Month: February 2013

I had a show last Saturday as a fund raiser for college students.  I’ve done these several times before and they are quite interesting.  First off, forget any references to jobs or working.  When a busy day involves three one hour classes, you’re not jumping on board with real world humor.  As a side note, God I miss college.  One semester my hardest class was library research methods.

Other problems include most of the kids are not local, so toss that out.  In fact, Saturday I am pretty sure about five or six of the forty audience members didn’t speak English.  The most pervasive though, is the “I’m too young and cool to laugh” attitude.  Thankfully, I am hilarious, so that’s not a problem for me.  At least the younger kids love to be lectured about how bad life is going to suck in five years!  Oh wait, they hate that.  Which is why I love it.

I went to the casino Friday night.  En Vogue was there, so it was packed.  Granted, it wasn’t the original lineup, but I don’t think anyone knew or cared.  I was surprised by how many En Vogue songs I knew and I feel like I need to go to metal bootcamp to purge myself.

I made it over to the blackjack table, which was the most interesting part of the night.  I was sitting next to a guy that had old tennis shoes and a t-shirt who was playing two hands at once, $100-$200 a pop, just losing his ass and not even flinching.  Then two guys showed up and laid down $75…in one dollar bills.  It took about 12 minutes to count it out and the dealer had to practically sledgehammer the money into the hole.  After wasting everyone’s time, the more than likely drug dealer guy #2 wouldn’t get off his cell phone, so they booted him off the table.  Thanks, dick.  Maybe next time, you could bring a sack of pennies!

Sadly, as I placed my last losing bet, I realized every person in there had more disposable income than I did.  I saw a woman in a crushed velvet jumpsuit – she had more cash.  There was a guy so large, he was sitting on two chairs at once – loaded.  A person at the table asked me if they should hit on 11, yes 11 – more money than me.  Well, looks like it’s time to quit comedy and start dealing drugs.  Then again, chriscoencooksmeth.com probably would not get too much traffic.

– If you’re freezing, don’t watchThe Grey.  Or if you have a fear of being eaten alive by wolves.

– I changed my own air filter the other day for the first time.  I am ashamed that I was proud of myself.

– I would maybe one percent be upset about the Post Office ending Saturday delivery if I checked my mail more than once or twice a week.

– Chris Brown must be one smooth talker if Rihanna took him back.  I’m pretty sure she options with all that money.  Then again, maybe she has explosive diarrhea.  That’s probably it.

– Now that football is over, the Walking Dead is only thing keeping me from sleeping all Sunday.

That was a bit overstated, but if it sells more shirts, I may start saying it.  There is almost no act more shaming in comedy than selling merch post show.  You have to stand there and fake smile while people slide their gazes up, down, and anywhere but your hopeful face.  I hate doing it, but every once in a while, you sell a lot and it’s awesome.  That happens about three times a year.

I thought after a recent show in my hometown I would clean up after the show.  I even had a nice local reference.  “I used to canister for baseball down the road.  Thanks to you cheap bastards, I had to wear skintight pants and a purple mesh hat with a cord.  You owe me some DVD sales!”  I sold one.  Maybe everyone doesn’t find my insults as charming as I do.

The very next evening, I sold well, except that a lady offered me $5 for a shirt (that would be great, if it was 1983 and t-shirts cost $3 to make).  She was actually mad when I wouldn’t do it.  Another biker looking chick bought both my items, then proceeded to tell me the flaws of my act.  She bought my crap, I would let her boot kick me in the testes once the money is in hand.  My fave was a guy who asked how much my DVD was.  “$5.”  “Ooh…I don’t have that much on me.”  Then he bought another beer.  What was he expecting?  “Oh, the DVD is only 47 cents.  It’s a recording of me cutting my toenails with left-handed scissors.  I’ve never sold one ever.”

I’ve done several hundred comedy shows in my run of stand-up.  Even for an open mike, I like to have a little bit of prep time to make sure I’m ready to go.  If that’s how I feel about five minutes of unpaid jokey time, you can imagine I am rather stand-offish for longer paid sets.  Enter the cornball last Saturday.

A gentleman showed up while me and my pal Darrell were getting ready in the green room (it was an office).  He proceeded to rattle off his resume of entertainment and mentioned he used to do stand-up…which is the worst ever, because that means that person is going to bombard us with shitty truck stop jokes we’ve heard forty times already.  He didn’t disappoint.  My usual trick is to minimize eye contact and try my damnedest to change the subject.  He was impervious to my lack of interest.

Of course, he had to pull out a joke that was, shall I say, insensitive to Semitic persons.  I finally just walked out on him.  Then he returned and asked me and Darrell if we prepared our sets beforehand.  At the time, Darrell was actually making notes and writing out a joke list.  We both said yes, we actually worked on our sets before walking onto the stage in front of strangers.  Then Darrell went right back to writing and I stared at him so blankly I think he felt his soul coming out.  He finally got the hint, which was great, because I had a whopping six minutes to mentally prep for a 45 minute set.  Thanks, conversation black hole!

After my recent move, I was pleasantly surprised by how short my commute was to work and of course, having someone guide me to eating food not in a can.  Day one, though, in the dark I wore brown socks with black pants, then day two grabbed a fork in the confusion for my can of soup.  I drank it out of the bowl, in case you were wondering.  What am I supposed to do, not eat?

Last night I went to burn DVD’s for the comedy shows this weekend.  I realized the day before I left the DVD covers at my old place, so I had to go back.  Then I discovered my blanks were in the crawlspace, so I army crawled in the dark like a tunnel rat only to find out they weren’t there.  Back across town, apparently.  So I went to Target, where I was stuck behind quite possibly the loudest screaming child I have heard to buy more blank DVD’s…of which I will probably sell, not this weekend, but over the course of the next two years.  Oh well.

The saddest part of the whole experience is how little of my stuff I use.  I packed 34 years’ worth of my worldly possessions up and I pretty much use my laptop, iPod, and clothes.  I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s probably not good.