Author: Chris

I seem to be a magnet for odd or awkward conversation.  Recently, I was relieving myself when my daughter walked in, stood about six inches from me and said, “Dada’s pooping!”  “Well, I’m peeing…”  Any explanation was overridden with fear that at any second a sudden movement would have very disastrous consequences.  And that’s not even as bad as the rest of this list and she’s two.  These other people, adults.

I called a business once to place an order.  I threw in the ol’ “How’s it going today?”  “My niece died.”  I was dead silent for about three seconds.  “I’m sorry to hear that, that’s terrible.”  “Did you need to order?”  He went from my niece died to did you need to order in one sentence.  I ordered just to move along past it.

I did a show in a small town in the middle of nowhere.  A man, smashed, stumbled up.  “You need to do more racist jokes!”  Well, by more, you’re implying I did one in the first place.  His daughter, closer to my age, grabbed him.  “He’s not racist, only when he drinks.”  No, sounds like he’s always racist, stupid, it just comes out louder when he’s drunk.  Oh, and he looks like he drinks a lot.

I was running with my dog years ago and a neighbor on the other side of my complex had her dog in the yard.  Her dog was a slobbering mess and unfixed.  As her dog and mine sniffed each other, she began talking.  “You should take your dog to a dog park!  There’s a nice one about 40 minutes from here.”  The whole time, her dog is trying to mount mine and slobbering all over his head and back.  “Yeah, that’s pretty far.  That’s why I am jogging with him now.  Exercise…hey can you grab your dog?”  She was impervious.  “I like the dog park.  Do you go to other ones?”  “No, never been once.  Hey, can you grab your dog now?”  “I found out about one that’s supposed to open soon.”  “OK, I’m out of here, nice talk.  Enjoy the dog park!”  I started jogging again with my dog; her dunce dog kept following us and she had zero interest in pursuing.  This happened about 11 more times, word for word, until one day, blocking the sidewalk yet again, she told me they had to move due to complaints against their dog, but maybe we should have our dogs meet to play.  I told her I didn’t remember my number and started running again.

Yesterday, I had a serial violation committed against me that should have wound up with someone in jail.  I was emailed, then immediately called before the ink was even dry on the email.  That’s a metaphor, but you get it.  With modern technology, there are more ways than ever to contact people, so here are the rules that must be followed.

Thou shalt not email, then immediately call.  Just call.  Or just email and wait, oh, maybe like more than 94 seconds.

Thou shalt not end a line of communication, then strike up another.  Many moons ago, when I was single, I was talking to a girl and the conversation was dead in the water.  I was mercifully able to kill it off and jumped on Facebook to send a message.  I immediately saw her IM me on Facebook – “Hey, saw you’re online!”  Another 30 minutes of mundane nothingness later, I permanently disabled the IM feature.

Honor the method of communication used.  Don’t Facebook message me, then text me follow up and leave a voice mail.  When I try to remember what I’m supposed to follow up on, I now have to search 12 different areas of conversation to find what the hell we were talking about.

Thou shalt not delete text messages with 24 hours of receiving them and ask for the information again.  I HOPE MY WIFE READS THIS ONE COUGH COUGH.  Ok, that wasn’t subtle.

THOU SHALT NOT ASK A QUESTION VIA EMAIL THEN NOT READ THE DAMN EMAIL AND REASK THE QUESTION LATER OR THOU SHALT HAVE THE MONITOR DUCT TUPED TO THINE FACE SO SAYETH ME.

Thou shalt not send a read receipt email for an email that says “Thanks!” or “Cool!”

OK, there is only six commandments, but feel free to comment your own and maybe I’ll add more.

I have thought about this topic for a while.  First, I hate when people use “us” when they are talking about themselves, but I’m using the internet to get this blog out, so to avoid being a smug ass, I used it.  Second, I’m not saying there’s going backwards, so hold your eye rolls.  My point is just that the internet is making people worse human beings.

Let’s start light for this blog.  Movies.  When I grew up, movies were reviewed by a couple really pretentious guys on TV or in papers, but generally you saw movies that 1) looked interesting 2) were about a topic or story you cared about 3) had actors/actresses you liked or 4) your family or friends recommended them.  You enjoyed them or didn’t and told others your opinion.  Now, thanks to the internet, EVERY MOVIE IS SHIT AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER BY A PERSON WITH A BLOG.

I will avoid spoilers, but the current biggest movie (and maybe biggest ever) is Avengers: Infinity War.  It reached $1 billion faster than any movie in history.  I finally saw it and the next day, saw three articles on Facebook or my email website about how it made money, but really wasn’t that good…while it’s making hundreds of millions of dollars in a week.

Here’s the beef, because of course, I clicked on the articles.  “It had too many characters.”  It’s a war, it’s supposed to, moron.  Wars aren’t fought with six people.  “It left out ______.”  I’m not joking, that was in the same article.  In other words, there are too many people, but you forgot one person, maybe two, from one Marvel movie in the last ten years.  It went on – “There wasn’t enough dialogue for _____.”  Well, the movie wasn’t seven hours, so yes, they didn’t have Captain America reading the Lincoln Douglas debates to Corvus Glaive.  They didn’t give Groot fifteen minutes of “I AM GROOT.”  “There were too many men!”  I THOUGHT WE DIDN’T LOOK AT GENITALIA ANYMORE.  SHUT YOUR HOLE.  Also, tons of female superheroes, so dumb point, but nice try, stupid.

I had to take a paragraph break to catch my breath.  I hate the internet right now.  OK, here goes.

“They gave the Guardians director power over the script but not the Black Panther director, so it’s racist.”  BLACK PANTHER CAME OUT THREE MONTHS AGO.  THERE’S NO WAY THEY WERE GOING TO REDO THE MOVIE.  IT WAS DONE.  DO YOU KNOW HOW MOVIES WORK.  IT’S NOT A CARTOON WHERE YOU CAN DO ONE IN A WEEK.  “There was a inconsistency in Gamora’s backstory!”  There were movies made by different writers and directors for the last ten years.  You’re lucky all the actors are still alive, let alone someone took the time to analyze one sentence from a movie that came out four years ago and compare it to a scene in this movie.  15 years ago, before Marvel started making movies, all you nerds were crying about no superhero movies about your favorite character and not one person gave a squirt of piss about Gamora’s backstory.  Go run into traffic and ban yourself from watching a movie ever again.

I had to stop there.  Enjoy the movie or get a job being a legit movie critic.  Go watch the fish sex weirdo movie with your snobby douche friends and sew your lips shut before you ruin my day again.  Sadly, this is the most benign criticism of the internet, but I’ll start here.  It makes really uninteresting and untalented people think their opinions are worthwhile.  DID YOU MAKE A BILLION DOLLAR CASH COW, INTERNET MOVIE ELITIST?  NO?  THEN STUFF YOUR REVIEW WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE, WHICH IS EVERYWHERE IN YOUR MISERABLE CLOUD OF A LIFE.

About a week ago, our young dog meandered into my son’s room and the unmistakable stench, similar to rotting fish stung our nostrils.  Any dog owner knows that smell – overfilled anal glands.  For some reason, dogs seem to dig it, but it’s straight up horrible and doesn’t go away magically, so I called the vet.  With two kids and a full work life, it’s a pain in the rear to try and fly over on my lunch or go in on a Saturday, so my wife and I thought, why not have them teach me how to take care of this pungent mess myself?

I watched a YouTube video – yes, there are several on this wonderful topic, and nearly vomited.  Surely it’s easier than this…what is that greyish brown…oh God…I can’t even smell this video…  I got to the vet this week and met the tech.  “So what we do is the internal method because it works much better.”  Um, how about the extra external method, like I do this from outside the neighborhood or outer space?  She smiled and kept going.  “You need gloves, some lube… “Just like last weekend, amirite?  Ah, no high five back.  Continue.”  OK, I didn’t really say that, I was too horrified to speak.  “Then you insert your thumb in the…(she paused) anus and feel around the 5 and 7 o’clock positions for a raisin.”  I hated raisins before this, I really do now.  “How about I do the first one, then you.”  Oh goody.  Let’s rip this bandage off.

The first one went great for her, but the small room filled with a stench five times worse than the fish smell from the night before.  The gag reflex was barely subdued.  “Now it’s your turn!”  I put both gloves on and went after it.  Nothing happened.  “Is that it?  Did I do it right?  (I knew I didn’t)  “No, try to feel for the raisin.”  Again with the damn raisin.  Haven’t you done enough, making me think you’re chocolate chips, you son of bitch hasbeen grape?  I tried again and suddenly thick, viscous brownish liquid sprayed, I mean really sprayed out from my dog’s sour flower like a skunk blast.  I saw it cover the paper towel on the floor and her fur.  The reeking odor, once overwhelming, now stung my lungs as I tried not to breathe.  The deed was done and no one was happy about it.  “You got it!”  Oh I sure did, lady, I sure did.

I finally got out of the stank chamber and paid my bill.  $18.  You know what, I think I’ll find time on my lunch break to make this visit happen next time.  You could add a zero to that bill, ma’am, I’ll be back next time too.

I am friends with too many damn comics because I saw about 5000 posts/tweets/blogs/shares about Michelle Wolf.  MIGHT AS WELL JUMP IN SINCE I DO JOKEY TIME AND I KNOW EVERYTHING.  Breaking news: My liberal friends who do comedy are saying, “Suck it up, reverse snowflakes!” and my non liberal comics friends don’t seem to like it as much (yes, there are some comics who aren’t liberal/progressive).

First, stop defending Michelle Wolf.  She knew exactly what she was doing.  If you have the balls to go in front of White House officials and the media and blast the skin off their backs, you aren’t looking for allies.  She has a Netflix show coming out.  She’s doing exactly what she wanted to and will benefit from the criticism in ways you couldn’t hope for.  She’s a big girl and her show will get a huge boost now.

Second, it was vulgar.  Doesn’t mean a lot of it wasn’t funny.  Doesn’t mean she did well for the event’s crowd (she didn’t) – she didn’t care about that, see the previous paragraph.  Was it her fault, the booker’s, the crowd’s?  We will probably never know.  I’ve been paid to work formal events and even the lower standard fund raiser show.  I did a show where the patrons told me before and after to curse or they wish I had cursed because the comics seemed uptight.  I didn’t.  Why?  The person paying me told me not to.  She used language and references that from my experience were way out of line for that type of room…but I have no idea and don’t care.  Until the emails are released of what was expected, it’s a waste of time to jump on a horse and scream into the wind about it was her fault or the booker’s fault or the room was uptight.  Probably all three.  The world will turn and they will adjust the show accordingly.

Third, was it funny?  Some of it was.  I must admit, if I hear another Nazi joke I’m going to vomit.  She did a great job covering the news topics of the day and even since Trump’s election, but I thought was light on media jokes and heavy on him, so the balance may not have been there for the event.  Also, the abortion joke was poorly written.  Abortion supporters claim a fetus is not a baby, so her wording played into the hands of the pro-life supporters if she was attempting a knockout blow.  Again, not sure the parameters set or expected, but as a rule, if people are wearing formal clothes, probably not the place for such a joke, if such a place exists – you can watch it or read the joke, I’m not going to transcript the whole thing.  Just my two cents and I’m not a clean comic by nature, so I’m not prudishly swatting away any crude humor, just observing material as someone who has been paid to perform in a tuxedo or suit on multiple occasions.

Like everything, this will pass and next year, they’ll probably give the room to much less partisan or dirty comic.  I really don’t care about this event – it was a private event that got way too much coverage regardless of the politics.  I don’t care who is supporting the event or performance.  The same people cheering Dave Chappelle’s support of Ms. Wolf were losing it over his last couple specials’ lack of sensitivity towards the trans community and women.  Calm down everyone, it was a comedy roast of sorts.  A traditional roast is for one person and they expect it, so this is a little different, but not much.  It was highly partisan and very blue and wasn’t very nice.  And not one person I know or ever will talk to was there or could have been there.  It’ll be OK for her and the administration, which will probably also get a boost.  People don’t like seeing a comic tee off on someone unless they think they deserve it.  In other words, everyone is exactly where they were before this event in regards to their disdain for Trump world or liberal celebrities.  Hugs for all (don’t touch me, please; hug each other or whatever).

The NFL draft started last night and boy was it exciting.  OK, I didn’t watch.  I used to watch most of it, then I realized I was alive and could walk around and do other things, like anything.  What a draft in sports is, is where 90 sports analysts call each other stupid because they disagree on who or what a team needs and should pick.  Then a team picks a player and they all agree or disagree with the pick and call the team stupid or genius.  Then this cycle repeats for several hours – in the NFL’s case, over 3 days.

I wouldn’t mind the draft, if there were about three minutes between picks.  They have three months to get ready for it – the bad teams even longer because they didn’t make the playoffs.  They get 10 minutes, then the time starts dropping.  Used to be 15 and one year, the Vikings didn’t get their pick in for 45 minutes – they actually got skipped twice.  They should have pulled the GM out and threw rocks at him until the pick was made.

Also, it’s all guess work.  If you’re last in the league in passing and your QB threw 43 interceptions, my toddler could tell people you may want a quarterback.  I don’t need three months of breaking it down by ten guys who have never coached or played football.  Then they get a QB and they talk about it for 20 years after.  Some fans actually go to the draft and sit there sober and cheer for three days.  I just shuddered a bit.

All you need to know is very highly paid people are picking new players for your team.  Most will be off the team in three years.  If too many don’t make the team, those highly paid people get fired.  If most do, you probably will win games.  There’s your breakdown.  Watch the first round, then go do something else.  If you’re watching the seventh round on day 3, you need help and I feel bad for you.  Watching draft guys argue is less entertaining than watching drunks at a bar yell about who was better at sports in high school.