Friday, November 21, 2003  

Sweet Merciful Fuck

Let me say this one time, out loud, for everyone to hear. I want this read into the record, signed, sealed, and notarized: fuck Plum Island, and fuck people from Plum Island.

Last night's show at the Wine Cellar was full-on combat comedy at its most tiresome. Our hecker-cum-comedienne was there, and she brought all her friends, who, as it turns out, were exactly the same people from Plum Island who made my life so miserable last time I saw them. They were annhiliated on cheap booze before the show even started, and by the time I got up, their heckling had been reduced to mooing like cows, raspberries, and drunken outbursts like, "You know why I had to do the thing I say FIVE!" To top it off, they took up the entire center of the room like a black hole of alcoholic heinousness. Dealing with them wasn't so much comedy as it was riot control...I was the verbal equivalent of a character in a James Ellroy book, breaking in teeth and smashing kneecaps. And all I wanted to do was do a regular comedy show!

To top it off, the owner paid me IN CASH ON THE STREET IN FRONT OF THE BAR! Great...now I can suffer through a miserable comedy show AND get jack rolled.

TIP FOR NEW COMICS: Do not, under any circumstances, confuse doing your dumbass jokes to your dumbass friends for actually being a comedian.

Fucking Plum Island, man.

Show Tonight: Wine Cellar in Beverley, MA

Hey, all...

I'll be headlining the show at the Wine Cellar in Beverley, Mass tonight, along with Todd Andrews, Rob Steen, and the aforementioned heckler-turned-comic, whose last name I forget, so I'm sticking her with her title instead. Mea culpa. Showtime's 9:00, and I plan to swing for the fences as I need to sell some CD's because due to a combination of ATM fraud (some cocksmear has cloned my wife's ATM card and cleaned out our checking account) and inane bank policies (our replacement bank doesn't let you touch your dough for 10 days after opening a new account) we are having what I think a corporate type would call "liquidity issues," and we need some cash money stat.

Dentyne FIRE, My Ass

How am I supposed to stay on the straight and narrow, tobacco-wise, if NOBODY makes a decent cinnamon gum? Orbit Cinnamon tastes like the inside of a Hot Tamales box, and Dentyne Fire is an insult to cinnamon everywhere. Extra's flavor lasts an extra long time, but that's not a positive, in this case. Anyone have any hot tips? Get it? HOT tips for CINNAMON gum?

Wakka wakka wakka!

Heckler Haunting

How weird is this? One of the worst hecklers I ever had in my nearly 11 years in comedy (pause while my stomach churns at THAT figure) has gotten into comedy and was one of my opening acts at Chops Lounge on Saturday night.

[cue wavy lines for flashback sequence]

I first met her in the town function hall in Plum Island, Massachusetts, where Dave Rattigan booked a BYOB show, and man, did these people B a lotta B's. Dave did well, as I recall, then Tony Moschetto went up and killed so unbelievably hard that when he was done, people put on their jackets to leave because they felt the show must be over. It's always great to be brought up to, "No, wait, there's another guy! No, he's good! Stick around!"

So needless to say, I went up and began chomping it hard. HARD. The table up front was building a pyramind between me and them out of empty Bud cans (equals classy!), and trust me when I say there were so many empties, they coulda interred Ramses in the fucker. Needless to say, I commented on it, whereupon the drunkest of the bunch lit into me. She was blonde and hammered, and was so brutal, that I eschwed clever banter and went for plain meanness. I still feel bad about what I said to her...and no, I won't write it because SHE IS NOW A COMIC AND SAYS SHE LOVES READING MY BLOG. Who knew I'd ever see her again?

Goddamn, this is a strange world.

Open Miker-a Go Go

There's a nice little pretentious comedy brouhaha going on over on the Kvetch board. Come watch open-mikers try to decide which one sucks more. It's like watching retarded kids hit each other with rakes!

Patrick's Pub

Hey, gang. Tonight I'm performing at Patrick's Pub in beautiful Gilford, NH. Great club, but be warned that it's an obnoxious website. I will try to talk to the owner about taking off the JINGLE that plays when you load it. What is it about New Hampshire people and websites with music? At least Boggis's has beaver shots as a payoff. Anyway, showtime tonight is 9:00, and Steve Scarfo is opening. Don't mean to name drop.

Upstate New York

I am so completely wiped out from this weekend. It was a great time, and Rusty Ward was really fun to work with. He's a terrific writer and really loves comedy. We did two shows in Sackets Harbor and then one show in Geneva, New York. After that show, I went out with the owner and his girlfriend, where we saw three guys who seem to be burn survivors working out some new rhymes at a hip hop open mike. I was sitting down to a Black and Tan when this black guy with pink scar tissue covering his face and head (except for a small tuft of on the left rear quandrant) came looming out of nowhere yelling at me "to say YEAH-AH!" It freaked me out, frankly, and we went to three more bars, including an Irish bar that didn't sell Guiness, a Polynesian bar promising their own comedy night (featuring three total douchebags!) and wound up in yuppie heaven, but it was blessedly free of irony and the walking wounded.

Last night did a benefit for the Ellie Fund. I'm glad it was a good cause, 'cuz I don't like to bomb for a bad one. Oof. On the plus side, lots of free drinky drinks. On the minus side, Sam Walters acted like the devil and tempted me with bad, bad things.

This Weekend Away; Odds and Ends

So our house is falling The Fuck apart, and apparently now so is our car, so I'm not in much of a mood to post anything too boffo right now.

So: Friday and Saturday, I will be headlining at the Lake Ontario Playhouse in Sacketts Harbor, NY. I'm really looking forward to this gig. I opened there once for the legendary D.J. Hazard, and I'm psyched to get back there. I hope the feature act (one Rusty Ward, who I've never met but who looks hella funny) doesn't take it personally, but I have every intention of locking myself in my room and finishing a complete first draft of my current story.

Sunday night, I'm at a hotel in Geneva, NY. Not sure which one, really. If I thought that people in Geneva, NY were reading this blog and might come to the show, I'd go find out. But I don't, so I won't.

To answer questions I've gotten lately: I solved my bus problem by just blowing him off, I never found a new bag, and my new computer will make your computer cry.

Hostage Situation

You ever start out being a nice person, and then end up in a situation where the only way out is to be an asshole?

I take the 100 bus every morning to the Dreaded Day Job, and I don't mind it at all. In fact, since I have a 2-year old at home, it's really the longest stretch of free time I have available to me at any point during the week. Unfortuanately, last week, I struck up a "how's the weather" style conversation with the driver (since I get on at the first stop, I'm the only one on the bus when it leaves), which evolved into a discussion of our upcoming new furnace. Turns out he knows a shitload about furnaces.

In fact, he knows so much about furnaces, that today was the fourth day in a row where I was trapped in the front of the bus for my entire ride listening to him talk about them. And talk about them. And talk about them. Forced air, baseboard, radiators, zones, gas, oil, electric...he knows every goddamn thing there is to know about heating in Massachusetts. He's got this incredibly ruddy Irish face and this nearly impenetrable Revere accent, so for the first couple of days, in addition to getting some admittedly good advice on furnaces, I was digging on the whole performance aspect of it.

But I don't want to talk about furnaces every day for the rest of my commuting life. I want to read a book. Or look out the window. Or think dirty thoughts about the chick who dresses in black who gets on at Riverside. Or whatever, but now it's a pattern. I get on, he starts talking about furnaces (though today featured a lovely little detour into roofing tar), I sit there, and stay there until we get to the train station. The only way out of this is to totally blow him off and just keep walking to the back of the bus, and I don't have the heart to do it.

I already adjusted my schedule once to avoid forced conversation with my fellow bus riders...and I can't adjust later, so now I have to adjust two busses EARLIER if I want to read in peace. What is wrong with me that I'd rather get up 45 minutes earlier than just be a little rude one time to one guy?

Damn you, Colorado, for your manners!