Comedian Sven Wechsler's Blog

Hey 2009

2009-01-12T20:14:00.003-05:00

I acknowledge the new year. There. Can we move on. I will not dance. I will not promise. I will not regret.

No, I have not seen Slum Dog Millionaire.

So, that about covers it then.

Talk to you next year.

Haven't posted in a while....

2008-02-11T20:13:00.001-05:00

Now, that's no longer true.

Dental Inquisition

2007-05-04T12:47:00.000-04:00

I've been visiting the dentist at the New York University School of Dentistry. It's cheap, because student doctors work on you. While, you might think this is would be a ticket to increased agony at the hand of a nervous, fumbling student, it's actually pretty good dentistry. I should know, I've had a lot of dental work. I like candy. Plus, the professors are always there looking over students shoulders to make sure they don't accidentally drill into my skull.

What always gets me is the guilt I feel whenever I visit the dentist. When you first visit, there's that questionnaire. "Do you smoke? Do you drink coffee? How much? How many fruits and vegetables do you consume each day?" They dish out more guilt than the clergy. And the punishment for your moral indiscretions is painful torture. It's Draconian. It's like a dental Inquisition, and there's a drill in my head telling me to repent.

At one point, while being confronted about my poor life-decisions by an aspiring BMW driver in a lab-coat, I offered, "I'm a comedian." As if that would explain my poor life choices. As if a bank robber could just say, "Hey, I'm a bank robber. Sometimes you have to shoot a hostage."

Then, the condescending tooth-brush lesson. I know how to use a tooth-brush. I'm just lazy about it. Thank you for making me feel like a 3-year old. Little circles? O.k... Yes, I'll be a good boy. Can I keep the brush? Can I have one of those little tubes of toothpaste? Oh joy!

I suspect most people avoid trips to the dentist, because of the threat of severe damage to their self-esteem more than any fear of physical pain.

BRAINYAXE

2007-04-04T16:37:00.000-04:00

Hey all. Please come check out the new monthly show I'm producing at The Bowery Poetry Club:

BRAINYAXE

Reggie Watts, Craig Baldo, Baron Vaughn, Tom McCaffrey, John Mulaney. An evening of brainy comedy. Hosted by Sven Wechsler. D,J,'d afterparty with free food!

Thursday, April 12th @ 10 p.m.

The Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery New York, NY 10012 (Bowery and Bleekker)

F train to Second Ave | 6 train to Bleecker

www.brainyaxe.com

Rockin' the Casbah

2007-03-28T02:22:00.000-04:00

My new neighborhood is Arab. There's a Mosque across the street and about 20 hookah cafes down the next 3 blocks. I see women in headscarves all the time. Tonight, I went to the kebab place on my corner that is open till 4 a.m. and got a burger. A guy with corn rows walks in, lays his German WWI military helmet (for his motorcycle) on the counter and orders in Arabic. Outside, an older Egyptian (guessing) cabby shouts hello's to his buddy's as The Scorpions blast from his car stereo.

Welcome to the jungle baby.

(The pic is of the 80's German glam-rock band, The Scorpions, for those too old or young to recognize.)

Buying Furniture

2007-03-25T01:32:00.001-04:00

I went to IKEA with my girlfriend and we spent over $500. We didn't mean to. It just sort of happened. We exercised restraint. Several times I put things in the cart and then returned them to the shelf, because... Do we really need a stainless steel pots-and-pans organizer with a hanging spice-rack and hooks for whisks and spatulas over my stove?

No. We don't.

We bought a bed frame, which... we needed. I mean, we're adults and we can't very well keep the mattress on the floor, can we? I mean, we're not peasants. Lay down with dogs, rise.....

We bought a sleeper sofa (glorified futon), because, when friends and family come to visit, we can't make them head-to-toe it on the couch... can we?

And, we bought a medicine cabinet, because the previous tenants unbolted theirs from the bathroom wall and took it with them. (We will be doing the same.)

Now I can't break up with my girlfriend, because we own furniture together. That's how we commit to relationships. We share investment in material possessions. Not to mention the fact that all this furniture we are gathering has been hauled up four flights of stairs. That would have to be one hell of a fight to warrant lugging it all the way back down.

Now, I wasn't thinking about breaking up with her. I'm in love with her. But, I must admit, the ephemeral nature of our union was more romantic than this tangible wood and metal construction project named after blond children.

It's all very appropriate. My name is Sven, and her's is Stefka. We actually sound like we're related to the furniture we bought, cut from the pine forest dream in the "Land of the Midnight Sun".

We're not getting a fucking cat.... yet.

My Bulgarian Vacation and Dental Surgery

2007-03-19T11:49:00.000-04:00

Alright... here goes. As mentioned, I went to Bulgaria. Why, because my girlfriend is Bulgarian. Many of you are just now learning that a place called Bulgaria exists, because I am telling you about it. I could say anything about Bulgaria, and you would have to believe me. I could say, "The national anthem of Bulgaria is Duran Duran's 'Notorious'. They just replace the word 'notorious' with 'Bulgaria'." That is not true. I'm not sure what the national anthem of Bulgaria is, but I'm pretty sure it's not 80's new wave music.

I was worried about this trip, as Stefka is much younger than me, and I'm pretty sure her family did not expect her bringing home a poor comedian as part of the American dream. However, after sitting on the couch of her family home and listening to her step-father's album from the Bulgarian glam-rock band he was in, I felt I could fit right in to this family. To understand what his band sounds like, first picture 4 Bulgarians wearing white leather jump-suits with leather tassel wings under each arm. Then imagine the The Scorpions had sex with Queen. You're there. They were around during communism, so most of their music had to be inspirational as opposed to angry, although occasionslly sung in English. "Leev for your dreems! Theer awwl yooo hyav!". (Mitko, if you’re reading this, please smile with me.)

Stefka's mother and her boyfriend (who I've referred to as stepfather because I felt like it) live in the same apartment Stefka grew up in. It's a nice place, recently remodeled, and with a shower that is the entire bathroom. It took some getting used to, but basically, the shower head just sprays into the middle of the bathroom. The entire room is tiled, and the water just drains in the middle. When you're done, the toilet and sink and all the walls are wet, but they're all water proof. You can pee in the shower and be peeing in the toilet. I've decided that this is the way all bathrooms should be. Somebody make it so.

Stefka and I slept in her old bedroom, which apparently doesn't look much like it did when it was hers (you can never go back). A sleeper sofa was purchased specifically for our visit. Bulgarian sleeper sofas can take a beating. Enough said.

Bulgaria has taken to capitalism quickly, and the whole place is under construction. With the exception of the occasional Romas (often derogatorily referred to as "Gypsies") riding a rickety cart pulled by a donkey through rush-hour traffic, the place is pretty modern. The old Soviet-era gray blocks of apartments and government buildings are still there though. These buildings, no matter what country they're in, always look like misery personified. One gets the impression the communists actually saw happiness as a bourgeois emotion that the victorious proletariats should be liberated from, a process many Eastern Europeans seem to have embraced long before communism (see Dostoyevsky).

Sophia has a large population of stray dogs. Most of these seem fairly well-fed and tame. They're dirty and probably not in perfect health, but people put collars on them to make them look like somebody owns them, apparently so they won't be euthenized. I've seen stray dogs in Africa, and by stray dogs, these guys are doing pretty well. Sophia doesn't have a harsh winter. Often, store owners befriend the dogs, putting food out for them.

There is a lot of public transportation. There are trams, busses and trolleys. I'm not sure which is which, but some of the buses and all the trolleys run on electricity from wires that hang above the streets all over the place. There is a subway system under construction. It has been under construction for 20 odd years, and a common joke in Sophia is that during construction they found the archeological remains of the earlier subway construction.

There are lots of cars, most of which you would never see on an American Street. Many of them are eastern European brands like the “Lada” or weird Russian trucks from the 1960’s. Other than that, there are European versions brands like Toyota and Subaru. There are also B.M.W. S.U.V.’s, which, just like in America, are inevitably full of assholes.

Bulgarians, however, are not a miserable bunch. They're excited about the future and the fact that at the beginning of 2007 they joined the European Union. Even before that, western Europeans have been pouring into Bulgaria buying up Black Sea-front property and ski villas in the Balkan Mountains which run right through the middle of the country. Racism doesn't seem like much of an issue, although every Bulgarian knows about the hundreds of years they spend under the "Turkish Yoke", which either refers to an omelet or tyranny by the Ottoman Empire. Statues of heroes who tried to overthrow the Turks and never reached age 25 are abundant.

I would be able to tell you more about Bulgarian history, but I spent much of my time in Bulgaria at the dentist's office. Yes, the dentist. Little did I know Bulgaria is part of the burgeoning medical tourism industry, and it's know for it's dentistry. Now, by dentist's office, I mean apartment, an apartment in one of those giant Soviet-Era blocks mentioned earlier. Inside the office there is a waiting room, but people don't do much waiting. They walk around and talk to the dentist while she's working on patients. While I lay mouth open having my soul drilled out of me, cousin Sasha would come in and gossip to the lady holding the drill about how his wife can’t cook. She’d answer him, then turn to me and tell me to spit.

I needed X-Rays, and was sent a few blocks away to get them. The “X-Ray Shop” (blury picture to right) was located behind an car repair shop in an alley. You walk down a dingy hallway, give somebody 2 dollars (equivalent) and sit in a folding chair while a Dr: Who-styled laser gun shoots radiation through your body. They give you your x-rays 2 minutes later, and you walk out past the auto mechanic shop.

Upon returning to the living-room/dentist’s office, I am informed I need surgery. Well, why not? When in Bulgaria…. get surgery.

The hospital is a giant, (image to left) somewhat rusty, gray block – “The Ministry of Facial/Crainial Surgery” or something. It’s attached to a military hospital. The elevator up to the specialist’s office is about 3 feet by 3 feet, and don’t go looking for a maintenance certificate. In the hallway outside the office, worried people with bandaged faces wander the halls. I use the bathroom, which is not as clean as the public restrooms in Central Park (NY). One gentleman with a bandage covering most of is head, is in there smoking out of the limited section of his face that he has access to.

After my consultation, I am bounced around a bit. Sent back to the original dentist for more drilling, more x-rays, connected to the head of the department through a friend of Stefka’s mother, go back to the original specialist, get in trouble with the head of the department for going behind his back, and two days later admitted in the morning for surgery. I change into the hospital pajamas, which look disturbing like concentration camp oufits, and wait some more. At one point, I’m in the doctor’s lounge where six doctors and two nurses are sitting and smoking. I didn’t see any of them do shots of vodka, but they probably were just maintaining decorum for me.

Thankfully, the surgical floor looks clean. I even have to wear plastic backs over my slippers to maintain a germ-free environment. Have these people seen the bathroom? I lay on a gurney, while three people attach wires to me, shoot me full of Novocain and occasionally ask “Feel pain? No?”. The rest of the time they joke with eachother about life or death or something. I have no idea. Nobody speaks much English.

And, it’s over. Stefka and I leave the apartment and promptly go climb the mountain at the edge of town. I’ve been at the dentist for half my trip, and need to do something other than lie in chairs and get tortured during my trip to Bulgaria. At the top of the Vitosho (the mountain, which we actually road a rickety ski-lift to the top of), it’s beautiful. There is deep snow, some Bulgarian kids are snow boarding and the mountains of the Balkans stretch out to the horizon. I can’t feel my face.

Busy, busy.....

2007-02-21T01:46:00.000-05:00

I believe somebody actually bitched at me for not posting. It was anonymous, but I do have the feeling that it was not my girlfriend, mother, father, brother or sister, as none of them would refer to me as "man". Well, Stefka (girlfriend) actually did refer to me as "man" for the first couple months we were dating, at which point I kindly requested she graduate me to "dude" or "compadre".

Anyway, to the one non-family-member who reads this, I've been in Bulgaria, and then I was apartment hunting, and now I'm moving, so chill. Yes, I have many tales to tell, but I also have many balls in the air.

I realize there is no excuse for not sitting down and typing a few words on a keyboard for an hour that I am otherwise wasting watching T.V.. I also realize the inevitable apology post for not posting is cliche and also inexcusable, but I am out on stage 4 or 5 nights a week actually speaking words into a microphone in front of real live audiences, so come and see me if you have some desire to receive what I have to offer. My schedule is on my website at www.SvenComedy.com.

No more anonymous comments on this blog. I'm just too sensitive for passive aggressive slights from random electronic ghosts.

Goodnight sir. I said goodnight!

Product Placement

2007-01-14T18:16:00.000-05:00

I had a dream last night in which somebody gave me a Blow Pop . There was no stick coming out of it, but the wrapper was unmistakable. I 'm nervous this is the beginning of a terrible trend of product placement in my dreams, and worse, that I will receive no financial remuneration for such advertising. It's widely known by very few people that my dreams are major conduit to a highly coveted demographic of 20 to 35-year old males with limited spending money and deep-seeded suspicions about corporate psychological warfare. I would ask that whoever is in charge of my R.E.M. sleep cycle take into consideration the ramifications of the opening of this market.

While companies like Daimler Chrysler and The Church of Scientology will pay handsomely to have their vehicle driven by my mother into an awkward naked-at-the-coffee-shop with Parker Posey and Barack Obama conversation on dog breeds, or their logo tattooed on the Elephant delivering pizza to me in the steppes of northern Russia - the sanctity of this last respite from the tangible reality that dominates existence must not be corrupted.

Furthermore, whoever is writing my dreams needs to stop with the remakes of previously released dreams. I'm noticing a disturbing trend of "re-imagined" versions of the "Sven Saves Humanity from a Nuclear Holocaust" and "Sven Can Fly and Nobody Seems Alarmed By It" premises.

If these trends continue, I will forgo R.E.M. sleep completely and go directly from deep sleep to consciousness, avoiding the dream-world completely. This may seem like a toothless threat, but the type of people who occupy the various rolls in my dreams are not the kind of people you want unemployed and out on the streets.

Happy New Year

2007-01-02T11:41:00.000-05:00

Well, glad that's over. Managed to get through it all without losing my girlfriend, family members, reputation and credit rating; Coincidentally, my resolutions for the new year consist of keeping the aforementioned through the next Winter Solstice. I would also like to become a better conversationalist, or, at the very least, become better at feigning interest.

I hate to be cliché in my holiday cynicism, but I really like the quiet solitude of winter, and nothing spoils peaceful introspection like ritual obligation. The annual parties for various institutions that hardly deserve an annual party (offices, couples, non-existent deities, miracle oils) weigh on my mind and poor conversation skills like large breasts on a girl with low self-esteem - The feeling that simile just gave you is the feeling I have at a New Years Eve party. And, yes, large breasts are a metaphor for being extremely intelligent.

By the way. Rapper’s Delight is playing in the coffee shop right now, and that song really stands the test of time.

French Vagrants

2006-12-20T23:50:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention, I was in Montreal, Canada last month. I flew up there with the same girlfriend mentioned in the previous post to get her visa. For some reason, to get a visa to stay in the United States, you have to leave the United States and get the visa at a U.S. consulate in another country.

Montreal is a big city in Quebec, Canada where everybody insists on speaking French no matter how loudly you speak English to them. There were a fair amount of vagrants around, and I have to say; Homelessness, and mental illness with a French accent are adorable. They all seem like characters out of Les Misérables.

There's more I could say right now about Montreal - the casino, the Biodome, the "mountain", a thousand strip clubs, but frankly, when you live in New York City, every other city is .... not New York City.

Bulgarian Couch Surfing

2006-12-20T23:35:00.000-05:00

I just bought my ticket to Bulgaria. I will be going with my girlfriend to meet her mother and grandparents. Her mother is very excited about our visit, as Stefka has not been home in three years. She has purchased a sleeper sofa for us to sleep on. I'm not sure if the sleeper sofa is the Bulgarian version of dowry, but, if so, I'm not looking forward to convincing the people at the Tyrolean Airlines baggage counter to put it on the plane.

I'm a Mover

2006-12-03T18:45:00.000-05:00

I’m a mover. I move people and things. I do this with a 26-year-old van and 34-year-old muscles. It’s hard, lucrative work. I’m my own boss. I’m off the books.

I get most of my business advertising on Craigslist, an online message board with portals all over the globe. Craigslist is an open marketplace of sex, love, televisions, housing, sarcasm and mental illness; an electronic flea market peddling the cast-off possessions of the middle and lower classes, the apartments to keep them in, and the lives to animate it all. Anonymous and intimate at the same time, people who’ve never met can come together to exchange cats and coitus in a black-and-white environment; tantamount to getting directions from a Russian in broken Spanish, it’s to the point, dictated by necessity.

People are nervous when moving their lives. There are various kinds of moves; divorce moves, marriage moves, eviction moves, graduation moves, new job moves, cheaper housing moves, I suspect I’m an artist who should live in New York City moves. It’s always a big deal to the person moving and almost never a big deal to me, the mover.

I show up, and I just want them to be ready. That’s the most important thing. It seems obvious, that one should prepare to pick up their lives and shift them geographically, that one should pack and protect their possessions, but, apparently, it’s not obvious. Often, I show up to find the remains of the previous evening’s drinking binge. The customer, overwhelmed by having to collectively assess the objects that fill their life, turns to the bottle.

I sometimes wish my customers were coke-heads. Coke-heads pack. Drunks reminisce. Drunks pick up the book, and, before throwing it in the box, remember the girl who gave them the book, the argument about communicating, the need for another drink. Drunks forget to tape the bottom of the box. Drunks put a hundred books in a box, a hundred pound un-taped box of books at the top of a 4^th floor walk-up.

Sometimes, upon arriving, I realize that I am, by necessity, the only person who has ever visited the apartment. Twice, I found an apartment filled with used q-tips. They were everywhere, on the open areas of the floor, and behind dressers and under coffee tables – hundreds of used q-tips. On one of these occasions, in Long Island City, the q-tips were interspersed with coins, mostly quarters, a few hundred dollars worth of coins, and one large jug of change which we were instructed to throw out. The customer, an effeminate 30-something-year-old man with good manners and the disturbingly strong odor of lotion, had also never met a record he couldn’t purchase. Most of these albums would be considered kitsch, married couples singing Bavarian hymns smiling in tight yellow shorts on velvet couches, but I suspected no conscious irony in their presence in his collection. The job consisted of loading the van with 50 crates of records, 10 garbage bags of clothing and abandoning all else to a landlord who would mostly likely burn the apartment down while weeping quietly on the sidewalk.

While our vinyl obsessed, ear cleaning compulsive, lotion reeking host ran out to the store, no doubt for more q-tips, my Moldovan helper and I filled our pockets with hundreds of soon to be abandoned quarters from the bottom of this hopeless wishing well. We occasionally took guilty sidelong glances at each other as we peeled them off the floor, regret that had more to do with the greedy lapse in hygiene we were trespassing than the unwarranted notion that we were stealing. Perhaps we collected enough to buy tetanus shots.

I later deposited the albums, garbage bags and, it turns out, great conversationalist, at a home in a suburb of Boston, where his unsuspecting and unfortunate new roommate helped carry a plague from my van into an immaculate two-bedroom.

I love my van. I’ve loved all my vans. They are traveling boxes of security. Generally, all of my earthly possessions can fit into a van, although I have been trying to avoid proving this to myself as of late. This particular van is a 1990 Dodge B350 Ramwagon. It has a huge 8 cylinder engine and almost never breaks down. When it does, I forgive it, because it’s my van.

It’s 14 feet long with windows all around, like a church van, although in it’s previous life, it was owned by a university in Texas before being purchased by a gay accountant for the sole purpose of moving to New York. He sold it on Ebay – to me. Since then, it’s been broken into 4 times, had most of its front end replaced, received new tires, many cans of white spray paint to cover graffiti and rust, gained a home-made roof-rack and visited Pittsburgh, Boston, D.C., Philly, Baltimore, Richmond and all points in between. I’ve put forty thousand miles on it in a year-and-a-half. It was built in Canada.

Volume is a puzzle. Couches are not big. They only take up the volume of air they displace. That is to say, they can be surrounded on all sides and in all orifices, and I am the conductor of the symphonic geometric orgy that takes place in my van daily.

Nobody thinks I can fit their stuff in my van. They have generally been wrong. It has 9 by 5 by 5 feet of cargo space, and a roof-rack. I strap mattresses to the roof rack, and, if necessary, anything else that attempts to refuse inclusion. I am limited only by aerodynamics, for which I have little respect. On one or two occasions, I have almost doubled the height of my van. I have only once gone under a bridge and lost the legs of a kitchen table, and only once forgotten to strap down a mattress, which may still be in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.

My downfall is Ikea. Ikea furniture is not built to be moved once assembled. Optimistic, upwardly mobile youngsters bring compact boxes named after blond children home and with dowel and metal hook engineering, guided by Swedish hieroglyphics, puzzle together sheets of air, woodchips and Viking spit into clean, modern Scandinavian furniture. It works great as a thin, pine-laminated veil over emotional and financial poverty, but it doesn’t last a trip up a staircase.

I defend Ikea, even as I’m busy destroying their products during a move, because I’m Swedish, and an insult directed at Sweden is an insult directed at my mother and her cooking. Ikea isn’t to blame. People who don’t dismantle their Ikea furniture before moving are to blame. Ikea IS made of air and woodchips, and that’s why it’s cheap, environmentally friendly (pine is a renewable resource) and easy to assemble and disassemble. It’s not built to move whole. If you’re upset that you bought something that should move without being dismantled but falls apart into an environmental disaster every time you move it, you have a Ford Econoline, not an Ikea.

When I think of it, I explain to the customer that I can’t be responsible for assembled Ikea furniture breaking during a move, but usually I forget, and, if it breaks I’ll shrug and say “It’s Ikea crap, man. The stuff’s disposable.” - The equivalent of a waiter blaming his errors on an innocent kitchen.

Now, just so we’re clear, I’m not a careless mover. I don’t break things often, but, some damage is inevitable. If you wanted a perfect mover who was insured for damages, you would be paying two or three times what you’re paying me. I’m not quite the back-alley abortionist of movers, but I don’t have a medical degree either. I’ll scratch your coffee-table, but I’ll deliver your guitar unscathed, and most of my customers have guitars.

I’m a semi-professional mover. I’m a writer, a comedian, a recovering addict, a friend and I’m good at moving people, strange, flawed, nervous people with too much crap and nowhere to put it.

1969 Econoline

2006-11-24T20:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve always owned vans. The first one I got was a 1969 Ford Econoline. I paid for it in some minimal amount of cash and half a pound of Mexican brick weed, the kind that gets smuggled across the boarder crunched into its densest possible form and inserted into something innocuous, like a car driven by a drug dealer. I also bought a dog with the same currency during this period of my life. This speaks as much to the proprietors of the establishments I shopped at as it does to who I was at the time.

The van was metallic green with a yellow Starskey and Hutch stripe on each side – think of a more angular Nike swoosh. The grill and round headlights spoke of it’s age, as did the font of it’s logo. It had the obligatory shag carpeting on the floor, walls and ceiling. Homemade benches and camping utilities and captains chairs. By the time I came into possession of this vintage love-machine, it was 1993, and the carpet had absorbed the sordid events of dirty hippies, metal heads and deteriorating dreams for a quarter of a century. I had delusions of rebuilding the green machine to its former glory, but these disintegrated in clouds of pot smoke at a slightly faster rate then the sheet metal of the Econoline was disintegrating into rust.

The steering linkage was so worn out that one could turn the wheel 180 degrees without affecting the direction of the tires. This didn’t stop me from sailing it home from Boulder, Colorado, where I was attending university, to Deerfield, Illinois one summer and parking it in my parents suburban driveway. The neighbors on our quiet street must have considered keeping their kids off the streets upon seeing this leaking abduction mobile lurking in a puddle of it’s own filth on Linden Ave.. My father insisted on bringing the beast to a shop to make my trip back to Colorado slightly less suicidal, and the mechanic, after making a couple repairs (the equivalent of dropping a bucket of water in an empty well) suggested that the vehicle wasn’t worth throwing away, as it was likely to voluntarily evaporate into vapor within the week. None the less, I was adamant that the first piece of shit transportation I had ever bought with my own money/drugs would not be abandoned in the land of large yards and small minds. It would return to the land of big mountains and cloudy minds.

The van should not have been on a highway. The aforementioned steering issue and long stretches of Nebraska highway combined to make my job more akin to sailing a large yacht in treacherous waters than driving. I would spin the wheel from one end of its free zone to the other, bouncing back and forth as if tacking upwind. I must have yelled “coming about” a few times to my first mate, an unfortunate cannabis-traded Golden Retreiver – Wolf hybrid fighting for balance in the back, wondering at her fateful ownership.

I should also mention, that the van contained everything I owned, as upon leaving Boulder, I had been homeless, one week out of my lease and sleeping in my ship. When, somehow, I made it back to Colorado, I lived in the Econoline for another week or two, going to my job as a bellman/elevator attendant at the Hotel Boulderado and leaving my poor dog with a bowl of water and food under the van to fend for herself in the blocks surrounding my parking space. I would come home in the evening and call her name – Sasha, and 9 times out of ten, she would come, sometimes a day later.

I found housing with friends and the Econoline slowly faded from use. I can’t exactly recall what became of that van. It’s lost in smoke to me. Perhaps it did finally evaporate. Perhaps I sold it to some naïve sap. Maybe it’s been reborn into new purpose and identity as I have in the many years since we parted company. Most likely, it’s rusting in a field somewhere in Colorado. You can see it from the highway, sinking in the tall grass, waiting for the snow to blanket it and the many stories it has carried.

Ignoring Everybody is Better at a Coffee Shop

2006-10-13T15:44:00.000-04:00

I could stay home and not pay attention to other people. It would be easy. Other people are not there... in my room I mean. But, it's much more enjoyable to ignore other people at a coffee shop. I just bring my laptop and zone out, you know? This way, I can keep track of them, in case they try to sneak up on me or grab my attention through some trickery or antics.

Sometimes I go into the crowded streets of Manhattan to avoid the clawing, needy reach of society. There, on 1st Avenue (a famous street in Manhattan), I weave through the crowd, avoiding their touch, their eye contact.

I'm king of the world.

Avert your eyes troglodyte.

Is it me, or did the Velvet Underground suck? The only song I like of there's is the Cowboy Junkies cover of Sweet Jane, which is nothing like the original. I'm pretty sure it was all Andy Warhol behind their fame.

There's a giant map of the world on the wall at the coffeeshop I'm at. It's old. Still has "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" on it, and Yugoslavia is one country. It's a climate map, so Greenland is covered in white to represent the fact that it's covered in a glacier. I don't understand why they never got around to switching their name. It's just silly.

Death.... yes, a happy post.

2006-09-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

Last night I could not get to sleep. I kept tossing and turning worrying about dying. I have no immediate plans to die, or any information regarding the proximity of said event, just a nagging fear of my inevitable demise. For some reason I go through my resume during these moments of angst, as if death is a position I need to qualify for, and frankly, my resume just doesn't hold up.

It is my understanding that I will be allowed to die whether I am qualified or not, but who wants to die and have everybody whisper at their funeral how unqualified you were for this level of advancement? "Who does he think he is. He was never even approved for a mortgage, let alone a peace prize." Does anybody else hand out peace prizes, or is it just the Nobel gang? Perhaps I can win a Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Peace Prize.

Now, I'm an Atheist, so I'm not worried about an acceptance committee at a gate asking why I never held any student council office, just a lot of passive aggressive mumbling at a funeral. I'm extremely sensitive about the level of sarcasm that will occur at my funeral.

To most, it seems, having a family, a career and a house is a successful life story. But seeing as one can achieve these things through a lottery ticket and a broken condom and a lack of imagination, I'm just not sure this represents the level of honors I'm gunning for. I do buy the occasional lottery ticket, but this has more to do with my having too much imagination.

Where I live in Brooklyn, owning a Cadillac Escalade seems to be a good marker of accomplishment. Judging by the size of most of these Escalade owners, their shiny tanks will have to double as coffins in which to bury their fat asses. And, considering they blew every cent they had on the Escalade, it's the only coffin they will be able to afford.

It is doubtful that I will run for office, although I have spent time running from officers. I have, in the past won a few drinking contests but have been removed from such competition by doctors and the aforementioned officers. I doubt I will cure AIDS or Cancer, so it appears that I will have to resort to curing boredom. Excellent. Glad I got that sorted out. Now I can get some sleep. Rest up for the battle ahead and all that.

Mr. Productivity

2006-09-07T16:09:00.000-04:00

I have an amazing ability to be counter-productive... or maybe it's dis-associatively productive... well, you decide.

I have something to do, like write the comedy that will keep me in cocaine and Learjets for years to come, but I manage to find something else to do - that is also work - instead. I've done laundry when I should be updating my blog, changed the oil on my car when I should be writing a screenplay and gone grocery shopping to avoid sending mailings to bookers and agents. It's as if I prefer mindless menial labor to meaningful mental labor. AS IF.

I don't like cleaning, or changing oil per say. I'm pretty sure that it's just easier to see the fruits of my labor with such tasks. I can see the clean room. I can't see the positive reception to my brilliant musings. Maybe I'm afraid that I will fail. Is it fear of success? Then why this constant fear of failure? If I'm afraid of failure and afraid of success, does that make me mediocre? But I'm pretty sure I have a fear of mediocrity too - I mean, doesn't everybody? Don't answer that. I've lived in the suburbs.

I'm not lazy. I'm always working. Even when I was being a drug addict, I made sure I was a drug dealer so I wouldn't have to depend on hand-outs. I'm very self-reliant; wouldn't ask for a life-preserver (or heroine) if drowning and all that.

I'm very good at preparing to do work, but never doing it. I've bought pens, expensive electronic equipment such as a video camera, voice recorder and laptop to streamline the recording of my rapid flow of creativity, so that no ideas would slip through - out into the ocean of lost and forgotten premises. I have sat down at my computer with the full intention of writing my observations and imaginations in sweeping prose and punchline only to find myself spending two hours surfing Ebay in search of a laptop on which to record the same when at a coffee-shop on some future date - and I have never in my fucking life been productive in a goddamned coffee shop. There is nothing creatively inspiring about Starbucks. Nor am I inspired in any independent coffee shop whose entire ambience is dedicated to seeming as un-Starbucks-like as possible.

I quit smoking in part because it is the perfect excuse to procrastinate. I may have to abandon coffee for the same reason. Also, it's hard to have a cup of coffee and not a cigarette. If you're going to make your mouth taste like shit, you really have to go all the way... but I digress.

I could make promises, but I've made promises in the past. I'm just going to try to make a point of being a total slob with a broken car and dirty clothes. This is obviously the only path to glory.

Here's some Ping Pong:

No Smoking in the Rain

2006-09-05T17:42:00.000-04:00

Rainy, rainy day. I'm not sure that I actually enjoy rainy days, so much as I enjoy the fact that I don't seem to be nearly as affected by them as those arround me. I suppose I could wax on about my Swedish heritage and how hundreds of generations of living under gray skies in the "land of the midnight sun" have steeled the Swedes and those whose fathers scored Swedish girls against the depression induced by gray skies. But Sweden has one of the highest national suicide rates in the world, so that would not ring true. Swedes apparently react to rain and clouds by closing the garage door on their running Volvo... but, knowing Swedes, they probably wear their seatbelt for this operation.

I think part of what appeals to me about rain is the same as what appeals to me about snow. It sends everybody running for shelter. It clears the streets. For the most part, your biggest assholes, those obsessed with their appearance or too spoiled to risk a chill or any discomfort whatsoever, run for safe confines, and the world outside achieves a sort of asshole-less utopian feel. Yes, I know it's not perfect. Some assholes are water-proof or so relish the shittyness they dole out on a daily basis, even inclement weather won't keep them from their calling. But, there are less of them. (The preceding paragraph could have easily been replaced by quoting Robert Deniro's character in Taxi Driver, saying the famous line, "Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.")

I quit smoking two days ago. This began as an act of bravado following my girlfriend commenting that I smoke too much as we sat on the couch watching television. I immediately broke my last cigarette in half and said, "O.K. I quit." Very macho. If only quitting cocaine had involved jumping a motorcycle over flaming barrels, or a pond full of piranhas, I might have kicked it much sooner than I did. Unfortunately most positive change in the world is the work of un-romantic, fairly tedious drudgery... like Non-Governmental Organizations, public education and highway adoption.

Anyway, what my lungs need is a real rain to come and wash the scum out of them, but I suppose I'll just breath in and out for 20 years and see what happens.

Macy's Fireworks - NYC

2006-07-04T23:14:00.000-04:00

I ended up going to the park at the end of Grand St. In Williamsburg. Thought I was so smart. Brought one of my moving blankets so we could stake out a spot. The place filled up, and then, once the show started, we realized we had our view obstructed by a giant tree. About 500 other people also realized this and a great exodus begun to break through the wall of factories and power plants to the East River... to the light.

We ended up a few blocks north looking through a chain-link fence, surrounded by Puerto Ricans, Indonesians, Polish, Chinese, hipsters, African Americans.... I quickly remembered that fireworks are always fireworks... really not that impressive. But, the ethno-melting pot factor of the couple thousand people wandering the streets around me did actually make me feel patriotic, which is a feeling that rarely rises to the surface these days.

It was actually pretty cool, like a Dead show, but I wasn't on acid.

It's my Birthday

2006-06-21T10:06:00.000-04:00

Joy.

I'd like to say that I'm either excited or depressed about the occasion, but I am neither.

Frankly, it just doesn't mean that much to me. No, I don't see this as a sign of depression. I'm not. I've just never been big on birthdays. They're artificial markers of time gone by. Yes, I know that's not a revelation, but I really believe it. I mean, I hope my car insurance goes down. I hope my girlfriend doesn't realize how much older I am than her. But, generally, I just don't care.

Anyway, I'm driving down to D.C. to see the family before everybody heads off to different corners of the planet. My parents are going back to Venezuela. My brother is already in Darfur. My sister-in-law and niece and nephew will be off to Budapest before moving to Stockholm, where my brother will join them. Somehow all this makes pursuing a career in show-business in New York City seem less exciting. While I'm in D.C. I will register as a resident, because New York auto insurance is ridiculous. My sister has a house there, so it will all look good on paper. Don't tell.

I'm done promising to keep up with this blog. I also don't believe there are too many people waiting with baited breath for my next installment. It's not low self-esteem. It's just that I'm so inconsistent about it, that my dedicated readers have long moved on to more prolific bloggers. And that's fine.

Love Sven

Happy Days....

2006-04-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

Have accidentally stumbled into a relationship that doesn't require a constant suppression of inner-dialogue. Would write more about it, but I suspect this would be unwise. Best to leave well-enough alone...

I just spent an entire weekend doing almost nothing but wandering around and looking around. It was perfect. I believe people who are in the habit of labeling such moments call this "living in the now". Fortunately, I managed to avoid those people during my weekend, which is part of the reason it wasn't annoying.

Thompkins Square Park was full of thirty-something, used-to-party-artsy-wild-lower-east-siders and their open-minded-urban-ironic-t-shirt toddlers. I'm sure we all look forward to the smug "I grew up in the lower-east-side and remember when...." pseudo-intellectual hipster pricks these kids will inevitably grow up to become. For now, they play with soccer balls and use words they don't fully grasp in hopes of impressing their poet-dread-lock fathers. It was nice.

There is a Pakistani guy at the corner of Bowery and Bleeker just north of CBGB's who has a vending cart called Serendipity or Karma or something. The whole thing is decorated like one of those Cornucopias from Pilgrims Thanksgiving illustrations had exploded onto a hot-dog stand. Even a simple hotdog comes in a spinach tortilla, with soy-beans, turkey-bacon, tahini, green onions.... It's good but a little aromatically confusing. Meanwhile the proprieter (a really nice guy) seems to be suggesting subtly that he is of Native American descent with long braids on each side of his head and, for some reason, a Caribbean accent. It's there from like 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. many nights, although, don't hold me accountable, as it would seem things like rain or one two many joints will cause our culturally plural restaurateur to leave the shop in the garage for the evening.

Item... Punk is now gay. I'm not sure when this happened, but I've been noticing that most of the mohawks, army jackets and combat booted lower east siders are gayer than (insert obligatory homosexual cliché here). The mohawk is the new assless leather chaps.

New graffiti on my van every week. Fortunately the local Brooklyn graffiti artists seem to have limited their color pallet to white, and my van is white with the exception of the back door. It had been falling off, so I went to the junk-yard in Jamaica Queens and replaced it with a black door. Soon, however, thanks to this plague of monochromatic urban vandals, said black door will be white. Until that time, "Chico 49ers" has fended off the existential angst of his seemingly meaningless, disenfranchised life by advertising his earthly presence on the back of a 1990 Dodge Ramwagon that has been known to travel to the far reaches of the Upper West side (a place that would otherwise not be aware of said life-force).

I’ll write more from now on. I promise.

Cryptic

2006-02-09T18:17:00.000-05:00

I’ve been swingin’ a little wide lately. It’s odd. This is the most frustrating business, but I know it’s going to always be frustrating, so why am I spending all my amo right now? I’ve got 25 years of fight left (Give or take), and I’m beating myself up over this little moment. I don’t know what I’m talking about either. I just wish my demons would form themselves into some sort of cohesive figure. I’m beginning to suspect they are of my own creation. My vague “everybody’s so full of shit” theory is tough to act on.

So, ladies, my excruciating loneliness is beginning to boil over into action, clumsy, il-advised action. Stay clear. It’s not healthy for anybody involved. If you find yourself accidently making out with me, smile sheepishly and slowly back away. This too shall pass. There, now I’ve made sure this entry will be of major concern to family members who are in the habit of reading my blog.

I’m moving soon. I’ve decided paying $1500 a month in rent is idiotic for someone in my position, which is the position of somebody who doesn’t want to pay $1500 in rent. I’ve decided I’m someone who wants to pay $700 or less in rent, and that it would be nice if that $700 included utilities and a roommate who isn’t a cocaine addict/dealer (had problems with this in the past). It’s funny. I used to look at the “roommate wanted ads” that said “no drugs” with disdain, assuming the potential roommate was an uptight, obsessive-compulsive who wore sweater-vests and meant it, but now this requirement peeks my interest. I’m actually more interested in living with someone who did drugs but stopped than someone who never did drugs. Because, people who never did drugs are still very likely to start doing them with all the gusto of the newly converted, and who needs to wake up and find a born-again meth tweaker in the livingroom.

Anyway, the long and short is that I’d rather work 10 hours a week to cover the rent and such instead of 25 hours a week. Yes, it’s a tough life, but don’t forget I spend my nights running around the city begging stagetime from people I often don’t respect to get up and speak to an audience I don’t respect, all so I can find self-respect. And, that’s taxing.

For the record, my favorite food is Port Wine Cheese. I like it on crackers.

That is all.

Random Evening

2006-01-13T15:06:00.000-05:00

So I went out last night with the intention of doing on open-mic. I was tired and just figured I owed it to standup to make an effort at something for the evening, but when I got to the place, I realized I was going to be waiting all night to do 5 minutes in front of a crowd that was only half watching, and I lost interest. Two young comics I know come up and say they're heading to the Cringe Humor show at the Laugh Factory and do I wanna go? I'm not really a Cringe Humor guy - dick/racist jokes that are supposed to be edgy and push boundaries of intollerance to bad racist jokes, but I was bored and looking for an excuse to leave.

We go. Rich Vos is hosting. Man. Not a fan. Maybe a little more time in the tanning booth will make you feel 21 again Rich. It's what I expect for the most part, and I sit through it patiently. God knows why. Juvenile, pedantic shit. "Ain't no reason to hate people for the color of their skin. [insert racist joke] It's just jokes folks." Fucking kill me. As I'm leaving I run into Katie Lazerus (sp?) and Dan Allen who are just leaving the "World's Funniest Reporter" show, which Katie has won. I've met Katie a few times and saw her set at Carolines "New Class Clowns" (which I am finally booked on March 14th), where she was brilliant, and an audience nurtured on Larry the Cable Guy and Jessica Simpson didn't quite follow . She is a brainiac and so is Dan Allen. They invite me to join them for a drink, and we end up at a bar in the Westin, where I'm feeling underdressed in ripped jeans and a hoodie. We're sitting with the reporters from News Day or some equally yellow publication and the Pentagon correspondent for CNN, Jamie McIntyre (Pictured). Now, he should be interesting, but he, along with his wife, is a pompous ass. At one point she (wife) goads him to tell us why Rumsfeld likes her. At another they ask the waiter where he is from (Serbia). Our high level Pentagon reporter says "Didn't we bomb you guys?" "Yes, it was terrible thing." "Hey, no hard feelings." Wife: "We did it for the right reasons. You forgive us right?" All this with a jokey, smarmy tone. I wanted to eat broken glass. I really wanted the waiter to blow his top. This and these fucking journalists (not Katie, who writes some stuff for the NY Times, but is really a standup comic), are doling out observations about standup comedy. I'll let Katie blog her own story, but man, she has a good one. One night boring the living shit out of an audience of friends and co-workers, and they know what the standup life is all about.

Anyway, I got a ride to Union Square from Dan and called it a night, but Dan pointed out that the way my evening was going, if I accepted one more randam invitation I would probable end up on the 105th floor of a building in a penthouse with a dead body and a pile of cocaine, going "Man, I should have called it a night."

P.S. I would like to add that my observations about the people involved in this evening are my own and nobody elses. Also, there was on guy from Boston, an entertainment reporter I think, who was a decent guy and had actually done some standup in the past. I would also like to add that I was a journalism major in college and worked as a reporter and editor for a few years before falling into comedy. Do not check this piece for style or spelling.

Rollin' along....

2006-01-10T18:55:00.000-05:00

Did the opening set at the Bowery Poetry Club's O'Debra Twins "Show and Tell" last night. Fifteen minutes of the kind of comedy I can't get away with doing most places. I actually stayed until closing and now know how the show ends. Won't reveal here. Those girls have incredible patience though - sitting in the front for most of the show and watching every act. Not every act is that watchable, but they stick it out.

I think I'm going to call the Bowery my home.

Holiday Limbo

2005-12-27T15:33:00.000-05:00

In limbo between Christmas and New Years. I'm not much obsessed with the holidays, but the effect on my environment makes an awareness of this period inevitable. When you don't drink, you notice drunk people. And when you don't god, you notice god people.

I just returned from Washington D.C., where I visited my brother and sister and family for Christmas. My family used to pay lip service to Hanukah, as we are half and half (my father is a Jew, and my mother a Swede/Lutheran - all atheists). But, Hanukah has lost its footing over the years, and just can't compete with the neon distraction of electrified Pagan Jesus abuse.

My brother has two children, 3-year-old Aaron and 5-year-old Anna. Both of whom run on high octane and require attention at all times. Fortunately I relate to children on a one-on-one basis more readily than adults, so I spent most of the weekend discussing Spongebob and junglegym diplomacy with the two. No existential angst can withstand the genius of "Be the monster, and I'll hide."

We took the inevitable trip into the city to look at the monuments on the mall. The Vietnam, Korean and WWII memorials continue the tradition of turning this place into a glorious cemetery, with Lincoln at one end somberly looking out the cost of "freedom". I'm not completely ironic about that, but I couldn't bring myself to type "freedom" without quotes, as it has been used as a catchphrase and weapon by politicos for so long, the word seems to lost some of its innocence. No matter where you are in this city, you can see the Washington Monument pointing skyward in tribute to Egypt. Between this and the pyramid on the dollar bill, one begins to wonder that the hell the pharos have on us.

Looming in the coming week for me is New Years. Now a year-and-a-half sober, I don't know what to do with this holiday. Going to a "meeting" and listening to the tragic, self-absorbed tales of A.A. is not tempting. Going to a party and watching the everybody actively drink themselves into who they wish they could be without drinking is also not tempting. I'm sure I will make no plans and end up doing something last minute that will involve the latter rather than the former. It's not that hard not to drink. It's just hard to be around people who are drunk without being drunk.

Alright... back soon.