CHRIS COEN

When I first started doing comedy and was absolutely awful, people came up to me and said, “When are you going to Houston?”  Everyone’s experience is different, but here’s how comedy works for most people.  You start, you do time, you bomb for at least a year, then you start to slowly figure out how to be funny.  Clubs spit on your face – why?  So many awful comics came before and blew it so bad, no one will give you a chance.  I heard a story about a comic that got his first show w/ a booking agency and he smashed up the hotel room.  Fired.  The key to getting work is to get in front of bookers.  These are mostly comics with some business accumen that go to small towns in your geographic region and convince bar owners that they can provide an assemblance of humor for a fee.  Most of these are one nighters that eat up your profits in gas, but if you do them, you get 25-35 minutes as a feature act to polish your act to a shiny turd.  When you start, that much time is worth a financial loss.  Trust me.  Some bookers are great – Steve Sabo w/ Inside Joke Productions gave me my first tryout in Bowling Green, OH after seeing me MC in Lancaster.  I have been working for him for three years now.  Steve rocks and got me in with another booker later this year that I have been begging for work for two years from.  Others are less than desirable.  I may have three shows next week…but I don’t know if it’s confirmed, or where they’re at (may not even be in Ohio), or any other random details.  Why?  I can’t get a return email or call.  If I am booked and no show, I’ll get banned forever from working for this agency.  If I can’t get the time off work?  Done.  If I can?  Same treatment – suck it, Coen.  You are my puppet.  Be funny.  Imagine getting a job – you start Monday.  Where?  I’ll get back to you, but if you no show…you’re fired.  When someone told me in 2007 it took 7 years to make enough to pay your bills doing comedy, I waved them off as a loser.  Now I think 7 years is perfect…if you live at home, drive a Geo Metro circa 1996, and eat ramen noodles on your birthday.  That said, I will conquer you, comedy.  I am funny and I am an American.  No one tells me no unless you want a bloody lip.  I will fuck up at 180 miles an hour.  I am too stubborn to quit and too stupid to know when I should.  See you at the top, one small town at a time.  Your ass is next, Houston…

A certain person I know just texted me about the spins, caused by excess alcohol (name withheld).  Thankfully, rarely if ever do I experience this, but if you’ve drank, you’ve ran into this.  The first time I drank, my buddy puked and then fished his retainer out of said puke, nearly causing the same reaction from me.  My moment of utmost intoxication came on a bet.  I was talking about another friend of mine that drank 72 beers in two nights.  One of my fraternity brothers then said if I could do it, he would buy me a combo meal at McDonald’s.  Not one to back away from a challenge/being a moron, I took this bet.  After a huge meal, the clock started.  I woke up with “27 down” written on my face in marker.  I later found out my roommate had a great action shot of me expelling the demons – from what I can tell, about two gallons’ worth of evil.  I may have also comandeered the CD player and turned it into a Pantera night, which is never good for picking up chicks.  I was in no state to talk to anyone that night, but I’m sure my frat brothers didn’t woo any ladies to the melodies “Primal Concrete Sledge” or “Good Friends and A Bottle of Pills.”  If a girl likes your heavy metal music, chances are she doesn’t have a strong relationship with her dad or she has Hep C from a dirty tattoo needle.

As the weather improves, most of us think about upcoming vacations.  Vacations are weird.  They usually involve more stress than just staying home and cost a lot of money.  Last time I went to Las Vegas, I lost enough money to feed a Ugandan family of five for a year.  Plus for me, being unmarried my whole life, all my buddies have one question for me upon returning: “Did you get laid?”  I got this question once after returning from camping in West Virginia for a weekend trip of white water rafting.  The only way I was getting laid in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia is if I pulled a Ned Beatty and got found in the forest by toothless hill people.  No, my friends, I didn’t find the magic vagina tree in the wilderness.  I’ve been to Mexico a couple times and once they gave my hotel to other group of people.  I spent the first night guarding a pile of shoes with a chair leg suffering sleep deprivation until my buddy Peterson threatened the travel company with a baseball bat and got us a four star hotel.  Once, I went to Washington DC on a tour bus and got sat by the crapper, which on a bus, is not supposed to be a crapper, but try getting 40 people in their 70’s to hold a deuce for more than hour.  It smelled like a cesspool within 55 minutes of pulling out of Ohio.  Is there such thing as a stress free vacation?  If you have kids, then no.  If you travel, then no.  If you are forced to interact with other people, then no.  My ideal vacation?  Ten cases of beer and a new Playstation 3 game in a bunker isolated from humankind.

Thanks to moms everywhere, especially to mine for working so hard, putting up with my hijinx, and also for helping to craft my sense of humor.  Especially the immature part.  Every time I see a guy get hit in the nuts with a football and chuckle – that’s my Mom.  Each time I hear a fart and tee hee like a six year old – my Mom again.  Love you Mom; now excuse me, I have to watch the neighbor’s dog hump a stuffed animal.

There is a lot of debate these days about whether we should show Osama’s beautiful death mask, the photo of his lanky beak-nosed psycho face with a fresh American bullet in it.  I say yes.  “But Coen, what about the reaction of the Muslim world?”  They hate us already, dummies.  I have NO problem with Muslims.  In fact, I have no problem with any religion.  I have a problem with the ol’ “I’m a Christian – now let me jam it down your throat!” people.  They give Christians a bad name.  Get off my nuts.  Strangely, the PC crowd that despises the “religious right” usally supports speech restrictions on words like retard and gay and whatever is now offensive.  Then they act super pissed when we mention the Middle East in a less than flattering way.  I love individualism.  We should all be free to be “fill in the blank.”  Who do you like to bang?  I don’t care.  What god(s) do you follow?  Don’t care.  Live your life to the fullest and don’t be a dick.  You love Jesus?  Good, then don’t judge.  You’re an aetheist?  Then who cares if people find solace in the sacrifice of their Savior?  Who am I to say anything?  Culture is the key.  There are fine Muslims in this country – doctors, businessmen, family oriented and hard working.  Yet there is a part of the culture in the Middle East – that has nothing to do with religion sometimes – that seeks to eradicate Jews, anyone associated with Jews, and anyone that accepts the premise that a woman’s ankle is sin worthy of death.  No wonder they’re so pissed.  This, in my opinion, is why priests who touch kids crack.  No beating it, no wife.  40 years later…  I went three days without releasing the poison when I was 25.  At this party I attacked my friend with a croquet mallet.  My basic point?  Release the Kraken or suffer the rage-induced consequences.  Do you think Osama’s death photo is a problem?  Ask the 2,977 dead souls bewailing their lost youth from 9/11 if they got a proper burial according to their respective religions.  Is a proper Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist/Agnostic burial involve jumping hand in hand with your wife from the 39th floor of a skyscraper?  Plus, right now in that region those barbarians are burning Old Glory.  Oh God, don’t incite them more!  Pussy ass PC’ers.  Restrictions are restrictions, no matter if they come from a religious stance or a “let’s hold hands and never offend anyone” viewpoint while the evil seek to topple free will.  I stand with all or no religions if you believe that we, as men and women, can make our own decisions within the rule of law and not disrupt the fabric of society.  When in doubt, drink.  Everything gets better.

I heard about a show on O & A today, so I watched it.  It focused on a 29 year old man who, when home, slept in a crib, wore a diaper, and was spoon fed.  Not surprisingly, he was overweight, probably b/c he was spoon fed adult food.  As hate-inducing he was (hims had a bad childhood, boo hoo), I couldn’t get away from the 63 year old woman with the saggiest breasts I’ve ever seen and a middle school goatee.  She did the spoon feeding.  How these two loons made the jump is beyond me.  Does baby boy want to play lego time?  “Actually, I’m off to work.  Let me schedule lego time around sixish, after we change my diaper.”