage. When I list off these various incarnations of what I see as an enduring myth that cuts across so many different histories, he says, "Maybe he appeared to them too. Who knows."
"Who knows? You do. You keep saying you know. You and everyone else who calls themselves Christians speak as if you know the truth and the only truth. You can't sit there after I have told you lots of other cultures had a Jesus figure with most of the same claims-he was born a virgin, he died for the worlds sins, he rose to Heaven and returned to life three days latter- doesn't that make you wonder a little more than, maybe he appeared to other people? Where is that in the book?"
He sits there with his eyes wide and uncomfortable. What is he suppose to say? I can't make one guy answer for a two thousand year old church. Can I?
He takes a breath and attempts a good natured smile. "I have always meant to ask, what happened to you?"
This only makes me more angry.
This usually happens. I talk about religion in my act a lot and in my blog because they interest me and I did not in fact have a very good experience with it growing up. But this, this question of what happened to you always infuriates me. Implied in the question is the idea that something bad must of happened to me as a boy to make me turn away from God. I turned away. You see what they accomplish in the argument with this? It is my fault that I don't believe or don't understand and not the creator of the universe whose son supposedly died for me and could work miracles. Get it? It's my fault and not God's even though he is much more powerful than any of us, it is still us. Hence the invention of original sin. The idea that we all enter this world with an automatic debt of having done something to offend the Almighty. That sounds like a God I can really get behind.
"Why do you think something bad happened for me not to believe in God?"
"Something did though, right?" He says with confidence.
"Actually, nothing happened. That was the problem. Everyone kept telling me to listen to my heart and guess what, God wasn't talking to me like my heart was a radio. I don't believe because I have not had the experiences you have had and history tells me that the Jesus myth is common to many cultures."
Now it's quiet. I think it's a fair statement though.
Then, right on time and as if it has been scripted, he makes the comment that everyone makes at this point in the conversation. "I feel sorry for you."
Is this written down somewhere in a play book for talking to those who don't share your faith?
"Thats funny. I was thinking the same thing about you."
Bumper stickers. Fucking bumper stickers.
Maybe in a thousand more years the bumper will be regarded as a religious icon. People will pray to it and question it and debate it. Who knows? Maybe it is really just a bumper or really it is something more than anyone could hope to understand.

Let Them Eat Pizza!

2008-07-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

I think it is a commercial for Pizza Hut. Two men stand in front of a huge wall mounted weekly calendar in an office. They are looking at what fast food restaurants have deals for that day of the week. One place has four dollar Tuesdays. Another place has Seven dollar value meals on Friday.
His friend, holding a slice of pizza simply says, Pizza Hut always has five dollar lunches every day of the week. I'm not putting it in quotes because it was late and I was falling asleep. But as I nodded off I got to thinking about that sales pitch. The young good looking and fit spokesperson tells you with a slight smugness that you should just go to Pizza Hut everyday of the week. After all, it's just five bucks.
Thats an office I would love to work in.
"Why is there such a long line for the bathrooms?"

There not selling the product based on it's merit. They are selling you the product based on how broke everyone is. These are the times we live in.
With everything we know about nutrition, adds will always appeal to the higher anxiety. Being broke right now is the national anxiety. It might be shit food, but at least I can afford to eat it.

With the stroke of his pen, the President made legal what they had been doing for years illegally; wiretapping everyone. The one tiny provision they made is that the Government can only listen in on the conversation when it is a call originating from outside the United States by a known terrorist to someone in this country who has done business with them in the past.
By that definition, the Bushes and Bin Ladens have been doing business together for decades. I guess there is a lot of tape somewhere with conversations between the President, and them.
The Fourth Amendment has been killed.
That was the amendment that guaranteed us privacy, the right to be secure in our personal papers, safe from government intrusion in our homes, and freedom from any search by the government without probable cause.
A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the second amendment when it told Washington D.C. that the 32 year old ban on Hand Guns inside the city was unconstitutional. That got a lot of press and a lot of overweight white people holding misspelled signs of congratulations over their heads. Not only has the fourth amendment silently been destroyed, but the bill doing so granted immunity to the phone companies and Internet providers that went along with it. The worse part though is Obama voted for the law. Obama. Our great hope to restore all that Bush has done just voted in favor of a law that effectively demolishes every Americans right to privacy.
I guess now that we no longer have any rights to privacy, we might need all those guns.

This is the grand non-conspiracy at work. There never will come a time when the Government will knock at your door to take guns out of your hands. They don't need to. It is far easier to grant people the illusion of control than to use force. Great, you have a hand gun. Good for you. Do you know what the government has? A transcript of every web site you ever visited. A chat log of any conversation you had while on line. A complete list of phone numbers and recorded conversations. Satellites 42 miles above the Earth that can read vin numbers through clouds and the glare of windshield glass. Micro chips embedded in your passport. Get it? They don't need to take your guns because they already have the inside of your head. If they can make you believe attacking Iraq had something to do with what happened on 9/11, you have to ask yourself the much scarier question of what else did they pull off that we don't know about? That is not a fringe element crazy guy question to ponder at all. The fact is, we no longer have any privacy. We know this. But just like the lure of five dollar pizza lunches, we don't care. We will trade our privacy for porn, priceline, prescription medications, google, Youtube, Myspace and craigslist. So what if there is a vault somewhere sucking in all this information. Isn't it to keep us safe from those that want to hurt us anyway?
You will loose privacy, but you will get protection.
You will save money, but you will put on 15 pounds.
Same thing.
We always go for the bait switch. It's almost programed into us as Americans. There is an understanding that a con game is working on us, but we are strangely fascinated by it. And honestly what are you going do? Never use the Internet again? Throw away your cell phone? To a lot of people, the Internet doesn't seem real. You can't point to it. It is intangible. But a gun. It is solid, real, firm in your hand. The idea of that being taken away is easy to imagine. The idea of someone listening in to an instant message conversation seems far more distant. Besides, the reasoning goes, I don't have anything to hide. Right?
I will just eat five dollar pizza three times a week. That can't be that bad. Right?

If this trend continues, the Government giving it's self more power to monitor citizens that have broken no laws and advertisers pushing shitty food that will make you fat and constipated, then the people with headphones in the basement of the Pentagon are going to hear a lot of talk about diarrhea. With all the talk about "black outs," "dropping a bomb" and the next guy walking in and dying because of our "chemical warfare," a lot of Americans are going to end up on no-fly lists just cause there telling another buddy about the state of their bowels. That will be a lot of Americans ending up on the no fly list. Result? The airline industry, already falling apart, will go under all because the country is now a police state with upset stomachs from only being able to afford cheap food. Besides, a nation of fat people with guns is really not a problem for a government with flying drones equipped with heat seeking missiles. Enjoy the illusion of freedom, America. Enjoy the idea of being a free thinker in a land bombarded by commercials every where you turn. Enjoy your guns too. The Poor will not be wiped out with a hail of lead from masked SWAT teams at your door. The poor will be wiped out by coupons to Pizza Hut.

Lips

2008-07-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

There is a a girl I cannot to talk to anymore. Here is the reason; her lips are perfect. Don't read to much poetry into what I am saying here cause what I am saying is that I can only think of one thing when she is talking. It's crazy and absolutely understandable as more than a little creepy, but that fact remains, I can't hear a word she is saying because her lips inspire nothing but blow jobs fantasies.
I cannot be alone in this phenomena. Her lips are a shape and color that are so fucking hot that God love her, she might be saying some wonderful stuff, I just don't know it-her lips are that pornographic perfect!
Porno hot! I know, It's terrible. I'm a pig.
That is the greatest compliment one man can say to another man about the beauty of a woman; she is porno hot. More than primitive I guess, but the unspoken truth. It's a huge compliment. So know it when I say it, her lips are porno hot!
The world wants a blow job from perfect lips on a hot young girl. Who doesn't?
All those Billboards and magazine adds where a slender young girl poses near whatever it is they are selling, poised and confident with moist red lips around a slightly suggestive open mouth in an expression of surprise or wonder perhaps. Whatever. Just what do you think they are playing to when they give you shots like that? It's not your sense of economics.
What do you do when you are confronted with the real thing?
Honestly, not a word, not a single word do I remember from a "conversation" we had recently because thats all I could think about! It's like coming out of a black out or even missing time like alien abductess report.
Maybe thats all thats is happening in the case of UFO's. It's just porno hot women we see naked? I know what you will say to that. You will say, that can't be it because a lot of the sightings of UFO's take place in remote places and desolate areas. I would say to you, thats what makes it perfect!
Too rapey?
She might have told me the cure for cancer or the secret to life but it didn't register. What a curse for her. We must seem like dogs to her. She has to know that as she speaks, what she might read as active listening is just lust. Shameful very bad dirt dirty lust. Fuck!
No one is a winner here. We all lose. It's a horrible trick life has played on her. She should be thought of like a good person. A real person. A wonderful intelligent interesting person. Not the kind of person I imagine her to be; bad.
I hope so anyway.
Sure. It is wrong. But thats the beauty of it. It's fucking wrong! When will people understand that wrong is the biggest turn on in life?
Wrong is the reason we have at least 312 of the 834 know sex positions.
Yeah. There are that many!
I love you and want you to feel good as my partner who is equal in all things, was not the thought that went into 7 of my top 10 all time favorite sex positions. It was dirty Internet inspired acts of poetry porno perfect lips, a chair, and stockings. Fill in the rest with your own imagination.
I think this is honest. I think this is what starts to happen as you age too. Young girls walk by you in the street and you realize, thats never gonna happen like I thought it might some day. That time has passed. I am not saying that I did not have some luck in my day. I had a few hot girlfriends. Everyone should have the hot young girlfriend experience at least once in life. I highly recommend it. I have had the slutty hot girlfriend, the smart hot girlfriend, the young hot girlfriend and of course the crazy hot girlfriend. None of it ended well but it was a hell of a ride for a while.
Lips. Something as simple as lips and I can build a theme park in my mind around them. But I am realistic. There is not another young hot girlfriend experience waiting for me. I walked pass a couple waiting at a bus stop. They each held a greasy oiled up slice of pizza. All I could think was, If I eat that, I won't shit for the next three days.
I don't think you get wiser with age, you just spend more time in the bathroom reading. When someone can quote you a recent magazine article or an authors column, they need a laxative.

The Weekend of Many Sets.

2008-07-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

Monday.
After a three day weekend complete with fireworks and crazy amounts of stage time, slipping back into the real world after playing rock star comedian sucks like you can't believe. Such is life I suppose. I manged to do sets at every club in town this weekend. I pulled off three sets on Saturday and two on Sunday. I love it when that happens! It made up for the disaster that was Santa Cruz last weekend.
A San Francisco 4th of July is basically a life lesson in let down for those who have not enjoyed the spectacle of watching clouds change colors when you wanted to see fireworks. Five minuets into the show, people started leaving. Little kids were perched backwards over strollers hoping for a glimpse of those hoped for explosions, only to be told, "next year, kid." by parents who now had to walk a mile or so back to where ever they had come from. It was a strange scene. Hundreds of people all walking with their heads down as thunder and color lit the clouds from inside. Red, blue, sometimes a sparkle, but no giant blasts of clear and easy to see fireworks.

Saturday night I pulled off a triple play. First, I did a show at Cobb's, then a set at the Clubhouse and then back to Cobb's for the late show. All this required cabs, luck and the generous offer of rides from a new young comic. There is something about doing multiple sets on a weekend night that adds an extra rush to the whole evening. At Cobb's I worked with Rob Riggle. He is a Daily Show corespondent and has an interesting problem. "People think that because I am on the Daily Show, they are going to see smart political comedy. Thats not me."
He is one of the nicest guys I have ever met. Almost the anti-headliner in a lot of ways. No trace of ego and an all around fun guy to hang out with. But, as he said, his comedy is not smart political stuff. It is in fact, pretty basic. I don't think he would disagree with that assessment either. In fact, he was an Improv guy for most of his career until he landed the Daily Show and saw his co-anchors hitting the road as stand-ups and bringing back nice checks.
Fame.
Any degree of it can always be parlayed into stand-up appearances. It is the great thing about stand-up and the worse thing about stand-up. It proves everything that is good and bad about this business. Fame, as this weekends crowds learned, does not always mean great stand-up.
And so it went. I did my set at Cobb's and took off for the Clubhouse. I love the Clubhouse and it's funky almost home made club feeling that it has. Five floors up in a converted office space, they have manged to carve out a name for themselves in San Francisco. More importantly, they provide that much needed place where new comics can find their voice before hitting the bigger clubs and making a play for a larger career. That is my thinking anyway. I don't think it is the prevailing attitude of the owner. My intro was this, "You could of seen this comic tonight at Cobb's, but you were smart and paid half the money to see him here." Don't know how I feel about that exactly. The Clubhouse sees Cobb's and the Punchline as an enemy when those clubs barely know it exists. It's the L.A. San Francisco thing at a micro level. People in San Francisco will go off on how horrible L.A. is, but bring up S.F. down there and people just go, "I love that town!"
I did my set at the Clubhouse with an emphasis on trying out some new stuff. Mostly happy with how that turned out, I left the stage to be taken back to Cobb's by a young comic just starting to take classes at the Clubhouse. He was all smiles and nervous energy. Thanks Dude. Back at Cobb's, it was time for the late show where this time I waited for the crowd to leave so I could pass out fliers for me. Thats when temptation showed up in the form of three young hot girls who wanted to know why I wasn't the headliner. Oh hot young girls! You are my weakness and you know it. When they asked if I wanted to join them at the bar, I said I didn't drink. Well, that cock blocked me pretty efficiently. I would so like to come back to this world as a pair of girls jeans.

Sunday nights crowd at Cobb's was great! I got my check and was off to the Punchline where I found a dead crowd. They were OK for some people and then no where to be found for others. I followed a five minuet video that is best described as quirky. It's not that it wasn't funny, it's just that seeing a video near the end of a stand-up show is sorta like seeing a car commercial in a theater when you expected movie previews. You know? The crowd was done but with in a few minuets of loading and reloading the riff gun, they were on board and we all landed together in funny. I even manged to sneak in some bits before returning to a crazy Irish man in back that cackled like a gay Satan and shared with the crowd that his favorite drug was speed balls. That, and a guy up front who was very upset that somewhere in the middle of it all I made fun of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Yeah. That was my weekend. I am a lucky Dude indeed to pull of sets at all three clubs in town on the 4th of July weekend and I know it.

Cause and Defect

2008-07-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, the big three auto makers gambled everything on Americas love affair with the SUV. Any attempt by environmentalists to curtail their development was met with open hostility. When Congress attempted to pass legislation to improve fuel efficiency standards, Detroit said doing so would cost jobs. When economists pointed out that a lack of diversity is always dangerous for a company, Detroit pointed to record sales. Every report available at the time said the trend of large cars had to end as oil prices would rise in the new millennium. Here were are in 2008. Japan leads the world in Hybrid production of cars. Detroit has invested almost nothing in alternative fuels or vehicles and as a result, General Motors stock fell bellow $10.00 a shares yesterday on the news that oil continues to rise sharply. That is the lowest it's stock has been since the 50's!
If anything screams American denial, this story does. As the Pentagon geared up for war in Iraq, Detroit continued to build SUV's, slashing whatever small budget it had for research into smaller, electric and hybrid cars. Economists warned them that a prolonged war in the Mideast would spell the end for Americans love affair with large gas guzzling cars. Detroit ignored all warning signs and continued to spend vast sums of money to make and market vehicles that had the worse fuel efficiency ever seen. Now, in Bushes last term with his Oil industry buddies making a blatant grab for all the cash they can get through market manipulation, Detroit's big three auto makers are victims of ignoring the future.
Cause and effect, people.
Make something that runs on what is literally dead dinosaurs and you risk becoming a dinosaur too.
Enter John McCain.
He has proposed a contest where the winner would get 300 million dollars for a new battery that could deliver all our energy needs at 30% of the current cost. Actually, not a bad idea. It was his old man speech about it that everyone should listen to that caught my attention. At one point, he says Americans should use their "creatillity" to do this. Ability? Creativity? Creatively? What word did he mean to use or did he just win a contest to invent a new word needed to inspire a new battery?
If anyone knows of a battery like this, run for your life! Detroit, Saudi Arabia and Standard oil will kill you. Honestly. We are not an economy based on gold or digits flying around the Internet. Nope. We are a petroleum based economy. If you upset that balance in anyway, you will be taken care of. Think I am being to X-files about this? We invaded Iraq to get their oil, what would we do to get a battery that would put all those powerful people out of business?

Now I have seen it all...

2008-07-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Muslims in the Scottish district of Tayside are outraged by the appearance of a wide-eyed, 6-week-old puppy on postcards distributed by the local police force, according to the Daily Mail.

Postcards showing police dog-in-training Rebel, a German shepherd born in early December, are causing a furor among the region’s Muslims who believe dogs are "ritually unclean," the Daily Mail reports.

There is a voice in the back of my head that starts to say things decidedly un-P.C. when I hear stuff like this. It's been a growing voice now for a little while. A few days ago I received a call from a woman at Kinko's. I had sent in a print order on line. They were calling to check on something. Her accent was so thick and the connection was so bad, that I had a very hard time understanding what she was saying. Considering that I was spending money to get a quality product and considering they advertise one stop press a button and all is done publishing, it was becoming more and more frustrating to attempt to talk to her. After a while I paused and said very clearly with no anger in my voice, "Could I speak with someone else please?"
There was a pause at her end, a click and then a moment later another voice without an accent.
"Is there a problem I can help you with?" The new voice said in clear English.
"I was having a hard time understanding the young woman on the phone. I was afraid something would get messed up because I didn't understand something." I said a little guilty.
Again, another pause and then with a slightly perceptible attitude I was told, "You might want to try another location next time if our staff is difficult for you to understand."
"Look, I don't want any trouble and I am not some right wing guy inventing issues, even you can hear the static on this line, right? Add to that an accent and it's a little hard to understand what she is saying. Thats all. I just want to make sure my order is fine. After all, you guys called me."

Now I had done it! I had said the one thing you can never say out loud in a liberal city; the truth.
People with accents can sometimes be difficult to understand. Thats it. No bias or racist overtones, just a bad telephone connection with static, a hard accent and now attitude because I was clearly stating a problem that is not suppose to exist in our everybody is equal paradise by the bay.

Now imagine you are a small town police department trying to get the word out about a new phone number. You put an adorable puppy on it to grab peoples attention. After you have printed and handed the cards out with the intention of better serving the population your sworn to protect, you find out that a group in that town is upset because it violates some religious principle you knew nothing about. Man! I can hear that voice in the back of my head. It is my Dad's voice. It is saying some fucked up things, but honestly, who would of thought that a puppy on a card used to inform citizens about a change in police services would of been an issue? Who would of even thought to say, "maybe we should check to see if this is going to piss anyone off?" Besides, and I am going to say it, you are no longer living in a Muslim country. Maybe you should try to be tolerant of your new country. A country whose police does not kick in doors to get information, but instead sends post cards with puppies on it to let people know information. I'm just saying. I am surrounded by people who cheer the slogan, celebrate diversity, but chances are if you printed up invitations to that party, a lot of people would not be able to read the card or be upset with whatever you picked by committee to put on the card.

OK, chances are they are living where they are living because they are refuges from that little war we started. Before FOX news gets a hold of this story and uses it to subtly and not so subtly tell us how crazy "they" are, step back a moment. American is suppose to be a melting pot. Right? But if we are being honest with ourselves, we all know that melting implies conforming and a lot of cultures do not want to conform. Thats fine. Granted, our history is not so good with other cultures anyway. But if postcards with puppies are going to upset people, I really don't know how to take that seriously. Do you?

In other tolerant news, a girl started a Facebook group that has spread. Seems people are changing their middle names to Hussein in honor of Barack Obama. A lot of people have made a big deal out of his middle name. First he was a secret Muslim sent to destroy us then he gets in trouble for having a crazy preacher at the same Christian church he has belonged to for more than 2o years. To demonstrate the sheer ignorance of it all, she simply suggested people change their facebook name to Hussein. It is the "smith" of the Arab world. Maybe there is a Dude trying to get stuff done in Iraq whose middle name is Joe and he is taking shit for it. I don't know. I like the idea behind it. If more people had Hussein as a name, it might not be so alien to people in America. Frankly, the only things we have been any good at integrating into society, is food. French Fry's, Belgian Waffles, Chinese take out, and Pizza. Were not a melting pot so much as we are a 7-11. We will take your food, just not any of the culture that goes with it. If we changed French Fry's to freedom Fry's when America went nuts and was mad at France for not voting for our mess of a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why not rename some food with the name Hussein? Better yet, lets name a dog Hussein.

Blond on Blond reaction!

2008-06-30T15:08:00.001-07:00

Pamela Anderson, on a radio interview in Australia, called Jessica Simpson a Bitch and whore for wearing a real girls eat meat, T-shirt. Where do you want to start with the irony? For a woman with plastic tits, enhanced lips, permanent eye liner and a hair color not found in nature, Pamela Anderson has a lot of nerve telling anyone they are not "real." Don't you think?
I'm not fan of Jessica Simpson either. After all, this is the woman who thought Buffalo wings were from buffalo. Anderson, is a member of PETA. Again, the irony factor is pretty high here. People would protest if they did to animals what Anderson did to herself. Besides, Pamela Anderson doesn't eat meat? Thats not what I saw on that tape.
I have no idea whose side I am on, but a plastic injected rock star cum dumpster getting uppity because she only eats vegetables, is pretty stupid. Two dumb blonds, famous for being famous, are in a war over what goes in their bodies. Insert your own joke here.