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"On Scatterbrain, McIntire addresses the ups and downs of a working comic's life. The bulk of the album is all laughs -- solid material on everything from having kids to the war on terror, killer stuff from one of Boston's most reliable comedy veterans -- but it's the bonus track, the one labeled "Nagasaki," that's getting the most attention. The nearly half-hour track is nothing short of a complete hell gig..."
"If Tim set out to reveal more about himself and be vulnerable on his new CD, Scatterbrain, he succeeded. He pulls off the delicate trick of turning inward without losing his persona. He is still The Reverend. Now, rather than pointing the finger at others, he's pointing it at himself. Instead of looking at obscure news stories and making them universal, he takes something universal, the birth of a child, and makes it his...It's smart and fearless. Mr. Hicks, this is Mr. Cosby."
Hey - just to clarify something here. I've gotten a bunch of emails and such from people who read yesterday's post and feel bad for me or who think I'm really that unhappy with m'life. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just wanted to bust a friend's balls, and I needed that setup to make the "life vampire" thing work. So thanks for the concern, but I'm fine, really. I didn't expect anyone to take it that seriously.
He IS a warlock, though.
For the record: I love my life, and I would make all the same choices again, even if those choices result in having to get up at 5:30 with a 3-year old just four short hours after getting home from the kind of Pabst Blue bacchanalia one encounters when opening for Doug Stanhope in a dive bar.
Turns out he's a life vampire AND an enabler.
P.S. The show was a blast. Doug was better than ever, Tony Pizzazz and Dr. Xanax were rape-tacular, Brendon Walsh's hilarity incited domestic violence, Dan Crohn tied it all together, and somehow, the stars aligned, and the Hellcat made an appearance. Top it off with the Mickey and Mallory of comedy, who were out in full force, and life is good. Headachey, but good.
Then you catch a glimpse of yourself in the window on the Orange Line on your way into work, your hollow, baggy eyes staring back at you, the sheen of night sweats still evaporating after six swirling hours of tortured baseball dreams, and you think, "How did it come to this?"
Right there, on the inbound train, wedged between a fat woman that smells like Fancy Feast and an old man muttering about "the coloreds," you see yourself, clearly, for the first time in years, and you look like a substitute teacher, but at least substitute teachers do something. They don't sit in a cube and read blogs on the sly and try to sense the boss's footsteps on the carpet like Jay Silverheels trying to sense the approach of the illegal Mexican immigrants they hired to play banditos on that episode.
And while this wretched epiphany steals over you, the absurdity of it all is crystal clear. You're on this train, with these people, going to this dirty trick of a job, but in twelve short hours, you will be opening for Doug Stanhope, and you goddamn well better not have the stink of the cubicle on you, or they will sense it, and they will devour you like wolves.
Let me tell you something about Doug Stanhope: Back in the day, during the dark times of comedy, after the boom had boomed but before everyone and their retarded cousin were trying to become YouTube heroes, there were a stealthy handful of us who roamed the country, doing comedy for the love and love alone. There were plenty of brickwallers out there, latched on and sucking the last few drops of marrow from the skeleton of the 80's, but there was a new generation, too, raised on standup on the teevee and promised an Eden of A-rooms and weeklong clubs, only to have that rug yanked away at the last second. I consider myself one of that generation; Stanhope's one of us, too.
There was a club, in Arizona, where a guy still felt like a rock star, or at least like he could become one. Nobody was writing a screenplay, and we were all making dangerous choices for the right reasons. One night at this club, I went up with a bellyful of scotch and dressed as Santa Claus, not because I thought it would be a funny comedy sketch but because I happened to be dressed as Santa and drunk on whisky for entirely unrelated reasons that day. It was that kind of club, you dig?
There was a picture taken that night, me in the Santa suit, a pint glass of Dewar's in one hand and a cigarette dangling from my mouth, giving an old woman in the front row the finger, my lips curled in contempt and the manager's panicked face just barely discernable in the background. That picture hung prominently on the bulletin board for a year. We'd laugh about it every time I came through.
And then it was gone, replaced by another picture of another comic, onstage and naked, all white legs and elbows, wearing a Santa hat of his own. It was Doug Stanhope, and it looked for all the world like somehow he'd snuck out of his picture and stolen the hat out of mine. He'd upped the ante, and it's all been downhill for me from there.
Now here I am, on the Orange Line, a day like every day I can remember, my comedy career as incomprehensibly comatose as a patient on House, while Doug Stanhope gallops around the country like some kind of hilarious Scarlet Pimpernel.
He lives in the desert I wanted to live in. He vacations in the country I still haven't visited. He does the gigs I thought I'd get to do.
Meanwhile, I'm typing words at a monkey job for people too rich to remember my name, and it all started the day Stanhope stole my Santa hat.
Let me tell you something about Doug Stanhope, my friends.
He is pure evil. He is a warlock. He is a goddamn LIFE VAMPIRE.
Tonight, there will be a reckoning. Oh, yes. There will be a reckoning.
For the record; someone was nice enough to make this for me back before I had my own camera, and while I am grateful for that, I just wanted to be sure everyone knew it's not me who misspelled "yin."
Okay, if I was a good person, I would have linked to Ken Carlson's new standup comedy magazine The Comediansbefore he interviewed me for it. However, I'm not a good person. The interview, I must say, came out pretty good, though. Where else are you going to get nuggets like this?
I also went to the University of Colorado for a year. What a nightmare. I was in some weird black box play. There was this Iraqi director there. He'd written some play called, The Rape. I went out for it because it wasn't a comedy. I wanted to be a serious actor. I had the audition and he said, 'You are fantastic! I love you.' I said, 'Great.' He said, 'You are very funny. I am putting some comedy in this play for you.' So, I was the comic relief in a play called, The Rape. It was an incredibly depressing play about this woman who gets raped. He just tacked on my wacky character, who'd kind of wander across stage between the wailing and revenge to do something nutty with a couple of melons and a pig .
That's right. Drink martinis throughout the course of a 3-hour phone interview, and that's what you get. I also shoot myself in the foot professionally about six times. Whatever. Ken's awesome, and his magazine's awesome.
You should go check it out, and not just for my drunken, pretentious comedy ramblings. The Comedians a slick piece of work. It's simple, gorgeous, and well-written. And if you check out all the interviews, you will learn this important truth: every comic on the planet has been to Aspen except me.
My Thanksgiving was spent exactly like yours, I'd reckon. Gluttony, sloth, intoxication and football. A wine buzz and gravy on my shirt while trying to wrangle the knuckleheads into bed while they spun and jittered from an eight-hour pie binge.
The only difference between you and me, I suppose, is that in all likelihood, you didn't have to have twelve iterations of a conversation that started with, "So, Tim...you're a comedian. What do you think about Michael Richards?"
What do I think about Michael Richards? The guy screamed "nigger" at black people about fifteen times. I think he's an asshole.
I'm not sure what sort of perspective people were looking for from me; I don't know what sort of comic calculus they expected me to perform or what sort of industry insight I might provide that would let them breathe a sigh of relief and go on thinking Kramer's just a wacky neighbor and not a rage-filled racist.
Yeah, racist. I mean, I don't know the guy. I don't know that he has any longstanding dislike of black people, but the way I see it, you call a guy a nigger, you gotta wear the racist jacket.
All that said, though, I have to admit that part of me hesitates to condemn the guy, because frankly, I've lost it on stage a time or two myself. Lost. It. I've written before about how I snapped on a woman (on her birthday, no less). I've also flown off the stage with every intention of punching a heckler in the face, and would have were it not for a well-timed shoulder check by the feature act. I've never gone racial, but that's about the only moral high ground I occupy. When you're rolling up there, and in that beautiful, dangerous, creative headspace, if somebody comes at you hard, a whole range of things to say pop into your head, you know? Do you blow it off? Make fun of his shirt? Call his wife fat? Call him a name? Drop the n-bomb? HOW BAD DO YOU WANT TO GO NUCLEAR ON HIM?
You can hit a point where you don't care about the show and you don't care about the funny. Stanhope's right: you pick the cruelist thing you can say, and you say it, whether you mean it or not. I've done it. More than once. The only difference is that I did it mostly before the age of the cameraphone. It's different now. You have a freakout and someone's going to try to make their YouTube bones off you.
My point, dear reader, is that I've redlined, too, and it would be hypocritical for me not to acknowledge it. Maybe that's what happened with Michael Richards. I don't know. Doesn't change the fact that he said what he said and he has to own it.
On the other hand, Jamie Masada's plan to fine comics for "hateful language" is about the dumbest response I can imagine. We've come full circle. Once again, Lenny Bruce wouldn't be able to work the Comedy Store (to say nothing of Richard Pryor). Masada wants Richards to pay $500,000 for each time he said "nigger." That's a lotta cake, and a lot of younger comics just can't swing that.
Maybe there will be a sliding scale fee structure. Less affluent comics couldn't afford to drop the n-bomb, but maybe they could find a less inflammatory, yet more affordable, racial slur that fits their act AND their budget. You could pay when you come offstage. "Let's see here...that's two jigaboos, a zipperhead, and a greaser. That'll be $92.50. Come back next week! We're having a special on "beaner!"
Comedy works best when restrictions are kept at a minimum. A comedy show's a weird thing, and what seems fine what night can seem patently offensive the next. It's alchemical. You can't possibly predict or contain it. But in Richards' case, the current system worked perfectly. He crossed a line, people left, and the club refunded their money. If Jamie Masada was really that concerned about it, he would have fired Richards and not let him work the next night (a point I just blatantly stole from "Jim Jones" over on the forums). A fine-per-word system is about the stupidest thing I ever heard. Not only does it not make any case for context (I assume Chris Rock's "Niggers and Black People" bit would suddenly become way too pricey to do), but it's an absolute insult to the legacy of guys like Bruce and Pryor and Hicks.
I guess what I'm saying is please don't restrict MY speech because Michael Richards is a racist asshole and a bad comic.
To buy Scatterbrain, click here (or here for iTunes). The actual CD is the only place you can hear Nagasaki, the semi-famous bonus track. Poor Impulse Control is sold out (unless you're crazy). If you just enjoy listening here, why not drop a buck or two in my tip jar, you stingy bastard?
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