CHRIS COEN

I am in awe of the grocery store.  It is full of food, toiletries, booze and general things that help us in our life journey.  Despite this, I can’t be in a grocery store for more than six minutes without wanting to commit acts of violence on strangers.

Rule number one of a grocery store – some fatback white trash will inevitably block the entire aisle, half with their cart full of Mountain Dew and snacks, half with their lumbering selves.  As I snort, tap the cart and clear my throat, they refuse to move or acknowledge my presence as they scour the various ranch dressings, pondering which one will be the best chip dip.

Then, it gets worse.  I went to check out the other day at Giant Eagle.  They have a fun thing where you have to scan your members card to even buy their shit.  My favorite part of this is that every time this happens, the scanner tells me the card is not a valid item and the light goes off, making me look too stupid to scan my own shit.  Then an employee saunters over and asks me if I need help.  “Yes, I need a machine that can read the card you gave me to scan so I can buy your crap.”

I scanned my own groceries, then bagged them.  I used to bag groceries, by the way, so I’m pretty quick about it.  Despite this, a middle aged sea hag found it necessary to walk down the aisle and angrily shove my last box at me.  “HERE!  THERE’S YOUR LAST ONE!”  I failed to mention that I had 10 items and there were three empty aisles.  She then began firing her groceries at me before I even pulled the bags.  Long story short, if anyone has a good place to hide a body, please message me.  If I run into this foul creature again, it may not go as well.

The entire history of the world has been one of kings, tyrants, sovereigns, dictators and oligarchs.  There was a tiny respite in Athens, but they still had slaves and some kept adolescents as lovers, so that really didn’t count.  A bunch of guys about 240 years ago got sick of being slapped around by a king that hadn’t even set foot in their hemisphere, so they got all white trash pissed and said, “Goddurnit, we done had nuff!”  I think that’s how it went, I wasn’t there.

Some people said they were wrong, they were just a bunch of rich assholes, most owned slaves.  As Lincoln would point out later, they set the stage for what came later.  You can’t have individual freedom as a premise and expect it not to carry to all peoples, even it took a Civil War to get there.  Long story short, thanks to a bunch of wig wearing, tax hating, fancy writing guys, we have a country that kicks ass.  Here’s a list of what started here.

Airplanes.  Mass production.  Cars.  30 packs of beer – because 24 is for commies.  Football.  Computers.  TV.  Free speech (even Canada doesn’t have that).  Freedom of religion…or no religion, for that matter.  Rock and roll, which came from American blues.  R&B.  Rap. Country music.  Steam power.  Horsepower.  Batman.  Captain America.  Toilets that have extra flush power.  Fast food.  (Thus the extra flush power).  George Washington.  Abe Lincoln.  George Patton.  John Wayne.  Jesse Owens (take that Hitler!).  The U.S. Military (take that freedom haters!).  Light bulbs.  Radio.  Cell phones.  Facebook.  Twitter.  Pro wrastlin’.  Hollywood (good and bad, I just watched the Transformers preview and died a little).  Action movies.  Wings.  Video games (OK, that was mostly Japan, but we bought the most).  Peanut Butter.  Chili fries.  There are more, but I need another beer, so I’ll wrap up.

Most importantly to me, we came up with the Bill of Rights, which was the brainchild of George Mason.  Freedom of speech is the essential component of comedy and rational political debate.  It also means I can do comedy and not have to worry about being detained, censored or executed, like in some countries.  So on America’s birthday, I give a hat tip to some pissed off boys from the east coast.  Good work…and sorry for wasting your legacy on drinking jokes and blogs.  Now pass me a beer and play some Lee Greenwood, I got some ‘Merica to celebrate.

I had a really bad show in the not too distant past.  It was so bad, I actually zoned out onstage and went over my time.  It was the first time in years I felt like when you’re driving for ten miles before you realize you missed your exit.  I was telling jokes and thinking about how much I hated this loud table I almost time traveled.  There was a group right smack in the middle of the room that sat down, ordered drinks, and then talked the entire night.  I tried being subtle, then got aggressive.  The headliner wasn’t so nice.  Nothing worked.  A couple came up to me after the show and said they would’ve enjoyed my act more, but they missed half my punchlines.  I actually gave them a free DVD.

At first, I was annoyed with the club, but then I realized it’s on me.  I have done, conservatively, over a thousand paid shows, open mikes and benefits.  Instead of waiting for someone to bail me out or toss the douches, I should have made sure the lighting was adjusted so I could see who the patrons were to accurately call them out, follow them to their cars, slash their tires, etc.  I blame myself.

In seriousness, here are some tips if you want a successful comedy show.  Have a mike.  You’d be surprised how often that happens.  Try yelling at people drinking for 30 minutes.  I had a guy offer a bullhorn once.  No thanks, I’ll just go home.  Next, have a stage.  If people can’t see the comic, you might as well have a lunatic yelling by the jukebox to play more Spice Girls.  Third, if people won’t shut up, remove them or risk the comedian melting down and making everyone uncomfortable.  If they won’t shut up, they’re not going to care that they miss the show anyways.  Also, please don’t let people in free.  If paying customers don’t care, free riders care even less than that.  Or let everyone in free, just don’t let three dozen people into the show in middle of the performance.  It’s almost like recess time for drunks in the back.  I think these drunks the other night were playing Red Rover they were making so much noise.  Finally, no kids.  I’ve done about five shows where they let kids in.  That’s bad for me, because I still have a soul, for one.  Also, kids aren’t going to get my pop culture or alcohol references, but they will be severely confused and/or scarred and that’s on you once I get going.  Hope this helps, random show that will never read this blog.

My lady bought a Groupon to go rock climbing.  I consider myself fairly adventurous, but I’ve seen a hundred of those survival shows.  80% involve mountains and climbing accidents.  That said, I can’t get shown up, so I went along.

The guide was pretty good and very friendly, but I had no idea what was going on.  He showed a bunch of knots, used a lot of words I had never heard, and then the tutorial was over.  Poop.  I had to climb up a 45 foot sandstone wall.  Apparently, you’re supposed to back off the wall to see where your feet should go.  No problem, I’m 30 feet in the air with my fingers barely holding on to rocks that are 5000 years old, so let me hang off the wall and let gravity pull me to death or paralysis.

I did the first two climbs, but a nest of daddy longlegs crawling by my face was a nice curveball.  The third was a 5.7, which apparently means something to people.  I got stuck about two feet from the top when my hands and feet cramped up.  I slipped and fell, but the safety rope caught me immediately.  That means instead of being killed, I was safe to crap in my pants and be humiliated as I hang off a rock wall with the harness pushing my junk into new and undiscovered positions.  Is there a video game that has you climb walls?  I need to take that up.

I had a show in Virginia last week.  It went very well, sold out crowd plus a few extra to test the fire code.  Of course, no one really bought anything afterwards, I guess I can blame Obama or Bush or climate change or something, I know it wasn’t my act.  One guy wanted the headliner’s DVD and no one had any change…except for this guy!  I took advantage of the situation and sold one DVD because this boy scout is always prepared.  Of course at some point later in the week, I pulled my phone out and apparently dragged $32 out also, which some lucky asshole found on the ground.  There’s the Coen luck I was expecting.

The real fireworks was the next day.  I was getting gas in the morning when a woman pulled in on the other side of the pumps.  She decided to pass both of those, even though her gas cap was on the driver’s side.  She then turned around and pointed at me.  I topped off, then sat in my car and hit the “Take Me Home” on my GPS.  In the three seconds that took, she honked at me and I saw this maniac yelling at me…with two kids in the car.  Apparently, she couldn’t fit in the space in front of me.  I screamed an obscenity at her and backed up a few feet, waiting on the GPS to load.  Then she laid on the horn and lobbed several F bombs my way.

At this point, I realized woman had to have MY pump, the other three she passed weren’t good enough.  I squealed my tires and gave her the double hand shrug, as in “Is that what you want, nutty?”  She then went inside and cussed out the attendant because her card didn’t work.  I was ready to walk up and tell her she should have someone else watch her kids until her menopause had run its course or her prescription got refilled.  Then I looked at her kids and I felt the strange feeling some call restraint.  I stopped.  What is this feeling?  How did my brain develop this skill, unknown to me since puberty?  Now I’m sad.  I need to dip my hands in broken glass and cage fight a stranger to get my edge back.  Or carry an emergency fifth of Beam to use when I need a boost of redneck.

As part of the Columbus Brew Ha Ha, hosted at the Shadowbox Cabaret in Columbus, a comedy contest is going down next month.  I think that’s what they say.  Or is someone getting served?  Bring it on!  I hate teenage movies.

My pal and fellow comedian Nickey Winkelman contacted all the open mikes in town to host the preliminaries.  This is a great idea, because it gets the whole scene involved, keeps the contest from being too long at one location, and plus I get to run a contest for the first at my open mike at Rehab Tavern this Monday.  I will move two comics on to the contest, with one alternate.

The good news, is that any comic reading this blog will get several tips on what the winning formula is!  1) Bribery is not only accepted, it is encouraged.  2)  Crowd voting will be a factor.  They can bribe me also.  3)  I will shop this weekend for an authentic laughometer.  It’s very high tech, but it takes the amount of laughs from crowd and multiplies it by the amount of dollars slipped into my palm.  4)  All comedians doing jokes about how cool bald eagles are get bonus points.  5)  Any contestant going more than 30 seconds over their time will be penalized and/or kneecapped ala Nancy Kerrigan.  I will also have judges.  One of them may be my dog, depending upon what mood I’m in.  I am thinking I’ll write the names on a piece of paper and whatever one he poops closest to will win.  Only fairness in my competitions!