Author: Chris

Well, another year older and more dumber in books.  We had an election where most people hated the candidates that were nominated, a ton of famous people died (drugs tend to hurt your lifespan – tip from ol’ Chris) and we found out yet again the internet lies…because no shit.  Sports were great for some long suffering fans, but we generally now hate almost everyone thanks to the steaming pile of election.  But Chris!  But Chris!  Don’t you know that (I hold up finger, press to lips)  SHHHHHHHHHHHH.  Be quiet now.  I can’t take anymore people telling me what to think.  Let’s move on.

Of course, I have to recap my blogs also.  Fatherhood led to some fun times, like my #2 most popular blog – Dad is banned from storytime (you can google Chriscoencomedy and the title to find these, I would link, but the links are 70 miles long) where I forgot my glasses and improvised an Elmo story.

Other big hitters, according to you, the seven readers out there, were “By the time you figure out how to be cool, you’re too old to be cool” and “Fallout 4 vs. Real Life” and “Family Emergency: Defcon 5”.  Of course, my other top blogs were less funny, because as much as I try to avoid it, sometimes they are necessary.  My third most popular hit total came from “Why tonight is the most important show I’ve ever done.”  This was about the first charity show I put together for Pets for Patriots and Dogs on Deployment where a lot of YOU PEOPLE helped me raise over $1200 for shelter pets and vets with PTSD and/or active duty military pet foster care.

Lastly, my top read blog, not only of this year, but in the six year history of my website was “Goodbye to my buddy Stringbean.”  http://chriscoencomedy.com/2016/goodbye-to-my-buddy-stringbean/ I had to put my dog down on February 19 this past year and in this writer’s opinion, it’s the most I’ve put into a blog.  I have lost family members while running this site, but it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to invest like I wanted to.  Thanks to everyone for the kind words, messages and sentiments when I put it out there.  I will tell those who experience loss it does get better, albeit slowly, and you never really forget the good times.  Life has a way of giving you too much to do to dwell for too long – my daughter started crawling the very next week and this is the third time I’ve sat down since then.

Hopefully 2017 is perceived as better, but I bet there are still dicks all over the world causing a ruckus (looking at you terrorists and dictators), my daughter will continue to run my wife and I loopy and hopefully I can check a comedy bucket list item off like performing at a bald eagle convention or something cool.  Thanks for reading, sharing and occasionally laughing.  Or not and go to hell.

About once a year, post-Christmas, I will go through the clothes hanging in my closet and in my drawers and start a donation bag.  I tossed about five shirts I hadn’t worn in years into one, then decided to move on to pants.  Don’t move on to pants, just set fire to them all if you’re not sure.

I went through a couple stages of life.  In high school, I tried to get to 200 lbs.  I couldn’t get over 185.  I ate like Joey Chestnut combined with a stray dog – no bounce.  Now if I have one day like I ate in high school, I lose four days’ worth of eating well and exercise. I need those horse blinders attached to my head for the holidays.

I tried on several pairs of pants from the pre-fatherhood days and great news, everyone – most of them fit.  I couldn’t move, bend over or even fart, but they slid right on!  I started acting like I was running in place as best I could.  My wife said, “You can’t work out in those.”  “I know I can’t, I need to lose weight to get them back off.”  So I’ll be replacing my breakfast with sheets of notebook paper if anyone is wondering.  Are there calories in the air?  Maybe I can hold my breath.

Then: “I can’t wait until Christmas!  It feels like it will never get here!”

Now: “Holy hell, it’s Christmas Eve?!  I need to buy 43 gifts by midnight!”

Then: “The winter break is only three weeks this year?  Lame.  I don’t want to go back to school.”

Now: “A three day weekend?  Oh thank God!”

Then: “I hope I get the fun toys I want!”

Now: “I hope I get that nose hair/eyebrow trimmer I need.”

Then: “New clothes?  BOOOOORING!”

Now: “New clothes?  Good, I’m too fat for all my old stuff.”

Then: “Is Grandpa drunk already?”

Now: “Why am I not drunk already?”

I’m a simple man these days and I had a great birthday, but I would like a few things money can’t buy, so I made a list for next year.

– I would like companies I grace with my business online to realize the best way to keep my business is keep offering good deals and products, not send me three emails a day until I unsubscribe and type, “Back off, psychos!” in the comments section.

– I would like comedians I book at my shows to ACTUALLY PROMOTE THE SHOWS I BOOK THEM ON.  I know this sounds crazy, but it’s a much higher percentage than you would imagine.  14 political posts a day?  Check.  Stupid one line joke shared on 6 different social media accounts?  Check.  Promote show one time in month preceding?  “NOPE, TOO BUSY COMPLAINING HOW I SHOULD BE GETTING MORE WORK.”

– I would like whomever is in charge of GPS and actual street addresses get on the same damn page.  Is it OH-13?  State Route 13?  US-13?  While you jackasses are picking your own systems, I’ve been circling a credit union and UDF for 40 minutes trying to find this bar I’m doing the show at tonight.

– I would like for someone to invent a moisturizer for my nostrils I can use Dec. 1 to March 1 so every time I blow my nose it doesn’t look like a murder scene.

– As I am always reminded every winter, I would love for one, just one, car manufacturer make a door that doesn’t dump snow and ice all over your damn seat when you open the door.  Seriously, they make cars that can parallel park, tap into satellites and even self drive.  Yet every time it snows, that shit is going on your seat unless you get a flamethrower and torch your ride for 5 minutes straight.

I started comedy nine and a half years ago.  I have done shows now for tens of thousands of people over the years.  I’ve done shows to tryout for bookers and comedy clubs where my performance meant work or no work.  I’ve done benefit shows for people with horrible illnesses and conditions, terminal diseases, and to help with bills.  I’ve never done a benefit show of my own in this almost decade until now.  Here’s why I’m doing it.

This past year I saw two different Facebook posts that stuck with me.  One was the pushup challenge highlighting awareness of suicide rates among veterans.  The other was a post about a man having to give up his dog when he was called to active duty.  Something clicked in my head.

My uncle Tom served in Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic.  His job was to stay behind and disable the bird so the enemy didn’t use it against our own troops.  He got this job because he could fix anything and would have been an engineer, if the war hadn’t chucked a turd in the swimming pool of life.  He started his own building company and worked as hard as is humanly possible to work.  He built the barns at the Muskingum County Fairgrounds, several restaurants and just about every pole barn that stands around Zanesville.  He got up at 4 and worked until the sun went down.   He gave money to anyone and everyone and knew more dirty jokes than Gilbert Gottfried.  His voice was so deep, it made mine sound like an eight year old girl’s and people have told me I sound like a white Barry White.  When I was in college, my parents built a new house.  Me and three other frat bros carried buckets of cement one at a time and they were so damn heavy it took us five minutes to carry them 20 feet.  My uncle had one in each hand and almost ran across a sagging 4×4 in seconds, lapping us.  He loved cigarillos, his Harley and laughing at my Grandma’s very animated stories.

He got cancer – prostate cancer, the same that took my Grandpa before I was two, but earlier.  I’m convinced Agent Orange, the jungle eraser that they dropped in Vietnam to clear out the foliage at the very least didn’t help.  He had to drive from south of Zanesville, while running his business and go all the way to Dayton for treatment, because that’s what we do for our vets.  Chemo and cancer treatment affects everyone differently and it was rough on him.  It made him sicker than a dog, but he beat it back.  He said he would never go through that again.

In June 2011, I got a call from my sister at work.  She was a wreck.  They found Tom in his car with a bullet in his heart.  He had found out weeks earlier his cancer was back and didn’t tell anyone.  He kept his word.  The cancer didn’t take him.

When everyone went their separate ways after the funeral, in the quiet time when work bereavement is over and life forces you back into responsibility and you don’t have time to call or be around your family, friends or significant others, the thoughts and feelings surge back up, especially right after.  In that time, my dog was the only one there.  He didn’t have much insight, but he helped quite a bit.  I won’t go into more about Bean in this blog, but this year was his time, too, as it is for all of us eventually.  I realized what he meant to me in the darkest hours.  I kept thinking this summer about those Facebook posts I saw over and over.  I decided to try and help in whatever dumb way I could.

Dogs on Deployment finds foster homes for those called to service to their country.  Pets for Patriots helps vets with PTSD adopt shelter pets.  They do more, but that’s the brief rundown and I decided in honor of my uncle Thomas Wayne Coen and my pal Stringbean (who was a stray found in 2004), I would use my limited shitty skill set known as humor to try and raise some money to help our vets/service members and stray pets without homes, two groups that really need and deserve our help.  So if you want to help, go to http://www.shadowboxlive.org/shows/tuesdays and get your tickets to the show at 8 pm tonight in Columbus – or hell, just buy a ticket.  They get the money even if you can’t show up.  All proceeds go to these two groups.  If you want to help more than $10, please go to https://www.crowdrise.com/pets-and-vets-comedy-benefit-show/fundraiser/petsforpatriots and give there.  TONIGHT IS THE LAST NIGHT TO HELP.

I’m short of goal and the show isn’t sold out – I will appreciate the ticket sales, donations and even social media shares to get the word out with an appreciation I can’t verbalize.  I’ve done hundreds of shows for me.  This is for something else, more important.  Now enough with the sap, get your ass out to the show.  I’m doing a headliner set and these shitty jokes ain’t going to tell themselves!  (I need to work on my segues from sad to funny…and my show promo).  Thanks again for all your help.

I went to Muskingum College (now University, whatever) when I was 18 to study history and business and also play football.  I was nervous about getting my ass kicked by college athletes, excited to be jumping into college life and feeling quite unprepared.  Just before I went off to make my mark on the world, my Dad told me one piece of advice.  It wasn’t just say no to drugs, don’t knock up a young lady or even to study hard.  It was “Don’t ever go to Saguarro’s.”

Saguarro’s was a bar, technically, about five miles from campus, east of Zanesville.  It was boarded up like a hurricane was coming in and looked like the Double Deuce from Roadhouse, if the Double Deuce took a deuce on a shittier version of the Double Deuce.  When I was a freshman, four of my later frat brothers went there and got beat stupid by a black motorcycle gang wearing purple camo – well, three of them did, my pal Quincy was just held back while the whiteys got stomped.  Despite that incident and my dad’s warning, I went one time.

I walked in with a group of equally stupid college boys and saw a bar that was more garage or storage barn than bar.  I asked the miserable looking barkeep for a bottle of Budweiser.  “We don’t serve bottles.”  Oh really?  “Too many people get cut with them.”  Well, terrific.  There was a pool table and some stools and really cheap liquor.  There were just a couple townies, but I felt safe enough, being a half a townie myself.  I went to piss and walked in the bathroom.  Just one problem – there was no toilet, just a hole where a toilet used to be (I’m guessing, maybe it was always a hole).  So I pissed in the hole, mostly, and we decided to get out of there.  Some time later, they got busted in a drug raid for the way too manyeth time and shut down.

In retrospect, I probably should have listened to my dad, which I could say about 300 other topics also.  To this day, if a bar doesn’t serve bottles, get the hell out of there and drink somewhere classy, like the Cheyenne where they keep the doors open all year due to the smell or the Doctor’s Lounge, which has a strip club called the Nurse’s Station attached to the back.  It’s so good to learn life lessons.

Also, just a few days left – http://www.shadowboxlive.org/shows/tuesdays for the Pets and Vets Comedy Benefit Show!  If you can’t go, please consider donating to help shelter pets and vets with PTSD at https://www.crowdrise.com/pets-and-vets-comedy-benefit-show/fundraiser/petsforpatriots   Thanks for your help in helping these great organizations!