Friday, October 31, 2003  

Halloweenie

I actually got up early today to work on my new computer. I am one pair of panties on my head away from being AnthonyMichael Hall in Weird Science.

On the plus side, I'm posting this via GNOME-blog, a kickass little applet you can run from your panel in Linux.
I don't know why I call the geekiest thing I ever wrote "the plus side."

TONIGHT: I will be performing at the KOWLOON in Saugus. One show only at 9:00. Halloween in Saugus; I'd like to have the hairspray concession THERE!

Geek, Writer, Comic, Me

All my computer parts finally arrived (thank you, FedEx, bawk bawk!) and so I was up late, late, late last night putting it all together and getting the OS(es) installed. The temptation to brag about my tech is great, but I'm trying to remind myself that the whole point of this blog is to drive traffic TO my shows, not away. Suffice it to say that I geeked out late enough into the night that I'm compltely rumpled and unshaven today. I look like goddamn Emmett Kelley.

It's raining so bad in Boston today that it's pretty clear someone is being punished for something. I don't know which one of you is worshipping craven idols, but knock it off. I can't afford a flooded basement right now.

I'm torn about going to class tonight. I should go...it's the first week that someone's presenting their actual story, and I should see how it goes AND build up some karma, but I so want to just go home and play with the new machine. My story is progressing nicely...it's good and dark. I'm challenging myself to NOT write something funny in this class (I should submit this blog, then), and my piece is somewhere between melodramatic and morbid. Hopefully, I'll whip it into shape.

Health tip: if you are staying up late, a midnight snack of apple juice and baked beans is a poor, poor choice.

Weekend Roundup

I have neither smoked nor drank since Friday, and I feel much better for it. I'm chewing gum like an obsessive/compulsive today, but other than that, I am most re-dedicated to the path of righteous, nicotene-free living.

Great shows at Nicks Comedy Stop this weekend. Steve Kimbrough hosted, and in addition to doing a bangup job of wrangling the barely-controlled entropy that is a Nicks crowd, he also really changed my thinking about comedy festivals and contests. Essentially, he pointed out that participating in or winning such a thing is superfluous and that the real goal is to be in a room with a lot of people with whom to network and work with. He's a smart guy, that Mr. Kimbrough, and I'm hoping Tony Moschetto gets involved in his Comedy Film Festival.

Tonight I'm participating in the Halloween show at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge. Should be a blast. Apparently, I'm playing the mailroom boy from Fangoria Magazine. I don't claim to know much about horror, but Dan Sally says I just have to be mean to the comics. Done and done. The plan was to get drunk and be mean to the comics, but the thought of booze still makes my face ache.

Head Fulla Zombies

The staff at the Hong Kong thinks I'm funnier when I'm drunk.

I shall assume that cleaning up my puke last night will disabuse them of that notion.

Apologies to all involved.

8 Days, Shot to Hell

Two things are very, very clear to me:

1. I have a textbook addictive personality.
2. Camel Lights taste so goddamn good.

I was good. I was so good. After Ross's bachelor party, I re-affirmed my desire to not be a smoker. I felt like shit. My mouth tasted like I'd felched a baboon. I felt like an idiot for pissing away 5 years of being quit. So I re-quit!

Until right now. Jeniphir left to go see Eddie Izzard (her new favorite comic...bumping me down another notch on the list), and there I was, on the back porch, fucking Joe Camel all over again. I swear, my relationship with tobacco is almost sexual. I'm treating cigarettes like I always thought I'd treat old girlfriends from high school: gee, baby, it's been a long time, and we shouldn't do this, but god, I want it so bad! Only instead of making out with Carol Gesling (who I assume isn't ever going to read this) in a seedy motel room during a trip back to Colorado (p.s. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED), I'm sneaking off to rendezvous with my worst bad habit, and one that I'd thought was long behind me.

Mostly, I think it's because my day job sucks ass, and I don't have any other coping mechanisms (choking the living shit out of various professors at Harvard Law School being deemed an inappropriate method of coping). Of course, that kind of rationalization is typical for junkies. If only, if only, if only.

On the one hand, I could never, ever go back to a pack-a-day habit. Jeniphir would kill me much faster than lung cancer. On the other hand, that means I can only get away with enough smoking to feel like a weak dickhead.

It would be much more dignified to just stay quit, because really, there's no reason not to. It's been long enough that I don't have chemical dependency to blame. It's all me. Me and my lack of impulse control (p.s. that's also the name of my CD, which I wish someone out there would buy! I promise not to spend the dough on smokes).

So if you know me, and I see you, and I try to bum a smoke, for the love of Christ, TELL ME NO. Then look the other way, because I don't want you to see me cry. I think that's from a Chicago song....do you SEE how pathetic cigarettes make me?

Also...if you have a job available, that'd help, too.

And in non-tobacco related news, I have a screen test on Friday for a new version of This Old House. Fuck, my life is weird.

Weekend Roundup

Two good shows this weekend; hopefully, you were at one of them. Friday, Club 360 in Dover. Small crowd, due mostly to the aftershock of GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING GRADY LITTLE BEING A COMPLETE FUCKING MORON. Still, had a great time with Tom Mitchell and Dave Rattigan, and despite a small turnout, had better than average album sales. Last night was at Woody's At the Junction in Claremont, New Hampshire. Here's a rule for you new comics out there: Claremont, New Hampshire is always further away than you think it is. A long, long goddamned drive culminating in asking a Pakistani man for directions to "Woody's." He had good intentions, but the "Woody's?" "Yes, Woody's" dialogue that ensued was straight out of a bad 80's comedy. Once I found the gig (in the basement of a restaurant in a working train station...kill me), we had a great time. Shane Kinney opened strong, and my personal favorite pornographer Greg Boggis took it from there. Great show, great sales, and some real unforgettable hecklers, including a man who was so old and whose sunglasses were so dark, he looked like the guy that used to sell Charlie Parker heroin.

I'm sure I have shows this week, but for the life of me, I can't remember where they are.

If You Can See This, Rob Reuter Is My Hero

If this shows up at all, then Mr. Rob Reuter, through the magic of AIM, was able to offer some suggestions that successfully got Shitty-Ass Computer #2 up and running.
Posting stuff with Lynx just feels so Neal Stephenson, man...

I Feel Like I've Been Raped

By a guy in a Red Sox hat.

I can't adequately describe it. How did I get invested emotionally in these knuckleheads?

Luckily, I've got good friends like John Curtin:

Understanding that you're relatively new to this whole experience, if there
are any questions or unfamiliar emotions you need help with, I'm here for
you.
-JC

P.S. Grady Little must die

Compu-Mystery

My computer woes continue in a most bizarre way. If anyone out there has any ideas, PLEASE let me know...

So here's the deal: I tried to put that hard drive in my P3 Windows box. There was a little spark, and it died. It wouldn't boot. I took it to the kitchen to start a postmortem, and it booted. I plugged it back in in the office, and it booted once, and then wouldn't. And it stayed dead.

So I took it apart, keeping the good stuff.

Just so I'd have something to tide me over, I got my 200Mhz linux box out of the basement, and brought it up here to the office. I plugged it in, used it to check email and start SSHd, and then powered down. Now *it* won't start anymore. Won't boot. You can see the cooling fan on the processor try to start, and then nothing. Won't power on.

SO...it was plugged into the same power strip as the other one. Could something be wrong with the STRIP? But if there is, how or why would it fry my power supplies (working theory) when I power the computers down? Shouldn't it either work or not work? I mean...there's no way that it's coincidence. What's going on, and how do I fix it before I plug in my replacement stuff?

Tech-types and gearheads (Paul Day and Baratunde, I'm looking in your direction)...PLEASE HELP!!!

R.E.M.

I'm sorry, but the "new" R.E.M. song is just fucking great.

Thank You, Jesus!

Oh, lordy...why did I have to be at work when I saw this? FHM has asked the Food Network's Rachel Ray to pose for pictures. At least now I know I'm not the only guy in the universe who's crazy about this sexbomb (who makes pie!).

(Thanks to my kickass wife, who passed along the recommendation from her friend Trystbat, in whom she's apparently confided my lust for Ms. Ray)

Catatonia in Red Sox Nation

The air around Boston is indescribable today. The only time I've ever seen so many people suffering this combination of fear, exhaustion, and grim determination is in Vietnam documentaries. I'm surprised we're not calling the Yankees "Charlie."

Let me say it for the record: I officially care about baseball now. The Sox are a virus, and I'm infected. Last night, the wind blew down power lines in our neighborhood. When I found out, my first thought was not of my wife and child...it was being pissed off because I'd miss the end of the game.

Note to self: buy batteries today.

The show at the Comedy Studio has been cancelled tonight, natch. Thank Christ. I was going to make Mike Birbiglia do an hour while I watched in the bar downstairs. I had my "you're the big Comedy Central star" speech all planned. No disrespect to Mike, who's unbelievably talented, but I wasn't going to be relegated to MC *and* miss the goddamn game.

This way, everyone wins.

EXCEPT THE YANKESS!

Goddamn you, Sam Walters, for getting me hooked on this goddamned team. This is a codependent relationship, man. Between me and the Sox, not between me and Sam. That relationship is patient and kind. But the Sox...the fluctuating emotions. It's like your first high school relationship, where everything is either blissful or the end of the universe. It's not you, it's me! I need space! WIN THE MOTHERFUCKING SERIES, ALREADY, WILL YOU???

Shows This Week

In case all my computer babbling hasn't completely undermined my credibility as a comic (sorry, I'm not Doug Stanhope. I'd like to eat mushrooms like they were popcorn and live a delightfully Hunter S. Thompson kind of life; but alas, I'm a dork with a job and a family. That's not meant as a slam on Doug, by the way. I'm so jealous of his career, his talent, and his life...well, his career and his talent, anyway...), I am actually performing out and around New England this weekend.

Thursday - The Comedy Studio. Duh. 8:00

Friday - Club 360. Dover, NH. 9:00. This is one of my favorite clubs. It can get rowdy, but in the right way.

Saturday - Oh, god. Apparently I'm playing someplace called "Woody's" at the "Hobo Lounge" in Claremont, New Hampshire. 9:00. Even if you don't come, please archive this page so you can give it to the cops when they're trying to reconstruct what led up to the crime.

Boring, Sid, Boring, Boring, Boring

Spent last night moping about the Red Sox, finishing up my homework, and trying to fix my computer. I took it out to the kitchen table to dissect it and salvage the pieces worth salvaging, and lo and behold, it booted up! I don't know what changed...but I got it up and running, and then met with complete defeat when trying to put in the new hard drive Randbot hooked me up with at the strip club the other night (in either a very Matrix-y or very nerdy kind of move, depending on your interpretation). I'm sure I'm doing something wrong master/slave wise (those are technical terms, assholes), but something is definitely wrong with my floppy controller, so I'm pretty much SOL.

Doesn't matter, because even though I surfed and typed like crazy last night, this morning, it was DOA all over again. So I've been breaking up work by shopping for the components of a new system on TigerDirect.com. If anyone has any other reccomendations of places to shop, by all means, let me know. Right now, I'm getting a new HD, an Athlon XP 2200, a new motherboard, 256 MB of memory, a new case, a shitload of cooling fans and a new floppy for around $400. I'll keep my monitor, keyboard, vid card, sound card, and NIC.

The point is this: the faster I get up and running again, the sooner I can get on with my life and the sooner there might be something halfway interesting posted here.

Libertarian for a Day

My head is throbbing. In the last 24 hours, I've consumed over a pound of red meat; drunk a generous portion of beer, whiskey, and sake; received several lap dances, smoked 2 packs of cigarettes, and expended over 400 rounds of 9mm ammunition.



Now that's a bachelor party.

Mr. Ross Garmil, my friend and co-creator of the Grand High Council is getting married in a couple of weeks, and last night we feted him. And today, I feel like I'm going to die. Going from 5-years-quit to 2-packs-in-a-night makes your lungs feel like they're filled with pudding. I confessed my week-long flirtation with the Tobacco Demon to Jeniphir yesterday and promised to re-quit today. I don't know why I've been fucking around with cigarettes. Oh, yeah, because I have no impulse control and because Philip Morris is evil. The week I ran the Studio, I snuck about a half dozen smokes, mostly out of exhaustion. Then I switched over to Kentucky Cheroots, which didn't get the monkey off my back but at least left my lungs in a mostly puddingless state. But in Colorado last week, I found myself sneaking my mother's menthol Virginia Slims (which makes me either secure in my masculinity or gay as Carson) whenever everyone else would leave the house. I came back and started bumming more manly smokes, and Saturday, I bought a pack, which is the sign of immiment defeat. So I gave Jeniphir my pre-party confession (to which she responded with a very touching and supportive, "What the fuck is wrong with you? You don't smoke anymore, you dumbass!") and blew through (with the help of Ross, Benari, and Glenn) 3 and a half packs of Camels of various varieties, which leads me to today's nicotene hangover (being treated with Chinese Curing Pills and Hail Marys) and an intense combination of regret and addictive craving. Brilliant fucking decision, McIntire! Brilliant!

As long as I'm confessing my retardocity, let me point out that I'm posting this from my wife's iMac because after Randbot was cool enough to drop a free 16GB hard drive on me last night at the party, I came home and tried to slave it in my machine without turning it off. Flash! Sizzle! Moron! I don't know if I shorted out the power supply or fried something more substantial, but either way, I now have a 700Mhz testimonial to being a fucking dumbass sitting on the floor of our office with its guts flung everywhere like it got attacked by a bear.

Tech Envy

My wife is out spending Saturday morning like she spends most Saturdays: yard saling. I don't know when it became a hobby, and I really don't know when it became a verb, but she's out bargain shopping and has promised to find me a weight bench and a coffee percolator. That's probably an oblique metaphor for my life these days.

I'm doing some bargain shopping of my own, as I'm in dire straits, technology-wise. My cell phone is a complete hunk of digital shit that reboots itself occasionally and whose display is upside down and backwards most of the time. My PDA has developed a condition where it eats a pair of batteries every eight hours. My desktop machine, which was built for $25 out of scrounged parts, is just about to outgrow its tiny 6GB hard drive. And my "laptop" is so old and heavy that time slows down if you get within 5 feet of it. I'm neck deep in tech culture overdrive...I want to hack the planet...and I don't have and can't afford the hardware to do it. Meanwhile, every dipshit yuppie that needs the manual to run Excel is cruising along with tiny little laptops and sweet flip phones. Thus is the irony of my life.

Wish List:

Alienware Area-51 Extreme
T-Mobile Hiptop Sidekick with digital camera.
Hoojum Cubit p4 running BeOS 5, Mandrake, and Win98 for games.

There Goes My Motivation

Good god. Someone just sent me this link. I shall be useless the rest of the day.

The Bob Haircut Worship Page

Council, The Day After

Great turnout for the show last night at the Comedy Studio. We had a real blast with this Council, despite the fact that it could not have been written closer to the wire and could probably have stood another rewrite. Rob Reuter, Baratunde, and TC Cheever were outstanding guests, and my main men Ross and Benari (fresh home from Gitmo - yes, that Gitmo) were a goddamn panic, if I do say so myself. And extra uber-thanks go out to DJ Hazard for reprising his role as Benari-Hulk.

Question: Would you, my general readership (last count: 3), be interested in seeing the questions and bits posted here after a Council? Drop me a line and let me know.

Standup-wise, everyone did great. I thought Dan Sulman was particularly funny. He's always had a sharp brain, but he's knee-deep into some serious artistic honesty these days, and was a dadgum riot.

News Flash: Rick Jenkins had an idea for Thursdays at the club that didn't make me want to punch him in the throat! In fact, it was pretty good, and hatched only after a minimal amount of Sam Adams. Stay tuned, because I do believe I'm going to take him up on it (how's that for needlessly cryptic?).

Playing Catch Up

The last few days are a complete and total blur. October in Colorado spun me back to an earlier time in my life, when I didn't have many responsibilities, did nothing but comedy, drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney and lived like a by-God beatnik. I didn't get to do any of these things, but it took me there emotionally, dig? Hitting Boston full-force after 8 hours of airports and airplanes was one hell of a shock to my system. I'm only just now starting to settle my head.

Disjointed moments in the last 48 hours:

155 emails waiting for me at my Goddamn Day Job
A Grand High Council tonght that's 100% unwritten as of this moment
A couple of very poor choices in the middle of my stress yesterday
My writing teacher marking up last week's assignment like Douglas MacArthur planning an assault on the Phillipines ("writing is too exuberant" -- hack, slash, slash, hack)
The Red Sox! The Red Sox The Red Sox!
Jude running around in circles in his footie jammies yelling "PENIS!" at the top of his lungs (I should never have taught him to do that)

Perfection

Yesterday's funeral was a lot of things: cold, rainy, simple, and perfect. A few readings of scripture that Gramma Mac particularly loved (all of which focused on love, kindness, patience, and faith), a couple of songs she wanted (The Old Rugged Cross and Amazing Grace) a lot of crying (even the limo driver got swept away by it all) and capped by my father reading her specific request:

"In lieu of flowers, or donations, friends are asked to vote Democrat."

Logan Airport - 8:10 am

First leg of my journey to Colorado for gramma Mac's funeral. I'm sitting at a public internet kiosk in Terminal E at Logan, and I find myself trying to wrangle two conflicting impulses. One should be obvious: I want to document this trip, give it some gravity, make sure I remember it. But I find this impulse to be in direct opposition to the fact that most anyone reading this is doing so out of an interest in my comedy, and I'm having a hard time reconciling the two, so I'm sitting here, praying for some wacky occurrence so I can slap it up here instead of waxing maudlin.

Please, god, a rude security guard or stupid fat woman to make fun of! But alas, no such luck. The only interesting thing I've seen today is a man in a gold lame sweatsuit and completely dripping with Bling², which baffled me until I remembered that this leg of my journey goes to Detroit, so it makes sense that he's dressed more or less like a Pip. I now have an image of Detroit where everyone dresses like a motown backup band, where everyone's a Pip, or a Shirrelle, or a Rondell. A Detroit where these have become medieval family names...where Charles Rondell might marry Susan Shirelle and found a new dynasty.

Now I'm just babbling because I'm trying to avoid the sorrow of tomorrow and because I'm hopped on airport coffee brewed so strong it tastes like liquid evil (or, to be more accurate, liquid evil with 2 Equals and milk) and a chromium breakfast drink that tastes like a peanut butter cup.

Gramma Mac, of course, drank enough coffee that this is probably an appropriate way to approach her funeral. Jacked on java, and waiting for the tears to come.

In Memory: Opal McIntire

My grandmother passed away this morning at the age of 92. She taught me everything I know about good coffee, good whiskey, and questioning authority. I guess the hospice chaplain showed up last week and she sent him packing with his tail between his legs. She gave me the courage to follow my comedy dreams, and god, I'm going to miss her.

Unfaithful to my Muse

I realize I haven't written much of substance lately. Sadly, most of my writing juice is going into short stories these days. I'm taking a class in short fiction writing at Harvard Extension School and enjoying it entirely too much. I'm absolutely pouring words onto paper. I've got creative energy that I haven't had in years. I'm falling in total love with fiction.

In a way, I feel like I'm cheating on comedy. Then I remember that comedy's a dirty, filthy whore that ruined my life, and I don't feel so bad.

Jake Ivory's

Just a last-minute bit of advertising. I'll be performing tonight at Jake Ivory's as part of a benefit for America's Walk for Diabetes. I'll be joined by Sam Walters, Brian Gordon, Kelly MacFarland, and a bunch of other great comics. Last time we did this, we raised a ton of dough for the cause and ended up drinking entirely too much beer with the Baltimore Ravens. Yes, really. Doors open at 7:00, show starts at 8:00. There's booze and food available.