Wednesday, November 29, 2006
BABY TALK IS CHEAP
I went on a first date with a woman, and beforehand her best friend told me that she finds it sexy when men talk baby talk to her. So I talked baby talk to her, but I think she found me creepy. I don't know why.
During dinner, I said, "WHEN ARE WE HAVING A BABY? WE'RE NAMING IT PHIL AFTER MY GRANDFATHER!!!"
* * * * *
I don't get baby talk. I mean, if your child started talking like, "Who's a woogie boogie googie gaga? You are! yes, you are!" you'd call a doctor, because that kid ain't right.
* * * * *
Here's some marx Brothers stuff:
Here's Groucho and Sinatra singing a song. I don't know what this clip is from, but I'd love to see the entire thing:
Here's a fantastic clip from Groucho's game show You Bet Your Life. I'll tell you, bless that old lady, I sure as hell wouldn't want to tell Groucho to put out his cigar.
Thanks to Chico's unfortunate gambling problem, his brothers were sometimes dragged into doing some embarassing stuff, like this home perm commercial:
|
During dinner, I said, "WHEN ARE WE HAVING A BABY? WE'RE NAMING IT PHIL AFTER MY GRANDFATHER!!!"
* * * * *
I don't get baby talk. I mean, if your child started talking like, "Who's a woogie boogie googie gaga? You are! yes, you are!" you'd call a doctor, because that kid ain't right.
* * * * *
Here's some marx Brothers stuff:
Here's Groucho and Sinatra singing a song. I don't know what this clip is from, but I'd love to see the entire thing:
Here's a fantastic clip from Groucho's game show You Bet Your Life. I'll tell you, bless that old lady, I sure as hell wouldn't want to tell Groucho to put out his cigar.
Thanks to Chico's unfortunate gambling problem, his brothers were sometimes dragged into doing some embarassing stuff, like this home perm commercial:
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
THREE REVIEWS
So I've been looking for writing work, and I recently an answered ad for a website looking for someone to write reviews of hip, edgy nightspots. You needed to submit three samples in their style, which I did.
The only problem is, I can't afford to go nice places, so I wrote three reviews of places I can afford.
I would like to emphasize that these are three reviews I really submitted, and that I had to change the names of the second two places because those are both true stories and I don't want my staff lawyer having a heart attack:
EAT FRESH! IN WILLIAMSBURG
Dining Out At Brooklyn’s Hippest, Edgiest Restaurant
It’s been a long time since you’ve eaten a really good sandwich on fresh-made bread with crisp vegetables and delicious, soft, hand-cut meats.
And now that you’ve forgotten what that’s like, you’re ready for the hippest, edgiest new addition to the Williamsburg culinary scene: Subway Sandwich.
On “out there,” artistic Bedford Ave., Subway is conveniently located next to a car service that will get you the hell out of Brooklyn once the L train stops running at 11pm.
Subway sandwich is a welcome respite from the neighborhood’s booming nightlife, whether you’re a tourist from Scandinavia, or a tourist from Germany, or even a production assistant from Minnesota who likes to refer to your Greenpoint Ave. apartment as being located in “Williamsburg South.”
Be ready to brave the witheringly scornful looks of struggling “artists” able to live alone in a $2,100-a-month studio as you enter the brightly-lit restaurant. The biggest surprise will be that there are no surprises on the menu; it is true comfort food, especially if you take comfort in being able to take ten minutes to eat the same thing wherever where you go. No matter; your meal will end up all over the sidewalk outside Galapagos.
*
WELCOME HOME TO THE HAPPINESS HOTEL
The Wet Stain On The Lap of Luxury
Conveniently located between Los Angeles’ business district and MacArthur Park, home to the city’s premiere crack dealers, the Mayflower Hotel is ideal, whether you’re a failing businessman on a shoestring budget or simply want to splurge on a prostitute before murdering her.
With mattresses slightly thicker than the comforters resting atop them, cable television, and a free continental breakfast, which will have you wondering from which lost continent the eggs were poached. (TIP: Be ready to have a five-minute debate with hotel staff on the meaning of the phrase, “free continental breakfast included.”)
Each room comes with a view of the sort of sprawling Los Angeles squalor that inspired writers like Raymond Chandler to pen stories of man’s spiraling into degradation and desperation. There are no exercise facilities, although a stroll through the surrounding neighborhood will turn into a brisk walk and elevate your heart-rate.
At rooms starting as low as fifty dollars a night, the Mayflower is a steal, so make sure to carry all expensive personal electronics with you each morning when you leave. The hotel is conveniently located near the subway, city bus, and across the street from a halfway house, to which an extended stay at the hotel will surely send you.
*
PAGING DOCTOR FEELGOOD
Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll, minus the Sex or Rock
A recent finger infection took us to New York’s after-hours hotspot, the Promised Land Hospital Emergency Room. Thanks to our insurance, we were able to enjoy the warm, attentive service of the staff without worrying about price.
Your first stop as you enter is a lounge cheerfully named “The Waiting Room,” where you will be surrounded by several fine ladies, all of whom are over the age of eighty and would be happy to engage in conversation if they could hear you over whatever voices inside their skulls are currently commanding their attention.
Don’t get too comfortable in the hard plastic seats, because after a mere two-and-a-half hour wait, you will be escorted into the VIP section by a nurse who will give you your own hand-tailored paper gown - fun to both hang out in, and hang out of.
Eventually, we were attended to by a Dr. Feelgood ten years our junior, who prescribed us an antibiotic and asked us what sort of painkiller we’d like. He then winked and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you something good.”
Fifteen minutes and a three-months-supply of Vicodin later, we were out in the cool morning air, ready to start our workday a mere hour hence.
* * * * *
Here's the Delirium short from Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes. RZA and GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan are star-struck when Bill Murray serves them coffee. Some good yes-anding:
|
The only problem is, I can't afford to go nice places, so I wrote three reviews of places I can afford.
I would like to emphasize that these are three reviews I really submitted, and that I had to change the names of the second two places because those are both true stories and I don't want my staff lawyer having a heart attack:
EAT FRESH! IN WILLIAMSBURG
Dining Out At Brooklyn’s Hippest, Edgiest Restaurant
It’s been a long time since you’ve eaten a really good sandwich on fresh-made bread with crisp vegetables and delicious, soft, hand-cut meats.
And now that you’ve forgotten what that’s like, you’re ready for the hippest, edgiest new addition to the Williamsburg culinary scene: Subway Sandwich.
On “out there,” artistic Bedford Ave., Subway is conveniently located next to a car service that will get you the hell out of Brooklyn once the L train stops running at 11pm.
Subway sandwich is a welcome respite from the neighborhood’s booming nightlife, whether you’re a tourist from Scandinavia, or a tourist from Germany, or even a production assistant from Minnesota who likes to refer to your Greenpoint Ave. apartment as being located in “Williamsburg South.”
Be ready to brave the witheringly scornful looks of struggling “artists” able to live alone in a $2,100-a-month studio as you enter the brightly-lit restaurant. The biggest surprise will be that there are no surprises on the menu; it is true comfort food, especially if you take comfort in being able to take ten minutes to eat the same thing wherever where you go. No matter; your meal will end up all over the sidewalk outside Galapagos.
*
WELCOME HOME TO THE HAPPINESS HOTEL
The Wet Stain On The Lap of Luxury
Conveniently located between Los Angeles’ business district and MacArthur Park, home to the city’s premiere crack dealers, the Mayflower Hotel is ideal, whether you’re a failing businessman on a shoestring budget or simply want to splurge on a prostitute before murdering her.
With mattresses slightly thicker than the comforters resting atop them, cable television, and a free continental breakfast, which will have you wondering from which lost continent the eggs were poached. (TIP: Be ready to have a five-minute debate with hotel staff on the meaning of the phrase, “free continental breakfast included.”)
Each room comes with a view of the sort of sprawling Los Angeles squalor that inspired writers like Raymond Chandler to pen stories of man’s spiraling into degradation and desperation. There are no exercise facilities, although a stroll through the surrounding neighborhood will turn into a brisk walk and elevate your heart-rate.
At rooms starting as low as fifty dollars a night, the Mayflower is a steal, so make sure to carry all expensive personal electronics with you each morning when you leave. The hotel is conveniently located near the subway, city bus, and across the street from a halfway house, to which an extended stay at the hotel will surely send you.
*
PAGING DOCTOR FEELGOOD
Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll, minus the Sex or Rock
A recent finger infection took us to New York’s after-hours hotspot, the Promised Land Hospital Emergency Room. Thanks to our insurance, we were able to enjoy the warm, attentive service of the staff without worrying about price.
Your first stop as you enter is a lounge cheerfully named “The Waiting Room,” where you will be surrounded by several fine ladies, all of whom are over the age of eighty and would be happy to engage in conversation if they could hear you over whatever voices inside their skulls are currently commanding their attention.
Don’t get too comfortable in the hard plastic seats, because after a mere two-and-a-half hour wait, you will be escorted into the VIP section by a nurse who will give you your own hand-tailored paper gown - fun to both hang out in, and hang out of.
Eventually, we were attended to by a Dr. Feelgood ten years our junior, who prescribed us an antibiotic and asked us what sort of painkiller we’d like. He then winked and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you something good.”
Fifteen minutes and a three-months-supply of Vicodin later, we were out in the cool morning air, ready to start our workday a mere hour hence.
* * * * *
Here's the Delirium short from Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes. RZA and GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan are star-struck when Bill Murray serves them coffee. Some good yes-anding:
Monday, November 27, 2006
LOCKBLOCKED
One in the morning is not the time you want to realize that you've locked yourself out of your apartment, so I called a 24-hour locksmith whose stickers I see plastered on every payphone, and apparently the "24 hours" refers to how long they take to show up. I asked the guy when he'd get there, and apparently, "When I Get There" is an actual time.
So it's two in the morning, and I'm sitting outside my apartment door, and a guy walks by and says, "Hey buddy, what's wrong?" And he seems friendly enough, so I reply, "I got locked out of my apartment."
And he gives my apartment door the once-over and says, "Oh, that thing? I can get you in." And before I can say, "Please don't show me how good you can break into my apartment," he's done something to the lock and the door is open.
And before I can say, "Who was that masked man?" he's ridden off into the sunset, and I'm thanking him while making a mental note to buy a big wooden bar to go across my door.
Okay, so four in the morning I'm woken up by a doorbell, and it's the locksmith. I tell him that a kind man has already broken into my apartment, and then the locksmith tells me that he wants fifty bucks for showing up.
I tell him that if he wants to get paid for showing up three hours late and doing nothing, he should register with the temp agency I use. That's when he introduced me to his crowbar - and the idea that someone whose job is to break into peoples' houses at three in the morning is not on the right side of the law.
The next day, there's another ringing of my doorbell. It's the police. There'd been a burglary in my building the night before, and since, as a single guy who keeps odd hours, I'm generally the most suspicious person in my building, they said, "Excuse me sir, but we've been told you come in late at night, have you seen anybody coming in or out as you was getting home the night before?"
And after a moment, I gave them the description - of the locksmith. Because screw him, at least the burglar had actually shown up when I needed him.
* * * * *
Beavis and Butthead was an incredibly brilliant satire of a certain kind of person I grew up around, and the best part was that the show was actually embraced by the very people it was savagely attacking.
Here, B & B watch Radiohead's video for Creep:
And here they watch Suicidal Tendencies' Institutionalized:
And here's the classic Great Cornholio:
|
So it's two in the morning, and I'm sitting outside my apartment door, and a guy walks by and says, "Hey buddy, what's wrong?" And he seems friendly enough, so I reply, "I got locked out of my apartment."
And he gives my apartment door the once-over and says, "Oh, that thing? I can get you in." And before I can say, "Please don't show me how good you can break into my apartment," he's done something to the lock and the door is open.
And before I can say, "Who was that masked man?" he's ridden off into the sunset, and I'm thanking him while making a mental note to buy a big wooden bar to go across my door.
Okay, so four in the morning I'm woken up by a doorbell, and it's the locksmith. I tell him that a kind man has already broken into my apartment, and then the locksmith tells me that he wants fifty bucks for showing up.
I tell him that if he wants to get paid for showing up three hours late and doing nothing, he should register with the temp agency I use. That's when he introduced me to his crowbar - and the idea that someone whose job is to break into peoples' houses at three in the morning is not on the right side of the law.
The next day, there's another ringing of my doorbell. It's the police. There'd been a burglary in my building the night before, and since, as a single guy who keeps odd hours, I'm generally the most suspicious person in my building, they said, "Excuse me sir, but we've been told you come in late at night, have you seen anybody coming in or out as you was getting home the night before?"
And after a moment, I gave them the description - of the locksmith. Because screw him, at least the burglar had actually shown up when I needed him.
* * * * *
Beavis and Butthead was an incredibly brilliant satire of a certain kind of person I grew up around, and the best part was that the show was actually embraced by the very people it was savagely attacking.
Here, B & B watch Radiohead's video for Creep:
And here they watch Suicidal Tendencies' Institutionalized:
And here's the classic Great Cornholio:
Friday, November 24, 2006
FREE SHOW MONDAY
MONDAY, NOV. 13th, 2006
at the Lolita Bar
226 Broome St., corner of Allen
8:00pm - FREE
With your host: Baron Vaughn
And an all-star lineup including:
Joe Garden
is a writer/editor for The Onion
Tom Shillue
has had his own "Comedy Central Presents" 1/2 hour special
Rena Zager
writes for VH1's "Best Week Ever"
Josh Comers
funny guy
The Fools
An awesome musical duo
Jason Trachtenberg
the paterfamilias of the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players
Liam McEneaney
from Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," VH1's "Best Week Ever," and was a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"
WHAT THE PRESS HAS SAID ABOUT "TELL YOUR FRIENDS!"
* Time Out New York called it a "DON'T MISS" twice now, and said: "With a slew of talented stand-ups . . . and folk-rock duo 'A Brief View of the Hudson,' Liam McEneaney's new show—and 'workout comedy room'—is sure to please."
* The NY Daily News made it a Monday pick of the day.
* AM New York put it in their "Best Bets" section.
* "Editor's Pick!" - clubfreetime.com
* The Onion says, "Though it's pegged as a 'workout room' for comics to test their new(ish) material, Liam McEneaney's weekly show Tell Your Friends flexes enough comedic muscle to pull its weight alongside more established downtown shows. Demetri Martin, Slovin & Allen, and Late Night With Conan O'Brien writer Brian Kiley are among the stand-ups who have squeezed into Lolita's narrow space since the show's debut this summer, alongside the surprisingly tolerable resident folk duo A Brief View of the Hudson."
ABOUT OUR HOUSE BAND
A Brief View of the Hudson is a folk-rock duo that blows away audiences at every show they play.
Here's what the press has said:
* "BEST FOLK DUO"
"It's rare that we like a band from the first chord. Yet the first time we saw folk duo A Brief View of the Hudson play at the Bowery Poetry Club we were hooked.
"Ann Enzminger and Nicholas Nace incorporate many of the best characteristics of both country music and classic rock without sounding derivative...Enzminger is a tiny woman, a hair taller than five feet, but with an opera-trained voice as big and sweet as a bowling ball–size Hershey Kiss. Nace's twangy talk-singing adds a quirky and ear-catching roughness; we crave the combination time and again." - The NY Press
* "It is not often that a band sounds like nothing you've ever heard & still sounds good. That's what you get from A Brief View of the Hudson." - The NY Sun
* "A Brief View of the Hudson features Ann Enzminger's arrestingly powerful vocals, which are well tuned to the duo's graceful songs of indie-folk heartbreak." -Time Out NY
|
at the Lolita Bar
226 Broome St., corner of Allen
8:00pm - FREE
With your host: Baron Vaughn
And an all-star lineup including:
Joe Garden
is a writer/editor for The Onion
Tom Shillue
has had his own "Comedy Central Presents" 1/2 hour special
Rena Zager
writes for VH1's "Best Week Ever"
Josh Comers
funny guy
The Fools
An awesome musical duo
Jason Trachtenberg
the paterfamilias of the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players
Liam McEneaney
from Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," VH1's "Best Week Ever," and was a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"
WHAT THE PRESS HAS SAID ABOUT "TELL YOUR FRIENDS!"
* Time Out New York called it a "DON'T MISS" twice now, and said: "With a slew of talented stand-ups . . . and folk-rock duo 'A Brief View of the Hudson,' Liam McEneaney's new show—and 'workout comedy room'—is sure to please."
* The NY Daily News made it a Monday pick of the day.
* AM New York put it in their "Best Bets" section.
* "Editor's Pick!" - clubfreetime.com
* The Onion says, "Though it's pegged as a 'workout room' for comics to test their new(ish) material, Liam McEneaney's weekly show Tell Your Friends flexes enough comedic muscle to pull its weight alongside more established downtown shows. Demetri Martin, Slovin & Allen, and Late Night With Conan O'Brien writer Brian Kiley are among the stand-ups who have squeezed into Lolita's narrow space since the show's debut this summer, alongside the surprisingly tolerable resident folk duo A Brief View of the Hudson."
ABOUT OUR HOUSE BAND
A Brief View of the Hudson is a folk-rock duo that blows away audiences at every show they play.
Here's what the press has said:
* "BEST FOLK DUO"
"It's rare that we like a band from the first chord. Yet the first time we saw folk duo A Brief View of the Hudson play at the Bowery Poetry Club we were hooked.
"Ann Enzminger and Nicholas Nace incorporate many of the best characteristics of both country music and classic rock without sounding derivative...Enzminger is a tiny woman, a hair taller than five feet, but with an opera-trained voice as big and sweet as a bowling ball–size Hershey Kiss. Nace's twangy talk-singing adds a quirky and ear-catching roughness; we crave the combination time and again." - The NY Press
* "It is not often that a band sounds like nothing you've ever heard & still sounds good. That's what you get from A Brief View of the Hudson." - The NY Sun
* "A Brief View of the Hudson features Ann Enzminger's arrestingly powerful vocals, which are well tuned to the duo's graceful songs of indie-folk heartbreak." -Time Out NY
Monday, November 20, 2006
THANKSGIVING IS UPON US
And therefore I'd like to present a little playlet I call:
"Every Grade School Play About The First Thanksgiving"
CURTAIN UP ON:
SEVERAL PILGRIMS sitting around a table, or in this case, a grade school desk with chair attached. On it is a big bowl of popcorn and one of those cardboard turkey centerpieces. To add to the festive holiday mood, there are some orange and brown streamers hung about the stage.
NOTE: All performances should be delivered slowly, haltingly, one word at a time, as if all actors had taken a big dose of Thorazine ten seconds before stepping onstage:
PILGRIM #1: Hello. Welcome to our first Thanksgiving. Feast.
PILGRIM #2: (giggles)
Long pause.
ADULT VOICE FROM OFFSTAGE (whisper): The harvest -
PILGRIM #2: The harvest is (giggles) in and now the (mumbles rest of line)
PILGRIM #3: To give thanks for this food, we have invited our savage friends.
PILGRIM #4: Behold. I smell them coming now.
REST OF PILGRIMS WHO HAVE HAD NOT HAD A LINE: The Indians!
A LONE INDIAN enters, stops self-consciously and looks around to see if he's made a mistake. As he does, he's hit by THE REST OF THE INDIANS as they enter directly behind him. All wear the trappings of their tribe; the boys have construction paper feathers tucked into headbands, the girls their hair braided.
INDIAN #1: How. Welcome to our feast -
PILGRIM #1: No, that's my line. Welcome to our feast, savages.
INDIAN #2: It is a Thanksgiving for us, too.
INDIAN #3: Yes. We want to thank you for teaching us civilization.
INDIAN #4: How to wear clothes.
All actors giggle.
INDIAN #5: And not to kill innocent people. And now, we will do a rain dance for you.
The Indians dance in almost a circle, making loud whoops as they do so.
PILGRIM #1: Thank you, Indians. And now, we will eat the bou-ty of our harvest. As we say...
ALL turn to the audience, and in unison:
ALL: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
* * * * *
MONDAY, November 20
CBS/NY PRESENTS: Liam McEneaney's "Writings (with Music)"
at Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction
34 Avenue A @ 3rd Street
8:00pm - $6.00
Every musician secretly wants to be a comedian. All comedians have a secret yearning to play music. On Monday night, these worlds collide in a music/comedy experiment, as some of New York's best comedy writers read pieces, creating a rhythm that a jazz band will use to create a live, improvised musical background.
Curated by:
LIAM McENEANEY, who has been seen on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend" and VH1's "Best Week Ever." He spent two seasons as a writer for Comedy Central's "Stand-Up Nation w/ Greg Giraldo."
And featuring readings from:
TODD HANSON, who is the head writer for the popular satirical weekly The Onion, and is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller "Our Dumb Century."
AMANDA MELSON, who wrote for the Comedy Central shows "Stand Up Nation w/ Greg Giraldo" and the upcoming (hopefully) "Adult Content w/ Greg Giraldo" She is also a contributing writer for Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update."
CHRIS REGAN, winner of five Emmys as a writer for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, "America (The Book)." His website, www.mythstory.net, will be published as a book in 2007.
WENDY SPERO, a comedian who has appeared on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend." Her one-woman show, "Who's Your Daddy?" was greeted by ecstatic reviews from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York. She is also the author of the LA Times-bestselling book "Microthrills: True Stories from a Life of Small Highs."
With live musical accompaniment from EVAN SILVERMAN'S JAZZHOLE. EVAN SILVERMAN is a professional musician who has toured all over the US, Canada, and Europe, opening for bands like Bob Dylan, Echo and the Bunnymen, and No Doubt. He recently completed his Bachelors in jazz music.
* * * * *
Here's an old N Sync anti-drug commercial. Just try to spot which one turned out to be gay:
|
"Every Grade School Play About The First Thanksgiving"
CURTAIN UP ON:
SEVERAL PILGRIMS sitting around a table, or in this case, a grade school desk with chair attached. On it is a big bowl of popcorn and one of those cardboard turkey centerpieces. To add to the festive holiday mood, there are some orange and brown streamers hung about the stage.
NOTE: All performances should be delivered slowly, haltingly, one word at a time, as if all actors had taken a big dose of Thorazine ten seconds before stepping onstage:
PILGRIM #1: Hello. Welcome to our first Thanksgiving. Feast.
PILGRIM #2: (giggles)
Long pause.
ADULT VOICE FROM OFFSTAGE (whisper): The harvest -
PILGRIM #2: The harvest is (giggles) in and now the (mumbles rest of line)
PILGRIM #3: To give thanks for this food, we have invited our savage friends.
PILGRIM #4: Behold. I smell them coming now.
REST OF PILGRIMS WHO HAVE HAD NOT HAD A LINE: The Indians!
A LONE INDIAN enters, stops self-consciously and looks around to see if he's made a mistake. As he does, he's hit by THE REST OF THE INDIANS as they enter directly behind him. All wear the trappings of their tribe; the boys have construction paper feathers tucked into headbands, the girls their hair braided.
INDIAN #1: How. Welcome to our feast -
PILGRIM #1: No, that's my line. Welcome to our feast, savages.
INDIAN #2: It is a Thanksgiving for us, too.
INDIAN #3: Yes. We want to thank you for teaching us civilization.
INDIAN #4: How to wear clothes.
All actors giggle.
INDIAN #5: And not to kill innocent people. And now, we will do a rain dance for you.
The Indians dance in almost a circle, making loud whoops as they do so.
PILGRIM #1: Thank you, Indians. And now, we will eat the bou-ty of our harvest. As we say...
ALL turn to the audience, and in unison:
ALL: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
* * * * *
MONDAY, November 20
CBS/NY PRESENTS: Liam McEneaney's "Writings (with Music)"
at Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction
34 Avenue A @ 3rd Street
8:00pm - $6.00
Every musician secretly wants to be a comedian. All comedians have a secret yearning to play music. On Monday night, these worlds collide in a music/comedy experiment, as some of New York's best comedy writers read pieces, creating a rhythm that a jazz band will use to create a live, improvised musical background.
Curated by:
LIAM McENEANEY, who has been seen on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend" and VH1's "Best Week Ever." He spent two seasons as a writer for Comedy Central's "Stand-Up Nation w/ Greg Giraldo."
And featuring readings from:
TODD HANSON, who is the head writer for the popular satirical weekly The Onion, and is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller "Our Dumb Century."
AMANDA MELSON, who wrote for the Comedy Central shows "Stand Up Nation w/ Greg Giraldo" and the upcoming (hopefully) "Adult Content w/ Greg Giraldo" She is also a contributing writer for Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update."
CHRIS REGAN, winner of five Emmys as a writer for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, "America (The Book)." His website, www.mythstory.net, will be published as a book in 2007.
WENDY SPERO, a comedian who has appeared on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend." Her one-woman show, "Who's Your Daddy?" was greeted by ecstatic reviews from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York. She is also the author of the LA Times-bestselling book "Microthrills: True Stories from a Life of Small Highs."
With live musical accompaniment from EVAN SILVERMAN'S JAZZHOLE. EVAN SILVERMAN is a professional musician who has toured all over the US, Canada, and Europe, opening for bands like Bob Dylan, Echo and the Bunnymen, and No Doubt. He recently completed his Bachelors in jazz music.
* * * * *
Here's an old N Sync anti-drug commercial. Just try to spot which one turned out to be gay:
Thursday, November 16, 2006
TONIGHT, TONIGHT, WON'T BE JUST ANY NIGHT
Tonight I'm gonna go see one of my favorite performing artists ever. That's right, Mr. Vincent Price:
(whisper whisper) What, no really? I'm sorry, apparently, that's Mr. Bob Dylan.
And opening for him, one of those homeless guys who sings doo-wop for spare change on the 6 train:
(whisper whisper) What, really? My bad, everyone, that's also Bob Dylan. No, opening for him will be that depressed girl who was the editor of my high school poetry magazine:
What? How embarrassing! Apparently, that's Mr. Jack White of the Raconteurs!
* * * * *
Oh, hilarious! Speaking of hilarious, why not check out this CBS/NY Presents show that I'm hosting on Monday? We have the head writer for the Onion, a 5x-Emmy winning ex Daily Show writer, and much more...
* * * * *
Bob Dylan! At his angriest! Performing Idiot Wind in '76:
And ten years earlier, performing Ballad of a Thin Man. Man, you do not want to get on this guy's bad side:
|
(whisper whisper) What, no really? I'm sorry, apparently, that's Mr. Bob Dylan.
And opening for him, one of those homeless guys who sings doo-wop for spare change on the 6 train:
(whisper whisper) What, really? My bad, everyone, that's also Bob Dylan. No, opening for him will be that depressed girl who was the editor of my high school poetry magazine:
What? How embarrassing! Apparently, that's Mr. Jack White of the Raconteurs!
* * * * *
Oh, hilarious! Speaking of hilarious, why not check out this CBS/NY Presents show that I'm hosting on Monday? We have the head writer for the Onion, a 5x-Emmy winning ex Daily Show writer, and much more...
* * * * *
Bob Dylan! At his angriest! Performing Idiot Wind in '76:
And ten years earlier, performing Ballad of a Thin Man. Man, you do not want to get on this guy's bad side:
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
IF OPPONENTS OF GAY MARRIAGE REALLY HATE GAY PEOPLE
They should allow gay marriage, but make gay divorce illegal.
* * * * *
Here's a heart-string tugger:
I was on Delancey the other night, just as a NY CORRECTIONS bus - a schoolbus with grates on the side blocking the windows painted in the NYPD white-and-blue - pulled up to stop at the light. There was a crowd of urchins hanging out on the street, and a voice from the Corrections bus yelled to one of the kids, "Hey you!"
A little Hispanic kid looked around and the Voice said, "Yeah you! Come here!"
The Hispanic kid looked around again, and the Voice shouted, "Come here, faggot!"
The little Hispanic kid kind of awkwardly stood there not moving, and the Voice shouted, "Well fuck you, fucking faggot!"
At that point, the little Hispanic kid got into a half crouch and screamed, "You gonna get RAPED!"
To which his friends started laughing, and a half-second later, the bus exploded in laughter, so loud you could barely hear the Voice screaming, "Fuck you bitch."
A girl then shouted "Don't drop the soap!" Causing more laughter all around.
Then the light turned green and the bus rolled away, forcing me to miss what I'm sure was the sound of more merriment drowned out by the gentle hum of tasers.
* * * * *
I have Dylan tickets but no date. That's a sideways frowny-face if I've heard one.
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* * * * *
Here's a heart-string tugger:
I was on Delancey the other night, just as a NY CORRECTIONS bus - a schoolbus with grates on the side blocking the windows painted in the NYPD white-and-blue - pulled up to stop at the light. There was a crowd of urchins hanging out on the street, and a voice from the Corrections bus yelled to one of the kids, "Hey you!"
A little Hispanic kid looked around and the Voice said, "Yeah you! Come here!"
The Hispanic kid looked around again, and the Voice shouted, "Come here, faggot!"
The little Hispanic kid kind of awkwardly stood there not moving, and the Voice shouted, "Well fuck you, fucking faggot!"
At that point, the little Hispanic kid got into a half crouch and screamed, "You gonna get RAPED!"
To which his friends started laughing, and a half-second later, the bus exploded in laughter, so loud you could barely hear the Voice screaming, "Fuck you bitch."
A girl then shouted "Don't drop the soap!" Causing more laughter all around.
Then the light turned green and the bus rolled away, forcing me to miss what I'm sure was the sound of more merriment drowned out by the gentle hum of tasers.
* * * * *
I have Dylan tickets but no date. That's a sideways frowny-face if I've heard one.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
TEN POUND HAM
I have one that's almost completely defrosted. How do I cook it?
* * * * *
Speaking of hams, my friend Bryan works at a TV show and made this rap video. Enjoy it:
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* * * * *
Speaking of hams, my friend Bryan works at a TV show and made this rap video. Enjoy it:
Friday, November 10, 2006
AN OCEAN'S GARGLED VOMIT BY THE SHORE
LOS ANGELES I'M YOURS
I was in LA for all of fifteen minutes when I had my first celebrity sighting.
Los Angeles is a driving city, and I am still a month away from taking my road test. Therefore, I can tell you from hard experience that a good time to reevaluate your life choices and your comedy career is on the train in from the airport.
Basically, I know the neighborhoods in LA to completely avoid based on whether or not I’ve heard them mentioned in a rap song: Long Beach, South Central, Crenshaw Boulevard. And the train in from the airport goes through all of them. You transfer from the Green Line to the Blue Line to the Red Line, and each stop keeps you feeling more and more borderline homeless.
So I was sitting on the train, and I was thinking, “At least I’m the most famous person on the Blue Line.” And at the next stop, as if the Hand of God had decided to bitch-slap me, in entered Screech. Dustin Diamond from Saved By the Bell, with a lady, both wheeling bicycles.
And while I was no longer the most famous person on the Blue Line, I also could no longer feel like the biggest failure either. Entertainment is a fucking hard business.
* * * * *
I’m writing this on the airplane. Here are two announcements the flight attendant had to just make over the PA:
1. “Will the passenger whose dog got loose from its carrier please check to see if your dog is missing and come pick it up?”
2. “Seriously, if you’ve lost your dog please come and get it. It’s running up and down the aisles.”
Entertainment is a hard fucking business, and Los Angeles can be a hard fucking town. When you fly in from New York, you fly over a large desert, just miles and miles of barren land, incapable of supporting life. Then you fly over a large, rocky mountain range, impossible to cross without luck, no-how, and expert help. And then you suddenly arrive on a low-lying, sprawling metropolis, built where no city was meant to be built, literally carved into the land with sheer insane, single-minded willpower. And that’s Los Angeles.
* * * * *
The Olsen Twins look as if someone has deliberately stunted their growth, to keep them looking like young girls forever.
* * * * *
I had a good time in LA, as usual. A friend is a producer for the Jimmy Kimmel show, so I got to hang out in the green room, which is a large backstage area with an open bar and pool table and video games and pinball and entertainment types hanging out and barely watching the show. Basically, it’s everything you fantasize show-business being if you’ve never actually worked in the business. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was a guest on the show, and she walked right past me, and I’m not much of a celebrity person, but there’s something odd about being right near someone that famous and that rich and that adored by millions of people who’ve never met them. It strikes at something almost instinctive and guttural deep inside my animal brain, and it made me freeze for a split second and immediately hate myself for being that impressed. Her face is round.
Lady Sovereign performed as well, which was a huge thrill for me; I’ve been a fan for a while now, and I almost never go see the people I like live in concert. She looks like she’s about eleven years old, but she’s a saucy British rapper and I was happy. If you’ve never heard her before, start with “9 to 5.”
I told my producer friend, “That album sounds great. I can’t wait to Limewire it.” I was shushed immediately.
I alos got to visit the studio of a friend who's a stop-motion animator. That was fun, too.
* * * * *
I was staying with my friends O. & C. on their couch And here's how my being a complete idiot also leads to my being a genius:
First morning, I awoke as C. was heading out for the day. She said, "I'm off to the doctor's office."
I said, "Because you're pregnant.
Awkward pause...
"Yeah that's right. How'd you know?"
What then followed was the conversational game of, "No Seriously? Really? Come on."
So big ups to them.
* * * * *
I spent some time at LA coffee shops, where putting out a tip jar really is an act of balls. One coffee shop I enjoy going to has a tip jar out even though you have to pour your own coffee. In other words, you’re expected to tip a woman for the act of handing you an empty cup and showing you where a coffee machine is. I did tip, though, because I walked in and she was singing the theme to Mel Brooks’ “Robin Hood: Men In Tights.”
This laptop only has another hour of juice left in the battery, which means I will probably end up watching “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” on the way back to New York as well. Guess whose copy of The New Yorker fell apart in LA for some reason?
I walked in and she was singing and MTV was there shooting a scene for their reality show, “The Hills.” Because nothing says “capturing a gritty sense of reality” like three cameras, a light crew, a guy walking around having you sign a release, the air conditioning shut off (during 90-degree weather), and a guy shushing everyone so he could get something called “room tone.”
Memo to the staff at the other coffee shop: Don’t give me attitude because I’m not going to tip you another dollar on a three dollar cup of coffee. Especially if you charge full price for refills.
* * * * *
There should be an alternative Hollywood Walk of Fame, maybe on Sunset, called “the Hollywood Walk of Shame.” And each square would have a broken heart, and in each broken heart the name of a person who came to LA to make it in show business only to run into the weird crazy awfulness of an industry town where everyone believes that movies are real. It could stretch all the way to Palm Springs.
Other than that, I drove up the PCH and through the mountains and through Brentwood down Bundy and along the beach and through West Hollywood and through Chinatown and Echo Park and Silverlake and the worst slums of LA and to the airport and here we are.
|
Los Angeles is a driving city, and I am still a month away from taking my road test. Therefore, I can tell you from hard experience that a good time to reevaluate your life choices and your comedy career is on the train in from the airport.
Basically, I know the neighborhoods in LA to completely avoid based on whether or not I’ve heard them mentioned in a rap song: Long Beach, South Central, Crenshaw Boulevard. And the train in from the airport goes through all of them. You transfer from the Green Line to the Blue Line to the Red Line, and each stop keeps you feeling more and more borderline homeless.
So I was sitting on the train, and I was thinking, “At least I’m the most famous person on the Blue Line.” And at the next stop, as if the Hand of God had decided to bitch-slap me, in entered Screech. Dustin Diamond from Saved By the Bell, with a lady, both wheeling bicycles.
And while I was no longer the most famous person on the Blue Line, I also could no longer feel like the biggest failure either. Entertainment is a fucking hard business.
* * * * *
I’m writing this on the airplane. Here are two announcements the flight attendant had to just make over the PA:
1. “Will the passenger whose dog got loose from its carrier please check to see if your dog is missing and come pick it up?”
2. “Seriously, if you’ve lost your dog please come and get it. It’s running up and down the aisles.”
Entertainment is a hard fucking business, and Los Angeles can be a hard fucking town. When you fly in from New York, you fly over a large desert, just miles and miles of barren land, incapable of supporting life. Then you fly over a large, rocky mountain range, impossible to cross without luck, no-how, and expert help. And then you suddenly arrive on a low-lying, sprawling metropolis, built where no city was meant to be built, literally carved into the land with sheer insane, single-minded willpower. And that’s Los Angeles.
* * * * *
The Olsen Twins look as if someone has deliberately stunted their growth, to keep them looking like young girls forever.
* * * * *
I had a good time in LA, as usual. A friend is a producer for the Jimmy Kimmel show, so I got to hang out in the green room, which is a large backstage area with an open bar and pool table and video games and pinball and entertainment types hanging out and barely watching the show. Basically, it’s everything you fantasize show-business being if you’ve never actually worked in the business. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was a guest on the show, and she walked right past me, and I’m not much of a celebrity person, but there’s something odd about being right near someone that famous and that rich and that adored by millions of people who’ve never met them. It strikes at something almost instinctive and guttural deep inside my animal brain, and it made me freeze for a split second and immediately hate myself for being that impressed. Her face is round.
Lady Sovereign performed as well, which was a huge thrill for me; I’ve been a fan for a while now, and I almost never go see the people I like live in concert. She looks like she’s about eleven years old, but she’s a saucy British rapper and I was happy. If you’ve never heard her before, start with “9 to 5.”
I told my producer friend, “That album sounds great. I can’t wait to Limewire it.” I was shushed immediately.
I alos got to visit the studio of a friend who's a stop-motion animator. That was fun, too.
* * * * *
I was staying with my friends O. & C. on their couch And here's how my being a complete idiot also leads to my being a genius:
First morning, I awoke as C. was heading out for the day. She said, "I'm off to the doctor's office."
I said, "Because you're pregnant.
Awkward pause...
"Yeah that's right. How'd you know?"
What then followed was the conversational game of, "No Seriously? Really? Come on."
So big ups to them.
* * * * *
I spent some time at LA coffee shops, where putting out a tip jar really is an act of balls. One coffee shop I enjoy going to has a tip jar out even though you have to pour your own coffee. In other words, you’re expected to tip a woman for the act of handing you an empty cup and showing you where a coffee machine is. I did tip, though, because I walked in and she was singing the theme to Mel Brooks’ “Robin Hood: Men In Tights.”
This laptop only has another hour of juice left in the battery, which means I will probably end up watching “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” on the way back to New York as well. Guess whose copy of The New Yorker fell apart in LA for some reason?
I walked in and she was singing and MTV was there shooting a scene for their reality show, “The Hills.” Because nothing says “capturing a gritty sense of reality” like three cameras, a light crew, a guy walking around having you sign a release, the air conditioning shut off (during 90-degree weather), and a guy shushing everyone so he could get something called “room tone.”
Memo to the staff at the other coffee shop: Don’t give me attitude because I’m not going to tip you another dollar on a three dollar cup of coffee. Especially if you charge full price for refills.
* * * * *
There should be an alternative Hollywood Walk of Fame, maybe on Sunset, called “the Hollywood Walk of Shame.” And each square would have a broken heart, and in each broken heart the name of a person who came to LA to make it in show business only to run into the weird crazy awfulness of an industry town where everyone believes that movies are real. It could stretch all the way to Palm Springs.
Other than that, I drove up the PCH and through the mountains and through Brentwood down Bundy and along the beach and through West Hollywood and through Chinatown and Echo Park and Silverlake and the worst slums of LA and to the airport and here we are.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
SHOWER AND GROWER:
Friday, November 10th
8:00pm * $8.00
Stand-Up Spotlight: Liam McEneaney
UCB - LA
5919 Franklin Ave.
323-908-8702
Liam McEneaney brings his off-center brand of stand-up to the UCBTLA in a very rare West Coast appearance. In fact, this will probably be Los Angeles' last chance to catch Liam until 2007.
Liam is one of New York City's fastest rising young comedians, having appeared on Comedy Central's Premium Blend, as a regular panelist on VH1's hit show Best Week Ever, and spending two seasons as a writer for Comedy Central's Stand-Up Nation w/ Greg Giraldo (Liam is very very proud of his work on the show, but please don't pretend you've seen it).
Liam has played clubs and colleges on the East Coast, as well as regularly appearing at such premeire alt. comedy shows as Invite Them Up at Rififi, Eating It at the Luna Lounge, Tell Your Friends! at the Lolita Bar, and Bogus Sting at the UCBTNY.
For more info: http://ucbtheatre.com/schedule/showdetails.php?showid=1252
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8:00pm * $8.00
Stand-Up Spotlight: Liam McEneaney
UCB - LA
5919 Franklin Ave.
323-908-8702
Liam McEneaney brings his off-center brand of stand-up to the UCBTLA in a very rare West Coast appearance. In fact, this will probably be Los Angeles' last chance to catch Liam until 2007.
Liam is one of New York City's fastest rising young comedians, having appeared on Comedy Central's Premium Blend, as a regular panelist on VH1's hit show Best Week Ever, and spending two seasons as a writer for Comedy Central's Stand-Up Nation w/ Greg Giraldo (Liam is very very proud of his work on the show, but please don't pretend you've seen it).
Liam has played clubs and colleges on the East Coast, as well as regularly appearing at such premeire alt. comedy shows as Invite Them Up at Rififi, Eating It at the Luna Lounge, Tell Your Friends! at the Lolita Bar, and Bogus Sting at the UCBTNY.
For more info: http://ucbtheatre.com/schedule/showdetails.php?showid=1252
THE PLANE TRUTH - LOL!
By the time you read this, I may already be rich and famous. In fact, by the time you read this, I will have been in LA for a couple of days, which is hilarious to me, as I’m actually writing this blog entry on the aeroplane en route. Oh sorry America, did I just BLOW YOUR MIND?
By the way, just so you know, I’m not bicoastal – I just meet different coasts that I like, and if I’m into a West Coast City then I’ll be into it, that’s cool. It doesn’t define who I am as a person.
I don’t get laid on the road. Part of that is that, frankly, I just flat-out don’t get laid a lot. But I feel like at least in New York City, I do, in golf terms, have a handicap; a lot of the women who move to New York City do so partly because they grew up on Woody Allen movies and Albert Brooks movies and Martin Scorcese movies, and movies influenced by that generation of New York city filmmaker, and TV shows like Seinfeld where they’re trained to find neurotic, conventionally unattractive men in glasses hot because they’re smart and they’re charming and they’re funny. Little realizing until it’s too late that neurotic, smart men are also really hard to deal with, because their bullshit runs deeper than the men they grew up around.
Women who get broken up with by guys like me find themselves walking around shell-shocked. “How could THAT guy break up with ME?” they’ll think. “I’m the one who’s supposed to do better, not him. In high school I would never have even talked to that guy, but movies like Revenge of the Nerds and whatever Michael J. Fox starred in taught me that they’re more sensitive.”
Little realizing that people are people and assholes are assholes, and to be completely frank, Midwestern shiksas who see themselves as the stars of the movies of their lives embarking on the Gutsy Independent Phase of their lives in New York City are almost literally a dime-a-dozen, especially to Jewish fellas in glasses who’ve been told by their mommies their whole lives that they’re Special, Sensitive, Brilliant Boys Who Deserve Better.
I almost hate to give up the game here, but the good news is that women reading this will think that being self-aware at least makes me we willing to change and work on my issues.
I know my mom thinks I’m a Special, Sensitive, Brilliant Boy Who Deserves Better. A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with my parents, and I got my mom to admit that she would love no matter whom I chose to marry, but she would be really happy if I married a Jewish woman. Which is funny when you understand that my mother is a practicing Buddhist who married an Irish Catholic Socialist practicing Buddhist (my childhood wasn’t that cool, relax).
Man, have I gotten away from my point. Which is that I don’t get laid on the road. Ever. In fact, I have never had sex outside of the Five Boroughs. And I certainly didn’t get laid on the “College Comedy Game Show Tour!” that I started talking about yesterday. At the time, I was four hundred fifty pounds and nineteen years old and taking my first road trip since my family vacations at the age of five.
At that point, I’d had one awkward, awful sexual encounter, during a time in high school in my junior year when I’d temporarily lost a lot of weight. That encounter ended with the lady giving me an in-depth critique that left me feeling not only completely inadequate but like a bad person for attempting to inflict my evil, clumsy sexual techniqueon an unsuspecting female populace. Any time someone uses the phrase, “And that left me feeling raped” to describe sex with you is fantastic, especially your first time.
Anyhooters, I honestly have no idea where I was going at the top of this entry. That’s cool, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.
“College Comedy Game Show Tour!” was produced by Ripoff Bookings (I’m changing a lot of details here, because there’s nothing worse than slamming someone you think you’lll never meet again, and then six months later you’re working with them and trying to figure out if they know all the horrible stuff you said about them).
Ripoff Booking is located in a town I will call “Ass End, Midwestern State That Is About Five-Hour Car Ride Away From Chicago’s Midway Airport, Which Is Where We Flew In.” Why would we fly into Chicago’s Midway Airport when Ass End Airport is actually in Ass End City? Because I was nineteen and had not experienced what happened when you left the Captain in charge of planning anything. So it was a five-hour drive with Tom from Ripoff (I truly hope I’m changing his name here, it’s been a while), during which he told us all about how Ass End is considered the Klan Capital of the Midwest, and about how the head of Ripoff Booking – whom we shall call “Ripoff the Magnificent” – was a headlining comedy hypnotist for years who semi-retired to open his own booking agency. We heard all about how you didn’t want to mess with Ripoff the Magnificent, because he was a big guy who would jump over his desk and beat the shit out of you if he thought you were screwing with him.
As a side note, I’ve found that a lot of “tough guys” in comedy are actually fat guys who discovered that if they wore leather jackets and talked a lot of shit about how much they’d beat the crap out of you, most comedians are too passive-aggressive to call them on it. I seriously have a dozen links to those kinds of guys, and you can tell that for the most part, these are guys whose exposure to street-fighting has been through video games with titles like “Street Fighter,” and who if it weren’t for their comedy personae, they’d be wearing Klingon costumes and screaming about the glories of dying in combat for the Empire. Trust me, I’ve met those guys, too.
Because that’s who this Ripoff the Magnificent ultimately ended up being. A sad fat man in black, in his fifties, who clearly couldn’t jump over his desk if his ass were on fire, who probably couldn’t beat his own meat (I believe I owe Beavis and Butthead an “additional material written by”credit here) let alone the shit out of me.
His wife/assistant was a woman of a certain age whose face was a little – er – tight, whose breasts were fairly large for her frame and buoyant for her age, and whose hair was blond and brittle to the point of being a potential fire hazard. He sat me and the Captain down (TJ was flying in to join us the next day for our first show, a dry run at a local Catholic High School), and pretty much told us exactly how he was going to screw us in no uncertain terms. In fact, there was a certain twisted integrity to the thorough way he outlined exactly how fucked The Captain was financially. He kind of had us by the yarbles; what were we going to do? Eat the expense of the plane ticket and say, “No, we don’t want to do comedy on the road?” and drive back to Chicago’s Midway airport?
I forget exactly how the arrangement worked, but essentially The Captain was technically the one getting paid by the colleges we performed for, and then he paid both the other two comedians on the tour and the booking agency, which meant that somehow he alone was responsible for paying the bulk of the income tax. It was a complicated, difficult arrangement that still makes no sense to me, and pretty much resulted in two years of IRS problems for the Captain further down the line. And I felt bad for him, because for all the frustration of dealing with this man (and there was frustration) he is at heart a good guy who took a chance on hiring me to perform on the road with him at a time when I was clearly not ready for it.
Comedy is a bad business, and I feel a certain amount of gratitude that I’ve mostly run into the Good Eggs of the comedy world. But if there’s Bad Eggs, then Ripoff the Magnificent and Tom were Rotten, Left Behind the Couch In Front of the Radiator for Three Days Until the Whole House Stinks of Death Eggs. I know that R the M wasn’t literally covered in a thin veneer of slug slime, but that is quite honestly the impression he left me with.
That first night, the Captain and I were driven around by Tom From Ripoff as he shotgunned a six-pack in just under an hour. He took us out for an evening at his favorite Ass End bar, and if you’ve ever seen a bad ‘80s action-comedy where the black partner ends up in a redneck bar and is told they don’t serve his kind before there’s some kind of hilarious resolution involving Fists of Justice and broken Redneck Collarbones? If you have then you’ve already been to this bar.
Alright, I just found out that the in-flight movie is Talladega Nights, and I’ve never seen that.
Or not – there’s a problem with the Talladega Nights tape; it’s the Spanish-only version, and it’s been substituted with “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” a movie that could only be improved if the audience doesn’t actually understand what the characters are saying.
Okay, here’s how I’ll finish out this entry; a couple of incidents from that tour, and then tomorrow’s entry will focus on stuff that’s happened to me since I landed in LA, I promise.
So the Captain and I are driving back to New York City – TJ has flown back from Ass End Airport to New York to take care of some things, but someone’s got to drive the van east (being that it’s a traveling comedy game show, there’s a lot to transport – a huge set, boxes of props and costumes, a PA and sound system incuding speakers and speaker stands and microphones.
The Captain and I are driving, by which I mean the Captain is driving because I don’t have my license. And I mean, I literally still don’t have my license ten years later. At one point, the Captain told me that he couldn’t be caught speeding because he also technically didn’t have a driver’s license. Somehow, he had let his license expire, and he had a new one on the way, but in the meantime the DMV had faxed him a copy of a driver’s license which was somewhere crammed into a million papers among his stuff.
An hour later we were stopped for speeding, and that took a half-hour to clear up, because even once he’d rooted though his garbage and found his faxed copy of a license, it still took the cops a super-long time to do a thorough check. This was to be a theme of his travels, as we shall see later in this chapter.
As we were driving later in the evening, he casually mentioned that he couldn’t get to sleep at night without masturbating. This kind of stuck in my mind, probably because I was looking forward to an indefinite period of time sharing motel rooms with the man. Sure enough, as we approached New York State, we realized that it was almost midnight and the best course of action would be to pull over and stop at a motel.
Now, the Captain didn’t have a driver’s license, and you have to give any desk clerk in this country a driver’s license before you’re allowed to check into a motel room. So I said, “I do have a non-driver’s ID.” The man behind the desk looked at us and said, “If neither of you has a driver’s license, how are you - ?” And then he sighed and said, “Here, just check in.” Because ultimately, it was midnight and he was tired and he worked the graveyard shift at a highway motel, and sometimes it just doesn’t pay to ask questions you really don’t want to know the answers to anyway. We could have moved a bulky rolled-up carpet with one arm flopped out into our room and the guy wouldn’t have wanted to know about it.
Long story short, five minutes after lights out, I heard a whispered “Liam?” from the other bed followed by the sound of skin rubbing against skin. That was to happen again.
Now, the other story I want to tell. We performed at a university up in Maine, right south of the Canadian border, and we decided, being three young-to-youngish men, that we would drive up to Canada to an awful stuck-in-the-eighties dance club up there.
First of all, the Captain was caught speeding in Maine. The cop gave us a lecture and extracted a promise that we wouldn’t have to see him again.
On our way into Canada, we stopped at the Border Patrol, who asked us to step inside. Fair enough; even pre-9/11, when three men drive into your country in the middle of the night in a van filled with trunks and equipment and boxes, you’re going to want to ask some questions. This is understandable.
As we entered the Border House, I said I had to pee, and went to the bathroom. Came back, and the Border Patrol started processing our names and IDs for background checks. TJ had to go the bathroom next, and as he did, I whispered to the Cap’n, “It’s going to look suspicious, the three of us going to the bathroom at the same time.”
He then laughed, and repeated that to the Border Patrol agents. Who then spent a long time doing a thorough check on us. They don’t really seem to believe in jokes I gather; something else I said was met with an honest query: “Would you like me to do a full-body cavity search?” Not even as a threat, but rather almost as an offer. I did not say another word.
We eventually got through and went to the awful dance club, and a few hours later we were back in Maine (no one stopped us on the way back in) where the Captain was again stopped for speeding. By the same cop, who was almost speechless at having caught our van speeding on the way back after giving us a stern warning on the way up. The fact that the Captain was not given a ticket I can only attribute to the fact that angels protect children and idiots who should know better but don’t.
Our next stop was upstate New York, and the next morning we figured we’d drive up through Canada to NYS. We’re stopped again, same Border Check, this time by a nice young man. I was sitting in the passenger seat and, remembering what had happened previously, I diplomatically suggested that I might be in charge of talking to officials. “I’ll do all the talking,” O Captain My Captain snapped.
And he sure did. First, the Border Patrol Guy asked if we were transporting cigarettes into Canada. Now, the correct answer to that question is “No,” even if you are not driving a van filled with boxes and equipment.
So the Captain said, “Yes.”
“How many cartons?”
Hilariously, Cap’n R. thought the Border guy was asking how many individual cigarettes he had left in his half-empty pack on the dashoard, and said, “I don’t know. Ten, twelve.”
“You have ten or twelve cartons.”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing with that many cigarettes?”
“I don’t know, I guess I’ll smoke ‘em.”
“You’re going to smoke ten or twelve cartons of cigarettes while you’re in Canada?”
“Oh wait, cartons? No…”
Strike one. Here was strike two:
Now, in order to understand this example of a horrible misjudgment of how to talk to people in authority, you need a mental picture of exactly what I looked like – four hundred-fifty pounds, thick cheap glasses that looked more like welder’s goggles, the prescription already long out-of-date, which meant I was continually squinting. In addition, I had long, crazy hair so badly cared-for that portions were matted. I looked like Meat Loaf’s mentally disturbed brother.
And the Border Patrol guy asked for my ID, and as he’s looking at my NYS ID, this man who had warned me to leave the talking to him, said in a joking conversation al voice, “Yeah, he looks like a rapist huh?”
Then we were pulled over and got to spend ten minutes unpacking boxes from the back of the van.
There’s much more, but I want to listen to Bob Dylan a bit and maybe catch some of “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.” I just realized I could have brought a DVD to watch on my laptop on the plane. Crazy.
Alright, California here I come!
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By the way, just so you know, I’m not bicoastal – I just meet different coasts that I like, and if I’m into a West Coast City then I’ll be into it, that’s cool. It doesn’t define who I am as a person.
I don’t get laid on the road. Part of that is that, frankly, I just flat-out don’t get laid a lot. But I feel like at least in New York City, I do, in golf terms, have a handicap; a lot of the women who move to New York City do so partly because they grew up on Woody Allen movies and Albert Brooks movies and Martin Scorcese movies, and movies influenced by that generation of New York city filmmaker, and TV shows like Seinfeld where they’re trained to find neurotic, conventionally unattractive men in glasses hot because they’re smart and they’re charming and they’re funny. Little realizing until it’s too late that neurotic, smart men are also really hard to deal with, because their bullshit runs deeper than the men they grew up around.
Women who get broken up with by guys like me find themselves walking around shell-shocked. “How could THAT guy break up with ME?” they’ll think. “I’m the one who’s supposed to do better, not him. In high school I would never have even talked to that guy, but movies like Revenge of the Nerds and whatever Michael J. Fox starred in taught me that they’re more sensitive.”
Little realizing that people are people and assholes are assholes, and to be completely frank, Midwestern shiksas who see themselves as the stars of the movies of their lives embarking on the Gutsy Independent Phase of their lives in New York City are almost literally a dime-a-dozen, especially to Jewish fellas in glasses who’ve been told by their mommies their whole lives that they’re Special, Sensitive, Brilliant Boys Who Deserve Better.
I almost hate to give up the game here, but the good news is that women reading this will think that being self-aware at least makes me we willing to change and work on my issues.
I know my mom thinks I’m a Special, Sensitive, Brilliant Boy Who Deserves Better. A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with my parents, and I got my mom to admit that she would love no matter whom I chose to marry, but she would be really happy if I married a Jewish woman. Which is funny when you understand that my mother is a practicing Buddhist who married an Irish Catholic Socialist practicing Buddhist (my childhood wasn’t that cool, relax).
Man, have I gotten away from my point. Which is that I don’t get laid on the road. Ever. In fact, I have never had sex outside of the Five Boroughs. And I certainly didn’t get laid on the “College Comedy Game Show Tour!” that I started talking about yesterday. At the time, I was four hundred fifty pounds and nineteen years old and taking my first road trip since my family vacations at the age of five.
At that point, I’d had one awkward, awful sexual encounter, during a time in high school in my junior year when I’d temporarily lost a lot of weight. That encounter ended with the lady giving me an in-depth critique that left me feeling not only completely inadequate but like a bad person for attempting to inflict my evil, clumsy sexual techniqueon an unsuspecting female populace. Any time someone uses the phrase, “And that left me feeling raped” to describe sex with you is fantastic, especially your first time.
Anyhooters, I honestly have no idea where I was going at the top of this entry. That’s cool, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.
“College Comedy Game Show Tour!” was produced by Ripoff Bookings (I’m changing a lot of details here, because there’s nothing worse than slamming someone you think you’lll never meet again, and then six months later you’re working with them and trying to figure out if they know all the horrible stuff you said about them).
Ripoff Booking is located in a town I will call “Ass End, Midwestern State That Is About Five-Hour Car Ride Away From Chicago’s Midway Airport, Which Is Where We Flew In.” Why would we fly into Chicago’s Midway Airport when Ass End Airport is actually in Ass End City? Because I was nineteen and had not experienced what happened when you left the Captain in charge of planning anything. So it was a five-hour drive with Tom from Ripoff (I truly hope I’m changing his name here, it’s been a while), during which he told us all about how Ass End is considered the Klan Capital of the Midwest, and about how the head of Ripoff Booking – whom we shall call “Ripoff the Magnificent” – was a headlining comedy hypnotist for years who semi-retired to open his own booking agency. We heard all about how you didn’t want to mess with Ripoff the Magnificent, because he was a big guy who would jump over his desk and beat the shit out of you if he thought you were screwing with him.
As a side note, I’ve found that a lot of “tough guys” in comedy are actually fat guys who discovered that if they wore leather jackets and talked a lot of shit about how much they’d beat the crap out of you, most comedians are too passive-aggressive to call them on it. I seriously have a dozen links to those kinds of guys, and you can tell that for the most part, these are guys whose exposure to street-fighting has been through video games with titles like “Street Fighter,” and who if it weren’t for their comedy personae, they’d be wearing Klingon costumes and screaming about the glories of dying in combat for the Empire. Trust me, I’ve met those guys, too.
Because that’s who this Ripoff the Magnificent ultimately ended up being. A sad fat man in black, in his fifties, who clearly couldn’t jump over his desk if his ass were on fire, who probably couldn’t beat his own meat (I believe I owe Beavis and Butthead an “additional material written by”credit here) let alone the shit out of me.
His wife/assistant was a woman of a certain age whose face was a little – er – tight, whose breasts were fairly large for her frame and buoyant for her age, and whose hair was blond and brittle to the point of being a potential fire hazard. He sat me and the Captain down (TJ was flying in to join us the next day for our first show, a dry run at a local Catholic High School), and pretty much told us exactly how he was going to screw us in no uncertain terms. In fact, there was a certain twisted integrity to the thorough way he outlined exactly how fucked The Captain was financially. He kind of had us by the yarbles; what were we going to do? Eat the expense of the plane ticket and say, “No, we don’t want to do comedy on the road?” and drive back to Chicago’s Midway airport?
I forget exactly how the arrangement worked, but essentially The Captain was technically the one getting paid by the colleges we performed for, and then he paid both the other two comedians on the tour and the booking agency, which meant that somehow he alone was responsible for paying the bulk of the income tax. It was a complicated, difficult arrangement that still makes no sense to me, and pretty much resulted in two years of IRS problems for the Captain further down the line. And I felt bad for him, because for all the frustration of dealing with this man (and there was frustration) he is at heart a good guy who took a chance on hiring me to perform on the road with him at a time when I was clearly not ready for it.
Comedy is a bad business, and I feel a certain amount of gratitude that I’ve mostly run into the Good Eggs of the comedy world. But if there’s Bad Eggs, then Ripoff the Magnificent and Tom were Rotten, Left Behind the Couch In Front of the Radiator for Three Days Until the Whole House Stinks of Death Eggs. I know that R the M wasn’t literally covered in a thin veneer of slug slime, but that is quite honestly the impression he left me with.
That first night, the Captain and I were driven around by Tom From Ripoff as he shotgunned a six-pack in just under an hour. He took us out for an evening at his favorite Ass End bar, and if you’ve ever seen a bad ‘80s action-comedy where the black partner ends up in a redneck bar and is told they don’t serve his kind before there’s some kind of hilarious resolution involving Fists of Justice and broken Redneck Collarbones? If you have then you’ve already been to this bar.
Alright, I just found out that the in-flight movie is Talladega Nights, and I’ve never seen that.
Or not – there’s a problem with the Talladega Nights tape; it’s the Spanish-only version, and it’s been substituted with “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” a movie that could only be improved if the audience doesn’t actually understand what the characters are saying.
Okay, here’s how I’ll finish out this entry; a couple of incidents from that tour, and then tomorrow’s entry will focus on stuff that’s happened to me since I landed in LA, I promise.
So the Captain and I are driving back to New York City – TJ has flown back from Ass End Airport to New York to take care of some things, but someone’s got to drive the van east (being that it’s a traveling comedy game show, there’s a lot to transport – a huge set, boxes of props and costumes, a PA and sound system incuding speakers and speaker stands and microphones.
The Captain and I are driving, by which I mean the Captain is driving because I don’t have my license. And I mean, I literally still don’t have my license ten years later. At one point, the Captain told me that he couldn’t be caught speeding because he also technically didn’t have a driver’s license. Somehow, he had let his license expire, and he had a new one on the way, but in the meantime the DMV had faxed him a copy of a driver’s license which was somewhere crammed into a million papers among his stuff.
An hour later we were stopped for speeding, and that took a half-hour to clear up, because even once he’d rooted though his garbage and found his faxed copy of a license, it still took the cops a super-long time to do a thorough check. This was to be a theme of his travels, as we shall see later in this chapter.
As we were driving later in the evening, he casually mentioned that he couldn’t get to sleep at night without masturbating. This kind of stuck in my mind, probably because I was looking forward to an indefinite period of time sharing motel rooms with the man. Sure enough, as we approached New York State, we realized that it was almost midnight and the best course of action would be to pull over and stop at a motel.
Now, the Captain didn’t have a driver’s license, and you have to give any desk clerk in this country a driver’s license before you’re allowed to check into a motel room. So I said, “I do have a non-driver’s ID.” The man behind the desk looked at us and said, “If neither of you has a driver’s license, how are you - ?” And then he sighed and said, “Here, just check in.” Because ultimately, it was midnight and he was tired and he worked the graveyard shift at a highway motel, and sometimes it just doesn’t pay to ask questions you really don’t want to know the answers to anyway. We could have moved a bulky rolled-up carpet with one arm flopped out into our room and the guy wouldn’t have wanted to know about it.
Long story short, five minutes after lights out, I heard a whispered “Liam?” from the other bed followed by the sound of skin rubbing against skin. That was to happen again.
Now, the other story I want to tell. We performed at a university up in Maine, right south of the Canadian border, and we decided, being three young-to-youngish men, that we would drive up to Canada to an awful stuck-in-the-eighties dance club up there.
First of all, the Captain was caught speeding in Maine. The cop gave us a lecture and extracted a promise that we wouldn’t have to see him again.
On our way into Canada, we stopped at the Border Patrol, who asked us to step inside. Fair enough; even pre-9/11, when three men drive into your country in the middle of the night in a van filled with trunks and equipment and boxes, you’re going to want to ask some questions. This is understandable.
As we entered the Border House, I said I had to pee, and went to the bathroom. Came back, and the Border Patrol started processing our names and IDs for background checks. TJ had to go the bathroom next, and as he did, I whispered to the Cap’n, “It’s going to look suspicious, the three of us going to the bathroom at the same time.”
He then laughed, and repeated that to the Border Patrol agents. Who then spent a long time doing a thorough check on us. They don’t really seem to believe in jokes I gather; something else I said was met with an honest query: “Would you like me to do a full-body cavity search?” Not even as a threat, but rather almost as an offer. I did not say another word.
We eventually got through and went to the awful dance club, and a few hours later we were back in Maine (no one stopped us on the way back in) where the Captain was again stopped for speeding. By the same cop, who was almost speechless at having caught our van speeding on the way back after giving us a stern warning on the way up. The fact that the Captain was not given a ticket I can only attribute to the fact that angels protect children and idiots who should know better but don’t.
Our next stop was upstate New York, and the next morning we figured we’d drive up through Canada to NYS. We’re stopped again, same Border Check, this time by a nice young man. I was sitting in the passenger seat and, remembering what had happened previously, I diplomatically suggested that I might be in charge of talking to officials. “I’ll do all the talking,” O Captain My Captain snapped.
And he sure did. First, the Border Patrol Guy asked if we were transporting cigarettes into Canada. Now, the correct answer to that question is “No,” even if you are not driving a van filled with boxes and equipment.
So the Captain said, “Yes.”
“How many cartons?”
Hilariously, Cap’n R. thought the Border guy was asking how many individual cigarettes he had left in his half-empty pack on the dashoard, and said, “I don’t know. Ten, twelve.”
“You have ten or twelve cartons.”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing with that many cigarettes?”
“I don’t know, I guess I’ll smoke ‘em.”
“You’re going to smoke ten or twelve cartons of cigarettes while you’re in Canada?”
“Oh wait, cartons? No…”
Strike one. Here was strike two:
Now, in order to understand this example of a horrible misjudgment of how to talk to people in authority, you need a mental picture of exactly what I looked like – four hundred-fifty pounds, thick cheap glasses that looked more like welder’s goggles, the prescription already long out-of-date, which meant I was continually squinting. In addition, I had long, crazy hair so badly cared-for that portions were matted. I looked like Meat Loaf’s mentally disturbed brother.
And the Border Patrol guy asked for my ID, and as he’s looking at my NYS ID, this man who had warned me to leave the talking to him, said in a joking conversation al voice, “Yeah, he looks like a rapist huh?”
Then we were pulled over and got to spend ten minutes unpacking boxes from the back of the van.
There’s much more, but I want to listen to Bob Dylan a bit and maybe catch some of “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.” I just realized I could have brought a DVD to watch on my laptop on the plane. Crazy.
Alright, California here I come!
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
BY THE WAY, IVE DECIDED
I want to perform at more colleges. So if you want to see me perform at your college, drop me a line at mceneaneyl at aol.com.
Also, if you want to see me in LA, you can check out my show at the UCB LA on Friday:
CLICK HERE for UCBLA show info
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Also, if you want to see me in LA, you can check out my show at the UCB LA on Friday:
CLICK HERE for UCBLA show info
THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES
I’m writing this today's and tomorrow's blog entries on my MacBook on the airplane to Los Angeles. Every time I fly, I always promise myself that I’m going to use my time productively and write, and I always end up staring out the window and trying to follow whatever horrible in-flight movie is playing without spending the two bucks necessary to actually listen in on my headphones.
By those lights, Bridget Jones’ Diary Part 2 is such a broadly-acted, cookie-cutter formula movie that I not only could tell you what the characters were saying and doing at any given time with the sound off, I could predict what they were about to say and do in the next scene as well. How? Simple: I'm a super-genius and I can read minds.
I enjoy flying; I grew up in a family that could never afford to fly anywhere, and therefore didn’t fly for the first nineteen years of my life, so I find there’s something inherently magical about airplanes; about watching out the window from within a machine that my conscious mind knows logically is too heavy to be suspended in the air.
I always hold my breath a little as the plane takes off, as if we are being held aloft be belief, as if even thinking that there’s no way in the real world that a plane can fly, if I remind gravity that we're up there somehow will cause it to plummet, screaming, back down to the Earth below.
I realize that writing these words during turbulence is probably jinxing myself in a stupid way, but the good news is that if it is, at least no one will ever know it. Even if I die, no one will be able to read these words, no one will find out it was my karmic responsibility, and I won’t have to die of embarrassment. Either way, I win! (SPOILER ALERT: I survived the flight.)
I do, however, find myself disappointed awith airports; probably because for a long time my only exposure to these places was through the movies I grew up on, Movies about important men bustling going to important places to do important things; military men and businessmen in huge hangars filled with music and shouting and importance and drama.
The first time I took an airplane I was 19, and I was flying to Chicago’s Midway airport, which has all the charm of the Albany Greyhound bus terminal. I remember getting out of the plane at Midway, looking around, and thinking, “Man, I can’t wait to get into the actual airport.”
And as I walked to the Baggage Claim, I realized that, no, this was good as it was going to get. And I am a New York snob, and I compare everything (unfavorably) with New York City. So I walked through Midway airport, thinking, “This is less impressive than the Port Authority. In fact, this is less impressive than the Queens Center Mall food court.”
Of course, that was when I was nineteen, and had dropped out of college to embark on my ill-fated tour - I will call it “Comedy Game Show Tour!” Two other comedians and myself driving in a van through the Midwest and East Coast bemusing college students.
It was me, I’d been doing New York City open mics for six months, my buddy “TJ” (not his real name) who had iffy material but a really winning stage presence, and a guy whom we quickly nicknamed “Captain Retard.” And please, no offense to the retarded peoples; no one finds making fun of the handicapped and the developmentally disabled more repugnant than myself.
However, this is a guy had done so many drugs, had drank so much, had treated his brain and body so badly that he had destroyed a good portion of his cognitive abilities. Which is fine, and cool to hang out with (I’ve befriended many burnouts and on-their-way-to-being-burnouts in my day), but it’s extremely frustrating to deal with when the guy is also your expedition leader; acting as conduit between the booker and the performers and the colleges, keeping track of your destination and the hotel you’re supposed to be staying in.
There’s nothing more fun than arriving in Youngstown, Ohio at one in the morning (please note that this sentence is sarcasm – on the scale of Fun Things To Do, arriving at Youngstown Ohio at one in the morning ranks somewhere between attempting to use a bathroom a homeless man had just spent twenty-five minutes “freshening up” in and, oh, arriving in Youngstown, Ohio at one in the afternoon) –
Okay, that parenthetical got away from me. My point is, there’s nothing more fun than arriving in Youngstown, Ohio at one in the morning and – no, I can’t let that statement stand, not even as an example of clear sarcasm.
The only thing worse than arriving in Youngstown, Ohio, at one in the morning is arriving in Youngstown, Ohio, at one in the morning and discovering that you will never be able to sleep in the nice hotel rooms the college where you’re about to have the worst show of your life paid for because your Captain wrote the information in such horrible chicken scratch scribble that even he can’t read it. And so you have three grown men sharing a two-bed EcenoLodge filth pit. And he actually has the nerve to say, “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it,” and, the kicker, “I guess I’ll take the cot, huh?”
Since I'm rambling a bit, I'd like to point out that I held off on writing this entry for a long time (I may have alluded to some of these events in previous entries. I honestly don’t know. I’ve been keeping this blog for five years now), but I decded the hell with it. A few years ago, I discovered that the Captain had written a screenplay about our trip, where I was a five hundred pound man (I was a four hundred –fifty pound man, thank you very much) and TJ was a midget, and the Captain was a hero who had some kind of Brewster’s Million deadline to prove that he’s wirthy of his inheritance (in real life, the Captain has fairly wealthy relatives) and teaches us life lessons. Considering that the Cap’n was fairly incapable of teaching a fifth-grader math, I found the whole notion somewhat insulting. And by the word “somewhat” as a modifier at the end of that last sentence, I am using a comedy technique known as “understatement.”
Anyweasels, I've got to wake the woman next to me so I can use the bathroom - I have somehow picked the worst, most crammed-in seat on the plane, and I am somehow sitting in my own lap. Tomorrow, more about the college comedy road trip from H-E-Double hockey sticks.
* * * * *
Bob Motherfucking Dylan:
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By those lights, Bridget Jones’ Diary Part 2 is such a broadly-acted, cookie-cutter formula movie that I not only could tell you what the characters were saying and doing at any given time with the sound off, I could predict what they were about to say and do in the next scene as well. How? Simple: I'm a super-genius and I can read minds.
I enjoy flying; I grew up in a family that could never afford to fly anywhere, and therefore didn’t fly for the first nineteen years of my life, so I find there’s something inherently magical about airplanes; about watching out the window from within a machine that my conscious mind knows logically is too heavy to be suspended in the air.
I always hold my breath a little as the plane takes off, as if we are being held aloft be belief, as if even thinking that there’s no way in the real world that a plane can fly, if I remind gravity that we're up there somehow will cause it to plummet, screaming, back down to the Earth below.
I realize that writing these words during turbulence is probably jinxing myself in a stupid way, but the good news is that if it is, at least no one will ever know it. Even if I die, no one will be able to read these words, no one will find out it was my karmic responsibility, and I won’t have to die of embarrassment. Either way, I win! (SPOILER ALERT: I survived the flight.)
I do, however, find myself disappointed awith airports; probably because for a long time my only exposure to these places was through the movies I grew up on, Movies about important men bustling going to important places to do important things; military men and businessmen in huge hangars filled with music and shouting and importance and drama.
The first time I took an airplane I was 19, and I was flying to Chicago’s Midway airport, which has all the charm of the Albany Greyhound bus terminal. I remember getting out of the plane at Midway, looking around, and thinking, “Man, I can’t wait to get into the actual airport.”
And as I walked to the Baggage Claim, I realized that, no, this was good as it was going to get. And I am a New York snob, and I compare everything (unfavorably) with New York City. So I walked through Midway airport, thinking, “This is less impressive than the Port Authority. In fact, this is less impressive than the Queens Center Mall food court.”
Of course, that was when I was nineteen, and had dropped out of college to embark on my ill-fated tour - I will call it “Comedy Game Show Tour!” Two other comedians and myself driving in a van through the Midwest and East Coast bemusing college students.
It was me, I’d been doing New York City open mics for six months, my buddy “TJ” (not his real name) who had iffy material but a really winning stage presence, and a guy whom we quickly nicknamed “Captain Retard.” And please, no offense to the retarded peoples; no one finds making fun of the handicapped and the developmentally disabled more repugnant than myself.
However, this is a guy had done so many drugs, had drank so much, had treated his brain and body so badly that he had destroyed a good portion of his cognitive abilities. Which is fine, and cool to hang out with (I’ve befriended many burnouts and on-their-way-to-being-burnouts in my day), but it’s extremely frustrating to deal with when the guy is also your expedition leader; acting as conduit between the booker and the performers and the colleges, keeping track of your destination and the hotel you’re supposed to be staying in.
There’s nothing more fun than arriving in Youngstown, Ohio at one in the morning (please note that this sentence is sarcasm – on the scale of Fun Things To Do, arriving at Youngstown Ohio at one in the morning ranks somewhere between attempting to use a bathroom a homeless man had just spent twenty-five minutes “freshening up” in and, oh, arriving in Youngstown, Ohio at one in the afternoon) –
Okay, that parenthetical got away from me. My point is, there’s nothing more fun than arriving in Youngstown, Ohio at one in the morning and – no, I can’t let that statement stand, not even as an example of clear sarcasm.
The only thing worse than arriving in Youngstown, Ohio, at one in the morning is arriving in Youngstown, Ohio, at one in the morning and discovering that you will never be able to sleep in the nice hotel rooms the college where you’re about to have the worst show of your life paid for because your Captain wrote the information in such horrible chicken scratch scribble that even he can’t read it. And so you have three grown men sharing a two-bed EcenoLodge filth pit. And he actually has the nerve to say, “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it,” and, the kicker, “I guess I’ll take the cot, huh?”
Since I'm rambling a bit, I'd like to point out that I held off on writing this entry for a long time (I may have alluded to some of these events in previous entries. I honestly don’t know. I’ve been keeping this blog for five years now), but I decded the hell with it. A few years ago, I discovered that the Captain had written a screenplay about our trip, where I was a five hundred pound man (I was a four hundred –fifty pound man, thank you very much) and TJ was a midget, and the Captain was a hero who had some kind of Brewster’s Million deadline to prove that he’s wirthy of his inheritance (in real life, the Captain has fairly wealthy relatives) and teaches us life lessons. Considering that the Cap’n was fairly incapable of teaching a fifth-grader math, I found the whole notion somewhat insulting. And by the word “somewhat” as a modifier at the end of that last sentence, I am using a comedy technique known as “understatement.”
Anyweasels, I've got to wake the woman next to me so I can use the bathroom - I have somehow picked the worst, most crammed-in seat on the plane, and I am somehow sitting in my own lap. Tomorrow, more about the college comedy road trip from H-E-Double hockey sticks.
* * * * *
Bob Motherfucking Dylan:
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
CALIFORNIA HERE I COME...
Sorry for the non-posting, but I'm leaving for L.A. today, and I'm real busy getting ready to fly out there. I promise I will have at least one more detailed entry this week.
Just remember; today's Election Day, so get out there and vote.
If you're a Republican, just remember that tomorrow's Election Day so don't forget to save up your energy and go out and vote then.
* * * * *
I'm doing a show!
STAND UP SPOTLIGHT: Liam McEneaney
Friday, November 10
8:00pm - $8.00 (cheap!)
The UCB-LA
5919 Franklin Ave.
Reservations and informations: 323-908-8702
* * * * *
Meanwhile, enjoy the hell out of this:
Tom Wilson, Biff from Back to the Future, hates being famous. Someone held a gun to his head when he auditioned for Back to the Future.
The projector broke during the Toronto Film Festival screening of Borat. So Borat gave an impromptu Q & A, and of course you can't do anything in this world without a camera capturing it, here it is:
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Just remember; today's Election Day, so get out there and vote.
If you're a Republican, just remember that tomorrow's Election Day so don't forget to save up your energy and go out and vote then.
* * * * *
I'm doing a show!
STAND UP SPOTLIGHT: Liam McEneaney
Friday, November 10
8:00pm - $8.00 (cheap!)
The UCB-LA
5919 Franklin Ave.
Reservations and informations: 323-908-8702
* * * * *
Meanwhile, enjoy the hell out of this:
Tom Wilson, Biff from Back to the Future, hates being famous. Someone held a gun to his head when he auditioned for Back to the Future.
The projector broke during the Toronto Film Festival screening of Borat. So Borat gave an impromptu Q & A, and of course you can't do anything in this world without a camera capturing it, here it is:
Friday, November 03, 2006
HERE'S WHY I WILL PROBABLY BE SINGLE UNTIL THE DAY I DIE...
To me, romance is like ghosts; I've heard all the stories, but I haven't experienced anything that's made me a believer. Because apparently women have to "reciprocate your feelings."
A lot of the problem is, I don't first-date very well. I think sometimes women will see my act and hear me talk about how awkward I am and assume that I'm kidding. And then they go out with me and realize that I am dead serious about being so socially awkward. Seriously, I've had dates that were so awkward, I've left saying, "So that's what it felt like when Weisenthal and Eichmann had to share a flight back from Brazil."
Here is one such story:
This happened a few years ago, and I guess the first thing you should know is that I am very self-conscious about peeing on first dates. I mean, I don't pee into a cup on the table or anything like that (oddly, I'm perfectly comfortable doing that on a first date) - I mean, excusing myself from the table to go to the Men's Room. Why I have this hangup, I don't know, but I find it tremendously embarassing.
So what happens is, I'll drink coffee in the afternoon so I don't feel exhausted at 11pm at night in a bar. And then I drink alcohol and water with my alcohol so I stay hydrated, and next thing you know, I squirming in my seat like a hyperactive eight year-old because I really have to go.
So I'm at a bar, and I'm having a pretty good time, and forty-five minutes pass, an hour, and at an hour fifteen I really have to go really bad. And when I just couldn't hold it in any longer, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. And I got into the bathroom, and I saw the toilet was full, almost overflowing, and there was all kinds of nastiness floating around inside. But I had to go, so I turned my head and I went. And I went. And I went.
And after a couple of minutes, I was done, and I realized that I had a problem, which was that I had been in the bathroom long enough that it looked like I'd clogged the toilet. Happily, there was a plunger there, so I could fix it myself. Only, after a few minutes, it wasn't getting any better, and now, not only was the toilet clogged, but I'd been in there for a good five minutes. Which means that I'd excused myself from my date to go to the bathroom for the next five minutes.
Now, I've since learned from experience that the only really socially graceful way to handle a situation like this is to leave the bathroom, say, "Excuse me," to your date, cut your losses, leave the bar and move to Mexico.
Instead, I exited the bathroom, and there was a woman waiting to get in. So I had to tell her, "You shouldn't go in there." She did anyway, and immediately backed out, eyed me with disgust, and went to talk to her friend at the bar. I'm not sure what they talked about, but they kept shooting me dirty looks.
Then, instead of telling my date that the building was being sprayed with radon to kill the giant killer mice infesting the basement and that we had to leave immediately, I decided to approach the bartender and warn him that the toilet was clogged. When he gave me a look of disgust, I said, "No, it wasn't me." he told me, "Of course it wasn't," sighed, and walked into the bathroom.
Then I went back to my date at the table and apologiuzed for taking so long, but I was shooting heroin with a seven year-old in the men's room. No I didn't, but I should have, as it would have been way more socially acceptable than what I actually did:
I made the colossal tremendous good-thinking move to go back, sit with my date, and tell her, "I don't know, I guess someone clogged the toilet. It wasn't me, but I tried to fix it, but it was really bad."
My point? Yes, I am single.
* * * * *
If you come to this show on Monday, I promise you will not hear that story told out loud:
MONDAY, NOV. 6th, 2006
at the Lolita Bar
226 Broome St., corner of Allen
8:00pm - FREE
WITH:
TODD HANSON
is the head writer for "The Onion"
RACHEL FEINSTEN
has been seen on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend" and "Shorties Watchin' Shorties"
TONY CAMIN
is a writer/performer of the Marijuanalogues (touring with Tommy Chong) and has appeared at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "Premium Blend," "Jimmy Kimmel Live," and "Tough Crowd w/ Colin Quinn"
LIAM McENEANEY
from Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," VH1's "Best Week Ever," and was a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"
RACHAEL PARENTA
hosts "I Love Jack," more info abotu which can be found here.
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A lot of the problem is, I don't first-date very well. I think sometimes women will see my act and hear me talk about how awkward I am and assume that I'm kidding. And then they go out with me and realize that I am dead serious about being so socially awkward. Seriously, I've had dates that were so awkward, I've left saying, "So that's what it felt like when Weisenthal and Eichmann had to share a flight back from Brazil."
Here is one such story:
This happened a few years ago, and I guess the first thing you should know is that I am very self-conscious about peeing on first dates. I mean, I don't pee into a cup on the table or anything like that (oddly, I'm perfectly comfortable doing that on a first date) - I mean, excusing myself from the table to go to the Men's Room. Why I have this hangup, I don't know, but I find it tremendously embarassing.
So what happens is, I'll drink coffee in the afternoon so I don't feel exhausted at 11pm at night in a bar. And then I drink alcohol and water with my alcohol so I stay hydrated, and next thing you know, I squirming in my seat like a hyperactive eight year-old because I really have to go.
So I'm at a bar, and I'm having a pretty good time, and forty-five minutes pass, an hour, and at an hour fifteen I really have to go really bad. And when I just couldn't hold it in any longer, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. And I got into the bathroom, and I saw the toilet was full, almost overflowing, and there was all kinds of nastiness floating around inside. But I had to go, so I turned my head and I went. And I went. And I went.
And after a couple of minutes, I was done, and I realized that I had a problem, which was that I had been in the bathroom long enough that it looked like I'd clogged the toilet. Happily, there was a plunger there, so I could fix it myself. Only, after a few minutes, it wasn't getting any better, and now, not only was the toilet clogged, but I'd been in there for a good five minutes. Which means that I'd excused myself from my date to go to the bathroom for the next five minutes.
Now, I've since learned from experience that the only really socially graceful way to handle a situation like this is to leave the bathroom, say, "Excuse me," to your date, cut your losses, leave the bar and move to Mexico.
Instead, I exited the bathroom, and there was a woman waiting to get in. So I had to tell her, "You shouldn't go in there." She did anyway, and immediately backed out, eyed me with disgust, and went to talk to her friend at the bar. I'm not sure what they talked about, but they kept shooting me dirty looks.
Then, instead of telling my date that the building was being sprayed with radon to kill the giant killer mice infesting the basement and that we had to leave immediately, I decided to approach the bartender and warn him that the toilet was clogged. When he gave me a look of disgust, I said, "No, it wasn't me." he told me, "Of course it wasn't," sighed, and walked into the bathroom.
Then I went back to my date at the table and apologiuzed for taking so long, but I was shooting heroin with a seven year-old in the men's room. No I didn't, but I should have, as it would have been way more socially acceptable than what I actually did:
I made the colossal tremendous good-thinking move to go back, sit with my date, and tell her, "I don't know, I guess someone clogged the toilet. It wasn't me, but I tried to fix it, but it was really bad."
My point? Yes, I am single.
* * * * *
If you come to this show on Monday, I promise you will not hear that story told out loud:
MONDAY, NOV. 6th, 2006
at the Lolita Bar
226 Broome St., corner of Allen
8:00pm - FREE
WITH:
TODD HANSON
is the head writer for "The Onion"
RACHEL FEINSTEN
has been seen on Comedy Central's "Premium Blend" and "Shorties Watchin' Shorties"
TONY CAMIN
is a writer/performer of the Marijuanalogues (touring with Tommy Chong) and has appeared at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "Premium Blend," "Jimmy Kimmel Live," and "Tough Crowd w/ Colin Quinn"
LIAM McENEANEY
from Comedy Central's "Premium Blend," VH1's "Best Week Ever," and was a writer for Comedy Central's "Standup Nation w/ Greg Giraldo"
RACHAEL PARENTA
hosts "I Love Jack," more info abotu which can be found here.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
BIG SHOW - NEXT FRIDAY IN LOS ANGELES
I will be performing a half-hour set at the Upright Citizens' Brigade Theater out there. Please come by and say you love me. Check out their website for a lot of information and online reservations.
STAND UP SPOTLIGHT: Liam McEneaney
Friday, November 10
8:00pm - $8.00 (cheap!)
The UCB-LA
5919 Franklin Ave.
Reservations and informations: 323-908-8702
NOTE: It will probably be a while before I get back to the West Coast, so this is your last chance for a while to catch me out there.
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STAND UP SPOTLIGHT: Liam McEneaney
Friday, November 10
8:00pm - $8.00 (cheap!)
The UCB-LA
5919 Franklin Ave.
Reservations and informations: 323-908-8702
NOTE: It will probably be a while before I get back to the West Coast, so this is your last chance for a while to catch me out there.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
NOTES FROM THE GREENWICH VILLAGE HALLOWEEN PARADE
So crowded; the Daily News estimated that two million people showed up; and this is the paper that also guesstimates that fifteen thousand people show up at any protest rally that every other news source in the world estimates at half a million.
It's a pretty amazing parade, because you've got the Tri-State area's entire gay population showing up, and you've also got massive guidos from Jersey and Long Island and Queens. Which means that essentially it's gay people and people who ate gay people. And yet they all manage to get along and party together. It's like an after-school special, but with more sidewalk puking.
* * * * *
I was going to go to a CD release party on Christopher Street, and that was a mistake. Here's a tip - never throw a party in a bar at what can only be described as Ground Queero of a huge gay event. Unless you want invitees to not be able to show up.
So I decided to go from Christopher to a party in the 20, and realized that the quickest way to walk was by joining the parade. So I did, and now I'm part of hundreds of tourists photo collection forever.
* * * * *
I know that I have to lose weight now, because although I was not in costume, people still guessed that I was dressed as Peter Jackson, as Jack Black, as Michael Moore, and - mega-super-ouch - as Kevin Smith.
Guesses that would have put a gun in my mouth include: Orson Welles in his wine commercial days, the bloated corpse of John Belushi, or - no, Kevin Smith really was the worst.
* * * * *
Common costumes included sexy nurse, sexy cowgirl, and sexy French maid.
But not as common as the not-as-sexy-as-she-thinks-she-is nurse, not-as-sexy-as-she-thinks-she-is cowgirl, and not-as-sexy-as-she-thinks-she-is French maid.
* * * * *
Things white people should not wear include:
* huge afro wigs
* black face
* the African native outfit a guy had on, which included full-body blackface, a loincloth, a spear, and a bone through his nose
* * * * *
At one point, I stood watching a homeless guy just kind of standing there taking it all in, and i realized that this parade must be a real mindfuck for all the street crazies.
Because it's the one night when they say, "Hey wait, you see that too? The angel and the giant bong getting into a fight with the devil-woman? I knew I didn't need to take those pills everyday!"
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It's a pretty amazing parade, because you've got the Tri-State area's entire gay population showing up, and you've also got massive guidos from Jersey and Long Island and Queens. Which means that essentially it's gay people and people who ate gay people. And yet they all manage to get along and party together. It's like an after-school special, but with more sidewalk puking.
* * * * *
I was going to go to a CD release party on Christopher Street, and that was a mistake. Here's a tip - never throw a party in a bar at what can only be described as Ground Queero of a huge gay event. Unless you want invitees to not be able to show up.
So I decided to go from Christopher to a party in the 20, and realized that the quickest way to walk was by joining the parade. So I did, and now I'm part of hundreds of tourists photo collection forever.
* * * * *
I know that I have to lose weight now, because although I was not in costume, people still guessed that I was dressed as Peter Jackson, as Jack Black, as Michael Moore, and - mega-super-ouch - as Kevin Smith.
Guesses that would have put a gun in my mouth include: Orson Welles in his wine commercial days, the bloated corpse of John Belushi, or - no, Kevin Smith really was the worst.
* * * * *
Common costumes included sexy nurse, sexy cowgirl, and sexy French maid.
But not as common as the not-as-sexy-as-she-thinks-she-is nurse, not-as-sexy-as-she-thinks-she-is cowgirl, and not-as-sexy-as-she-thinks-she-is French maid.
* * * * *
Things white people should not wear include:
* huge afro wigs
* black face
* the African native outfit a guy had on, which included full-body blackface, a loincloth, a spear, and a bone through his nose
* * * * *
At one point, I stood watching a homeless guy just kind of standing there taking it all in, and i realized that this parade must be a real mindfuck for all the street crazies.
Because it's the one night when they say, "Hey wait, you see that too? The angel and the giant bong getting into a fight with the devil-woman? I knew I didn't need to take those pills everyday!"
