CHRIS COEN

I get asked that a lot.  The answer?  I have no clue.  I was doing comedy for a month and a lady told me I was funny.  “When are you going to Houston?”  As soon as someone pays me.  “Huh?”  News flash – if I could pick and choose, do you think I would be closing out the Fall Sour Apple Festival in Mayberry?  I love the downtown, it has personality!  Yuck.

I’m not bitching too much – thanks for your interest.  Where I am going next is not up to me, it’s up to a booking agent or a club.  Comedy is weird in that you can be amazing and never get the time of day because they just filled their middle act…he used to get free weed for the headliner, so he’s in and you’re out.  Thanks for trying!

Please realize when ask a comic when he’s in ???? town, you’re basically putting him/her in the awkward position of saying one of a few possibilities.  1) Your town has 140 people, where in the hell could I perform there?  2) I’m not good enough to have enough connections to play there.  3) Give me a sandwich, I’m starving and comedy doesn’t pay much.  Or my fave – 4) I could tell you next week, and you would no show.  That said, every time someone comes to one of my shows specifically for me, it means a lot.  Thanks.  (Cue Paula Cole music)

Last week I started having that fun thing where randomly my nose is stuffed, I am sneezing, my eye is watering, etc.  In other words, under the weather, but not enough to call off work, see a doctor or unload $50 at the pharmacy.  Other than being mildly sick, the only thing worse is everyone’s dumb advice.  I learned once, then had reinforced a few days ago, never tell your mom that you’re sick.  Moms are like web MD in that both go for worst case scenario – sniffles?  You have SARS cancer.  It’s going around.

What does that mean anyways?  It’s going around.  Like everyone works for the CDC every time they hear of two people getting sick.  “My nose is runny.”  Say that in a crowed room and immediately everyone has a full rundown of the history of airborne virus patterns in the tri-state, like it’s one bad day away from the Walking Dead.  I swear more people freak over a flu shot story than if there are a rash of unsolved murders in their neighborhoods.

My whole life I have hated being called white trash.  One time in college a guy from Boston called me that and I almost got into a fist fight with him.  Later that summer, I went to my family reunion in WV (you can see where this is going).  We had to leave early due to my Dad’s work schedule, but he said, “Too bad we’re leaving before the evening entertainment.”  What?  His answer – “They put a $20 bill on top of the pole, then grease it down and watch the kids spend all night trying to get it.”  Fantastic.  My family vine invented the human bug zapper.  I need to apologize to every guy that calls me a hilljack now, before the argument even starts.  Great.

This is the most interesting questions someone can ask.  I did a show last night and this young chick came up to me and said, “I know you probably hear this all the time, but you look just like Ryan Dunn (from Jackass).”  Great.  I look like a dangerous drunk driver.  (Disclosure: I wrote a joke about this next one)  I was also told I looked like a young David Hasselhoff after a show.  It was the most depressing moment of my life.

In fairness, I used to hear I looked like Joshua Jackson, aka Pacey from Dawson’s Creek.  I was such a douchebag in college, I tried to use that to my advantage once.  Drunk, I went up to a table of 18 year old ladies and said, “Hey, I just had some girls tell me I look like Pacey from Dawson’s Creek.  I don’t think so, what do you think?”  (I had a wet beer stain on my shirt, FYI)  This chick looked at me and said, “Who is that?  Wasn’t that show on like 10 years ago?”  I heel-turned and realized in the fight between drinking and getting laid, I had better stick to drinking – it only filled me with shame the next morning, not all week long.  Remind me to be nice to my lady this weekend…

My show last weekend was nice.  I showed up and the guy running the show was very accomodating, almost too much – I can’t deal with overly nice people.  I think they’re trying to steal my wallet or something.  I went up, did my time and pretty much, in my opinion, threw out a five out of ten.

I was kind of bummed watching the headliner.  I was pissed at my set, then the show ended and I sold more shirts and DVD’s than I have at any show in 13 months…  Guess it wasn’t that bad after all or this particular crowd all liked to silently laugh like they were British aristocrats from the 19th century.

After the show, the headliner offered up the advice that I should ditch my watch, since it was big and shiny (I also looked at it once to make sure I was good on time).  This made sense…except for the fact he was in full makeup as a clown.  Yes, that happened.  I honestly don’t know, but I think he was dead serious.  Oh well, on to the next show.

Before you pull out a pre-formed opinion, please read the whole blog.  I was reading online news stories last week at wrote and performed a quick joke about the woman that testified in front of Congress that she needed help (and others, too) paying for birth control.  I said, this is a pretty high profile way to tell everyone you’re a slut (assuming the reason why was that she banged all the time, for the slow).  Most people laughed, on to next joke.  No big deal.  Then this Rush Limbaugh stuff blew up going into the weekend…looks like my joke is done…

I don’t give a shit what you think of Limbaugh, but every time something like this happens, everyone goes nuts.  He was quite the ass using language as he did to describe the woman and guess what?  His stupidity cost him a ton of sponsors and money.  Good.  As for the speech monitoring…think you’re exempt?  Imus had to crawl on his hands and knees over the Rutgers basketball incident.  I read last month the Million Moms were yet again pissed about something – probably sex or a perceived homosexual takeover of their kids thanks to an orange juice commercial.  I saw people online clamoring for getting his show off the air and a lot of other things.  This bothered me – if you hate him, don’t listen!  If you support him, listen!  If you don’t give a damn, join most people too busy to tune in or out and ignore him!  If we shut up every asshole in America, no one would be talking.  If he, or anyone else sucks enough, guess what?  They’ll be gone and the first amendment still stands.  There’s a reason I have the Bill of Rights framed in my guest room (a copy, they wouldn’t give me the original).

As a comedian, I am very sensitive to freedom of speech.  I have had people cuss me out after shows, insult me, tell me my act was “insensitive” by picking out one joke and ignoring all the others.  I’m not one of those douches who just goes for shock value with no humor, but I tend to say whatever I want to if the show permits.  I’ve paid the price for it.  If you don’t like my act?  Don’t watch it.  Don’t buy a shirt.  Ignore me, check your facebook status, or just fucking leave.  I don’t care – if I consistently suck, you’ll never hear from me again.  That’s on me.  I’m just glad we still have a pretty solid number of people in this country that can laugh about things and relax.

As much as it pains me to admit, I even have to say those putrid pieces of shit from the Westboro Baptist Church (the boil on society’s ass that protests gays at dead soldiers’ funerals) have speech rights.  Granted, if I was there and they showed up, I would beat the shit out of as many as I could until I went to jail, but feel free to protest!  Alright, that’s not the best behavior supporting freedom of speech, but I really hate those pig fucking inbreds.  You know what happens now when the Westboro blasphemers show up?  Patriots and the tolerant of our country form walls with signs to block them from the view of the greiving.  If those single-celled skidmarks never protested in the first place, so many good people wouldn’t get together and show their support for our fallen heroes and as a bonus, our rejection of those who put down an entire group of our fellow men and women who are gay.  That’s a pretty beautiful response to something so ugly.  Not as beautiful as me driving my car into a group of scumdick hatemongers as the Battle Hymn of the Republic plays on my stereo, but most people are better than me.

If you read this whole stupid rant and you hate me, then go fuck yourself – you wouldn’t like my jokes either.  I don’t care about Rush saying slut or Imus saying hoes or Maher says twat any more than I protest rap music.  I don’t care if Jesse Jackson calls Obama the N word or Soros says Bush is a Nazi.  If someone says something dumb, I dismiss them as dumb as move on.  I don’t have time to get pissed about words and opinions, I’m already pissed off enough.  Sorry, PC police, the freedom of speech covers all of us – liberal, conservative, aethiest, religious, and so on.  Even Mel Gibson, for God’s sake.  And he’s not even American.  And that fact, among many, is what makes America one badass place to live.  Back to the funny tomorrow, I had to get that out.