Monday, April 24, 2006  

Spinning In My Grave

I just got back from my very first spinning class ever. Insanity. Take everything you hate about working out and throw in a perky chick with a wireless mike and far too much Limp Biskit, and there you have it. Don't get me wrong -- it was a tremendous workout, and I plan to go again, but it's misery.

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I'm a 5-day a week gym guy. It's mostly wasted effort. My body is a mean joke grafted onto statistical aberration, strung together by leftover pieces from a prankster god. But the livelihood of a hot wife and two promising spawn depends on my ticker, so I go, and I work hard. I'm already a pilates beast (thanks, in part, to this cruel mistress), and I've been wanting to upgrade my cardio, since THE FAT CHICK in the PINK SHIRT keeps HOGGING THE GODDAMN ELLIPTICAL MACHINE WITH THE TV in the mornings, and cardio without SportsCenter is like surgery without anesthesia.

Thus, today's experiment in spinning, which, as it turns out was NOT the hardest thing I've done in the last 48 hours.

That honor goes to having to follow Steve Sweeney on a comedy show. In Boston. At a club named STEVE SWEENEY'S COMEDY CAFE. This is roughly akin to a band having to follow Aerosmith in Joe Perry's basement at Steven Tyler's birthday party. I'm proud to admit I pulled it off, but by the time it was over, I felt like Eli Wallach, wandering in the desert and swearing revenge on the Man With No Name.

(You'll forgive me that last tortured metaphor - I'm on a bit of a Sergio Leone jag lately. If you have Comcast OnDemand, do yourself a HUGE favor and order up A Fistful of Dynamite tonight. Its original name is Duck, You Sucker, and it features Rod Steiger as an angry Mexican and James Coburn as a bomb-tossing Irishman. 154 minutes of pure cinematic joy.)

But I disgress. Steve Sweeney is hard to follow because he is a comic par excellence. While he was on stage, I spent most of my time with my head between my knees, trying not to hyperventilate, but when I could watch him, it was like going to a Masters class in comedy. He takes a lot of shit in this town, but you cannot deny his craftsmanship. He was also gracious as can be, and he is way taller than you think. His club is also gorgeous, and if you're looking for someplace to go for your comedy fix (when I'm off performing between cockfights at a Legion Hall, of course), I highly recommend it.

I'll be there on Thursday night at a benefit for Right Turn. You should come.

From the Mailbag

My email stalker writes again:

From: YouHave NoClass
To: info@reverendtim.com
Date: Apr 22, 2006 5:15 PM
Subject: its time to consider another path

you are mean and not funny. you act as though you are a seasoned comic. there's just one problem, you haven't really done anything. so be a little nicer to people until you actually get some cred.

Always Miranda To Me

Once upon a time there was a weird little theater company in a wretched little city. Despite the fact that the city was a Republican hell-hole filled with gun-toting crazies, this theater company enjoyed fairly generous public funding and had a certain reputation for putting on top-notch children's theater in the summertime.

During one of those summers, I had the good fortune of being in that theater company (which I would go on to direct, briefly) with some incredible people. It was one of those moments in time when the right people were in the right place at the right time, and I'm not ashamed to say it was one of the most remarkable summers of my life.

Not only were the plays pretty goddamn hilarious, if I do say so myself (we all co-wrote them), but 4 of the 6 of us became inseparable, spending all day together at the theater and then all night together raising various flavors of hell around the aforementioned city. Everybody had crushes on each other, and everyone could crack everyone else up at any given moment, including, it should be said, while we were being detained by police for trespassing on a very chi-chi golf course (ostensibly, we were there for stargazing, but frankly, I thought there might be making out - note: there was no making out).

Long story short, it's been a long time since that summer, and I've only seen the other people intermittently since then, crashing in Chicago or LA or touching base via late night email, but they're all still remarkable. Matthew is directing movies out in Hollywood, and Leigh is busy making the world a better place.

And Amanda, whose email prompted me to write this post, is writing badass screenplays out in the La-La. She's having her latest script, Stray, read as part of the Slamdance OnStage series, which is what we in the business like to call a Big Damn Deal. It's on April 24 at the Open Fist Theatre, and I strongly urge all my friends in LA to go. Amanda is one of the most astounding people I've ever met, and you should go meet her so you can brag that you did.

Kick Pickler

An absolutely surreal moment at Fenway Park last night:

About the 7th inning, I had to pee (thank you, Bud Light, bawk bawk!), so I got up from my seat atop the Green Monster (just thought I'd drop that in) and went to the bathroom (note: the bathrooms up there are NICE).

On my way over, I saw about six members of the security staff huddled together, faces drawn in intense concentration. The man I took to be their leader strained to hear his walkie talkie.

I stopped, because it looked to me like something serious was about to go down, and I wanted to see it.

The leader stood up straight. "Got it!" he barked into his radio.

He looked his people dead in the eye.

"It was Ace," he said. "Ace is gone."

Wait. What? Ace...Schilling? That made no sense. Could it be...?

Inadvertantly, I made eye contact with the leader. I'm incapable of staring down authority figures, so I had to say something, and quick. My heart thudded.

"Ace?" I said. "Not Pickler? She BLEW the other night!"

His steely eyes didn't waver.

"Ace is gone," he said. "Bottom three: Chris, Ace, Paris."

I started walking to the bathroom then, because surreal or not, I still had to pee. He followed me.

"What?" I said. "Chris and Paris were really good!"

"I know," he said, opening the men's room door for me. "I thought Taylor Hicks was good, too."

Going from the outside into the bathroom, his voice seemed entirely too loud. It boomed off the walls, as half-drunk men tried to quickly piss in silence, anxious to get back out to see the game.

Then, from the far stall, another voice, "Hicks was okay, but Pickler sucked!" it said.

"Totally," said the guy at the first urinal.

"But Ace just got voted off!" the security guy yelled.

"That's bullshit!" said the guy at the sink.

"Pickler sucks every week," said a guy walking in the door. "But she's cute."

"Not cute enough," said the security guy. "And she's wicked retarded."

And then I peed.

When I left, a good half-dozen guys were still standing in the men's room at Fenway, debating the merits of Kelly Pickler, who, we all agree, is indeed wicked retarded.

P.S. NESN

So I just found out that beautiful motherfucker Mike Baker is taking me to the Sox game tonight, because he has MONSTER SEATS. In order to commemorate this blessed event, I made a sign that I hope will get me on TV:

Super Me Me

Ho-hum. Another day, another mention in a newspaper.

"It's easy: 'Super Bon Bon' by Soul Coughing," wrote Tim McIntire. "Not only does it have part of Papelbon's name in it, but the chorus says it all: 'Move aside, and let the man roll through...let the man roll through.' Combine that with a sick bass line - it's the perfect song."

Seriously. It's perfect.

(And P.S. the guy who suggested "Monster Mash" needs to be picked up by police and returned to the retirement community IMMEDIATELY)

You Can't Stop The (Radio Friendly) Rock!

Congrats to Scamper, who are en route to the finals of the WBCN Rumble after mowing down the competition like they've got cheat codes and health packs. I expect an easy win on Friday night, and then I expect the heroin-fuelled destruction to start on Saturday morning. They don't strike me as drug fiends or hotel wreckers, but Brendan has certain tendencies, and he is a proven bad influence on others. I just ask them, nay, beg them, to bide their time and keep it cool until the opportunity to punch the bass player from Fallout Boy right in his toothy little smile presents itself.

Cool? Cool.

Let's ride the rock theme a little longer. The BOC show in New Hampshire kicked enormous quantities of ass, as the pictures below demonstrate. The venue left a little to be desired - I mean, who plans a rock show with symmetrically-arranged banquet tables? - and the crowd had some douchey dead spots (a symptom of free ticket giveaways, methinks), but none of that stopped the boys from New York from putting on a hell of a show for nearly 2 hours.

There was a surreal moment when one scorchingly suburban-looking couple got up and left in the middle of Godzilla, I guess to beat the traffic. Huh? Who leaves a rock show just before the big boffo finish? How retarded to you have to be not to realize the obvious: we were at the Godzilla-Reaper-and-Out! portion of the show. I personally like to think that maybe they just looked like suburban free-ticket leeches but were instead superfans who were leaving in a huff because the band hadn't played She's As Beautiful As a Foot. And there were some hardcore fans there - I saw one woman with gorgeous long grey hair and surprisingly buff shoulders clutching a seriously beat-up copy of Secret Treaties on vinyl. A more beautiful sight I cannot imagine.

But I got my shirt, and I got Buck Dharma's guitar pick because the couple sitting across from us (again, at a fucking banquet table) was so cool. She caught it but gave it to me because it was obvious I was more into the band than she was. Kinda sad, really...I was sitting there clutching my Mirrors t-shirt and singing along to all the songs like a lovestruck junior high girl. But fuck it, I had a hell of a night, and may I just say how nice it is to see the band now that I'm old enough to drink beer FROM A CUP FROM THE BAR rather than out of a shitty sixer in someone's backpack?

And a quick shoutout to the "youth movement" of the band, namely Jules Radino, who plays angry, angry drums, and Richie Castellano, the bassist who is equal parts rock, funk, and straw-that-stirs-the-drink. They really drove the show, and the conspicuous lack of cowbell was duly noted.

All in all, a topnotch night of rock and roll, tables and all. I spent Easter Sunday playing the first few notes of Don't Fear the Reaper with Mr. Dharma's pick, and I think Jesus would have wanted it that way.

The Hampshire Hills Have Eyes

Great show at Hampshire Hills last night - for ME. My friend and opening act, Pat Napoli, had a much, well, stranger time of it.

Dig the blond in the foreground of this picture. She's Pat's date. She has just started HECKLING HIM MERCILESSLY.



And here she is, ten minutes later - ON HER FEET AND HECKLING HIM HARDER:



I suspect that mister Napoli will be spending Easter trying to hide a blonde corpse.

More Pix

What's that there in your hand, Tim?



Why, that's Buck Dharma's guitar pick, fucker.

Also:













Great goddamn night. Just great. Too sleepy to write, but not too sleepy to beam.

Before the Kiss, a Redcap

How was it?







'Bout like that, only better.

WMFO

Quick shout out to Paul Day and Derek Gerry, who were nice enough to have me come down to their sketchy little radio studio and be on their strange little show. I had a blast and a half, and confidential to Gerry: she is well out of your league.

BOC Day!

It's absurd how excited I am.

I've been hoarding cash for weeks, saving my sweaty rumpled bills like a high school kid, waiting for the moment I can hit the merch table and buy a sweet t-shirt. Or two. And a beer coozy, if they've got 'em.

Because tonight, I roll with Blue Oyster Cult, the band that once I actually skipped a college final to go see in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it was a fine, fine thing.

I want to be very clear: this is not some ironic gag, nor am I trying to piggyback on that goddamn cowbell meme. I love this band, and I have for years. I know I'm not supposed to. It's okay to have liked them when I was kid, right? Didn't know any better. Hell, I grew up in Colorado Springs - I had very few options. But now...now I'm supposed to be embarrassed, like people get embarrassed when they see their 8th grade picture and they're rocking a narrow silk piano key necktie (before you ask, yes, yes I did). But fuck that, and here's why.

Everyone has that band that got them through that period in life - that horrible period where all you're doing is wishing you were dead, trying acne treatments, and masturbating - and BOC was that band for me. When the girl I liked kept dating all my friends except me, when my mom bought me yet ANOTHER pair of highwater jeans, when Damien Via sucker punched me in the back of my head for no good reason, it was BOC that kept me going. Between the kickass guitar riffs (no, thank YOU, Mr. Buck Dharma), the freaky space/monster/occult lyrics, and the coolest goddamn album covers ever (Cultosaurus Erectus? You're fuckin' A right!), they were My Band. The band that saved my life. Everyone has one, and they were mine.

I'll admit freely that I only got into them because Erik Olson did, and he was the coolest guy I knew. I don't know if they were His Band or not (because as near as I can tell, his only trouble in high school was the occasional over-enthusiastic blowjob), but once I found them, they were mine soon enough.

So I'm supposed to repay that by being embarrassed now, pretending it's all an ironic goof? Ha ha, weren't we all stupid and all that?

Screw that. Thank you, Blue Oyster Cult.

And please, re-release Imaginos, okay? Because otherwise I'm going to buy it from some sketchy Russian website.

Say it with me:

ON YOUR FEET OR ON YOUR KNEES, FROM NEW YORK CITY - BLUE! OYSTER! CULT!

I Double Dog Datr You

From the Mailbag:

Tim, I hope you get a case of the hemoroids that eventuay spread to your
brain, Your nasty ass remarks about Teddy B. were as nasty as Rosie O looks in a
2 piece. In any case he's got more talent in his little finger than you will
ever attain in your pathetic life as a wanna be comic. I datr you to post
this your ignorant little small brained man, buy a wig you look like a dick with
legs.

For the record: I don't know who sent me this, I don't know what they're talking about, and I don't feel that I look like a dick with legs at all. However, I'm not one to turn down a datr, so here it is.

A Tour of Hell

I'm expecting an influx of eyeballs today, as the Globe has published a piece on Nagasaki, the bonus track on Scatterbrain.

So...welcome, Globe readers! If that article made you want to check me out, I can only assume you're the sort of person who has Faces of Death on their Netflix queue and might actually go to a cockfight. Not that I'm judging. Just getting all the cards on the table.

You want blood and guts, then, you bastards? I'll give it to you. In honor of the article, here, for your sick, voyeuristic pleasure, is my ALL TIME LIST OF HELL GIGS.

Tyngsboro, MA
This is the one on the CD. 300 big game hunters sitting down to their annual dinner while I bomb spectacularly. Listen to the track, and about 9 minutes in, you can hear someone call a toast in the back of the room by clinking his spoon on his glass. That's how aware they were of my presence. Meanwhile, a cute girl in high heels and a short skirt walked slowly through the room displaying the night's door prize: a camouflage-wrapped 12-guage shotgun.

Plum Island, MA
You've heard comics talk about not being able to follow each other? This was one such case. We were in some wretched town function hall, a grimy echo chamber of a room, and Tony Moschetto was up before me, and he killed like I've never seen anyone kill. He killed so hard that when his set was over, the crowd assumed that it HAD to be the end of the comedy show, so they all stood up and started putting on their jackets to leave. I was doomed from the start, because my intro was basically, "Wait! Wait! Where are you going? There's another guy! Sit down! There's another guy! Tim McIntire, folks!" 45 minutes of stone death followed. A woman in the front row hated me so badly she built a pyramid of Budweiser cans on her table in a naked display of contempt. She had a pronounced gap between her two front teeth. About 22 cans of Bud in, I finally snap on her and say, "Jesus, lady, we all know it's important to floss, but you gotta take it easy." That turns the crowd's apathy into anger, and the show is over soon thereafter. Said woman now owns and books a comedy club. Oops.

Junction City, Kansas
I'm a green, green comic in a tough, tough room. I'm the only caucasian as far as the eye can see, and I'm being heckled to death by this one guy in a red silk bowling shirt. I'm taking it in stride, just trying to do my time, but he won't let up. Finally I snap and tell him to shut the fuck up, that I'm not going to take that from a guy wearing the shirt Miles Davis died in. At which point, he rips off said shirt, revealing a physique not unlike Bruce Lee's. The crowd parts, he rushes the stage, and is scrambling up to beat the crap out of me when in a moment of panic I pick up the microphone stand and crack him on top of the head with it. He hits the ground, I yell, "Peace!" and I run to the back of the room, where I spend the next half hour apologizing to the headliner and the next five hours waiting for the manager to drive me back to my hotel so I don't get killed in the parking lot.

Bemidji, MN
I'm the opening act, and as such, it's my job to go onstage and announce to the packed room that we're turning off the Stanley Cup Finals to start the comedy show. In Minnesota. They boo me for 15 minutes straight (when they're not yelling, "shut up, faggot!") until the manager relents and turns the game back on. When I attempt to leave the stage, he makes me go back up and do my act, without the microphone, for my allotted time, while everyone else in the bar watches the game. Later, I end up drunk with said hockey fans, and somehow the couch from my hotel room ends up in the pool.

Butte, MT
Remember the chicken wire scene in the Blues Brothers? Bingo. I get to the club and the owner tells me they're going to throw beer at me. I try to laugh it off and tell him no, I'm pretty good, I think I can get them. He tells me that it has nothing to do with being good, they just like throwing beer at the comedians here. Rather than try to, you know, stop them, the club put up the chicken wire AND added new, cheap beer to the menu specifically for throwing (Schaefer's, I believe). If that's not a case study for Havard Business School, I don't know what is. And he was right - they whipped beer at me for a half hour straight. Sometimes at the gym, when the sweat is flying and the pilates cranking, I still smell like Schaefer's.

Enfield, CT
A week and a half after September 11th, I'm booked to do a gig at an Italian restaurant. The owner, who's Russain (not Italian) has this cockamamie idea that instead of the usual show where 3 comics do 90 minutes, he'll have 2 comics do 60, take a break, and then have a different 2 do 60 more. He's also petrified that someone will be rude to his customers. Me and the opening act go up, and it's deadly. The control to the lights is next to a drunk guy, who keeps turning them on and off the entire time. The entire time. And there are two big screen TV's next to the stage on which the news is still showing the planes crashing into the WTC over and over again. So every three minutes or so, it goes dark and all you can see is the second tower collapsing in a cloud of dust and fire. And me in the middle telling jokes. The show comes to a crashing halt when a guy in a yellow down vest stands up and starts heckling in earnest. He says he's gay and he's going to "rape me," and I tell him that I'll do whatever he wants if he'll shut the fuck up and let me finish the show. The owner pulls the plug and tells me to get offstage for being rude. Someone then informs him that the other 2 comics are stuck in traffic. I very generously offer to do the second show, too. He declines said offer and bans me from the premises.

South Shore Melody Tent
Someone got the idea to have me open for Martina McBride, which is strike one - her crowd is not my crowd. Then I find out it's in the round - totally wrong for comedy. Strike two. But I go up, and my first joke bombs. It echoes off the walls of the tent, it bombs so badly. Immediately thereafter, I discover that people have neglected to tell me about the most important feature of this venue: the rotating stage. Strike three. So for the next half hour, the stage slowly rotates and I die - in circles. I tell the setup to the joke here...and the punchline over here. Creaky spinning death in front of Massachusetts country fans.

Boston Music Awards
Brutal death in front of moderately famous people. I've been hired, with another comic, to host the show. She and I decide to open with a sketch, wherein she plays Cher and I play a recently deceased Sonny Bono. She comes out and tells the crowd that ever since Sonny died, things have been going great for her, so she's getting the band back together. That's the cue for the six pallbearers to carry me out in a coffin, open it up, and prop me up, limp, dead, and sporting one hell of a moustache. That's the plan. But the second the coffin hits stage, the place goes bananas with boos - and when you're being booed by 3,000 angry people at the Orpheum while lying in a sealed coffin, you know it's a bad gig. Interesting note: the only celebrity who was cool to me afterwards? Joey McIntyre.

Nashua, NH
Perhaps my most infamous. Performing at an upscale yuppie bar in downtown Nashua to a crowd that could politicely be described as drunkenly cruel. The opening act has gone down in a puff of flak, and I'm just trying to make my time when a large woman in the front row notices that my zipper is down a half inch or so. She stands up, points, and yells to everyone in the room to look at my lazy fly. Silence and stares. You can almost hear a jukebox needle skip. The only way I can salvage my dignity is to look her in the eye, raise the microphone to my lips, and say, loudly and slowly, "Hey, thanks for pointing that out...you chubby cunt." A near-riot breaks out, she and her friends leave, and my agent gets an hysterical phone call from the club owner. I did not get paid - turns out it was the woman's birthday. Her complaint to the club? I shouldn't have called her chubby.

There. That enough savage truth from the great American heartland, you sickos? Good. Now go buy my CD! I've earned it!

Me Gusto Mucho

Look: Rob Reuter is a dangerous man. Not dangerous like normal people are dangerous. Dangerous like liquid hemlock on the tip of a ninja's sword. A ninja Viking, even. A cyborg ninja Viking, that breathes cancer and sadness and smells like broken promises and Boone's Hill Farm Apple Blossom.

He is also hilarious, as this post at the newly-resurrected American Jerk shall prove.

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW INTERNET OVERLORD, THE AMERICAN JERK.

Things Change, Okay?

Welcome to the new digs. They look identical to the old digs, except for the ol' URL up at the top there. This is the first step to something that may or may not end up cool, but the first order of business was to kill the Reverend.

Drink to him tonight.

On to bigger and better things.

Like BOC in 3.

(I'll post something better/funnier soon, but right now I'm too busy watching the Sox take it to the Jays...my man crush on Kevin Youkilis is getting unweildy.)

Recap

Great weekend of shows, if I do say so myself. Matched by an equally great weekend of baseball. So between me and Schilling, chalk up 2 points for pasty Germanic white guys.

Friday night was a showcase spot for a very good-natured muckety-muck at the Comedy Studio, my home club and my albatross. Without question, the best shows I've ever done in my life have been there. I've also slept in the third floor men's room after covering it with puke and the smell of French cigarettes in a flagrant disregard of both personal wellbeing and the municipal code of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Either way, Friday was a good set, and I pretty much did to that crowd what the Sox were doing to the Orioles at the exact same time. PBR and self-contratulation followed.

Saturday was an equally good show, though far more surreal. It was at an extremely fancypants club in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a town not really known for its pancypantsedness. My agent, who is equal parts dishonest and learning disabled, neglected to mention that the show would be in such a nice location. And this place was nice: converted mansion, private membership, dark suits and evening gowns. And me in workboots, torn jeans, and an OP shirt I found at a rest area.

Yet this estate was in the middle of one of THE sketchiest neighborhoods I've ever seen. While trying to find the club, I passed by literally three instances of cops with guns drawn on motorists, two hookers, and a homeless guy who kept walking in tight little circles, most likely trying to get better reception on his dental work.

So I was feeling underdressed AND in danger at the same time.

Yet the show went very well, despite my rough appearance, and the hoi polloi were quite appreciative. Not so appreciative that they forked over a lot of dough for CDs, but appreciative nonetheless.

Speaking of CDs, you should check out this link, because I bet CD Baby doesn't let me keep it up for very long.

BOC in 4.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Morning After

This is Scott Biram:



He is a gifted, brilliant, crazy motherfucker, and he blew my face off at TT the Bear's last night. He is also a major part of the reason why this is about all the bloggy goodness you're going to get out of my wretched, shrivelled brain today. I have nothing in the tank. It's all used up, every last drop of juju. It's spattered all over the walls of that dank little club.

Perfect night. Now pass me the Tab before I cut you.



Ahhhhh...that's the stuff.

Wakey Wakey

If Josh Bard's not a full-blown alcoholic by the end of this season, I will be flabbergasted. By the All-Star Break, I imagine he'll have manifested a righteous thousand-yard stare, and by the playoffs, we'll be calling him The Deerhunter.

Imagine what it must be like to know that you're going to have to go through that every five days. Brother man's going to have a flask sewn into his chest protector. Or put scorpions in Wake's locker. Either way.

Last night was a bad night for the Sox, but tonight promises to be a good night for yours truly. Sure, it's snowing on April Goddamn Fifth outside, but that shall not deter me from my appointed rounds at what should be a humgoddamndinger of a rock show: Scott Biram, Reverend Glasseye, and Th' Legendary Shack Shakers at TT's. I was initially only going to go for Biram, for whom I've been absolutely bananas since catching him on a Bloodshot compilation. But I've been informed by those who know that that's a stupid thing to do.

I mean, I actually shared the bill with Reverend Glasseye once. I came home completely pickled and readdicted to cigarettes. I was going to miss their set out of self-preservation, really. Fool me once and all that.

And the Shack Shakers go on at 11:30, which is a crazy number for an old man like me. I have pilates EARLY in the morning, okay?

But then my man Nicky Z and my friend Lady B, indepedent of each other, both informed me that if I missed the Shack Shakers, I would easily become the Stupidest Asshole on the Planet, an honor I've been up for many times in the past. I don't feel like winning yet, so screw it. Rock on a school night it is, then. Meeting D-Pat at Bukowski's for Lone Stars to set the tone of the evening at 8:00, and then it's balls to the wall until THE T STOPS RUNNING!!!

Someone tape Lost for me, okay?

Drizzle

It's 6:52 am. I've been up since 5:00, which is more or less my usual time. Except instead of heading off to pilates with my usual Tuesday Amazonian ass-kicker, I'm sitting at my desk and staring at the rain. A poetic image, I'm sure, but one made much less so by the fact that I'm doing so only because I can't find my umbrella, and therefore can't leave the house.

It's one thing to stand at a bus stop in the dark and the rain; it's quite another to do so sans bumbershoot. If you're standing in the rain with an umbrella, you're dedicated. If you're standing in the rain without an umbrella, you're too stupid to come in out of the rain.

Query: what's gayer? My use of the word "bumbershoot" or the fact that I do pilates?

So instead I'm drinking instant coffee (don't ask; consider it colorful character nuance), listening to Dave Gleason's Wasted Days, and trying to figure out what's wrong with our furnace, whose "lockout" light is flashing and which is stubbornly NOT putting out any heat. I stand staring at the thing, slurping instant coffee and pushing the reset button every 45 seconds or so. This entire morning is an exercise in pathos, I guess. In about half an hour, I'll set up a service call, armed with just enough knowledge to be utterly incomprehensible.

"The lockout light is flashing," I'll say. "I've been trying to reset it, but it's not working." To myself, I'll sound competent, even masculine. To everyone else, from the furnace tech to the girl answering the phone, I'll sound like a jackass. A lesser comic might use this as a segue into a standard "men won't ask for help" missive, but not me. I honestly believe that this is my personal character flaw, and that it exists independently of my gender.

Stupidity may be a staple of hack comedy, but mine is mine alone, and it is precious. I will now go make noise that I will pretend is accidental until my wife wakes up and tells me where my umbrella is.

Precious, I say.

BOC in 10 days. Scott Biram in less than 2.

Please buy my CD.

Blüe Öyster Tïm

First things first. Where are you going to be on April 14th? Oh, spending Good Friday at Mass? Not bad. Me? Oh, I'll just be rocking out at a private show with a little band you might have heard of: BLUE ÖYSTER MOTHERFUCKING CULT!!! I cannot describe how excited I am by this, but here's a hint: one of my children's births just got bumped off my Top 3 Things Ever list.

More on that as BÖC Friday approaches.

This blog will begin to update much more frequently. I was roundly chastised this weekend by a friend and teen pop idol who is, frankly, kind of round himself, for not writing more frequently than I do. I told him I only wanted to post quality stories - well-written pieces that people would want to read. More columns, really. He laughed in my face and Thai kicked me in the solar plexus. As I lay gasping for breath and trying to sweep his leg, Cobra Kai-style, he planted a knee on my back and hissed in my ear with breath that reeked of illicit sex and domestic beer, "It's the internet, asshole. No one cares about quality."

Who am I to argue with the rhythm section of Scamper? They are about to kick the crap out of the BCN Rumble, after all.

Updates to come. Please buy my CD.