CHRIS COEN

I am constantly reminded that people are weird and/or morons every day.  Here’s some examples I encountered recently.

In line for 15 minutes at the post office because the stamps aren’t dispensing correctly.  A manager type fixes it finally and asks the guy what stamps he would like, Rudolph or Winter Fun?  He is stumped and then takes a full 12 seconds to decide.  1) It doesn’t matter.  2)  You couldn’t decide in the 15 minutes of smelling BO only slightly trapped by winter coats?  3)  It doesn’t matter.  4)  IT DOESN’T MATTER YOU SCUMBAG.  GRAB YOUR DAMN STAMPS BEFORE…and now everyone’s staring at me because I’m muttering to myself.  Yes, I’m the problem.

I was running and saw a vandal had spray painted “Go Vegan!” on the back of a road closed sign.  First off, you can’t normally see the back of a road closed sign, so the placement sucks.  Second, what a rebel you are.  “I’ll show everyone I don’t care about the law!…but I care immensely about animal rights and nutrition, let’s not go crazy here.”

I was behind someone at the grocery store that split their items into two separate orders.  Annoyed, I switched lines.  The lady in the other line was shoving change into the self checkout, about a nickel at a time.  I switched back, only to discover the guy was writing a check.  He wasn’t even 100 – plus I didn’t think guys knew how to write checks.  Of course, nickel lady finished first, so I jumped lines again to another person who had finished.  He then took five minutes to bag individual veggies one at a time and of course, check guy with two orders finished, screwing me yet again.  I’m looking into online groceries from now on.

I got contacted recently about a performance.  A guy calling himself a promoter saw me and wanted to use me for a show.  I was pretty excited, but after some back and forth, found out he didn’t want to pay anything for an hour long show.  As an entertainer, you have to watch out for titles like “promoter.”  I could walk into any club or bar in America and call myself a promoter because I once posted a show link on Facebook.  “I’m a marketing specialist.  I also made pork and beans, so I’m a chef.  I then told my buddy how to beat beat Deathstroke on Batman: Arkham Origins, so I’m basically a crisis negotiator.”

Comics are probably the worst, sadly.  I’ve met more people who have claimed to have worked with Sam Kinison than he possibly could have met in two years of doing comedy.

There needs to be a Carfax for the comic industry, but trust me, if you do it long enough, you don’t need one.  You just know.  When I did a show in Indiana several years ago, a guy told me he used to open for Kinison.  Then he pulled out a piece of paper and read several jokes he had printed off a Google search.  He didn’t even have the decency to memorize the jokes that I had heard before my tenth birthday.

Of course, real promoters and bookers have been bombarded by these truth ignoring poop smears for decades, so it makes it that much harder to get anyone to believe my credentials, which are rather menial.  I’ve featured for John Witherspoon and Jim Breuer, opened for Harlan Williams and Pauly Shore, once headlined a high school reunion in Zanesville, have performed in a senior center, at a 50th anniversary, before a movie at a theater, and multiple bowling alleys.  See how fast that petered out?  Did I tell you about the time I worked with Sam Kinison?

Another birthday, another year older (that’s how it works, typically).  I have decided to write down questions to my failing body, hoping for an answer or two.

Why, if the hair on top is thinning, do you produce more elsewhere?  Heat escapes through my head – not my back.  We were cool until about 30, no need to change it up.  Also, while you’re at it, keep those pimples.  I was clearly told that would end in high school.  I need to find that contract and call my lawyer.

I eat better than ever.  I work out.  Yet if I have one bad day of fatness, you decide to hang onto that for a week.  Don’t make me go back to White Castle at 2 am and pizza for breakfast, you no good son of a bitch.  I ate that turkey burger for you, not me.

You can go ahead and go to the bathroom all at once, like you used to.  There’s no need to go, then order up round 2 and 3 five minutes later.  Oh, and tell my bladder he’s slacking too.  One beer and I have to pee like I drank a swimming pool.

I tore a rib muscle working out recently.  I felt no pain, yet the next day I reached up to grab something and nearly went down.  Can you at least give me a heads up?  I didn’t even know there were muscles there to tear.  Not cool.

Then again, I had birthday cake for breakfast, haven’t had a physical for a decade, and my liver hasn’t crapped out on me.  I guess we’ll call it even.  Now if only I can find my glasses so I read whatever in the hell I just typed…

One of the perils of adulthood is that tasks come up where one has to make the decision – pay someone or do it yourself.  I am unskilled in most things, but I have yet to make a million dollars from comedy, so I choose the latter.  At rate things are going, this will be the case until 2311, when a million dollars will take three gigs to get due to hyperinflation.

My headlight went out, so I popped the hood.  Then I remembered whomever designed my car is a sadistic sociopath and I have to take the entire front bumper off just to change the bulb.  I looked at Youtube for tips and the first video was a seven year old doing it.  Well, now I have no damn choice.  Two hours later, I had sliced my knuckles open, broken three plastic pieces I hope aren’t important and went through three entire metal albums just to change a headlight.  One more headlight issue and I’m pulling insurance fraud to get a new car.

Last night, I cleaned the sump pump.  Before I moved into my wife’s house, I had never seen a sump pump.  Online, a guy showed me how to clean it.  The difference was that the one he cleaned was pristine, well lit, and accessible.  Mine was tucked in a dark corner and looked like Swamp Thing’s bowel movement.  I had to go so far as too cut the sleeve off my old King Cobra malt liquor tee to cover my face.  I could almost hear my wife, “No!  Not your 1998 King Cobra shirt!  It’s my favorite!”  Sorry, dear, I know it’s your favorite shirt of mine, but sacrifices must be made.  Sadly, I have a lot of experience cutting sleeves off.  Maybe I should make a Youtube video.

I got it cleaned and now I play the waiting game.  What will burn out or need DIY next?  If my wife sees a seven year remodel a kitchen, I am screwed.

My hair has never been on the cutting edge of style.  I had the side part for years, then one time I found some mega gel in my sister’s room and tried to style it.  I put so much in, it began flaking like dandruff when it dried as soon as I got to homeroom.  I then did the free haircut, which meant I had a high and tight for a decade.  I let it grow and found out it was curly, which means I haven’t combed my hair since.  Sweet.

I got my hair cut yesterday.  It was great – hot neck shave, no one in line, the conversation stuck to football so I didn’t have to delve into personal matters with a stranger…until it was over and he began to comb my hair up and back like I was one of the Jersey Boys.  I immediately rubbed it normal in the car.  The last barber I went cut my bangs uneven and dropped an n-bomb for no reason.  I don’t even remember how he styled it.  Hearing a random racial slur will do that.  I’ll stick with the recent barber.  The worst style though, is when the “stylist” decides to blow dry the front in a teased ball like I’m a 55 year old lesbian.

I have some advice.  I came in looking like a guy who hasn’t put product or comb to his hair since 1999.  Let me leave the same way, Vidal Sassoon.

Fantasy Football is Dungeons and Dragons for sports fans.  It’s also the longest sports bet you can do.  “Here’s $20 – now I’ll see you in five months if I win.”

If you’re watching a show asking if Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, I’ll ruin it for you – they aren’t going to prove it by the end.  If they had proof, it would be on the news and internet long before the show was done.

The Hallmark Channel depends more on Christmas season for profit than Best Buy and Walmart combined.  I peeked at the lineup of movies – there are more bad 80’s actors on the Hallmark Channel than in rehab right now.

College football used to have a national champion picked before the bowls.  Then it was after.  Then the top 2 played in a BCS championship.  Now four make a playoff.  Everyone still bitches no matter what.  In the future, college football teams will play three games, then 144 teams will make a playoff and people will burn down a campus when their team narrowly misses the cut at 1-2.