Month: October 2013

I got a chance to sit down and play Grand Theft Auto 5, which is a fantastic game.  I also had a chance to learn some things about myself.  Most not good.

– I can’t see the screen that well.  I either need a 90″ TV or have stand three feet in front of the one I have.

– Rear wheel drive is pretty accurate, meaning you can’t corner well.  I know this all too well from hydroplaning in a Mercury Grand Marquis about six years ago.  As bad as that was, having my neighbors stare at me as I banged the rear panel back into place with a rubber mallet in one hand and a beer in the other was the most white trash moment of my life.

– I may be one of four people on the earth who likes the oldies station.  Sure, you have your gangster rap, but I just fired a handgun out my window while Michael McDonald sang “What a Fool Believes.”  I’m crazier than you.

– Much like in real life, I can’t work my phone while driving very well.  I see myself in a nursing home, 2049, carjacking hovercrafts in Grand Theft Auto 26 and complaining that I can’t get my microchip phone to work.

– I’m starting to like this running through red lights too much.  I may start to use this in my work commute.  Then I can sleep in another 15 minutes, only at the expense of public safety.  I think it’s worth it.  I’m a good driver, except when I’m trying to text or hydroplaning.  Maybe I should put down my beer and focus on my phone more as I fly through this intersection.

I did a small town show last weekend.  There was unnecessary excitement, as I got there way too early and decided to relax in my car for 30 minutes.  The problem?  Apparently you can’t listen to the radio, run the A/C and charge a phone without killing your battery.  I had to get a jump from some of the patrons.  I got a jump, they got complimentary beer coozies.  Everyone wins.

I have a joke where I ask the crowd if they’ve ever been drunk and seen something so messed up it sobered them up instantly.  I usually get a few nods and murmurs, but that’s the extent.  Usually.  An older man approached me after the show and decided to tell me his story in front of his very not interested in the story wife.

He proceeded to tell me he went to a farm in Iowa.  Upon getting out of the car, he saw a naked fat man chasing a naked fat woman across the yard, both disappearing into the cornfield.  His wife’s face soured with each word, by the way.  He then told me he went to sleep (passed out, I love when people deny that they passed out).  Upon awakening, he stumbled into a room to look for his buddy and walked in on a legless drunk man having nasties with a morbidly obese woman.  The door opening startled the legless man, who fell off the bed and couldn’t get back up.  He said it sobered him up instantly.

I am pretty sure his wife left him sometime on Sunday after telling that story, but I just wonder how one winds up a party like that or stayed past the first part.  Watching naked people run through cornfields is a bad start to any social gathering, generally.  Think I’m wrong?  Go back to the last party in your head.  Now remove the clothes from the people there.  Exactly.  I’m right.

Thousands of years ago, depending upon your religious beliefs or lack thereof, some people had sex and then their kids mated with some other group of people’s kids (or maybe each other, see ancient Egypt or Appalachia).  This happened a bunch of times and thus, here we are.  Most have been forgotten, but we inherit their traits, good and bad, hoping we carry on some weird legacy of past ancestors.

I tell this meandering tale because I like to think, with the men in my family who built buildings, fought in wars and tamed the wild frontier, I have some manliness in my blood.  Or I used to.  I was trimming my beard and noticed my chest hair was a bit long around the collar.  For hundreds of years, this has been normal and acceptable, but due to the modern new standards, I decided to give it a buzz.  I probably, in retrospect, should have used the guard.

After trying to balance this mistake out, I ended up buzzing my entire chest hair bald.  I then stared, horrified at a bald chest with a very hairy stomach.  Of course it had to go.  Minutes later, I looked into the mirror realizing that any legacy of manliness was now stuck between the blades of a $15 beard trimmer.  I also know I need to lose some weight.  I thought I looked fat before, but holy shit it’s much worse without any hair.  I think I’ll wear my shirt in the shower for the next few weeks.  I look like a surly baby or a pre-op patient hit shaved by an overzealous intern.

I got a chance last night to open up for Pauly Shore.  I jumped on it, noticing immediately the club was a sell out.  I met the “handler” who was basically the sound guy and problem solver.  He was very nice, but from the West Coast, so I don’t know if we communicated well.  “Are you the opener?”  Yes.  “Who is the emcee?”  I am.  “Then who is the opener?”  Ummm.  Me.  I’m both.  The feature is after me.  Can I have his intro?  “He doesn’t have intro music.”  Right.  What does he want me to say when I bring him up?  “Oh, that.  Not sure.”  Then again, my voice is very deep and mumbly.  Maybe he couldn’t understand my slack-jawed yokel accent.

I am not much of a picture guy, I’m not very comfortable meeting big names, so I wasn’t sure how my meeting Pauly would go.  He walked in, right before I hit the stage.  “Are you the opener?”  Yes!  “Have fun.”  Cool, thanks!  Holy shit, I am a dud.  Way to wow right from the start.

The show was sold out, so I stood and watched some of it, then after dodging the swinging kitchen door I figured I was better off just sitting at the ol’ bar.  I have a joke where I mention the way my career path is going, at the age of 50 I’ll be running the scrambler at your local county fair.  I then rub my hairy belly and say, “You kids quit pooshin’!”  This apparently created a kinship with a middle aged lady who approached me after the show and poked me in the gut way too hard.  “THAT BELLY MADE ME LAUGH!”  Then she walked away.  I need a handler, I feel violated.  Security!

I had a show Saturday night with my buddy Troy Hammond.  Troy is, I believe, the only blind comedian in the U.S.  Strangely, any disability is actually an advantage for material writing in comedy.  Turn lemons into lemonade!

We went up to the show outside of Youngstown and I realized having a blind navigator isn’t ideal when you are trying to find the place.  We shot past it and as I turned, a hockey masked psycho was chasing cars up and down the street.  I naturally did a double take and it was in fact a haunted house.  Then again, we were near Youngstown so it may have been an average Saturday night.

I thought of great joke about how the government had been shutdown for five days and people were already resorting to violence.  As I prepared to take the stage, the emcee said exactly what I had thought almost word for word.  I realized at that moment great minds think alike or I am an unoriginal turd.  Probably the latter.  I threw out another line instead that bombed horribly and got off to bad start.  It took me about three jokes to win them back.  That’s what I get for leaving the script.  Fire my cue card holder!

At the open mike, anyone can sign up, so a bar regular did it (see last blog).  He hit the stage, and I hadn’t seen it before, but he had pre-planted several notes on the speakers.  I used to carry a cheat sheet onstage, but this was the ultimate boy scout move – putting notes on before the show even started.  He did eventually pick up the sheets and shuffle through them.  Not subtle, but good work.  Then he fired it up.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t awful.  Long-winded, borrowed a lot of old premises, but had a few original punches.  I was disappointed for the purposes of my blog.  I was wrapping up the show, when suddenly, like a dream, a second bar patron came up to me.  “Hey man, I want to go up.”  OK, I handed him the mike.  “You ever hit it doggy style and stick your finger up there and put it your mouth?”  He then did four minutes of eating poop “humor.”  I was watching it and laughing so hard (not WITH him, but AT him) that I nearly had a stroke.  Comedy is fun.  Bad comedy is legendary.  I now want to encourage more new comics to show up every week.