Ragged Company

Don't Mind the Maggots: Episode 2

2011-06-13T22:24:00.000-04:00

Re-posted from comedy website Niente Peaches

Don't Mind the Maggots: Episode 3

2011-06-12T12:40:00.001-04:00

Re-posted from comedy website NientePeaches.

Subway Vision

2010-10-31T22:21:00.001-04:00

Happy Halloween, everyone. At the time of writing, it’s 8:32 pm on October 31, and I’m shoeless on the couch writing on my laptop. I only point this out because it’s such an anomaly. My past seven October 31^sts circa 8:32 have found me: a drunk cavemen, a drunk Titanic-passenger zombie (thanks Nick), a drunk train hobo asleep in the Atlantic ocean, a drunk Geico cavemen, a drunk un-costumed guy at my dad’s house, a un-costumed volunteer for a children’s party at a Methodist Church (and drunk) and a drunk classic television character getting ready to move to New York in a few hours.

Little different this year. Not that 2010 has been an uneventful Halloween weekend: I’ve already been a slightly buzzed crazy JetBlue flight attendant, a sober Peter Pan shadow, and a probably-should-have-been-drunk Walter White from Breaking Bad. It’s just that Halloween night falls on a Sunday and I have an actual job to attend in the morning and more importantly I have a blog quota to fill. So here I am, like Kobe, Doin’ Work.

This past Thursday I was at Port 41 in Hell’s Kitchen for the Brooklyn Comedy Underground’s one year birthday party. This was the second time I’ve performed at Port 41. The first was way back in July and was attended by none other then Boston rock legends The Okay Win. I had long regretted not blogging about that show because Port 41 is so... unique. When the opportunity came along to perform there again, I jumped on it, mainly so I’d be able to finally write about the one-of-a-kind Port 41 and its bikini-clad wait-staff.

Located a couple avenues west of the Port Authority, Port 41 is a relic of the pre-Rudy Giuliani Midtown. (Not a Midtown I ever experienced, of course. A Midtown a pubescent Gregory could only fantasize about in his wildest dreams.) Port 41 isn’t a strip club technically; the bartenders are wearing bikini tops and I’ve heard rumors there is underwear somewhere up there, tucked between there butt cheeks. But not being a strip joint does not “class up” Port 41. The lack of actual nudity does not make the proceedings any more tasteful or subtle. Port 41 is about as subtle as a roll of toilet paper next to the computer.

In other words, if you look up sleazy on Google Image, Port 41 comes up. The old saying was “if you look up [blank] in the dictionary…” or “if you look up [blank] in a textbook…” but since Google has rendered both those things irrelevant, I think the saying should be updated. Here’s the first image to come up when you Google-image “sleazy:”

Not Port 41 exactly, but surprisingly close.

(I like this new idea. I think I will try to do it once-a-blog.)

I don’t do well at places like Port 41. I’m awkward in general, but it’s completely exasperated in any situation involving scantily-clad women. Say what you will about strip-clubs, but at least the stripper – customer dichotomy has clearly set parameters: she exposes her vagina, I look at it. Easy-peasy. But any environment where the women are nearly naked and it’s inappropriate to gawk sets my conscience a-haywire. For one: I have absolutely no idea what to do with my eyeballs. I’m not making eye-contact with these ladies; I don’t want them peering into my soul and seeing the demons that lurk there. That’s for my loved ones to do. And secondly I haven’t any idea how to talk these women because I’m petrified they are going to think I’m another creep trying to hit on them, so I end up acting like a total jerk and/or gay, which interestingly enough comes quite naturally.

At places like Port 41, it’s best to utilize what I call Subway Vision. Subway Vision is when you are not strictly blind, but you are unable to see anything that isn’t totally pleasant. Weird shit happens on the New York City subway, and when it does, the consensus best response is to wholly ignore its existence when you might otherwise feel inclined to notice. An MTA train is just about the only place in the world where you can spot a homeless man peeing on a seeing-eye dog and have your only reaction be, oh I see Harrison Ford has a new movie out, maybe I’ll check it out, look at the poster, look at the poster, look at the poster…

Using Subway Vision is standard protocol at joints like Port 41 (or a beach, or a gym, or Hooters.) Just pretend like you don’t see the tampon string dangling precariously close to the tribal tattoos and order your beer. Problem solved.

Note: Subway Vision is virtually required if you are at one of these joints with a girlfriend. In that scenario, it’s best to pretend you haven’t even realized there is a bar. If free IPODs start falling out of the waitress’ ass, you are not allowed to notice.

I struggled to find ways to describe in detail Port 41, and thought it would be fun to post some reviews I found online. Alas, another blogger had beaten me to it. Here is a link to a blog post about Port 41, replete with photos and Yelp reviews, check it out:

EV GRIEVE

The comedy show and the Brooklyn Comedy Underground party seemed almost tangential. I was the first to arrive so I got first dibs on my spot on the lineup and went with lucky number four. The set went well. Dillon showed up unexpectedly and in a suit, which has to be something of a precedent at this venue. Dillon, Amy and I ditched the show early and walked around, soaking in the glitz and the squalor, the pomposity and the grandeur of Midtown, present time.

I’m feeling good about the current lineup of jokes I now have in my possession. I think it may be my best. Not bad after one year. Yes, one year ago tomorrow I moved to New York. In many ways this was the hardest year of my life. But in so many more ways it was also the best. And maybe that’s the way life should be.

Excuses (And Hyperbole)

2010-10-25T21:19:00.001-04:00

Ok, I’m back.

There have been rumblings recently that the 38th Governor of California will soon retire from politics to return to Hollywood. If these rumors prove true, it will mean that the 38th Governor of California will not follow in the footsteps of a previous movie star-turned-California Governor and ascend to the Presidency of the United States, ostensibly because the US Constitution won’t allow him, but in reality because God isn’t real. If there is a God, there is no way he wouldn’t see to it that Arnold Schwarzenneger became president. It’s just too good, too juicy to pass up. Now I can’t say I agree with Gov Schwarzenneger’s policies. I don’t actually know what they are – I don’t follow the “news.” But what I do know is that if God were real, he would want to see his children live in a world where they could realistically and appropriately see “The President of the United States” and “Total Recall” in the same sentence on Wikipedia.

And if this is the week that Arnold returns to where he belongs, (protecting the future leaders of the resistance and dalliances with three-breasted Martian prostitutes) and away forever from where he has no right being, (conversations on immigration policy), then it will mark the second great comeback of fall 2010. I have decided to post again.

The title of this blog post should be starting to make sense now.

I’m not going to list the myriad of reasons why I haven’t posted in so long. For that, re-read any number of my whiny blog posts about how I am too busy or how I can’t organize my time or how I watch to much pornography and on an on. Those are all among the reasons. This post however is to reassure anybody who may care that I have not totally abandoned this site, and more importantly, I have not abandoned my purpose for moving to New York. Fast approaching the eve of my one-year New York anniversary, I realize that I must work harder, and I attend to. Excuses are over, I’m here. That was the hard part, if I recall.

I’ve made a few promises to myself and there is one in particular that I would like to share: I will publish two posts to this website a week, every week, from now on, so help me Arnold. If I don’t, I will delete the site. If We Could Go On and On isn’t worth my token attention and effort every week, the it is not worth existing and not worth causing Harry serious anxiety problems.

Today is Monday. The next blog post (and spoiler alert: it will be a good one) will arrive by the end of the week. This will stand as the only explanation for the apparent end of posting. We will all just pretend it never happened.

Please stop by and check it out. I’ll be back.

Instigatorzine: Issue 7

2010-09-22T19:52:00.001-04:00

Monday’s blog took me five and a half hours. Seriously. It took me three-hundred and thirty minutes to determine my ten favorite funny films and then designate them a specific rank. My entire Monday afternoon/evening evaporated into a haze of cold cereal, cranberry juice and my venerable 2000-edition of Microsoft Word. It didn’t help that I wrote a mini-essay of adulation for each movie, (who doesn’t write for hours about Spaceballs?) and I felt a need to add pictures in case you didn’t remember what Bill Murray looked like. Whoever wrote that brevity is the soul of wit (I believe it was Eminem) would probably think I am a retard.

This blog however? 30 minutes, maybe. That’s because all the hard work was done months ago. I wrote The Butterfly Net, a short-story appearing in the current issue of the New Jersey-based literary magazine, Instigatorzine, in early July, as part of another several-hour long, cereal-fueled writing binge. The purpose of this blog post is simply to alert people to the magazine’s existence in the hopes that someone will be intrigued enough to buy it and of course, to massage my tender ego.

(Note: The purpose of every blog post is to massage my tender ego.)

You can purchase the September issue, issue number seven, by clicking on the link below. It’s available for order as a hard copy via the US mail or download as a PDF. Now let’s all order the hard copy to show our respect for the dying printed word while at the same time giving a nice, resounding “Fuck You!” to trees everywhere.

Purchase: Instigatorzine: Issue 7

Look...my name is down there. I swear!

A few notes about the story.

No, I can’t just print the story here for all of you to read, free of charge. First off, I signed a contract – which I did not read – but I’m pretty sure explicitly stated I cannot do that. And secondly, Instigatorzine is an independent literary magazine. You’ll be supporting grass-root art and getting essential hipster subway gear at the same time. It’s a good thing, believe me.

In case there is someone out there who does purchase it, who didn’t at one time happen to have me residing in their uterus or their testicles, I want to tell you: I am no longer particularly fond of this story. I can hardly read it truth be told. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of The Butterfly Net. The day I found out it was going to be published was one of the proudest of my life. And Instigatorzine is a tremendous publication. It’s just that re-reading the story now makes me grimace. I can’t stand the constant overuse of simile, I can’t stand the opening sentences, I can’t stand the melodrama. I feel like I can do a lot, which I guess is a good sign. I’m reminded of my friend Steve Macdonald, the musician. Every time I seen him perform he comes off the stage practically disgusted – irate - over some mic being too loud or too low, over some timing being off or whatever. And I always think he sounds great; I’ve literally never noticed any problem that Steve seems to think is monumental. But Steve notices them because he a legitimate artist; consummate. If he grew content, he would grow complacent and then he would fade away. So I guess I should be like Steve, obsessive. It’s the only way I’ll get better. And at any rate, only three people have read the story: the magazine, which accepted it, and Amy and Scoots, who both liked it. So maybe I’m just wrong.

Before you even ask, because I know someone will, this is not a true story. I’d like to go into more detail and I will. Maybe tomorrow, if I’m good.

Thank you. I like that there are imaginary people on their computers somewhere reading this and maybe even some that don’t think I’m a massive tool. For all those, thank you very much.

My Top Ten Comedies.

2010-09-20T21:52:00.014-04:00

Here's a list for you. I think you will enjoy it, even though it has nothing to do with New York City or stand-up comedy. But at least I went with the top ten comedies, and not something totally unrelated, like top 10 moments in Jurassic Park or whatever. (Which will undoubtably come next time I am at a loss for blog ideas.)

Enjoy!

And please note: these are my personal favorite. I have not seen every comedy ever made and I do not consider myself in any way a movie expert. So don't be offended at a particular omission (note to the GF: I haven't seen all of Caddyshack, big fight coming) or at my lack of taste. These are just ten comedies I happen to enjoy very much.

10. The Naked Gun Trilogy.

Ok, I realize this might be cheating, since these are technically three different movies. But just about every publication listed the Lord of the Rings trilogy as one singular movie when they bestowed upon it best-movie-of-the-decade status. And since LOTR is cinematic gruel when compared to Leslie Nielson’s magnum opus, I feel warranted grouping The Naked Gun movies together.

How to even pick a best of the three anyway? All three of them feature many instances of slapstick, saturation humor at its zenith. Do you fancy Leslie Nielson’s Lt. Frank Drebin impersonating a famed opera singer at a Dodger’s game and butchering an impromptu Star Spangled Banner: “and the ramparts we watched uh…dada da da daaaa, and the rockets red glare... buncha bombs in the air.”? Or do you prefer a just-about-to-murder-his-wife OJ Simpson trying to spike a baby in a madcap parody of The Untouchables (while Lt. Drebin reads a newspaper that proclaims: Dyslexia for Cure Found?) Or maybe you’re like me and you love an exchange like this one from The Naked Gun 2 1/2, which is quintessential Leslie Nielson:

Drebin: Well, What did he look like?

Jane: He was Caucasian, mustache, about 6 foot 3.

Drebin: That’s an awfully big mustache.

9. Team America: World Police.

I wanted to seem cool and not include this movie, which really did not age well, but every time I see that one puppet poop on the other puppet in the greatest puppet-sex scene ever, or hear the lyrics to the wonderfully irreverent and factual Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You, I realize that I would be lying to not include Team America. Mookish though it may be, it’s still hilarious.

8. Kingpin.

I love this movie. I can’t help it. Of the Farrelly Brothers’ first three (and by far, best) movies, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin is the one that remains the funniest in repeat viewing. Like Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary, Kingpin featured the Farrely’ Brother’s typical gross-out humor while it was still original; unlike Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary, Kingpin featured Bill Murray improvising virtually every line of his dialog.

Woody Harrelson plays beyond washed-up bowler Roy Munson to hilarious extreme, (I love the opening scene of Munson 17-years later, when he beats the morning alarm clock senseless with his hook-hand, then immediately chugs a bottle of Jack Daniels) and Randy Quaid doesn’t ruin the movie. But it’s Bill Murray as Harrelson’s rival bowler, Ernie McCracken, who predictably steals the movie. Every scene is ass-hole Murray at his best, whether he's turning Roy’s surname into cliché for failure (“These kids…they nearly got Munsoned.”) or refuting reporters’ inquiry into his pending paternity suit (“Please… I pulled outta her way early.)

7. Spaceballs.

I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.

Here’s the thing: I knew I would seem much more academic and serious and somehow cool if I selected one of Mel Brooks’s more famous and celebrated films like Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles, but I couldn’t lie to you dear blog readers. Brooks’ spirited Star Wars parody, Spaceballs is still my favorite. Why? I dunno. Probably the fact that Rick Moranis plays a Dearth Vader wannabe named Pith Helmet. Maybe it was Brooks getting beamed to the room next door only to find his head is on backwards. (“How come no one told me my ass was so big?”) Maybe it was the room full of Mr. Ass Holes, or the Schwartz battle (“I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. Now let’s see how well you handle it.” ) Or maybe it was Pith Helmet playing with his dolls again.

I dunno.

I just love it the most. OK? Back the fuck up.

Video: Your Helmet is so big...

6. Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day comes dangerously close to being one of those movies that may not actually be a comedy, a dreaded dramedy that may rely too heavily on drama to still classify it as a comedy. But the first half of this movie is so funny it makes up for the second half, which is mostly sweet, light drama.

I almost never watch Groundhog Day without feeling intense pangs of jealousy. Jealous of Harold Ramis, because I know I will never write anything so effortlessly clever and virile for comedy, and jealous of Bill Murray, because I will never be that good. I like that the plot is absurd and contrived, and the script mines that for comedic inspiration. My favorite sequences are towards the beginning, when Murray’s weatherman is learning how to use his “curse” to his advantage to seduce a random woman at a diner, and then his boss. Watching these scenes for the first time, and slowly realizing what Murray is up to, is watching the perfect union between script and performer.

5 Airplane.

This and the next movie make up what I call the “Classics” portion of my list. You can’t have a best movies list without The Godfather and you can’t have a best comedies list without Airplane.

Offended that I just compared Airplane to The Godfather? Consider this:

A. The movie all-but-invented two types of movie comedy: dead pan comedy and saturation humor. Dead pan is the pretense of seriousness, in comedy it means basically acting straight while saying ludicrous things. Peter Graves, Leslie Nielson, and Robert Graves put on an absolute clinic in dead pan humor in Airplane. How do they say it these days...? They totally pwned that shit. And saturation humor is basically stuffing so many jokes into a movie, in the foreground and background, that it doesn’t matter if only 30% of jokes work, because that equals roughly 1200 funny jokes. Remember when the passengers panicked as the situation became dire and a topless woman walked in the aisle and jiggled her breasts for no reason? That’s saturation-humor at its best, folks.

B. Video: I Speak Jive.

Automatic co-pilot and stewardess, post-coital.

4. Animal House.

The movie that would have been number one if 14-year old Gregory made this list, Animal House has nonetheless endured long enough to remain among my favorite funny films. It’s no surprise that I connected to it more as a 14 year old then I do now because A. I had not yet been to college and fully expected it to be exactly like the Delta House and B. I always felt like I was breaking the rules watching Animal House, and that made it cooler.

My father loved Animal House and used to sneak my brother and I downstairs to watch, and my mother never approved. (Something about that scene where a Freshmen consults with the devil on whether or not to continue having sex with a passed-out 13 year-old girl with one breast.)

The film is justifiably considered a classic. There are a myriad of reasons why it has been so loved for so long. For me, I love the combination of gross/out humor and underdog ramshackle ambivalence. I love how the preppy fraternity is the bad guys, and all their leaders limp. I love how John Belushi chugs whisky and throws the bottle against the wall and then becomes senator. I could go on and on really.

It's a mathematic certainty that Kevin Bacon will end up in every movie.

3. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is essentially The Odd Couple Hits the Road, but the film rises above its familiar plot contrivances because of the talent of its leads, Steve Martin and John Candy. Steve Martin, playing against type (if you assume that his type by the mid-eighties was the bumbling buffoon of The Jerk or SNL’s “King Tut”) as a conservative, uptight business square, is pitch-perfect high-strung. Martin’s Neal Page is pure 80’s quiet desperation until John Candy’s exhaustingly affable (and annoying) Del Griffith sends him on a number of hilarious and poetically profane outbursts, the highlight of them being this:

Video: You're fucked.

But the real treat of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is the unexpected dramatic talent of John Candy. There were always sad undertones to the lovable-oaf character John Candy played to almost iconic status during his career. (I think it was by virtue of his weight. We tend to equate obesity to sadness, to our assumption that an overweight man is burdened to a life alone because no girl ever loves the fat guy. Candy’s standard good-natured performances underscored this, since they always seemed to be masking a deep loneliness.) This subtext was hinted at in films like Uncle Buck or Only the Lonely, but in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Candy brings his loneliness to the forefront. It’s so effective that it reveals an entirely different level to a movie that features Steve Martin being lifted from the curb by his genitals. In one scene in a Wichita motel, Martin finally lashes out and berates Candy. As the camera hangs on Candy’s face, such a legitimate pathos is generated that it pervades the entirety of the movie. This would make Planes, Trains and Automobiles seem gloomy, but it really just makes everything funnier because you unwittingly become so invested in the characters. A wonderful movie.

See what I mean?! Every movie!

2. Hot Fuzz.

The follow-up to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s hilarious and surprisingly violent Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz cemented the duo as the preeminent purveyors of parody. If Britain’s idea of parody is Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and America’s idea is Scary Movie, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie and the rest of that putrid shit, then perhaps

Britain

should reclaim rule over its former subordinate.

I prefer Hot Fuzz out of the two, and if I were making my top ten favorite movies in any genre, it’s quite likely Hot Fuzz would make that list as well. I love how Pegg and Frost lampoon: with reverence. They clearly love the material they are parodying, and it is evident in Hot Fuzz. The film’s setup is genius. The protagonist, played - as in Shaun of the Dead -by Simon Pegg, spends the first half of the movie deriding and discrediting any number of action-movie clichés, then realizes that employing those clichés is the only way to achieve justice in his cozy little English-hamlet, Sanford. The catalyst for this – when Pegg is about to flee town before seeing Point Break and Bad Boys 2 at a gas station – is parody genius.

1. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

I think this is the number one. There wasn’t going to be a resounding winner here; this wasn’t an easy list like say… a list of my top ten pizza toppings or my top two parents – this one took thought. The difference in the amount of “funny” between number 10 and number 1 is indistinguishable, and if I were to tally the number of laughs each of the previous films elicited, there’s a good chance they would rank ahead of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But DRS has hands-down the funniest sequence of any movie on the list, and therefore probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. If you’ve seen the movie, you know which scene I’m talking about, and if you haven’t seen it, you’ll know as soon as you do.

In Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Michael Caine plays the debonair British con-artist to Steve Martin’s foul-mouthed, sleazy American counterpart in a hilarious game of one-upmanship. The pairing is genius, the script is excessively clever and the plots twists are genuinely surprising. The movie is proof that a comedy is best served with an intelligent script.

But it is Steve Martin’s six minutes as the imbecile, man-child Rupricht that represent the film’s high point. Hyperbole be damned, this is probably the funniest six minutes I’ve ever seen in a movie. I can’t watch it with out tear-streaming laughter. What makes this sequence so great is that while it is laden with sight gags and toilet humor, it really only works in the context of the movie – it’s infinitely funnier in the framework of the plot then if I just showed you the clip on Youtube. And please don’t get the impression that Michael Caine has no hand in this comedy paradise, to the contrary. It’s the way Caine plays off Martin’s Rupricht that elevates it to the sublime. Witness the way Caine scolds Rupricht, they way he eggs Rupricht along in order to scare away his wealthy marks. In a testament to the cleverness of the script, it’s the reason why Michael Caine is employing Steve Martin in this role that makes it funnier.

The rest of the movie is no slouch. The sparring between the two leads is a constant delight. It may not be the funniest funny movie I have ever seen. But every time I watch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I get the distinct impression it’s the best.

Comedy Genius.

The Sucked Orange

2010-09-11T15:49:00.006-04:00

Legendary Anti-Semite and part-time auto-worker Henry Ford once had this to say about my transplanted home, New York:

“There’s just too many Jews – I mean they already control our newspapers and now I can’t even get a decent bagel –“

… I’m sorry that’s the wrong quote. Ahh, here it is:

“New York is a different country. Maybe it ought to have a separate government. Everybody thinks differently, acts differently. They just don’t know what the hell the rest of the United States is.”

Kinda makes you think: gee, if what the “ rest of the United States is” is people like Henry Ford, then good-fucking-riddance but still - the demagogue had a point.

I like the idea of New York being its own country. New York’s metropolitan area, which includes the city itself plus neighboring cities like Newark and Stamford – New York’s JV Squad if you will – is home to over 22 million people, which as its own independent nation would make New York the 54^th most populated country on Earth, beating out about 175 other, sovereign nations. New York’s gross metropolitan product is 1.13 trillion dollars, 1.02 trillion of that covering the Yankees’ infield. In regards to being its own country, New York could totally pull it off, and maybe it just should. Hell, why stop there? New York is so diverse, home to so many large and prosperous ethnic subgroups representing scores of nations; it really could be its own planet. It would certainly give a new meaning to the phrase “illegal aliens.”

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisions a future dystopia where Henry Ford is our Deity. Aldous Huxley did massive amounts of LSD.

I’ve discovered that a vast majority of quotes on the internet regarding New York City are negative. It appears there is nothing easier then getting someone famous to say something shitty about New York:

“New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“New York is a sucked orange.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This could be good or bad. Who knows?

“[New York City] sucks… It just fucking sucks.”

-Woody Allen (As quoted in The Onion.)

Read this now. Actually, strike that. Read it after you finish my blog.

That’s just a sampling of what awaits you if you Google New York Quotes. It’s interesting (if not a little bit unsurprising) the level of vitriol that New York City can inspire in people.

Anyone watching Saturday Night Live in the late nineties remembers the name of disgraced big-league pitcher John Rocker. He took the time-tested route toward immortality that a surprising amount of perpetually mediocre athletes traverse: he made a legendary ass of himself. When asked by Sports Illustrated about the prospect of playing for the Yankees or Mets, the affable and cuddly Rocker infamously responded:

"I would retire first. It's the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you're [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing."

Ok, here’s the thing: Until the last two words, John Rocker was spot on. (And this is really just a modern, albeit far less eloquent, update on Jefferson’s quote.)

Let me explain before you go accuse me of being a sexist, racist, paranoid son-of-a-bitch. There’s an adage in the marketing world I learned in college, and it’s appropriate here: It’s the medium not the message. Or something like that; I was not frequently sober. But anyway that’s the gist of it and the point is that the person or device that’s disseminating the information is more important the information itself. What John Rocker is saying is true, but more important is what’s also true, that John Rocker is a sexist, racist, paranoid son-of-a-bitch. (Read his Wikipedia entry. The rest of his life proves this.) So when says it, being an ass hole, it becomes an ass hole thing to say. It's the medium.

My initial reaction to re-reading Rocker’s quote was - I’ve been on that train before, why didn’t he mention the guy with no legs?! – and I’m sure I’m not the only one to think like that. But the difference between all of us and John Rocker is that these are things we love about New York City, indeed these are things that some of us are ourselves. We’re dudes with purple hair, we’re queers with AIDS, we’re ex-cons, we’re teenage moms. And we all ride the train. New York just happens to have the biggest concentration of these people probably in the world, and for most people (most people I hang around with anyway) that’s pretty cool.

I wish I wasn’t 11 years late writing about John Rocker.

In Hell, it’s all Bringers.

2010-08-30T21:41:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I forget why I don’t do bringers. Because I have a soul.

One day that soul may face Judgement, and I bear not the strength to face it with nothing to show for my soul but a history of bloodsucking bringers.

Here is how my last bringer show ended: five good people, whose opinions of me I actually care about, paid about $35 each to watch me do the same material and tolerate being the butt of every comic’s intolerable crowd-work because they happened to be – with the exception of one obviously confused, middle-aged Asian man – the only people in the entire club. In other words, the club made $175 off me and me alone, and I got to watch people I like be ridiculed and forced to buy $10 beers.

My Soul. My Soul needs cleansing.

These pictures are great because it's impossible to tell that there are less people in the audience than a Mel Gibson Fan Club.

(Note: I know this show was weeks ago: I don’t churn these things out at a rate that pleases me. I would love to find a system that works, like posting a new blog every Tuesday – Thursday, or every day divisible by four, but any such method eludes me. The best I can hope for is Harry Q. yelling at me on my Facebook wall, and then subsequently liking his yelling at me to remind myself that I should get off Lobstertube and dust off the ole We Could Go On and On.)

The show was at Gotham Comedy Club on a Friday Night. Wow, a Friday-night spot at Gotham, not bad, sport-o. Don’t get too excited; the show was a bringer that started at 6:30, which is the comedy equivalent of me telling you I fulfilled my dream of playing at Gillette Stadium and you later discovering all I did was run around the field with the other blind kids at 11am with the Patriots’ PR team and the backup place-kicker. So let’s all keep this in perspective.

I got to the show early and the place was desolate. It was my first time in the Gotham, and I must say, it was gorgeous. It was all sleek and silver and black. Everything was a smooth and becoming plastic, like the back side of smart-phone. If BrookStone made comedy clubs instead of just alarm clocks that play ocean sounds, it would look like the Gotham Comedy Club. When I first got there I was giddy; there was definitely an I’ve-finally-made-it vibe in the room as realized I would soon be performing on this stage.

Any feelings of comedic actualization were fleeting as the show started and it became evident that the people I brought to the show to be able to perform were the only people in the audience. (I’m choosing to ignore the aforementioned bewildered Asian man, because let’s face it: if I don’t at least get some empathy for this show then it will have been an abject failure.) There were at least 10 other comics, none of whom brought anyone because apparently they didn’t have to. This probably gives them the impression that they are “above” me as comedians. Maybe so. But they weren’t better comedians. Not by a long shot. Still, I was the only one who had to ask his friends to blow almost forty dollars and a Friday afternoon to have the privilege to perform. Makes you feel like a schmuck, you know?

These pictures make it seem like the post is bigger!

Since it was just my friends and they were seated smack-dab in the front row, they were all treated to some of the worst, hackiest crowd work forty dollars can buy!

Who’s single here? Are you guys a couple? Are you freaky in the sack? Who’s smoking weed tonight? Name your top five Wrestlemanias – quick!

(What I wouldn’t have done for that last one to be true?)

A coworker of mine, Alex, who is just about the nicest person you could ever meet (she has a WALL-E bookbag for goddsakes) got the worst of the reverse heckling. I won’t even write some of the things that were said to her because I fear for my job if I printed them on the internet.

The joy on my face is not a joke.

(Photos courtesy of Amy H.)

I went on seventh. It’s hard to perform for a paying audience that consists of people you could have just invited over to your apartment and told jokes to for free. They were all such good sports, though. They laughed and smiled and were supportive and told me I needn’t feel apologetic or embarrassed when, of course, I felt both.

Afterwards, the booker/headliner of the show, who was a genuinely nice guy and a talented comedian, offered me a bringer-free guest-spot on a future show. I accepted and then came to the sudden realization that perhaps that was how all the other comics on the bill got to perform sans duped guests; they had already brought people to their own embarrassing failure and were compensated with a spot on my sinking-ship nightmare of a show. Makes sense.

Just to make myself feel a little better, I’ll use this time to thank the people who went to the show by name, didn’t complain one bit, took every thing good-naturedly, and decided to still talk to me afterwards. Amy, Aimee, Alex, Sarah and Dillon. Thank you. You are all going to Heaven, where they don’t have drink minimums and comedians who make inferences on your sexual habits based on your earrings. (Hell is loaded with both.)

one outta two.

2010-08-16T20:11:00.004-04:00

One outta two ain’t bad. In fact, there are a myriad of pursuits in which one outta two would be positively splendid. If a first baseman, for example, keeps a one outta two pace at the plate for an entire season, he would almost certainly have registered the greatest season in the history of hitting first basemen. Just about the only blemish on my one outta two is that it is only outta two; it’s too soon to determine if this is an indication of success or merely happenstance. But for now I stay positive and simply maintain: one outta two ain’t bad.

Question: What the hell am I talking about?

Sorry. I’ll explain.

I spent a good deal of time over July writing short stories, most of which I don’t mind saying were god-awful garbage. But I persevered, because I like writing short stories. Any creative pursuit that can be pursued sitting on a couch in one’s underwear while blasting Eminem is how shall I say, my cup of tea.

By the end of the month, submission deadlines for a few literary magazines were approaching, and I worked up the nerve to submit two different stories to two different magazines. One story was accepted and one was rejected, and what follows this (typically) elongated introduction is the rejected story.

Some sour grapes: The magazine that rejected me sucks anyway! It’s so lame, and the magazine that will publish me is waaaaay better. Like 1000 times better. And sexier.

ANYWAY, The story below is entitled In Left Field, and like all fiction, is based and born in truth. It’s not god-awful garbage, but I think it’s vastly inferior to the story that was accepted, so I’m actually quite content with how it all worked out. The literary magazine that rejected it stressed a brevity theme, and all submissions had to adhere to a 500-word limit. Part of (most of) the reason I chose to submit In Left Field was that with it’s original length of 1200 words, it was by far the shortest story I wrote. It was not easy eliminating 60% of a story that was only a couple pages long anyway, and indeed what remained of In Left Field was skeletal. In bore only a slight resemblance.

So, the magazine’s loss is We Could Go On and On’s gain (or loss, if you are understandably sick of these stories). Here is my first rejection. May it be the first of many, as long as I never stop writing.

In Left Field.

By Gregory Quinn

Mr. Anderson sat on his back porch, our default left-field foul pole. He loved watching me strike the old man out. He laughed and hollered and told my father he couldn’t hit the pool from the diving board. He called me the next Rocket.

My father pretended to be upset, promising to bring the heater when he took the rubber. But he’d toss me a gopher and I’d crank it to the trees while Mr. Anderson cheered.

Our field was a miniature diamond of raked-aside pine needles and bags of sand we bought at the hardware store. Mr. Anderson helped us build the field. He paced off the distance from the batter’s box to the pitcher’s mound, walking one foot after the other in dogged precision. He maintained the field throughout the summer, raked the sand and painted the foul poles yellow. He never played, always retreating to the porch of his brown ranch and always looking after his wife, whom I never met.

Mr. Anderson’s wife stayed inside, sheltered. During our games, Mr. Anderson checked on his wife often, bringing himself and my father another drink as he returned. She’s been feeling a little ill lately, he explained, pointing to the sky, this damn weather. At night, my father walked through the never-mended fence and sat with him on the back porch, smoking and drinking and trying to ignore.

Late in July, Mr. Anderson’s wife was seen wandering around the neighborhood naked, muttering to herself and watering the gardens. Mr. Anderson found her and silently wrapped her in a blanket, walking her to his truck. My parents sat at the dinner table and remarked how sad or what a shame, never expressing the relief that their own breakdowns took place in the anonymity of their own home, fully clothed. After dinner Mr. Anderson was back on his porch, warning me to watch out for the heater.

On the nights we didn’t play Mr. Anderson stayed outside, sipping from silver cans of beer and throwing rocks at the sticks in front of him. His wife called from inside and he’d go to her, emerging with a fresh drink but no one for which to explain. He’d shake his head and sit back down, barely moving.

It wasn’t long and then Mr. Anderson’s seat in left field was always empty. The trips inside for his wife were longer and longer and when he came back out he said nothing. My father went over there often then. He went inside and stayed for hours. He and Mr. Anderson came back out to the porch and from my bedroom window I watched them sit and smoke in silence. My father came in so late those nights I never heard him come home.

Mr. Anderson’s wife died the weekend I went back to school. I’m not sure I even noticed.

The End.

~~~~

See. It’s not that great. I mean, I don’t hate it. I like the image of Mr. Anderson’s crazed wife watering the neighbors’ gardens naked. But I know I can do better.

Amy suggested that one day I should publish an anthology of all my rejected stories (she assumes, like I, there will be a lot of them) and entitle it: Suck It: The Rejected Stories of Gregory Quinn.

My girlfriend is a genius.

Advice is like Ass Holes.

2010-08-09T21:32:00.003-04:00

I was goofing around on the internet the other night, hours after I really should have been asleep, when I stumbled upon an interesting site. The site- I Write Like – is a “statistical analysis tool” that allows you to input into its generator a personal writing sample, which is then “analyzed” and compared to a famous author. No wonder they haven’t cured cancer - this has clearly taken precedence.

After a few minutes messing around, it was clear this was all a marketing scheme for some writing workshop, but initially I was very intrigued. The link to the website was under “Do you write like Kurt Vonnegut or Stephen King?” and it was impossible to resist such a query. (Never mind what I Google-searched to yield such a link.)

Obviously I was curious to find out which famous authors my writing style resembles, so I entered the first few paragraphs of my short story, On Interstate 35, Stuck, (available for your reading pleasure in the archives section) hit the analyze button and immediately, I Write Like informed me I write like Stephen King.

Ok.

In the interest of consistency, I insert the last few paragraphs of Interstate 35 and find that in this part of the 800-word story, I write like Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code, a book which Stephen King famously hated. Oh, irony.

After a few more samples, I enter full messing-around mode. I write simply “suck it” into the analyzation-chamber, and I Write Like tells me that “suck it” is not a sufficient sample. So I elaborate and enter “Suck it, Mr. Magoo. You are not welcome here” and wallah! I write like Ray Bradbury. Don’t remember that line in Fahrenheit 451, but no matter.

The legitimacy of this whole operation now in question, I create a little test for the I Write Like. I input the first line of Stephen King’s story 1408:

Mike Enslin was still in the revolving door when he saw Olin , the manager of the Hotel Dolphin, sitting in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs.

What I found was that for all the years Stephen King was under the impression he wrote like Stephen King, he was mistaken. He wrote like Vladimir Nabokov. Perhaps it was the hotel setting which made I Write Like think of illicit, nubile love.

The site also features a “Prove-It” tab which enables you to link your results to your Facebook page and demonstrate that irrefutable technology has proven you do indeed write like JD Salinger. I spent the rest of the night trying hopelessly to get I Write Like to tell me I write like Kurt Vonnegut, even blatantly plagiarizing Cat’s Cradle, but was unsuccessful. Then, inspiration struck me, and I input:

Suck it, Mr. Magoo. You are not welcome here. So it Goes.

I Write Like analyzed this and told me I write like Ernest Hemingway. My name is Yon Yonson. I come from Wisconsin

All of this got me thinking about the craft of writing in general, and how - while this website is flawed – we all do write like somebody. And this brings me to the main point of this blog (Ha! Those 500 words you just read were merely the introduction! Suck it.)

I think the best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader. Constant, obsessive reading is just about the best writing class you could ever hope to take.

Here’s what I’m thinking.

We unconsciously emulate everything we are receiving. Spend enough time with anything: a person, a book, a musician, a movie, a fast-food restaurant (anything!) and it’s practically inevitable that you’ll start to copy certain things about their personality -their habits and quirks and humor and style - without even thinking about it. I had a teammate back in my NCCC days, Dylan, whose quirky style of humor I found infectious, and after only a few weeks living with him, I found myself constantly employing his brand of confused-faces and wise-ass-bewilderment humor without even trying, it just happened, and it felt totally natural.

The same thing happens with writing. The writer’s style is going to mirror whoever they’ve been reading lately or whoever they read the most. If a dude has read nothing but Stephen King and then one day sits down to write a short story, it would almost assuredly resemble, if not outright replicate, the prose of King. There’s a good chance the dude’s story would be a moody, folksy character ensemble about a nefarious store, politician, car, or graveyard in rural Maine. It would just happen. But if this dude, let’s call him Fisher; if Fisher becomes a better reader and adds more authors to his daily reading regimen, when he sits down to write his next story it’s going to have the influences of the new authors, plus the still-strong influence of King, plus the singular perspective of Fisher himself (which is exclusively Fisher’s, unique to him in the world, which is what makes writing great) and what will emerge will be the amalgam, and now Fisher is a much better writer. It’s like magic. Fisher has added Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Roth and David Foster Wallace to his reading list, and his new story is about a time-shifting alien growing up in post-war Jewish Newark and battling a prescription drug addiction. And his car is haunted. And that story could potentially be awesome.

The more you read, the more unique your reading list will be, thus the more interesting the mixture of influences in your writing style becomes. I really think it’s as simple as that. I could be wrong (I probably am wrong) but I know for sure that the more I read, the better these posts become, and no way that’s a coincidence.

Walk around New York and you’ll see those ubiquitous yellow newspaper stands with catalogs for writing classes, the front of the stand proclaiming: Learn How to Write! Inside you’ll find a few dozen suggestions on what to do with a few hundred dollars and 6 hours a week. They obviously don’t want you to know that a library card is free.

PS.

I input this entire post into I Write Like. I found like I write like Cory Doctorow, a Canadian Blogger and Science Fiction writer. Creepy.

Deal With It.

2010-08-05T19:50:00.000-04:00

When I was 14, I saw a billboard for Hooters Air.

For the unfortunate few not in the know, Hooters Air was the official airline of Hooters Restaurant, the only “family restaurant” that makes a Montreal strip joint seem tasteful.

Before you ask, please believe me. I am not making this up.

It was a hideous idea. Most people realize that flying is serious business and wouldn’t trust their lives to a company that somehow screwed up the combination of bar food and big breats. When I’m 35,000 feet in the air, I’m usually in a far too serious mood to participate in the type of decorum the Hooters’ atmosphere perpetuates. People agreed with me, and not long after I saw the billboard, Hooters Air folded. This would have been around the year 2000

I was 15 years old and on Interstate 95, somewhere in North Carolina. Above me, the endless string of South of the Border billboards relented for just a moment, and in their wake was a preposterously garish orange sign, with an illustration of a 747 and that semi-iconic Hooters owl, himself proclaiming: “Hooters Air, Where getting there is ~~half~~ all the fun.

My 15-year-old self thought it was absolute genius.

It’s a play on that old cliché and it was marketing wizardry. If anyone you know ever flew on Hooters Air, that was the reason. I’m not saying they saw the Billboard and then dialed their travel agents, but that philosophy was certainly the motivation behind choosing the airline. The conversation never would have gone:

“Yeah, I gotta take Hooters Air flight 109 to Atlanta for a meeting.”

Rather it would have sounded like:

“Yeah, I gotta go to Atlanta for a meeting, but I’m taking Hooters Air!”

The Hooters Air people were marketing the flight on the plane as the vacation, not the means to get to the vacation. They were hoping they could get you to forget how ludicrous the thought of Hooters Air is by making it seem like an event, or at the very least an interesting conversation starter. Other airlines boast about the destinations they take you, not so much the flight itself. If they do mention the flight, it’s to tell you about what little creations they’ve come up with to make the whole unfortunate experience more bearable. More leg-room, leather cushions, forcing fat people to buy two seats, and they go on and on.

Aren’t you being a little ridiculous? Yes. I am. Whichever ad-man came up the slogan was probably just trying to stress the point that this time when you duel over the stewardess, you needn’t feel like a sex offender. But, still. The idea that getting there could be all the fun was a notion that I could never quite relinquish. It festered and bubbled inside of me, until the idea that I would live my life without endlessly traveling, without wandering for the sake of wandering, became absolutely unbearable. It seemed that Hooters had succeeded in blue-balling me, though certainly not in the manner they anticipated.

It was this anxiety that led me to wander out on my own after college, to join Americorps (and then join it again), to forgo laundry and groceries to have money for weekend trips, and ultimately to relocate to New York.

And now I’m here, in New York, the great New York, and most of the time all I want to do is leave. New York City is so massive that weeks and months can melt away before I realize that I haven’t left the five boroughs even once. (I should just say four. Who goes to Staten Island?) Anyone who grew up in the suburbs will agree; the idea that you could go more then a weekend without leaving one town is crazy. Plymouth didn’t even have a Wendy’s until I was 22!

The downside to one place providing everything you could possible need is that you never need to go to another place. New York is like one giant Super Wal-Mart. Big Apple aficionados will counter by saying that New York is so disparate from block to block that it’s like traveling thru limitless locales, arguing there’s more diversity in a dozen Manhattan blocks then all of the Dakotas. And they would be right. I could travel thru the entire American south and never come across a good Venezuelan Cachapa, or I could take a five minute walk during my lunch break and score a great one.

But for me, there is something about staying in one geographical location for a length of time that drives me bonkers, just the idea that I’m not stretching out, that I’m becoming grounded.

Two good friends of mine are leaving the city next month. My roommate left last month. None of them seemed to acclimate to New York. For all the things they liked about the city, none of them ever felt it held a candle to what back home could offer them. So after a trial period they are moving home, and they are positively ecstatic. I get this horrible feeling that I will end up bitter too, that I will – such as those patrons of Hooters Air - want to just up and leave simply because I haven’t up and left in a while.

But that would mean giving up, and I can’t do that. Not this year at least. Maybe not in five years. Maybe I was ignorant to think that chasing my dream would be a constantly amazing and life-affirming ride, propelled along simply by the fact that “I’m going for it,” and not a reality check: a confidence-crushing, bank-account-depleting, self-degrading struggle. Maybe I was ignorant to think it would be so much fun.

(It is fun a lot, too. Let me take a moment here to apologize for how whiny and self-loathing this post got all of the sudden. Not sure what happened. Maybe I should have some cookies.)

I have to remember there is a purpose, a goal I’m working towards, and when I reach that goal this will all be so incredibly worth it. And if I never reach it, it will still be worth it, because it will just give me another place to escape from, another destination to start the car from and hit the road, or get on the jet plane. On to the next one, on to the next one.

And Mr. Gaffigan Came, Too

2010-08-03T20:01:00.004-04:00

Like pink flamingoes belong on the front lawn, I belong in the basement. A basement, it seems, is the only place in which I am fit to perform.

It’s nice actually, such an accurate physical manifestation of my stature in the comedy world. It couldn’t be any less subtle if I performed all my shows on the bottom rung of a ladder.

There were the countless mics at basement comedy clubs like The Comedy Corner or East Ville Comedy, the Wednesday motel mics in the basement of the Village Lantern, the mic at the Tangine actually called My Grandmother’s Basement, all of which gave me the impression that the road to top is paved with leaky faucets and menacing furnaces.

At least Ochi’s Lounge, the Chelsea club underneath Comix - pretty much the big papa of New York Comedy Clubs – is lovely, easily nicer and hipper and hotter-bartendered then any number of above-ground comedy clubs. I’ve performed here twice, both times as part of the I’ve Got Munchies variety show, which has got to be among the most interesting shows in New York.

Look! Pictures!

Why so interesting? Well - first you have the Munchie’s-produced comedy videos which elicit reactions ranging from silent bewilderment to roaring laughter. Then there are the performers, everything from desperate stand-ups (that would be me) to affable storytellers; from naturally-funny magicians to twin-brother comedy duos in matching suits. There was one man from my first show whose entire act was shoving whole meals into his mouth and then speaking as clearly as he could. The crowd loved him.

The producers of the show are also not what you expect from someone booking an important room on a Saturday night. They are the wonderfully irrepressible Jenn Dodd and Sharon Jamilkowski, two ladies who seem incapable of displaying emotions other than jubilation. When Jenn thanked me for doing her show, a show where she gave me a drink ticket and which I didn’t have to pay to do, I was flabbergasted. I’ve reached a point where I feel indebted to anyone who doesn’t out-and-out screw me over.

There’s also the name, I’ve Got Munchies. This is clearly intended to conjure up images of marijuana-induced snack-food binges (of which, mother, I know nothing about) but in truth refers to the group’s ultimate goal to combine comedy routines with easy to follow dinner recipes. Go figure.

Since I’ve moved to New York City last year, one of the better lessons I’ve learned is that a spectacular failure, something crazy and embarrassing and altogether unforgettable, is preferable to a moderate, garden-variety success. Everyone remembers that diminutive Asian man who became an instant celebrity “butchering” Ricky Martin and no one in the world has any idea who the hell Taylor Hicks is. (Indeed, I had to Google American Idol winners for this reference.)

In this vein, the I’ve Got Munchies’ variety show seems leagues ahead of other Big Apple shows even when acts or videos (or some of my jokes) fail. Even when jokes bomb, I found myself thinking: finally, something different.

There's me...

Adding to the overall oddball experience, last Saturday night I unexpectedly opened for Jim Gaffigan, one of the most successful and recognizable stand-ups in the country. Undoubtedly the high point of my comedy career and it all took place in a basement.

I’ve heard of superstar comics doing drop-ins before. Grizzled, open mic veterans are awash with accounts of the times Myc Kaplan or Bill Burr popped in to do some time right after their own set. These comedians always come off desperate, like when a middle-aged guy can’t get over the time his cover band opened for the remains of Lynyrd Skynyrd. But when it happened to me I suddenly understood. To so many comics who never flirt with greatness, to so many comics, like myself, who truly believe that they have inside them the capacity for greatness but will most certainly never attain it, simply sharing the stage with someone who has made it can be a life-defining event. If in 20 years I look back to the night I worked the same crowd with Jim Gaffigan as my crowning comic achievement, I will be supremely disappointed. But it’s better to have that then nothing.

He did not see my set, unfortunately. I was pretty good.

He came after I went on stage and he left after his own set. I fantasized about him seeing me in action, about hearing the laughter, about noticing the two applause breaks I received, and then rushing to phone his agent. Art, you gotta get down here, this guy is killing! And just like that I am whisked away into a world of stand-up royalty where Last Comic Standing has to beg me to audition. But that was not to be, of course. I settled on sharing 22-dollar shots of whisky with Scoots.

...And there's Jim. Proof! (This will be as big as I ever get.)

I don’t begrudge Jim Gaffigan for showing and then blowing, for the ease in which he arrives at any show he pleases and gets on stage. I am jealous but not bitter. That’s just what becomes of the big boys and he certainly worked hard to be there. Sure, it’s funny that to him this is a bush-league show good for testing unproven material and for me it is marquee, a time to roll out my red-carpet goods, but it’s not unexpected. Comix, remember, is upstairs.

And besides, it’s a win-win for everyone. Jimmy G. gets to try new stuff to a receptive, human audience, I’ve Got Munchies gets to forever advertise that they’ve booked the likes of Jim Gaffigan, and I get to forever regal my friends with the tale of the time I opened for a legend.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll meet him on the first-floor one day.

Here You Have It.

2010-07-21T20:55:00.000-04:00

The Stones Tavern is in Greenpoint, a neighborhood north of Williamsburg, Brooklyn just before Queens. Greenpoint is virtually indistinguishable from its neighbor to the south; it’s just as inaccessible and just as rampant with that flippant it’s-cost-so-much-to-look-so-poor chic. But the mic at the Stones Tavern is free and the pretty blonde bartender talks nonstop and doesn’t seem to mind that I only order water and don’t tip, so I go here frequently.

There’s also this show at Abigail’s Lounge on Classon Ave in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Classon is the western-most avenue of the Crown Heights neighborhood, and for long stretches Classon Avenue more closely resembles the more affluent Prospect Heights section it straddles. Abigail’s Lounge is a perfect example, as this trendy, darkly-lit wine bar with it’s mostly white clientele bears little resemblance to the bodegas and Crown Fried Chickens and Trinidadian Doubles Shops only a few blocks east on Nostrand. I imagine that the residents of real Crown Height’s streets like Nostrand and Utica wouldn’t even consider Classon a part of the neighborhood. (Though, to be honest, it’s likely that these people wouldn’t even think about such trivialities, as to them Crown Heights is simply home, not some distinction to be mulled over and collected by imperializing suburban outsiders.)

The show at Abigail’s is every Tuesday and is called fittingly Comedy Heights.

Lately, I’ve been spending Tuesday nights at the Positively Awesome show at Cellar 58 in the East Village. (Look! I go to Manhattan, too!) Like Abigail’s, Cellar 58 is a wine bar, although a more legitimate one. The microphone stand is placed at the back of the backroom of the Cellar, in front of pristine glass doors encasing shelf after shelf of wine bottles. The comics are under strict house guidelines to not even touch the glass. The room is small and narrow and occupied almost entirely by a Bruce Wayne-esque long wood table. The audience sits around on stools and watches the comic who performs at the head of the table. This setup gives performer and audience alike the feeling they are at an alternate version of The Last Supper, where after Jesus breaks bread and accuses one of his disciples of betrayal he gets up and does his five minutes. (Though if I had 12 people to watch my set, I would be totally stoked.)

These are the shows I’ve been hitting frequently over the last few weeks, a combination of trying to avoid soul-crushing paid club mics and my desire to do shows with people I know. And Abigail’s is like, a five a minute walk from my apartment.

Positively Awesome is a show produced by Abbi Crutchfield and Andrew Singer. Abbi was the host of the very first mic I did in New York City, the Root Hill Café last November. Oh, New York, how you make 9 months seem like 9 years. The Root Hill show seems to have vanished, but Abbi and Andrew started P.A. in February and it continues strong. The regular lineup features touring and local comedians, some friends of the producers who run their own shows, and some national, semi-famous headliners (Christian Finnegan and Ted Alexandro next week? Um, holy shit.) After the booked acts, P.A. switches to the Night Shift, a five spot open mic for anyone who would like. It’s a wonderful idea and it’s all executed in an easy-breezy 90-minute package. Good stuff. I was actually on board to help promote the show when it started several months back, but typical of myself, I did it for a couple weeks and forgot about it and was too lazy and I could go on an on. Who has a blog and is going to try and weasel his way back into this show? Answer: this guy.

Comedy Heights is in the basement of Abigail’s, in a room that looks not so much like a comedy venue and more like well, a basement. There’s a black-leather couch and a few scattered stools and benches facing a microphone flanked on each side by plants. It’s quite lovely. The last time I worked Comedy Heights was the week before my Americorps show, and this set served as a final dress rehearsal for my clean set. I showed up 20 minutes before the show started which is 90 minutes prior to when the show actually began. I stayed the entire show with the four people I brought, but decided on principle to not watch the “headliner” who watched not a single comic, showed up at the end and acted irate that I was leaving with my audience. I hate that shit. The host heckled me on the way out and said he would never book me again, despite the fact that getting “booked” on Comedy Heights requires little more then calling that morning and asking if you can be on. I can guarantee that if I call next Tuesday morning, he will put me on without a second thought.

The Stones Tavern is a weird place. A lot of establishments frame their “first” dollar on the wall as a keepsake, and it’s kitschy but endearing. The Stones Tavern takes this to a whole new level, as the entire wall of the bar is adorned with literally hundreds of hung bills, including fives, tens, and even twenties! I spent at least a half an hour trying to count the money and gave up somewhere north of five hundred dollars. The bartender had no idea how much was actually up there. I couldn’t help but think this money could be put too much better use in the hands of a food bank or the pockets of a struggling amateur comedian.

The Stones mic is a Brooklyn Underground Comedy show. Greenpoint is way too much of a bitch to get home from to risk going on at 11:30, so I always show up at the Stones Tavern nice and early to ensure a good spot. This usually leaves me alone at the bar an hour before any other comic shows up, and on one occasion I talked with one of the bartenders and she let me on the secret of the Stones Tavern, that being that is was named in honor of the Rolling Stones by the owner who is obsessed with the band, and instantly this became one of my favorite bars in the city, perhaps the world. I started to grill the bartender on why there weren’t pictures of the band on the walls or any of their music playing. This line of questioning escalated to the point where it seemed like I actually hurt the poor woman’s feelings, and I felt terribly guilty. It reminded me of how I felt after I got into an argument with a high school classmate over the

Iraq

war and how stupid the protesters who walked out of class were and she started to cry. (If by someway someday she ever reads this, I am so so so sorry. I was so incredibly wrong.)

So there you have it. This weekend I have two great shows, and I feel good again. Thanks for sticking with me. Evening.

Lunchtime Post: A Proper Blogger

2010-07-08T12:26:00.002-04:00

I have come up with an experiment. I have an hour to kill at lunch and ever since discovering our break room has wireless, I’ve brought my laptop to work each day with the expressed purpose being to work on jokes, blogs and stories, but surprise surprise I’ve spent just about every lunch endlessly browsing Facebook and Wikipedia-ing everything from poison ivy to assorted brands of General Mills cereal. I tend to lose focus, in other words.

So I’m going to try to maximize my lunch break by speed-writing a blog and posting it that same day. Hopefully I can pull this off a couple times a week, and that will help people maintain their sanity during the increasingly long intervals between longer posts, the ones I write at home in my underwear, like a proper blogger. Be advised however, that these Lunchtime Posts, as I have just now christened them, will be harried, and as such, not the 1500 word, multifaceted blog stews of which you perhaps have become accustomed. No, these will be whatever comes to mind and will be written in between spoonfuls of Cup-o-Noodles and falling peanut butter.

ANYWAY, this is my first Lunchtime Post, and seeing as I’ve already wasted 15 minutes explaining it, I best be begin. This is what comes to mind.

I was foraging thru my cell phone on the subway today (cell phones become nothing but digital phonebooks without service, yet I can’t help compulsively checking it on the ride in) and I stumbled upon a seldom-used feature: the template function. The template is a feature in just about any cell phone, and it’s basically nothing but a short list of pre-equipped text messages that can be utilized by the texter in a hurry. The messages are usually what the phone deems to be the most commonly used texts, generic statements like: “Running late, be there in a few” and “Where are currently located?” etc. I can’t understand why anyone would be in such a hurry that the 11 seconds saved sending the template would actually be helpful. But the templates do have one redeeming feature: they can be edited. So if I’m always running late to work, I can edit my templates to say “Running late, Mr.Tewilliger, be there in a few,” or if I can never find my dealer I can modify it to “Where are you currently located, White Rabbit?” and the fun can literally go on and on. But the most fun I found, and what kept me away from my book on the commute, was to completely edit the template to near nonsense, to make the messages so absurdly specific they can almost certainly never be used. After a few stops on the A train, I had completely modified my templates.

I found the 7^th template Just checking in… to be completely useless and so I changed it to the far more direct Have You Been Bee-Keeping Again?! You never know when that may come in handy. I totally deleted the lame What are you up to? and replaced it with Don’t Tell Margaret, but Charles is smoking again, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve to laboriously type out this text in the past. Other templates include I left the steaks defrosting in the sink. No more salad for dinner! and The car wouldn’t start this morning, I’d call mother for a ride…If she were still with us L

These will never be used of course, but at the very least, if someone finds my phone after I die, they will assume I lived a very interesting life.

On this subject, I have always thought that juice bottles, which are fond of placing esoteric phrases on the bottoms of their caps, should adopt my program. Rather then having your Cranberry Tea’s cap advising you to Smile! Today is a new day why not have it proclaim Dan, do not got to work today, Chelsea is very upset? For millions of tea enthusiasts, this cap will invoke only head scratches, but one day, a Dan will have a hankering for Cranberry Tea, and that Dan will have a job, and at that job will be a woman named Chelsea and wallah! Dan’s life is changed forever.

And now time is running out on my lunchtime post. I think this went well. Expect more. (Unless you really hate them. So let me know.)

The Great Unifier.

2010-06-28T20:38:00.007-04:00

Look. Dicks are funny.

I would argue they’re hilarious and comically vital, but leave it to some dickhead out there to quip gee you really like dicks huh and all of the sudden it’s back to therapy for this guy. So I’ll just leave it at dicks are funny.

Spend a few nights at any old open mic and count the number of dick jokes you hear. You’ll be floored. The jokes don’t even require the word dick in them to be considered dick jokes; all sex jokes are in essence, dick jokes. Lesbian comics doing lesbian sex jokes are doing dick jokes too, it’s just they’re talking lack of dicks. They may not use dicks to get off, but they use dicks to get laughs.

Of course, ole’ Gregory Richard (Dick) Quinn, loves a good ole’ dick joke for what ails ya. Here is my set from the video in the post “For the Remarkably Wise and Handsome,” (which since being rejected for their contest, I would like to heretofore rename “For the Remarkably Fucking Stupid and I’ve heard Anti-Semitic):

Cell phone porn joke: Dick Joke. (About choking yourself while touching your dick.)
Derek Jeter joke: Dick Joke. (About how thoughtful Derek Jeter is while sucking a dick.)
Blood Donation Joke: Dick joke (About how you can’t give blood if you’re a guy and you like dick.)
Sex Toy Joke: Dick Joke. (About how girls give other girls a personal fake dick.)
Vegetarians Joke: Hey! Not really a Dick Joke! (Although I do make a connection between vegetarians and homosexuals, which is a type of man who likes dick.)

I had a total of 1 joke that wasn’t wholly a dick joke and I threw in a subtle dick reference. It’s like I couldn’t stop myself! (OK, maybe I’m going back to therapy after all.)

So you can imagine when I was booked to produce a show for the Americorps Alums Pre-Conference party last night and then informed I would need to keep the set PG, I was terrified. NO DICK JOKES?! That’s like watching a baseball game with no bats; it’s like booking the Rolling Stones to perform and asking them not to play any songs with references to drugs or gay sex.

They asked me to do 15 minutes. If I eliminate all references to sex, dicks, vaginas, porn, breasts, etc, I’m left with maybe 2 and half minutes of material. Clearly I needed to do some writing. I also needed to find three other comics.

This part was easy. I had my ideal lineup in mind almost immediately, and it went exactly as planned. The show last night at Connolly’s Pub went: Emma Willman, Doug Smith, Julia Bond, and me, and when you throw in the complimentary mozzarella sticks and pizza bagels, I dare say you couldn’t find a better comedy show in New York.

And, for the most part (Emma’s accidental string of f-bombs aside) we did a clean set! And it was still funny! I had not previously known this to be possible.

For me, getting to this point was difficult. I had been trying more and more clean material lately, and it’s been a precarious process. Dick jokes are a fallback, a fail safe, they are what we in the comedy business call Hack Jokes. Less creative comics use penis references in their jokes when they aren’t confident enough that their material can work without them. Because we know people are going to laugh when you talk about your genitals. There is still enough unease in the public mention of sex and reproductive organs to elicit uncomfortable laughter from people. They laugh because they still feel like they’re partaking in something naughty or reproachable. (And in our world, that’s kind of amazing.)

To be sure, there are comics who work sex jokes or blue material into their set in a unique and decidedly not-hacky way, but talking about choking yourself while masturbating to porn on your cell phone is pretty much the textbook definition of hack, blue material.

In preparation for last night’s show, I spent two weeks at mics working PG material. I riffed on every subject I could think of that made no reference to a dick or what a person may choose to do with a dick. I wrote bits about Hamlet, Dunkin Donuts, baseball, Poison Control, R.L. Stine, my dad, the New Jersey Nets, the WNBA and all sorts of untrue stories about my relationship with Amy and an imaginary pet dog. Some of these worked; some bombed. So it goes, as they say.

A few of these jokes made it to my set last night. I imagined the jokes that made the cut felt a sort of pride for making it to the big show and constantly ridiculed the failed bits as “strictly open mic material.” Last night’s show was for Americorps, an organization I know very well, so I was able to throw in a horde of Americorps-related jokes that I (correctly) imagined the audience would just eat up.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I stood in the audience last night waiting for the show to begin, engaging in my typical pre-show ritual of pacing and near-vomiting. As the other comics went on I felt almost as nervous for them as myself, because if they bombed, I'd look like an idiot for thinking they were funny. Fortunately, they were great.

I met Emma in Boston last summer in a comedy class and we became instant friends. I think she is great. She has a delivery like she’s been doing it for years and works harder to make it in comedy then anyone I know. I speak highly enough of her that one day Amy remarked: “I’m really glad Emma is a lesbian or otherwise I would be really jealous.” Emma did, however, let a few of the f-bombs fly, but everyone laughed and the booker said that it was totally fine. (It’s seems hypocritical anyway to say “Hey, have some free beer everyone! But don’t expect any swear words!”)

Doug I had only seen a few times before at open mics. When I brought Doug on stage last night, I told the crowd that when I heard I needed to book other comics, Doug was the first one that came to mind. And I meant it. I remember being scared for a moment; I had only seen him 2 or 3 times and it had been a while. What if I had a skewed memory? But I didn’t. He went on second and killed, and I remembered why I wanted him specifically. Because my favorite joke of his – one of the better jokes I’ve heard since moving here – is totally devoid of a dick reference.

Julia has become what I call my comedy sponsor. When an alcoholic fears relapse he gets a sponsor to call at all hours of the night and remind him that no drink tastes as good as being sober feels. That’s what Julia is for me. When she’s not performing, she’s starting all-woman comedy shows and performing with actually-good improv troupes. And when I feel like I want to quit, Julia tells me to stop being a whiny little bitch and keep going. She’s also a great comic, because let’s face it; being a good friend alone wouldn’t have made me choose her as the penultimate performer.

Then there was me. I went on in the end and - despite a few tiny references to a certain phallic body part - delivered a predominantly clean set. And people laughed. And afterwards they bought me drinks and asked me to get everyone together for a picture, and offered me lines of coke and their daughter’s virginity. (Please note: I have begun to lie about a few of these.) I am much more prone to self-loathing than gloating, but I think I did pretty good.

No one is asking me for PG material anymore. I’m free to go R baby, watch out Derek Jeter!

Will I?

Not as much as before, because I feel good when clean jokes work. But I’ll still go dirty some of the time. I have to. Dicks are too funny to abandon them completely, and truth be told? Everyone loves them. Perhaps only in a comedy sense, they are the great unifier.

With Apologies to Gregory Quail.

2010-06-21T19:14:00.002-04:00

I did a booked mic at the Village Lantern not so many days ago, and the waitress (a dark haired, ethnically indeterminable woman) greeted me in the basement room where the mic was held and immediately asked what I'd like to drink. Seeing as I was early and a first-timer in this room, I asked her if I was in the right place, and she hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about, forcing me to head outside in a panic and phone the booker, who informed me that yes, I was just where I was supposed to be. This story is apropos of nothing. I just thought it was a classic indication of the relative ramshackleness of even the most established of open mics.

The Village Lantern is down on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village, only a few blocks from both the Bitter End and The Grisly Pear, two subjects of past blogs which I’m sure you all remember. The top floor was a typically classy Lower Manhattan bar, but it was in the basement where the Wednesday Motel open mic was held and the basement was a different story; a dark, squalid room. I was the first comic there and waited in loneliness for any signs of other human life. I explored the basement room a little.

The dingy bathrooms were at the terminus of an even dingier hallway that began just to the right of the stage. Each stall was their own independent room; a small chamber with only a toilet and a mirror-less sink flanking in to the left. The inside was actually quite pleasant, as a quiet and isolated room is a rare commodity in this part of Manhattan. The walls were covered in rapidly crumbling, presumably decade-old red paint, and years of pornography consumption had me instinctively searching for a waist-high hole in the wall, perhaps with a stalwart penis poking thru in search of gratification.

After twenty minutes or so, other comics finally arrived and I took a seat in the back of the room in my favorite open-mic location; right near a door in order to facilitate a swift exit should the need arise. The host of the show was comedian Ray Combs, son of the late Ray Combs Senior, the iconic host of Family Fued who hanged himself with his hospital bedsheets only a few years after his version of the Fued was cancelled.

(I say iconic because I mean it. For people my age, Ray Combs is the Bob Barker of Family Fued, the host we identify with as inseparable from the show. Ray Combs was the host of the show while we stayed home sick at Grandma’s, the host who hosted weekdays after school. Ray Combs was the voice emulated on the Sega Genesis version of Fued and made a celeb appearance at Wrestlemania VIII for goodness sakes.)

I sat in the rear of the Lantern basement, aware of who Ray Combs Jr. was and aware that if I were to write a blog about this mic, I would like to make mention of his father's suicide. But I felt distinctly guilty, like I had no right. I don’t know Combs Jr. personally, this isn't my place. I made up mind to make no allusions to the tragic Fued host and his demise, planning to skirt around the issue by giving Combs Jr. a fake blog name as I am prone to do.

This was all until Ray Combs Jr. got into the flow of his act and made not one, but several jokes about his famous father and the way in which he perished. Ray Combs Jr. reveled that his grandfather also committed suicide and if things stayed the same, maybe he would tighten the ole’ hospital bed-sheet himself. After all that, I felt at least permitted to make mention of the fact here. Not that I am offended that he would joke about such a tragedy, I’m actually quite impressed and inspired by his candor, (see the quote at the top of this page) but I do get the impression from his set that the subject is an acceptable one to broach.

Combs Jr. was an aggressive, offensive but altogether entertaining and funny host. The main subject of his material, his downtrodden existence and his near-misses at celebrity (my favorite story: how he impregnated Miss San Diego 2005) was constantly hilarious, and while he made fun of nearly every comic who went on stage, he seemed to have a legitimate affinity for them, as if he considered his fellow comics a brotherhood. Ray Combs Jr. spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince one woman comic to partake in a Byzantine I’ll-expose-my-testicles-if-you-expose-your-vagina deal that was to commence on stage and to pretty much everyone’s chagrin, he failed.

All of this left me fairly excited to see what comments Combs Jr. would have for my set. But I never got the opportunity. Despite being the first comic at the Wednesday Motel, I was one of the very last to go on stage. The mic was a lottery sign-up. After all the comics were present and accounted for, their names were put in a bowl and the order was drawn. It seemed early on that luck was not on my side.

By the time I went on, Combs Jr. had left for another set and was replaced by an affable, but not as exciting host. I did my set and kind of bombed. I had clearly picked the wrong set to try some new “clean” material I’d been working on, but was too stubborn to change my jokes once I arrived at the show. After my set I contemplated leaving, but seeing as there were only 2 or 3 comics yet to go, I decided to stick around.

It was lucky I did. A Wednesday Motel Mic tradition dictates that at the end of each show, a name is drawn from the sign-up bowl, and that person receives half of the door back; last Wednesday that equaled 40 dollars, hard cash. I heard the new host tell us this and sat up in anticipation because I had the distinct feeling that fate had kept me at that mic, fate had wanted me to have those 40 dollars.

And I was almost right. Fate actually wanted Gregory Quail to have that money, at least that’s how the random dude who was chosen to draw read the name on the slip of white-lined paper. I rationalized that this was close enough to Gregory Quinn, and that if there were an actual Gregory Quail, he was probably taking a leak in those frightening bathrooms anyway. I raised my hand, said right over here, and made off 40 large like a bandit. My second paid gig.

At the Bitter End.

2010-06-09T23:05:00.006-04:00

I’m standing in the catacombs of the Bitter End, listening to girls pee. We thought we arrived early enough; storytelling wasn’t set to begin for another 45 minutes. We were under the impression this was plenty of time to ensure us comfortable seats, feet from the stage. We were wrong.

Amy and I were on the corner of Bleeker and Laguardia when we spotted the line of fans snaking down the block. I was certain this was not meant for us; I mean I know I like the idea of hearing amateurs telling awkward stories from their childhood on a Monday afternoon, but all these hip youngsters? Not a chance.

But the line was for the Bitter End, indeed was for the Moth’s quarter-monthly storytelling show, the StorySlam. Amy and I took our place at the end of the line, feeling what little Ralphie must have felt as he desperately waited at Macy’s for his chance to speak to Santa. It looked as if we would never get inside, but we found our way in thanks to the Bitter End’s desire to ignore every conceivable fire code.

The Bitter End was a long, thin bar, with a stage on the right wall and a bar to the left. The wall above the shelves of liquor was covered with a staple of the hipster bar: oil paintings of musicians just old and un-cool enough to be trendy, the type of wall I look at blankly before declaring Hey, Isn’t that Frank Sinatra?

I fought my way to the bar and ordered myself another staple of Manhattan haunts, the 9-dollar beer. Equipped with our drinks, Amy and I began our fruitless search for seats. Inching around the bearded and bespectacled crowd, careful not to step on shoes or spill a splash on somebody’s lovely cardigan, it became clear we would have to stand. Not just anywhere, but right in the only unclaimed territory in the Bitter End, the hallway to the ladies bathroom. We stood nestled together, in an almost standing-spoon, borne not out of affection but out of sheer necessity. Whatever romantic implications this position may have yielded were overshadowed by the sound of the toilet flushing.

The Moth StorySlam works like this:

Every week a different storytelling event is held in bars all over New York (or more realistically, all over downtown.) Each event is open to amateurs, and each night has a theme. Usually one word, ambiguous themes like Earth, Scars, or Dues. The theme last Monday at the Bitter End was “Fakes.” Upon entering the event and forking over seven dollars, anyone who wishes to tell a story may enter their name in a hat, and ten names are drawn. The ten flannel-clad storytellers each have 6 minutes to story tell and when they finish, they’re summarily judged by three pre-determined groups of “story experts,” as I call them. (On the night of “Fakes,” one group of judges was deemed The Flying Hellfish, and that semi-obscure Simpsons reference was not lost on this guy.) The storyteller with the highest aggregate score is declared winner and moves on to the GrandSlam, for a chance to be crowned champion of the world and enjoy a lifetime of lucrative endorsements and unsolicited blowjobs.

The StorySlam method sucks for the following reason:

.It does not guarantee you a spot ahead of time, which means a couple of terrible things. A. You spend your time writing a story for a specific theme, you feel great about it, you find a wonderfully funny, unique perspective to share and then you’re name isn’t called. Heartbreaking. And B. All the same stuff as A, but you also brought a ton of friends and family to watch you perform, and they are excited and proud and totally missing Glee, and then your name isn’t called. Sucks. Look: I understand, the Moth is very popular. As such they probably have dozens of people every week who want to perform, but I don’t understand why they don’t have you sign up online and then email you a week in advance if you’re chosen. Actually, I do understand why they don’t have that option. Because they want you and your wonderful story and your Glee-missing friends to show up and buy your tickets and beer before you realize you’re not going on stage. I’m sorry if I sound bitter. New York does that to a person.

Some more thoughts from the Moth StorySlam, presented with helpful bullets.

Storytelling does not mean what I thought it meant. I figured you wrote a short-story and read it aloud. Not really. It’s more recounting a personal anecdote in a wistful, nose-wrinkling funny kind of way, like an extended stand-up bit. It’s more of a one man show, like the type performed by Christopher Titus. On that note…
Why were they all funny anyway? All the storytellers went for funny, which just makes you wonder why they don’t just go for stand-up comedy. Why couldn’t there be serious or sad or yearning? Surely there was someone who could have mined something from their past. On that note…
Do they have to be true? Do they all have to be in the first person? The MC, a boisterously unfunny fat guy, stated at the onset that the stories were all true. But I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. The theme was “Fakes.” Perhaps that was his point. On that note…
Why didn’t anyone expand on the night's theme “Fakes?” Amy pointed out after the show that everyone used the theme to recount a time when they pretended to be someone else or pretended to be good at something they weren’t. No one took it in a different direction; there are plenty of other ways to take the concept of “Fakes.” Amy’s first suggestion was faking an orgasm. Great.

I may sound a little under whelmed by the Moth, and I guess the truth is I was. It was not as wonderful as my daydreams. But I still want in. I’ll keep you posted.

Some Business.

2010-05-25T17:51:00.005-04:00

“The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

The problem is I’m a comedian. That’s at night time. During the day I clean up playgrounds and occasionally mow the lawn. These activities don’t involve much in the way of adventure. I’m talking good ole fashioned, hair-raising adventure. Sure, I have adventurous things happen to me. Sometimes a homeless person will take a dump in the urinal, and I’ll have to figure out how to remove it using only some rags and a sawed-off broom handle we call the “shit stick,” but that is hardly Indiana Jones swapping the diamond with the sandbag.

I don’t flirt with death, I don’t walk on the wild side, I don’t dance with the devil in the pale moon light. When I go on stage, I may say I “killed,” or I “bombed,” or I had them all “in stitches,” but 90 percent of the time, these are only metaphors.

In other words, I live a pretty easy, worry-free life. Most of the time that’s just fine, but when you’re trying to be an artist, or a comedian or a writer, it can make things a little difficult.

I’d love to write a memoir. It’s right up my alley. Memoir research presumably consists of reminiscing, looking at pictures, and drunk-dialing old friends. I'd get to focus on the one subject that can hold my attention longer then a limerick: myself. The only problem is that most of the memoirs I read center on some great struggle or affliction, and I don’t know anything about either. I love my parents, but if they had only been Communist Secret Agents who sold me to Red China, it would have made my literary ambitions much easier.

Take a look.

Jon Krakauer was an unknown journalist for Outside Magazine when he was sent to climb Mt. Everest for an article on the mountain’s commercialization. Krakauer reached the summit in the midst of the greatest tragedy in Everest’s history. Ultimately what Krakauer produced was not a faceless article called “The Price of Everest,” but “Into Thin Air,” quite likely the greatest mountaineering book ever written. (Find me someone who has read it and disagrees and I’ll buy you a Tab.) Whatever demons sill undoubtedly haunt Krakauer, somewhere in his mind he must realize what doors that tragedy opened up for him, how it provided him the ability to make a living doing what he loves to do. Krakauer is a wonderful writer and would have been without that tragedy, but there are plenty of wonderful writers who only need a chance. However terrible it may be to accept, all those people who died on Everest gave Krakauer his chance.

Augusten Burroughs is one of the most successful memoirists in the country. When he was 13, Burroughs was abandoned by his mother and sent to live at the family shrink’s place, where he was free to drink, smoke pot and have sex. He entered into a sexual relation ship with the shrink’s 30 year old step-son, which neither the shrink nor Burrough’s mother had a problem with. Then he moved to New York and discovered he was also an alcoholic. A good way to grow up? Probably not. Good fodder for a successful career as a writer? You bet. My mom cut the crust off my PBJ’s until I was 19.

I think the craziest example of… oh I don’t know… ironic serendipity, is the case of Ann Rule. Ann Rule was a going-nowhere crime writer in Washington State when she volunteered at the local suicide hotline and hit the jackpot. Sitting next to her every night and swapping stories was a pre-murderous-rampage Ted Bundy. They developed a close friendship, and soon Ann Rule, the failing crime writer, was privy to personal details in the greatest American Crime Story of the 20^th century. Her subsequent book on the Bundy murders, “The Stranger Beside Me,” made her famous, and she went on to become a prolific writer.

Come on.

That is luck my friends; twisted, violent, nights-wide-awake-tortured-with-guilt luck, but luck nonetheless. I’m sure Ann Rule swears she would give back every penny she made, every published word she wrote, to have just one murder disappear. I’m sure she believes herself when she says it, deep down in her core. But what I’m saying is this: do you think she ever breaks down in the middle of the night, wide awake, and knows she hit the jackpot?

And then there’s Vonnegut, who makes it appear the fates are literary minded. I mean, how many people survived the air raid at Dresden? A hundred? And among that small group was one of the great American writers, clinging to life. His account of Dresden became his great work, and it made him famous. He acknowledges this freely. I find this incredible, if a little scary.

So what am I saying? That I want something terrible to happen to me so I can write about it? No. Of course not. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately, and I could never intimate that I know what the aforementioned authors went through. These writers are all successful because they were supremely gifted artists who were able to turn their pain into something tangible, and share it with the lucky, pain-free masses. There were other people on that mountain, other people in the slaughterhouse basement, other people shaking hands with the serial killer. They all didn’t write about it. Weaker writers like me may think that a tragedy is all that’s keeping them from penning their magnum opus, conveniently forgetting that Stephen King was never mauled by a rabid dog or murdered by a killer clown.

The problem is I’m a comedian. I’m more concerned with where that sock went in the laundry. It’s no great adventure, no life-affirming personal struggle, but it’s life too. And I’d like to tell you about it.

At The Buzzer.

2010-05-21T19:24:00.001-04:00

My show at the Grisly Pear last Thursday coincided with Games 6 of the Boston Celtics – Cleveland Cavaliers playoff series. Sucks when that happens.

The Celtics were up 3 games to 2, and had a chance to knock out the heavily favored Cavaliers in Boston, so this was definitely not one of those get-the-score-on-the-internet-later games. There was no way I could skip the comedy show, leaving me with no other option then to attempt some Mrs. Doubtfire-esque multitasking.

The show was produced by my friends at Comedy Party USA and was a special goodbye to Michael Reardon, who was moving home to Boston later that weekend. Mike, like me, moved here from Massachusetts to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. At least that’s what I figured; I don’t really know what his intentions were. He lived here for five years and now he is moving home and while he never became famous he performed all the time and is one of the happier people I know, which has got to be a win. Mike says he’ll keep performing in Boston. It never ends. That’s the deal.

So I was particularly jazzed about this show. Mike told me I’d be going on first (they always save the best comics for first) and I had a moment of panic where I considered ditching my new material because I didn’t want to open the show with a thud, but eventually went with my new stuff and even dusted off a couple golden oldies. The set went fine and my work was done only 12 minutes into the show. More and more people came to the Grisly Pear as the show went on, and I missed out on the liveliest, drunkest crowd. Sucks when that happens.

It was no matter any how, because now it was game time. The comedy show was in the back room, behind the bar, so I had no place to watch the game. I could, however, hear the decidedly pro-Celtic crowd rip-roaring at the bar TV, and as I listened I had that distinct feeling of missing out, like when all your friends talk about how awesome that party you skipped was. I had to watch. Problem was, I wanted to be a professional, so the post-Michael Reardon era Comedy Party USA would still book me.

My first plan of attack was the classic I shouldn’t have broken the seal bathroom strategy. This is the one where you go to pee every 4 minutes and then stand in the bar to catch a few glimpses of the game. Your friends assume you are on cocaine or worse - you have diarrhea - but it’s a very effective strategy regardless. After a quarter and a half of this, I was beginning to look absurd. I switched to plan two: texting my brother for constant updates.

Usually this is a poor way to watch a playoff game, but when your brother is Harry Quinn, it’s a delightfully oddball experience. Only months ago, my brother was a devout anti-texter. (“If I want to talk to someone, I’ll just call them” – Idiot.) Now he’s a mad-text lunatic, and I couldn’t be happier, especially at playoff time. He’s the most frantic, simultaneously excited and infuriated play-by-play guy ever. He’s as excitable as Marv Albert around a pile of lingerie and an unbitten woman’s back. Random gametime texts from Harry include:

“This is so bullshit. The refs are throwing the game on purpose. The NBA wants …HOLY FUCKIN SHIT LEBRON WAS CALLED FOR A TRAVEL! IT’S A MIRACLE!”

“Fuck…Fuck. Damn. Hell. Wait….KGGGGGGGG!”

“Would you kill a close friend if it meant the Celtics won the finals?”

And so on.

You got to love his passion, and in the end it inspires me. I skip the penultimate comic to watch the climax of the game (I return for Mike, the finale, of course) and jeopardize my connection. They might not have noticed however, a lot of people were drunk.

As you probably know, the Celtics went on to win, pulling off a sizeable upset considering the Cavaliers were the odds-on favorite and the Celtics were washed-up geezers. I couldn’t miss that. The Celtics (sentimental hogwash alert) mean too much to me.

I think as you grow older, once the unqualified adulation for athletes that you have as a child wears off, what draws you back to sports teams is a sense of loyalty. I used to feel that for all four Boston teams, now I just feel it for the C’s. People often identify a team with a specific period of their life. Nostalgia for that time can convince a fan to keep coming back to the team. For me, it was the 2008 Celtic’s Championship run. I was a Celtics fan before then; I started getting into the C’s during their Paul Pierce-Antoine Walker-Walter McCarty glory days (sigh) but it was this run that solidified me as a lifetime fan. The 2008 playoffs coincided almost to the day with the two months I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the more trying periods of my life. The job sucked, I was homesick, etc. etc. Virtually the entire time I was in Alabama, I had a Celtics playoff game to look forward to and that kept me sane. I used to walk to an Applebees in Ensley, the shittiest ghetto in Birmingham, because I had neither a car nor a television, and I'd watch the game with total strangers. Just about every night. I made friends with all the other Celtics fans, discounting the one who threatened to stab me if I hugged his girlfriend again. (She was also a Celtics fan; Pierce just hit a go-ahead three. We were caught in the moment.)

I remember for the Celtics-Lakers series, Applebees was split in half, Boston fans bar-left and LA fans bar-right. The TV on the Celtics side was a few seconds ahead. I used to cheer with the Boston fans after a big basket and then run over to the LA side and relive the basket, this time rubbing it in their face. It was great. For those two months alone, I’ll be a Celtics fan forever.

That’s the loyalty. The Red Sox used to have it, but they lost it, maybe forever. Something about that entire 2004 World-Series Winning Curse-Breaking Yankee-Beating team being wholly juiced up on steroids… thing. That did it for me. When I was a kid, my two pastimes were professional wrestling and Major League Baseball. I think I always knew pro-wrestling was a fake sport; I was never ready to find out baseball was too.

I flew off on a tangent there, I know. Forgive me. Hope you enjoyed it anyway. If you did, you’ll be happy to know there are a lot of blogs brewing in my head. They will probably come soon. Just don’t expect one tomorrow. The Celtics are on.

I'd Eat the Cheeseburger, Darling.

2010-05-18T22:26:00.003-04:00

I did a bringer and I only brought myself; myself apparently worth $35. Seeing as I refused to bring any friends, the show’s runner insisted I act as my own bringer, and buy my way in like any comedy-fan: $10 ticket and two drink minimum. Hoping to get my money’s worth, I ordered the stiffest drinks I could imagine and the bartender, recognizing my despair gave me a Jack-and-Coke-sans-Coke and a vodka tonic, (hold the tonic.) After two glasses of virtually straight liquor (I do believe there was an ice cube in the Jack) I was bumbling and ready to go, but I wouldn’t go on stage for hours, after I had sobered-up, dozed-off, and urinated 13 times.

I hate shows like these. The crowd starts off hubbub with energy. Usually they are at the preliminary stages of intoxication. They are bewildered to be at a comedy show (regular people, it seems, do not go to comedy clubs every single day. I know; I was shocked myself.) They laugh at just about anything, save for the poor souls stuck going first or second, while the crowd is still texting their friends directions and staring in bewilderment at the beer prices. The comics who go in the middle of the show have it made. Comics can coast through their sets, a rapt, happy-drunk audience at their disposal. It’s during this portion of the show, the wheelhouse I call it, that I sit in the corner room, drunk and antsy and desperate. Desperate to get on stage while the energy is still high, desperate to deliver my jokes to a crowd that I could kill.

I go on stage just after 12:30 am, or in Gregory-Standard-Time, five hours before I need to be up for work the next morning. This is no longer the wheelhouse. They are no longer, happy, Opening-Day buzzed; they are miserable mid-August-Kansas-City-Royals-fan shitfaced. They have suffered (and I do believe that word to be appropriate here) through two dozen amateur comedians doing seven-minute sets laden with masturbation jokes. No one is really pays attention during my set, save for one intoxicated woman up front who may or may-not have wanted to sleep with me.

Earlier in the evening, while running a 10K between the comedian’s standing room and the toilet, I continually encountered a sloshed college girl who took every opportunity to make pleasantries. I never pick up on things, and figured she was just being drunk-friendly with everyone, until she cornered me by the bar and talked my ear off. At one point she put her hand gently on my shoulder as she laughed.

Uh oh.

Now I found myself in the awkward position of having to tell sloshed college girl that I have a girlfriend and want nothing to do with her. I’ve always been bad this maneuver. I never know where to sneak this info into the conversation. Usually I try to pick up on any bait which I could segue way naturally into an anecdote about my girlfriend. (I’m terrible at this; in my younger days it has taken me months. This is one of the reasons I look forward to marriage because then I can just scratch my forehead vigorously with my ring finger until the girl leaves me alone.)

I couldn’t find any gateway and I was beginning to get desperate. I was going to take anything I could get, maybe blurt out something like Oh I see you have jeans on. My girlfriend just bought some new jeans a couple months ago or something like that when sloshed college girl gave me an opportunity. She found out I was from Boston and coyly said that we couldn’t be friends anymore because she was a Yankees fan and then wallah! a window. I let her know that my girlfriend is a Yankees fan and we get along just splendidly. Sloshed college girl doesn’t notice or at least doesn’t acknowledge and went right on. I am left with only one option: I tell her I need to go the bathroom and I hide on the toilet.

I didn’t see sloshed college girl again until she was my only fan and it was almost one in the morning. I did my set, the usual stuff and then went home.

As long as I’ve broached the subject allow me to ramble.

I have this theory. I think being in a committed, monogamous relationship is similar to being a committed vegetarian. Here’s my logic: I’ve been a vegetarian for over two years and I no longer crave meat. I’m often say that if a cheeseburger and a pile of cocaine were placed in front of me with a gun pressed to my head, I would grab a rolled-up dollar bill and a credit card and get to work, Mia Wallace style. And I mean it. The thing is I used to love meat. I would salivate over the prospect of a mid-evening bacon-cheeseburger. It’s not as if I’ve forgotten how delicious cheeseburgers are, it’s just that I made a conscience decision to not eat them, and I enjoy being a vegetarian enough to not eat the burger. After a couple years, a cheeseburger no longer looks appetizing. I would most-certainly vomit if I ate one. It’s the same thing with being in a monogamous relationship. It’s not that I don’t notice other women are attractive or sexy, it’s that I’ve decided to commit to one woman, and the relationship is way-too wonderful and means way-too much for me to screw it up by, I dunno, eating the woman. And after a period of time, other women don’t look so attractive, and I would assuredly vomit if I made out with one.

It’s a pretty nifty theory right? It is, but it is essentially flawed, because it doesn’t take into account that in the two-plus years I’ve been a veggie, not once has a cheeseburger approached me, lettuce hanging out and buns exposed, and begged me to eat it. There isn’t much risk of confronting temptation beyond the smell of a random summer barbeque.

So I guess the question then becomes, if a gun were pressed against my head and in front of me sat a cheeseburger and a willing beautiful woman, which choice would I make? Oh darling, it’s easy. I would eat the cheeseburger. I would eat it with the bacon topping and the buffalo-chicken-kickers side. I would eat them all and never regret it. I promise.

The First Six Months (C-.)

2010-05-10T19:20:00.005-04:00

After work a colleague and I wait for the subway home. He lives on 175^th, mere three stops away. On my way to Crown Heights, I look forward to a 90-minute commute home. Every day. As the A train approaches the Dykman St stop, barreling ahead so fast it looks like it hasn’t the slightest intention to stop, my friend turns to me and says, “every time the train goes by I wonder what it would be like to jump right in front of it,” and I nod in recognition, because I know what he means. I’d say I even consider it ever so slightly, wondering what would happen to my body as it hit the scorching train; wondering if it would bounce around the track like a rampant flesh pinball, or if it would simply fall to the side and be dragged limp and lifeless, like the bodies of so many cell phone-retrieving idiots.

I’ve been in New York City six months now.

These are the thoughts that now inhabit my mind and I blame the Big Apple. When people ask how New York is going (as if I have some sort of influence over the city as a whole) I usually answer with this anecdote. If nothing else, it ensures they will stop asking. Because when you’re not doing all that great, it kinda sucks to talk about it.

(Let me explain however, that I harbor no actual suicidal fetishes, even ones so spectacular. I don’t actually want to jump in front of the train. In fact, as a staunch atheist, I am inclined to a pursuit of immortality. I would gladly drink deep from the fountain of youth, and in time would get over the inexorable deaths of my friends and family. I would regard their passing with a kind of reserved acceptance, similar to how I will feel when The Simpsons are finally canceled. So please, no worrying.)

New York City-wise, and by extension life-wise, I’m doing super. A+ across the board. (With the notable exception of my savings account, which is gone.) Comedy-wise though, it’s been much rougher. I’m thinking a C-, and only because the professor rounded up from a D+ after I cried in her office. (Did that in college)

The main problem I have is trying to quench that inner voice that keeps telling me I may have done a lot better for myself and my comedy career had I stayed in Boston. I was making ground there, making a name for myself, and plenty of comics have made it via Boston. The voice says I gave up on Boston prematurely, that I completely blew it when I tried moving to New York. I hate that fucking voice. That asshole can suck it, because he always conveniently forgets that I lived in my mother’s basement and spent most of my time cleaning up the splattered excrement of mentally-challenged adults. Still, it’s tough thinking about how much better I was doing only this time last year.

I know there are comics out there who have been working the mic scene for years. They still pay 5 dollars at 5 in the afternoon, still drag their friends to bringers at 50 dollars a head in the hope a booker will see their set and offer them their chance, and they keep going, head down in the wind. It’s incredible. I am completely drained already, and I’m still watching the same basketball season that started when I lived in Massachusetts. I cannot give up though, I have given up so much and spent - get ready for this - close to 7,000 dollars to live here 180 days, to call it quits now. So I won’t. But I plan to bitch about it frequently and you, as the ever-faithful readers of this blog, will be the recipients of that largesse.

My entries in this blog have dwindled because my whole comedy-experience is slowing. I can’t bring myself to write a blog about another mic, or tell you about another show in which I did the same old jokes, or tried new jokes that didn’t work, or barked on a street corner for a show that was cancelled. What new is there to report? How often do you want to hear about the unyielding embarrassment of leaving a show to blazing sunlight, or a paid open mic in which a third of the audience was asleep, or fooling around on their smart phones, or masturbating vigorously in a clown costume. (That last one seldom happens, but would be a welcome reprieve at this point.)

If I jumped in front of the A train? Now that would make a great blog.

I can’t quit writing this blog however, for without anything but my shower curtain and my soon-to-be long-suffering girlfriend to bitch to, I will be dead, sanity speaking. I need this and I will carry on (apropos of the name I have just discovered), but I am going to have to find some creative ways to keep this whole thing palpable. Maybe there is a break right around the corner. You will be happy to know that Scoots and I are brewing, and I feel a long-dormant creative potential could soon be erupting.

I must be honest; not all shows lately have been bad. I will write about these shows, I promise. And like I said, life in New York City hasn’t been bad. Sometimes it’s great. If this whole reason-I-moved-here-in-the-first-place thing was going alright, I would give the whole New York experience high marks. But as it is it’s a C-, holding on desperately to a cliff of average.

I hear the vindictive voices telling me I should have known. Not the voices of my parents of course, they are always supportive. (Please send checks made out to Gregory Quinn, Brooklyn, NY….) But I hear those snide voices who knew better. They are completely right: I should have known this would be impossible. But I would like them to hear me. I know how stupid I have been, but I have learned no lesson.

I’m not going anywhere.

For the Remarkably Wise and Handsome. (A video.)

2010-04-27T21:37:00.002-04:00

I’ve been hesitant to put a video on this blog. I could cite a thousand reasons why, but the most truthful is I’ve never liked one enough to tarnish We Could On and On with its presence. And I still don’t particularly like the video I've decided to post down below. Don’t get me wrong; the video is well edited and the quality is good. I just really hate watching myself perform. Hey, I think I’m a pretty good comedian. It’s just every time I see myself in a video, I can’t help but wonder why I wore that stupid shirt, why I didn’t shave, why I’m doing that “gay” thing with my hand, and why I even bothered with that pointless crowd work.

There are a few unsolicited videos of me on YouTube, none of which I can stomach the nerve to watch. In fact, the only video of myself I’ve ever not hated was of a show I did at the Comedy Studio in Cambridge, MA in December. So when I found out that I had to submit a five-minute video to audition for a place in the New York Comedy Contest, there was never any doubt it was going to be of this show. The only problem was the Comedy Studio set was 7 minutes long and if they stopped watching my set after minute 5, they would miss - in my opinion - my biggest laughs.

So I turned to Scoots. Scoots “Scott” O’Leary, for those who don’t know, is one of my oldest friends. It was the fall of 1991 when I stepped on my first school bus on then way to Kindergarten. And there in the second seat to the left was Scoots, sitting next to an older kid (2^nd grader) with a plank of wood and a working light bulb. From then on out, Scoots and I were inseparable. From BoyScout camps to baseball games to running across the hoods of cars after doing a powerhour of Goldschlager, we were the best of buds. Real Wonder-Years shit. After such a history, there was no way Scoots could turn me away when I asked him if he could edit down my seven-minute set to five and make it seem natural. Well, Scoots succeeded and this is the result.

I submitted this to the New York Comedy Contest application page earlier. I will be sure to let you know the results. For those who can’t wait for the result, the answer is no, I was not accepted in the contest. I hope I didn’t ruin the surprise.

From December 3, 2009. For consideration by the (remarkably wise and handsome) judges of the New York Comedy Contest.

A Tiny Love Song.

2010-04-24T19:13:00.003-04:00

I got myself a haircut at this little barber shop in Inwood yesterday, right on the corner of Dykman and Nagle. They even shaved my beard with a straight blade, Sweeny-Todd Style. The barber spoke barely any English, but we were able to communicate enough to get my hair and beard looking spectacular.

Everything is an event in New York; everything is another story. The word mundane wouldn’t show up anywhere in a 500,000 word history of New York City. In Massachusetts, a visit to the salon means a wasted hour at SuperCuts in the shopping plaza; in New York, a haircut means a middle-aged Puerto Rican with a straight-blade holster who takes periodic breaks to hip-hop dance with the other barbers. [That is 100 percent true.]

Visitors to New York and specifically Manhattan often have the same exasperated reaction: It was nice to visit, but I could never live there. They find New York City Way to crowded or Way to expensive or Way to vomit-and-garbage smelling. They report this back to their cozy suburbanites and go on extolling the many virtues of small-town living, presumably ignoring the rampant boredom and/or methamphetamine addiction. Before moving here several months back, I was guilty of similar shortsightedness. And believe me, there are times when I can not take the congestion, the 12-dollar beers, or the constant, omni-present smell of urine. I walk around Manhattan literally salivating at the idea of living anywhere else, and then I see people having sex in the park at ten in the morning and I feel a little better. [Also 100 percent true. It’s been a weird few weeks since my last post.]

A lot of times I hate living here, but I never, ever regret moving here. I think everyone should be required to live in New York City once, for two years, preferably at a time when they are young, idealistic and broke. For sure, they will all leave old, hopeless and broke but they will be wise. They will go back home unafraid and unimpressed. They will dread getting their haircut.

They can come here to follow their dreams and they will be ridiculed and they will probably fail. But its better they follow their dreams here then back home because it’s so much harder in New York. When they fail here they have failed among the best, and that’s better then the failures who never left town. Be proud of failing here. You’ve made it. Even if you’re booed off stage every night, you’re booed off a New York City stage. Back home they think just being here is success. Back home, you’re famous.

I was doing much better at this in Boston, but then again I was in Boston. I was dreaming of being here. And now I’m here in New York and I’m treading water, tiring out. Eventually I’ll sink and that’ll be OK. A tiny fish in a giant, giant ocean.

The Year of Living Desperately.

2010-04-12T22:43:00.000-04:00

Of all the sure-fire ways to get famous, I’ve discovered one that is surely the sure-firest. All you do is think of some routine, some anachronistic cultural ritual, some ridiculous pursuit, and do it every day for a preordained period of time, preferably a year. Then when you’re done write a book about it, or produce a documentary of it, or - to considerably lesser extent - blog about it, and wallah! You are now famous, or at the very least adorning advertisements on the subway.

That’s all you gotta do. It will literally work every time. It started with Morgan Spurlock, a Fu-Manchu-ed nobody who decided to film himself eating McDonalds every day and became famous while also losing the ability to bang his girlfriend. Mr. Spurlock and his “mission” became a national talking-point, spawned a TV show and even convinced McDonalds to change their dinner menu.

Super Size Me is hardly the only example of purposeful, documented excess. Journalist A. J. Jacobs practically lives his entire life this way. Among various other pursuits throughout his life, Jacobs spent in entire year following every rule of the Bible as literally and faithfully as possible, documenting it all in his 2007 memoir, The Year of Living Biblically. This includes such tasty tenants as stoning adulterers and sacrificing animals. The book was a bestseller, and has since been optioned by Brad Pitt’s movie company to become a feature film. There are plenty of crazed eccentrics who underwent such an ordeal and wrote about their experience. There’s Robyn Okrant’s Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk. (All those retched books!) There’s Ed Dobson’s The Year of Living Like Jesus (Little known Jesus-fact: He had terrible Athlete’s foot) and there’s Homer Glumplett’s The Year of Living Maury Povich-ly: One Man’s Attempt to Deny any Physical Resemblance to All His Kin. (Totally made up by me.)

Well, you know, yours truly isn’t above shamefully leeching on to any an all socio/pop phenomena for personal gain. So it is here I declare I will be going under a strenuous, completely illogical journey and then subsequently documenting it here and subsequently becoming famous and being asked on Oprah or at the they very least Craig Ferguson. The only problem is coming up with an interesting quest. This is where I will need your help, faithful, sexy readers.

I do have some ideas. I would like my quest to be distinctly New York, partly because I want to maintain the theme of this blog but primarily because I lack the funds to go anywhere else. And while the point of an undertaking of this sort is to be challenging, I can’t make mine excessively challenging because my garbage man by day/comedian by night dichotomy makes it hard to tackle any full-time commitment. And it’s not as if I can stop doing either of those. I’m also not eating meat, so A Year of Living Carnivorously is out. (Although for somebody else, a year of anti-vegetarianism – absolutely no non-animals – would be interesting. You heard it here first if this ever does happen. I’m contacting a lawyer.)

So here are three ideas I’ve come up with. My first inclination was A Year of Living Bad Slava, in which I would try to go to every single open mic listed on Bad Slava.com New York City’s finest open mic list (currently about 80 mics listed in New York City alone) and writing about each of them. Logistically this wouldn’t be impossible. I get out of work too late for the 4pm mics, but I could focus on getting to all the late mics and then if I’m really chugging along, I can take a few afternoons off to finish the list. Seems like a noble pursuit, but something tells me many comics have already done this, without giving it a second thought.

My second idea was a Year of Living Transit-ly, in which I attempt to ride every single public transit line in New York City. Every subway, every bus, every MetroNorth Train, every LIRR, every PATH train and on and on. I could handle this on weekends and it would almost certainly bankrupt me. But my personal finances are in such disarray that it really wouldn’t make any differences. I don’t particularly like this plan because even if I did it, it wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment. What would even write about? The conditions of the MetroNorth bathroom? No, this one is stupid.

My final idea was a Year of Living Pamphlet-ly, in which I respond to and comply with every pamphlet, brochure, and coupon handed to me on the streets of Manhattan. Every hair-braiding, pizza shop, or night club pamphlet I come in contact with, I have to accept and dutifully follow. This one is, in my opinion, the best idea I could come up with, as it would no doubt lead me to hilarious and interesting situations, but it is by far the biggest commitment.

Clearly I need your help. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I recently asked my good friend Scoots, and he was about as helpful as a blind man in an Easter Egg hunt. So anything would be better then Scoots. Let me know any way you like. I would appreciate it very much. Hell, I always do, every day of the year.

Spare a Moment?

2010-04-08T19:58:00.001-04:00

A group of younger ladies, dolled up on their way to a night out, walk right by me ignoring every word I say. A couple breaks off the group and retreats to the corner of Bleeker and MacDougal, where I’m standing.

“We need to get to Bowery,” says the greasy blonde one, face like a pastel painting. “She needs to refill her Herpes prescription.”

“Bowery? We’re on the West Side,” I said. “Aren’t there any closer places to get that?” (I know a thing or two about this.)

“Well, can you recommend any?”

“Um… I don’t know. There’s a Duane Reade right there. Is it simplex one or two?”

“You’re gross. I bet you aren’t a very good comedian.” The greasy blonde grabs her out-breaking friend and walks away toward Bowery in quest of Valtrex.

“[Stunned silence]…. Facebook me.”

And so it went on. Last week, I finally succumbed to barking for a Comedy Club in exchange for stage time. Which means it’s time for another installment of Fancy Comedian Lingo:

Barking: v. 1. Standing on a street corner and trying to convince complete strangers to come to a comedy show on a whim by promising them there will be professional comics on the bill. 2.Lying to strangers. 3. Wondering if you should even bother to ask the old Asian lady or the guy in the wheelchair.

Being asked for advice on Herpes treatment options is actually among the nicer reactions I got from people. Most common was the glacial, silent stare, as if to say: “how dare you offer me those free comedy tickets? How dare you?”

Another common response was to utilize me as a sort-of human Map Quest and ask for directions. This is a distinctly New York response to a barker; to outright deny what I’m selling but still want me to do something for them. "No, I don’t have time for your shit and just for bothering me, I want you to do me a favor. Where’s Arby’s?"

Barking for stage time was inevitable. I really, really didn’t want to do it. But unless I continue to beg my dwindling-group of friends to pay an average of forty dollars to see me do the same routine, I’m stuck. My other option was to enter as many comedy contests as I could, but that route has been one epic failure after another.

It’s realLy not all that bad, however. For one, no one is supervising you, so the barker is pretty much free to say whatever the hell they want. It only takes about ten minutes of rejection to stop caring what people think about you. One of my favorite techniques was to take a cue from those infuriating hipsters looking for money for third-world children and ask: “Spare a moment for a stand-up comedy? Sir? All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing!! They do nothing!!” It never works but it usually gets them to turn around a couple more times.

That’s the other thing: There’s nothing on the line when barking for stage time; no African child’s dinner depends on your success. It was very comforting to remind myself. It made me feel much less guilty when I would take sporadic breaks to get a slice of dollar pizza or give a handful of tickets to a homeless person to make it look as if I was working much harder.

If a person says no, I had no problem saying whatever and suggesting we get dinner instead. Still no? How ‘bout just a couple drinks then? Some Coffee? Come on, I’m a nice guy. You got a boyfriend? What’s your number? By the time I got to the last few questions, the woman was several yards passed me, her gait increasing with every word I said. I amuse myself.

When I barked last week I wasn’t alone, which helped. I barked alongside fellow Bostonian comic Emma Willman. It’s inexplicable that I’ve come this far in We Could Go On and On and haven’t mentioned Emma yet (or any of the other Boston comedian friends I miss dearly – that article is coming.) Emma is a wonderful comedian. You probably think I am just saying that, as I have a certain predilection for just saying things, but this one I actually mean. Emma has this one joke - I don’t want to ruin it for you - but it’s about New York City and what it does to the twinkle in one’s eye. It’s great.

Anyway, she sucks as barking too, so it was nice to have her there. We both managed to get enough people in to have a show (mostly Englishman for some reason) and we both went on almost dead last. It was around midnight by the time we took the stage. Modesty be damned, Emma and I tore it up, and were leagues ahead of some of the other “professional” comics who got stage time only by reaping the rewards of our hard work. Our time is coming though. It’s not right around the corner, but it’s up ahead there. We’ll get there.

Until then, I’ll be at the street corner, hustlin’. Fancy a comedy ticket? How about directions to the club? Some cream for that bothersome cold sore?

Making it Up as I Go Along.

2010-03-24T21:57:00.007-04:00

While reading on the toilet, I came across an interesting passage in Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader about comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld:

When Seinfeld went on stage for his first ever stand-up performance, he was paralyzed by stage fright and forgot his entire routine. He ran off the stage in a panic, mumbling a few lines to the crowd: “The Beach. Driving. Shopping. Parents.”

People love these anecdotes. It’s like the story of Michael Jordan getting cut from his first basketball tryout. We like to think we aren’t so different then the people we idolize.

Of course it’s flawed logic. My very first stand-up show went much better then Seinfeld’s, but it only takes a few minutes on Wikipedia to see that our careers have taken a far different trajectory since show number one.

It was only natural after this train of thought that my mind shifted to my very first show. (I made it off the toilet at some point.) When people ask me how long I’ve been doing comedy, I always say since last April, when I did a show at Mottley’s Comedy Club in Boston. That was not however the first time I ever did stand-up comedy, but it’s when I stated to pursue comedy in earnest. Before Mottley’s, comedy was a transient bedfellow; since then it has consumed my life.

My actual first attempt at stand-up comedy came years earlier in 2005, at a tiny coffeehouse open mic in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was at the Kiskadee Café. The Kiskadee mic was dominated by slam poets and singer-songwriters, and right in the middle of them was a pudgy, bearded 19-year old telling jokes about masturbating.

Even though it was five years ago, I remember it almost exactly, and I do believe I could very accurately recall my entire set. So what the hell, I don’t actually do any of these jokes anymore (and most certainly never will again.) Why not share with you all a transcript of my very first show? Does that sound like something you might like?

(I envision only Harry and K-Fox actually saying “Yeah!” out loud while reading this.)

So if you will, join me on a journey back to the summer of 2005 and…

Gregory’s First Show.

MC: Oh wow, that was great Hubert, really meaningful stuff. Thank you for sharing that about your father.

(I’m making this up of course, but you get the idea. Pretentious poets always write poetry about their father not loving them.)

MC: Well, we have a treat for you guy’s. Let’s hear it for Greg Quinn, who is going to do some comedy for us.

[Tepid Applause]

Gregory: Hey Everybody, Hello, Thank You. Hello. So it’s 2005. It’s like, the future! And technology has gone crazy! I was in a public bathroom recently and I went to use the paper towel dispenser, and I couldn’t even figure it out how to use it! It was completely motorized! Since when do you need an engineer’s degree to wash your hands? I went to get some paper towels, and there was that Terminator Eye looking right at me. And I couldn’t get it to recognize I was there, so I had to like, Karate-chop the air in front of the Eye trying to get paper out. What is the point of this? Was anybody injuring themselves with the old pull-down method? Did someone try to push for a paper towel and pull a muscle?

(I was totally jazzed when I wrote this joke. This is what made me think I could be a comedian. I did it this one time and no one laughed, and I’ve never done it again.)

Gregory: I actually like public bathrooms. There’s no pressure. We’ve all been there. You’re at home using the toilet and you go to flush and the most horrifying thing in the world happens, the water starts to rise. And it’s like Indiana Jones and there’s a giant boulder rolling down for you. (Big laugh, go figure.) But if you’re using a public bathroom and this happens, you just look at the toilet, shrug your shoulders and hit the road.

Gregory: Anything is better then hotel bathrooms. I hate hotel bathrooms. Because every one I’ve ever been in is the same. We all know the time-tested bathroom setup: toilet, next to that the sink, behind the sink the mirror. And it’s lovely. But every hotel bathroom I’ve ever been in abandons this set-up, and they put the mirror right behind the toilet, so every time I use the bathroom, I’m treated to front-row seats to my own disgusting, flaccid penis taking a leak. It’s awful

(Also a laugh. I changed this one up a bit and actually still do it from time to time, though not in a while. So there it is, 3 minutes into my very first set and every joke is quite literally toilet humor.)

Gregory: So the poets were good, huh? (I knew how to fish for applause right from the get-go.) I don’t know though. It always sounds like they’re just making up as they go along, doesn’t it?

(Here it is, my first ever riff. I thought of this while I listened to the poets, and decided right there I would make up a poem on stage, and I figured it would be just as good as anyone elses.)

Gregory: I could just do one right here and it would sound just as good! Just shout out a word, any word. (I’ll never forget - someone said trombone.) Ok, Trombone. (This poem won’t be close to the one I actually said, but you’ll get the idea.)

Gregory: Oh, trombones
Your sound, so sweet
Yet so hard to hear
Because I never knew
What it was like
To hear my father play one
Oh trombones
Why did he drink so much?

(Epic Disaster! Not a soul laughed, and honest-to-goodness, a woman with short brown hair stood up and said: “you know, that’s not funny, some people take this very seriously,” and then walked out. I was frozen.)

Gregory: Ok, so this is a nice place here, huh? You got bagels and coffee. Can I get steak-tips here? Does anyone order steak-tips here? (Bombing.) Um... So, I have a gay walk. I do. I mean I like women and everything, but I walk like a full-on homosexual. It doesn’t matter what I’m saying before I walk, I walk like I’m gay. “Yeah, the big football game! Let’s do this, let’s kick ass!” [Walk away overtly gay-like.]

(Big laugh. I DO have a gay walk. Time for the closer.)

Gregory: So I was watching a documentary about Pandas (I was a master of transitions) and I found out that the reason they are going extinct is that they prefer eating to having sex. They would rather eat then get it on. (I never saw such a documentary.) And I thought, how weird? Who would rather eat then have sex? And then it hit me. I would rather eat then have sex. Because if I’m horny, I can masturbate. But there is no equivalent for food. I can’t stare at a box of cookies and jiggle my stomach around. I can’t watch Emeril and stroke my tounge!

Gregory: Thank you everybody.

And that was it. Now, this is clearly not verbatim what I said, but I’m positive these were the jokes and this was the order. I tried my best to fill in the rest.

I would find out a short time later that Jim Gaffigan had an almost identical bit to my last one, only funny. But I swear on my life, I didn’t know that when I did this joke.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, or failing that, half as much as I did. I’m starting to think it would be a blast to do this exact set over again and some pointless open mic.

Anyway, I would do comedy maybe a dozen times over the next 4 years before going for real last year. Not bad for a first show if I can say so. What do you think, Seinfeld?

The Greatest Show in the Universe.

2010-03-22T12:42:00.004-04:00

Years from now, when I am predictably famous, I will look back with fondness at the place where I got “my start.” Perhaps it will be some place ordinary; a vaunted comedy club; a hip, soon-to-be legendary underground comedy bar. Maybe my start will come via a more unorthodox route; a new Geico commercial campaign, a media-sensationalized murder trial. But I can say with certainty that my start won’t be hosting a new late night talk show on the Spike Network. Oh well.

It’s not that I wouldn’t take that start. I would love to heretofore be known as “isn’t that the dude who used to host that show on Spike?” It’s just not in the cards for me.

The casting call for Spike’s new pilot, modestly named The Greatest Show in the Universe, made it clear it was looking for a very specific candidate. They were looking for a 20-to-30 year old “guy’s guy.” A dude who’s “into the internet, video games, beer and his friends.” They did not want someone “polished” or “hosty,” instead they were looking for someone with “inherent comedic talent,” specifically “Zach Galifianakis, Seth Rogen, Jack Black, Ricky Gervais, Bill Murray, Jonah Hill, Andy Samberg.” As far as I can tell, this means they would like the host of The Greatest Show in the Universe to be a pudgy, excessively hairy 30-to-60 year old British Jew who writes songs about “jizzing in his pants.”

The casting call also stated that it was looking for a guy who “gets laid because chicks dig his quirky personality, not because he’s hot. And not because he has the best pick-up lines. He doesn’t.” The brass at Spike wanted someone who was "unassuming, jolly when drunk (not violent)" and that people "would want to hug.”

It was starting to get convoluted; I needed to create a check list.

OK. Let’s recap.

• 20-to-30 year old? Check.
• Love the internet? Check. But I have a feeling they mean a different internet.
• Love video games? Unless they mean 20-year-old video games, then Strike.
• Love Beer? Check, for sure. But again, I think they mean drinking beer at a nightclub while scoping for chicks, not Gas-Station 40’s alone on a weekday evening. So, half-check.
• Not Polished or Hosty? I can’t even begin… um Check?
• Anything like that list of comedians? Judging my career achievements, Strike.
• Doesn’t get laid because of looks? Resounding Check.
• Does get laid because of quirky personality? Strike. (Any of the smattered instances of me “getting laid” were due almost exclusively to unbelievable luck, something akin to divine intervention.)
• Unassuming? Seeing as I have a blog, a Resounding Strike.
• Jolly when drunk (not violent)? Strike, Check. I’m not a violent person in any way, but I’m certainly not a jolly drunk. (On Friday night, in classic Gregory-drunk form, I spent my intoxication locking myself in the bathroom, then trying to “walk” to Massachusetts before passing out on a bench 4 blocks away in the wrong direction. I don’t really think this is what the casting-call had in mind.)
• Huggable? Check. Clearly.

So that’s 4 ½ definite checks, 5 definite strikes, and 2 in-betweens. This ratio satisfied me enough to give the audition a shot, although I probably would have showed up had the casting call asked for 70 year-old transsexual Asian pianists.

The audition was at Comix on West 14th street, and it took all day. I arrived just as signups began and was number 66. The open calls were going on in cities across the country. Each city had two days of auditions. The first open call in New York had around 200 hopefuls. Assuming this was the average per-day attendance and knowing how many cities were involved, I figured they were looking for one man among a couple thousand “guy’s guys.” My masculinity wouldn’t stick out amongst a group of Olympic Figure Skaters, so I knew odds were against me surrounded by beer-bellied football aficionados.

The internet call asked comics to come prepared with a 30-second routine and our best improve skill. I don’t have any jokes that clock in less than 30 seconds, so I spent the night before writing a bit specifically for this audition, and came up with one I could use. I should have known better. When I got to the audition, I was instructed to disregard the casting call and instead familiarize myself with a prewritten bit that I would be asked to perform, some routine about how people who wear Ed Hardy shirts are douche bags.

So I spent the morning trying to remember someone else’s bit and wondering why I didn’t just become a lawyer. I auditioned on the main stage, in front of couple of attractive women. They never even mentioned the Ed Hardy bit, just said hello and asked me a few questions about myself.

Hot Lady: If you had a superpower, what would it be, and why?

(I was told beforehand to be ready to answer “Coke vs. Pepsi?” and was ready to staunchly defend Pepsi; this question caught me off guard.)

Me: Um… I would like to be able to have my entire life available on VHS so I can watch any moment from my past whenever I want.

(No idea where that came from.)

Hot Lady: Why VHS?

(I wanted to say because they didn’t have DVDs when I was young and there was no way I would have the time to forward-convert my entire childhood onto DVD.)

Me: Um… I like VHS.

Hot Lady: So you tend to like older things, like retro video games?

Me: Oh yeah, I bust out the Sega all the time. (I smile, expecting her to say something like, “Oh, I just love Sonic the Hedgehog!”)

Hot Lady: Cool. Well, nice to meet you Gregory. Thank You.

And then I left.

That was it. The callback was on Thursday but I never received an email. I wasn’t surprised or disappointed. In fact, the audition accomplished nothing except giving me a topic to blog about. This has increasingly become my justification for any failure, or mistake, or terrible, terrible decision. It’s good to have that outlet. Believe me. It’s good.

We F'd it Up.

2010-03-12T19:19:00.002-05:00

“And I really don’t care for the way your company left me in the middle of fucking nowhere with fucking keys to a fucking car that isn’t fucking there, and I really didn’t care to fucking walk down a fucking highway, and across a fucking runway, to get back here and have you smile at my fucking face.”

- Steve Martin.

Left in the hands of a professional such as Steve Martin, Fuck and all its derivatives can be wonderfully poetic words. The problem is Fuck isn’t only used by the masters. The amateurs have gotten their filthy hands all over it, and they have completely Fucked it up.

I consider myself an amateur; I’m certainly no master. And that’s why I have tried to keep my usage of Fuck to a minimum. I’ve written 30 posts, at an average of about 800 - 1000 words a post. That’s anywhere between 24,000 to 30,000 words I’ve written for We Could Go On and On and to the best of my knowledge, I’ve used the word Fuck in some form 5 times. Once about every 5000 words. Considering that on a typical work morning 7 of the first 10 words I speak are Fuck, I should be applauded for this restraint.

(And before you point it out to me, I am completely aware of the irony of this post. Restraint is going right out the window, or as Amy H. would say, restraint is being defenestrated)

Fuck is such a wonderful word, partially because of its versatility but mainly because of its notoriety. That’s why we have to be so careful not to overuse it and make it socially acceptable. A lot of people lament the censorship of television and radio, claiming that it is in infringement on our freedom of choice, and being a comedian you might assume I would agree, but to the contrary! I cherish the censorship! As long as the FCC deems Fuck inappropriate for the masses, it will retain an air of deviousness. Trust me, if the day ever comes where they can casually say fuck on How I Met Your Mother, our civilization will meet its demise

Fuck is like smoking. The more reviled cigarettes become in the mainstream, the more ridiculously lethal we discover they are, the more completely insane you have to be smoke, which only makes cigarettes more awesome. If I read on the internet tomorrow that cigarettes caused rabies, it would only make smokers seem more badass. Fuck is the same way.

But what would happen if Fuck became just another word. What would we do then? There is as of yet no suitable alternative. The C-word? No way. No versatility. Somehow, “Cunt the police” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

We need Fuck. And we need it to stay as badass as it currently is. We can’t let amateurs ruin it. Overuse some other curse word all you want. Overuse shit. No one gives a Fuck about shit. Shit may be distasteful, but it doesn’t have the power of Fuck. Shit is the PG-13 to Fuck’s R. Go ahead, say shit in school. You may get a terse look or two, but no one will really get angry. But say Fuck in school and the shit hits the fan! That’s a Fucking detention for sure! (School children read this blog all the time.)

Substitute other phrases for Fuck You. Suck it seems to be very fashionable these days. Tina Fey says it all the time. Why not try suck it on for size? Suck it has some of the versatility that Fuck has and even rhymes for limerick purposes. So next time you want to tell that infuriating hippie on 6th avenue trying to get you to pledge money for children to Fuck himself, tell him to suck it instead. Do it for GQ. If not for me, then do it for the children! They will need Fuck in the future!

It’s with this in mind that I try to keep Fucks to a minimum during my stand-up set. As far as I can tell, I have only one bit in which Fuck is essential for the punch-line. The rest of the time I say Fuck, I’m irresponsibly garnishing it on my bits, like it’s Fucking mustard.

I’m glad I got that off my chest. It had been bugging me. And if you disagree, please feel free to suck it.

If I Had a Nickel...

2010-03-10T20:50:00.012-05:00

One of my favorite personal routines is to take the hypothetic saying “If I had a nickel for every time…” and compute it literally.

You hear it all the time: If I had a nickel for every time Tina was a bitch, I’d be a millionaire.

Now this person – let’s call him Walter - can’t possibly mean this literally. In order for Walter to actually become a millionaire exclusively through Tina’s bitchiness, Tina would have to be a bitch to Walter 20 million times. If Tina has known Walter for 50 years, she would have to be a bitch to him 1095 times every single day. I’ve known some mean ladies, but there is no way Tina could keep that up.

I’ve always found the cliché far more effective when you take the math seriously. Had Walter said “If I had a nickel for every time Tina was a bitch, I’d have 500 dollars” or if Tina said “If I had a nickel for every time Walt was impotent, I’d could take a trip to Hawaii,” well, those would be completely plausible, especially if they were married. Hell, an all-inclusive trip to Hawaii will put you out about 700 bucks, or in Tina’s terms, 14 thousand times Walter’s dick doesm’t work. That could happen over 50 years. Easily.

Lately I’ve been wondering how much I would actually have if I were to put a nickel in a jar for every time something has happened to me. So I did out all the math, and thought it only fair to share the results with you all – my bffs They are separated into categories based on what I could afford had I accumulated a nickel for every occurrence, so if you’re looking for all the juicy sex stuff (which is where I always head straight to) head to the bottom first, in the penny-candy section.

- An unlimited monthly MetroCard ($90, 1800 nickels)

If I had a Nickel for every time I…

• Couldn’t decide if I wanted to respond with “Cool” or “Nice” and ended up saying “Nool.”
• Answered “What’s up?” with “Good, you?”
• Been walking toward a stranger on the street and couldn’t decide which way to evade, resulting in a terribly awkward dance in which they get very angry.
• Pretended to no longer enjoy Professional Wrestling.
• Became winded rising from the sofa too briskly.
• Ate an entire package of Kraft Cheese Singles in one sitting.
• Wrote on someone’s wall with the sole intent of them writing on mine, thus making me seem more popular.
• Claimed to hate New York City and couldn’t live here a month longer.
• Claimed to love New York City and quoted “Empire State of Mind.”

- A beer for myself and my lady-friend at a typical Manhattan Bar ($12, 240 Nickels)

If I had a Nickel for every time I…

• Drank way too much and vowed to quit drinking in the morning.
• Got drunk again that very same night.
• Took an alternate subway train because I was convinced I could figure it out only to end up in the South Bronx.
• Bragged about loving some deviant activity I’ve never even considered doing.
• Quit a job or responsibility to “focus on comedy” only to watch DVDs at 10 in the morning.
• Exaggerated a story from College.
• Attempted to begin regular flossing routine, abandoned plan three days later.
• Claimed to just “not really be into porn.”

- A McChicken Sandwich ($1, 20 nickels)

If I had a Nickel for every time…

• Started to update this blog but spent 3 hours on IMDB instead.
• Really tried to love College Basketball.
• Compulsively moved because I didn’t want to “grow old in this two-bit town” only to be hopelessly homesick 4 weeks later.
• Ran three miles, felt entitled to eat pizza every meal for next 6 days.
• Rinsed and repeated.
• Semi-seriously considered responding to a Craigslist personal.
• Understood a poem.

- A game of pinball (.50, 10 nickels)

If I had a Nickel for every time I…

• Wore a Hawaiian shirt on a blind date.
• Talked to a woman without the assistance of alcohol.
• Danced without the assistance of alcohol.
• Convinced myself I am living “The Truman Show.”
• Hit a three-point shot.
• Have been paid to do Stand-up comedy.

-A gumball (.25, 5 nickels)

If I had a Nickel for every time I…

• Um… how do I put this… engaged a lady in coitus.

-Postage in 1978 (.15, 3 nickels)

If I had a Nickel for every time I…

• Engaged in aforementioned Coitus in which either party had an orgasm and/or was sober. (Estimated.)

-A Nickel (0.05, 1 nickel)

If I had a Nickel for every time I…

• Vomited all over the house from too much Tequila.
• Drank Tequila.
• Looked forward to visiting Nebraska.
• Have been paid to do Stand-up comedy in New York.
• Accidentally visited another country.
• Inadvertently told my family how many women I’ve slept with (see above.)
• Kissed a man. (It was in college, during an improv show, OK? No need to start texting your friends “I told you so!”)
• Maintained for any amount of time something I’m proud of (you’re reading it.)

I think that’s good for now. Forgive me for the few TMI (too much information) moments. But come on, those are PG-rated when compared to my stand-up act. If anyone would like to know anything else I could afford using this nickel scale, feel free to ask me in the comment section or on good old Facebook.

I’m a weirdo.

The Quitter.

2010-03-04T14:40:00.004-05:00

I quit my job yesterday.

I was going to say I resigned yesterday. Resignation has an air of authority about it, like I’m relinquishing a throne. But considering I was an office-supply salesman and I only worked there two weeks, it would be absurd to say I resigned. Truth is I quit, cold turkey and without any notice. Took all of five minutes.

Funny thing: I’ve never considered myself a quitter despite a lifetime of behavior to the contrary. Take for example New York City. I’ve lived here for 4 months and I’ve had and lost 4 jobs. Only one of them was not of my own volition. I had a job as a food demonstrator (stopped answering my supervisor’s calls because I deemed the position too “beneath me” to give her that courtesy. I assume she eventually got the idea.) I had a job driving old people to their rec. hall on Long Island (they told me to call back and let them know my availability. I never called back.) I had my temp job in TriBeCa (I intended to ride this job for several years, but they made me leave after two months.) And I had a job door-to-door office supply selling which I did for 12 days, got quite good at it, then had somewhat of an epiphany in the middle of the day and realized I couldn’t do it a moment longer. So here I am in the middle of the day in Brooklyn, unemployed again.

And this is a tradition I’ve maintained through my life. I got my first job when I was 14, ten years ago this spring to be exact. Here is a short list of some of the jobs I’ve had over those ten years:

 Bus Boy
 General Store Cashier
 Janitor at an old person’s home.
 A summer cleaning up department store parking lots.
 Whale Watch deckhand
 After School tutor
 Substitute Teacher
 Yogurt Salesman
 Target
 Video Game Store Cashier
 Radio Station Road Crew
 Trail builder
 Americorps Corps Member
 Case Manager

The list goes on. And none of those jobs I was fired from. Many people spend a decade at a single job, but in less then ten years I managed to get sick of all those. A couple of them ended and I had to leave (Americorps) but for the most part I just decided that I had enough. I even walked out on Target, which has made me ineligible to work there ever again, and in the very-likely scenario Target takes over the world, yours truly is screwed.

So maybe I am a quitter. I do have very particular taste when in comes to my employment. Money has never been much of a motivating factor for me, so it’s hard for me to do anything just to make money. I’d rather do something I like for little to no pay then something I hate but could bankroll in. This probably explains why I could volunteer ad nauseum for two years but couldn’t sell office supplies for more then two weeks. But in New York, I have to make a lot of money to live here and pursue comedy at night. And if I’m looking for a job just to collect a check while I do comedy at night, door-to-door sales ain’t it.

Because I couldn’t do both. I tried to convince myself I could, but it was clear I couldn’t. Sure, I got to an open mic every now and then, but I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t practicing. There was one too many nights where I rushed out of work only to get to a mic and realize I had missed the signup. I didn’t move to New York for that. I was stressed. I was up late thinking about how to work up the nerve to cold-pitch somebody who wanted to murder me with their eyes. I virtually forgot about advancing my comedy career. So after a cold, rainy day in the South Bronx, where I was told to get a real job, told I should be ashamed of myself, told I should watch my back in this neighborhood because people in suits seem suspicious, I realized it wasn’t worth it. Not when I agreed with every word they said. It’s not that the grass was greener in the neighbor’s yard, it was that I felt like I didn’t have a fucking lawn.

I’ll get a job, I always do. I wager that it won’t even take me long. I’ll go into that interview and they’ll ask me where I see myself in five years. And I’ll look them straight in the eye and lie. I’ll give them some bullshit office line. Because telling them I plan on living in semi-squalor, skipping from job to job and still barking at the comedy moon doesn’t have the best ring to it.

At least not to an interviewer. To me it sounds just fine.

A Pro at Work.

2010-02-27T19:08:00.002-05:00

When you think about it, 40 dollars for 15 minutes of work is pretty darn good. I took some time this past week to do the math and discovered that works out to 160 dollars per hour. Now only if they’d let me do an 8-hour set.

Alas, they only needed me for 15 minutes at The Spectator’s in New Rochelle. I could have (forgive me) gone on and on.

So that’s 110 unpaid days in New York City for a 40-dollar pay-check on day 111. It took exactly 112 days to get paid for joke-telling in Boston last year. So I’m one day ahead of schedule. The big test however, will be how long it takes to get to payday number 2. Last year it took a mere 14 days. Not going to happen in New York City.

Still, no reason to complain. I’ve had a rather fantastic couple of days. Yesterday, New York was buried in unyielding snow, and there was no sense in going door-to-door office-supply selling. So I got myself an unexpected three-day weekend. I took my second drunken walk through Prospect Park in the snow early in the day (there is nothing quite like having a good buzz on while watching The Price is Right) and it was far more successful, as I was accompanied by my also-drunk roommates.

Where the hell was I?

Oh yes, The Spectator’s. My first paying gig in New York. It wasn’t in New York City, but to the north in the City of New Rochelle. New Rochelle is the seventh largest city in New York, and the home of Dick Van Dyke.

I was offered the show a month ago by friend and fellow comic Amy, who long-time readers of this blog will remember as AC, the host of the See You Next Tuesday mic. She grew up in New Rochelle and still lives there, in the very apartment she lived as a child, indeed the very room in which she was born. AC was born without medical assistance in her mother’s bed. As she puts it: “my mom thought she had to take a shit and instead I started coming out.” This no-nonsense, get-out-of-my-way attitude AC displayed during her birth is still evident today.

Once I got a look at AC’s apartment, I realized why no one would want to leave. The place is a veritable palace; it makes my already ragged apartment in Brooklyn look like a Confederate prison. I guess that’s the benefit of living outside the five boroughs.

AC lived only a few blocks from The Spectator’s, a fairly typical sports bar with the exception of its size. It’s gigantic. Perhaps my judgment was warped by the always-cramped quarters of New York City, but I couldn’t get over the cavernous interior at the Specs. There was a large square bar in the front center, surrounded on all sides by booths for sit-down dining. In the back was a stage at least 6 feet off the ground, making it first set I’ve done with a legitimate chance I would fall to my death before getting to my closer.

The Specs was hoping, but the majority of the clientele were loitering around the square bar, seemingly hundreds of yards from the stage. I did a little barking before the show, trying to convince people to move closer without letting them know I was actually performing. I’m not sure this actually convinced anyone. I opened the show and did a solid 15. I love doing 15 minutes, just enough time to roll out all my “hits.” The comic after me entered stage to sci-fi music and smoke machines dressed up in a Snuggie and Elton John sunglasses. I forgot the name of this character. The crowd seemed befuddled, but I appreciated it. I’ve seen hundreds upon hundreds of comics with the same old schtick; (myself certainly included) it’s refreshing to see someone in a dollar-store costume claiming to be from space and talking about interplanetary intercourse. And stand-up comedy is just about the only profession in the world where you can claim that. It’s what makes it so great.

I thought I did all right. Wasn’t among my best, but I didn’t seem overwhelmed. It was odd to do a show so high up, I was literally staring down at people in the front row. I had a maddening impulse to check my fly the entire set.

Afterwards, I drank free beer at the Spectator’s behest. AC sat across from me at the booth and with subtle, drug-dealer precision, handed me a sweaty wad of ten dollars bills. Four of them to be exact. And with that, I became a professional New York Comedian. I may never again get another dime to tell a joke in this city, but that will always be true.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must visit the Automatic Teller and withdraw enough money to pay for admittance to the afternoon open mics this week. But I’ll hit the stage with a little more confidence this time. Step back junior, a pro is going to work.

Hear, Hear Roger.

2010-02-22T23:20:00.004-05:00

You may have noticed the paucity of blog posts lately. Sorry about that. Let’s Recap:

- Lost my temp job. Complained about it all weekend.
- Had my second show at the Creek and the Cave in Long Island City
- Got a new job selling office supplies.
- Had my first paid NYC comedy show.
- Shaved my beard.
- Started new job. Complained about it all weekend.
- Got Very Drunk, danced around bar in brand new suit. Spilled hot sauce all over jacket.
- Hung-over all day. Drank again. Passed out on 4 train.
- Had my best New York City afternoon on Sunday, complained about Monday all Sunday Night.
- Went back to work, spilled Vegetarian Chili on my crotch.

So I’ve been busy. Not that the schedule justifies writing less. I was busy last month, when I kept up a steady 2 post-per-week routine. (Also please note: blogs are forthcoming concerning the shows at the Creek and the Cave, and my paid gig in New Rochelle.) I’m just having a hard time keeping things in perspective.

What’s the expression? I can’t see the forest through the trees? That’s it. I still want nothing but to be a successful comedian, but I’m preoccupied dealing with other problems, such as how I’ve been uninsured since October or how I’ve mercilessly plowed through 75% of my savings in 4 months. I obsess over these things. I scour Craigslist job-postings rather than writing jokes. I shop for business-professional interview clothes rather than updating the blog. I go to bed early to rest up for the job rather than staying up late and hitting the mics.

I realize these are all part of a process. I have to do these things. If I don’t maintain a steady influx of cash, I can’t afford to live in New York and I can’t pursue stand-up comedy. This is very simple stuff here- I knew this was part of the deal. Still, I complain so much. I’m awful. I whine like a child on Christmas who opens a Sega Genesis when he wanted a Super Nintendo (reference courtesy of 1993.) And I fully expect everyone to sympathize; to realize my life is so hard because I have to hold down a day job like every other day-dreamer.

I bitched about blowing auditions, about losing a job that was clearly a temporary position, about getting a new one so quickly. All the self-pity made me lethargic and my ambition wallowed. Then I didn’t write. Not jokes, not blogs, not letters. It’s only been about 10 days but it feels like a fucking eternity. It really does.

Then yesterday night, hours after I should have been asleep, I stumbled upon an article online. It was from Esquire Magazine and it was about movie critic Roger Ebert. Do yourself a favor and check out this link:

http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310

Literally, do a favor for yourself. Read this.

Roger Ebert has always been one of my favorite writers. He managed – and still does – to walk the precarious line between serious film critic and populist champion; he found a way to be regarded by snobbish film purists and appreciated by the casual movie buff. In any artform, that’s impressive. I loved the way his reviews so often rambled off the deep end, like a lecture by that teacher in high school you could oh-so-easily get off track. He loved throwing in an anecdote, or a philosophical ramble, or a simple “this movie sucks!” Ebert always says “it’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it.” He says it over and over, sometimes qualifying it with “I often like to say…” but often just saying.

As it turns out, how Roger Ebert is about his life is with steadfast optimism. He has been battling cancer and its harrowing treatment since 2002. He’s been in an out of hospitals virtually ever since. In June 2006, he underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue in his jaw, which resulted in part of his jaw being removed. Since that surgery, Roger hasn't a thing to eat, a thing to drink, or spoken a word. Almost four years, now. Doctors have taken parts of his shoulder and his legs, trying to reconstruct his jaw, but each attempt has failed. These surgeries have left the rest of his body physically ravaged, and he has trouble just sitting up long enough to watch a movie.

For a man who made his name talking about his opinions, there seems to be not one instance in writing of him complaining. Nothing. He became famous telling people their movies sucked, but has never used such a word to describe what has happened to him. I know I’m prone to hyperbole, but that it’s truly amazing.

And he never stopped writing. He never stopped doing what he loved. Roger Ebert still reviews movies daily. He habitually updates his blog. He’s followed by thousands of people on Twitter, which he also updates obsessively. And take it from a lifetime Ebert Reader, his reviews are just as good as ever. Better maybe. Here is a man with remarkable perspective.

Makes me feel lazy, guilty. It’s an age-old trick to use other people’s misfortune to feel better, and I guess that’s what I’m doing. It’s wrong, but it always seems to work. I really need to stop complaining and just do.

In the photo for the Esquire Magazine, Roger Ebert is smiling. He doesn’t have a jaw, but look at that picture. He’s smiling. There’s more to a smile then just the teeth and the lips and the jaw. A smile is in your eyes, in the wrinkles on your forehead. It’s all over your face. Look at that picture. His smile is conscious decision.

“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting.”

- Roger Ebert

Hear, Hear.

Some New York Tales.

2010-02-13T19:01:00.008-05:00

I’ve heard lately that if I can make it here, apparently I can make it anywhere. Not so sure about that. I’ve been here three months. Certainly not long enough to qualify as making it here, but long enough to give me reason to believe that I will eventually make it here. And when that does happen, I don’t believe I will subsequently be able to make it anywhere. For example, I don’t believe I’d ever make it in China. What, without Google? Forget about it. I don’t have the slightest idea how I researched anything pre-Google. Plus I’ve never really liked Chinese food, even on New Years.

For such a big city, it’s the little things that continuously make me not hate it here. For example, there is perhaps no greater New York pleasure then unexpectedly grabbing an express train after you’ve already resigned yourself to a local train. It goes like this: let’s say you can take either the 4/5 express train, or the 2 /3 local train to your quaint abode in Crown Heights. The 2 comes first so you figure, “screw it; I’ll just take the 2 so I don’t have to wait any longer.” Then, a few stops down the line, your train pulls into the station and there across the landing is the 4 train. You gallop on board, instantly shaving ten minutes off your trip. Wonderful. No matter what was happening on that 2 train, you get on that 4 train. It doesn’t matter if you have just met your long-lost brother.

“Wait… so if your father is George Quinn, and my father is George Quinn, that means, we’re - Oh my god, AN EXPRESS TRAIN!” And off you go.

Of course sometimes you get on the train one evening and wonder why there is no one else in that particular car despite the packed subway station. It’s only after the doors close do you notice the belligerent homeless man sprawled on the floor or the car. If you’re as lucky as yours truly, sometimes that man will proceed to stand up, scream at you, and then chuck half-eaten chicken bones at your skull.

As disturbing as that incident was while it was happening, I instantly thought about how it would make a wonderful anecdote for this blog. Just goes to show how much you mean to me, readers.

I’ve been the weirdo on the train before. Why just last week I was running to catch the 6 train, and thanks to my exaggerated arm waving, I nailed a jutting pole with the back of my hand. Desperate to catch the train, I didn’t bother to look to see if I was hurt. I made it on the 6 and I noticed everyone backing away from me, forming a circle. Wondering what the hell was wrong with them, I looked down to see my hand gushing blood. Like a geyser. Because I’m a child, my initial reaction was to grab my wrist screaming, “my hand” while I tried to think of a plan. Eventually I just stuck my hand in my jacket pocket and let it bleed out. It’s a wonder I don’t have serious medical problems.

Moving on.

I’ve had some interesting shows in the past few weeks. One was a show I did at a “venue” in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I put venue in quotation marks because I’m not sure the joint actually qualified as such. It was more like a hollowed-out storage closet. There was no bar, no kitchen, no wait-staff. There was no one to stop anyone from bringing in outside booze or smoking butts or hitin’ reefer.

(Just to placate any concerned relatives, I must mention that I did not partake in the last activity. Chiefly because I didn’t want to, but also because I’m not sure I would have been able to locate the microphone –let alone tell jokes – if I had.)

Williamsburg is the hip section of Brooklyn. What the Haight-Ashbury was to hippies is what Williamsburg is to hipsters. I suppose. I’ve never actually lived in either. Anyway, there are a lot of flannel-clad, unnecessary-eyeglasses-wearing cool cats in Williamsburg. I fit in with them no better then with the Caribbeans and Hassidics who reside in Crown Heights. It seems, unfortunately, that the only place dweeby suburbanites fit in is in the suburbs. But my beard helps; I look Jewish in the Hassidic neighborhoods and hip in Williamsburg.

The show was almost an afterthought to the tempered debauchery. I don’t even smoke, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to puff a cigarette on stage while I sipped from my smuggled beer. I started with new stuff like I usually do at open mics, but then abandoned them in favor of my raunchiest jokes. It just felt right.

A comic passed around a flask of whisky. I sort-of smoked another cigarette. Mostly I just stuck the cig in my month and blew into it, like a party favor. As much as I outwardly disdain the hipster culture, I still want them to think I am cool and like me.

I took the train home and it took forever. I woke up the next day and went to work hung-over, the awful, guilt-inducing cigarette taste lingering in my mouth.

Two Down.

2010-02-09T16:06:00.005-05:00

I don’t want to sound like too much of a downer, but I think I may soon be 0 for 2. I’m currently batting a 2009 David Ortiz-esque 0.00 when it comes to comedy auditions, and unless 75 other amateur comedians have been stricken dead since I left Caroline’s a few hours ago, my average isn’t going up anytime soon.

(And in case you were wondering, if there were some sort of comedy performance enhancing drug, I would shoot up like a rocket ship. I have absolutely no problem seeing this sentence in newspapers one day: Gregory Quinn. 2010 New York Comedy Champion* )

Today, there was an audition at Caroline’s on Broadway. It was my second in the past two weeks, and both took place smack in the middle of a workday, working on the (fairly accurate) assumption that most comics are unemployed. I arrived three hours before the audition started and was the 17th comic on the list. One young man was curled up in a sleeping bag, and even he wasn’t number one. (Some character by the name of Skim Milk had that distinction.)

The first audition was at Comix on W 14th Street. I couldn’t manage to get the morning off and had to run to Comix during my lunch break. I arrived 2 hours after it started and was number 206.

Both of the auditions were for similar events: a March Madness-style comedy competition. The auditions were to narrow the field down to 64 contestants who will compete against each other in a series of shows until there are four finalists. The ultimate winner gets a weekend of booked shows at the respective clubs and a shit-load more Facebook friends.

They were whirlwind auditions. The Comix audition gave the comics one minute to deliver their best material in front of a panel of judges. We went in groups of twenty and each watched as 19 other comedians tried desperately to cram as many punch lines as possible into sixty seconds. A single bell went off to start your minute and then went off again, incessantly, after the minute was up. Trying to finish a joke after this bell went off was maddeningly impossible, like a substitute teacher trying to continue a lecture after the fire alarm goes off.

I barely made the cut-off at Comix. They stopped taking people after the 215th comic, only minutes after I arrived. I sat on a bench in the lobby, talking with another comedian for three hours while my nerves boiled inside of me. I timed my bit over and over again, each run through coming in around 48 seconds. I figured I had it down.

I didn’t.

That infernal bell went off seconds – seconds! – before I got the big finish, the line that usually gets a nice pop. I soldiered on, and delivered the punch line to a shuddering silence. I walked off the stage while number 207 walked on.

A nebbish man with round spectacles and curly hair showed our group out the theatre, telling us that the selected comedians would receive an email and a link to a video clip, where our friends could vote for us. I was not emailed.

There was another audition at Caroline’s this morning, for an event nearly identical to the Comic contest. From what I’ve picked up ‘round the comedian circles, the Comix contest was started by a group of friends a few years back. Eventually there was a falling out, and a few off the comedians broke off from the group to start a similar contest at Carolines. I’m not sure of the accuracy of this story, but I do believe you can read all about it in the late Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the Untied Sates.

At Carolines, we each got a scrumptious two minutes of stage time. I stuck with the bit I used at Comix, as well as adding two shorter jokes to bookend. I sat in the corner of the bar, going over my bits in my notebook trying to eliminate every unnecessary letter. I talked briefly with other comedians, all of them looking so calm, so confident, so at peace with whatever the result of the audition would be. Perhaps they just hid it well. But I did not; I was clearly a wreck all morning. I would take sporadic walks back and forth around the bar, “shaking out” my arms and rubbing my neck. I threw back cup after cup of coffee.

The audition process at Carolines was not as disciplined as Comix and didn’t run as smoothly. They called each comic in one by one to perform for the judges, exactly how it’s done on American Idol. It was a laborious process. I stood outside the theatre door and waited anxiously until my number was called. The judges were very friendly.

“Next up…Gregory Quinn. Any relation to Colin Quinn?”

I smiled and gave some doofus scripted answer; something like “I get that all the time!” I immediately regretted not just saying, “Hell yeah! I love Uncle Colin!”

I got through my first two bits with a modicum of chuckles and bemused smiles before the middle judge told me that was enough. I was mortified; they couldn’t even stand two minutes of my material. I started to walk away before the same judge asked:

“So you’re from Boston?” (This was mentioned in a setup to one of my jokes.)

“Yes, sir,” I replied. I treat anyone of even the slightest authority like they are an Army Sergeant.

“Well, I think I am going to be seeing a lot of you.”

Then he said thanks and called for the next.

I can’t decide if what the judge said is a good thing. It sounded good initially, but I can’t help but think it’s one of those things they just say to every comic. I don’t know. It’s really hard to tell. I always perform the same at these shows. Not so bad that I can’t get over it for days, but never good enough to feel as if I’m going to move on.

My gut tells me I won’t be moving on this time. You can just kind of feel these things. And that would mean I went down hard at my first two chances of the New Year. That is going to be hard to swallow. I know it will not stop me from going on, but the failure will chip away a little more from my crumbling confidence. Which sucks. Sometimes, out there in this city, I feel like I never have enough.

There’s another audition in March. I’ll be there.

On Interstate 35, Stuck.

2010-02-06T18:42:00.003-05:00

I did storytelling at The Root Hill Café again last week. I enjoyed it. It’s nice to wonder if I did well rather than knowing I failed because nobody laughed. I think I may start to seek out more storytelling opportunities in the city. Much like I drink 40’s of Old English every Wednesday, I’m going to attempt to “double fist” stand-up and storytelling. Why the hell not?

I wrote this story at work the morning before the open mic. Not sure I like it. The opening image has been in my head forever, and I just continued on with the story from that line. The story is fictional, but the central event happened to me a few years ago. I’ll explain afterward, if you stick around.

(Also, please kindly don't bother to tell me that posting these stories is just a cheap way for me keep my posts consistent without having to do much work. I know this. It's like telling me I only have a blog because I am an egomaniac; these things are assumed.)

On Interstate 35, Stuck.

By Gregory Quinn.

The map sprawled across the hood of the car and began to melt, like butter on a skillet. The air around Dolly’s Rodsid Dier (the poor sign) was permeated with kicked-up dust and charred rubber.

Ryder was hesitant to stop, but he was hungry and he always had a thing for diners. He opened his trunk and tossed the poorly-folded map in among dirty laundry and discarded fast food. He patted the back of his jeans, one check for his wallet and another for his can. He inspected the can as he pulled it from his pocket and packed it expertly. The second the tingling, almost painful burn rushed through his lip he remembered why he started again. He spat his wad of tobacco-juice onto the like-colored dirt.

It was dead inside the Dier. There were only three people, all alone, all quiet. The heavy aroma of bacon grease and lingering coffee dripped on his skin. Ryder sat at a corner booth and checked his watch. 1:30. Plenty of time to get to Minneapolis by nightfall. Plenty of time to see Maggie before she leaves.

Ryder left from Austin yesterday afternoon as soon as he heard the news. He burned north through Oklahoma and into Kansas, rolled west past Wichita and straight through Missouri. He was making good time: 1000 miles in less than a day.

Despite the dearth of customers, service was slow. Ryder turned over his coffee mug and stuffed a handful of napkins into the chamber to collect his spit. The waitress must have noticed; she brought Ryder a fresh mug and without being cued, filled it with hour-old coffee. She didn’t say hello or ask what he might like for lunch. She just stood there, wagging a pen over a pad of paper to indicate she was ready when he was.

The booth was fake red leather, the sort ubiquitous at diners. The seat was split open; the fluffy innards spilled out like a crumbled muffin. Ryder leaned back and closed his eyes. He thought of what he would say when he saw Maggie, how he’ll try to tell her not to go, how he’ll try to tell her he’s sorry.

Ryder had no idea what he was doing here. Days ago he had been home, in Austin, waiting for her. His new job started in a few days, yet here he was in Iowa, 15 miles south of Des Moines, in a rundown roadside diner called Dolly’s Rodsid Dier. And it was all for her. Ryder unloaded his load of tobacco from his bottom lip and discharged it in his mug, remnants of snuff lodged in between his teeth and in his fingernails. The coffee was already cold, the food taking forever.

As Ryder left, he heard the television over the diner’s bar flick on. Some sort of breaking news.

He merged onto I35. Traffic was heavy for an early Saturday afternoon. Ryder reached over the passenger seat to roll down the window, the car’s air conditioning long of out service. Ahead to the north Ryder noticed a giant pall over the Principal Building, a looming grey cloud that stretched upwardly like a funnel. The traffic ahead of him was stopped. Ryder put his car in park and stared at the cloud, then at his watch.

No car was moving. Some sounded worthless horns; their beeps rose from the traffic and were abruptly ignored. Ryder rifled through the radio stations. All the broadcasts were interrupted for a local news bulletin: a building in downtown Des Moines has exploded.

Around noon, a small ink building on Grand Street erupted. No one was injured, save for some traumatized pedestrians below. It was a minor explosion, but there was enough smoke to limit visibility north of the city. I35 North was shut down for miles. Not far south, Ryder was stuck.

He dialed Maggie but she didn’t answer. She hadn’t taken his calls since the day before yesterday. He knew she wouldn’t wait for him. His eyes darted between the clock on the radio and his wristwatch, hoping for a discrepancy. But they agreed – ten past four. His car had been in park for an hour.

He was frantic. Gridlocked, Ryder gripped the sweat-soaked steering wheel and rubbed his neck. The radio advised commuters to keep their windows up, as the billowing smoke could be hazardous to your health. Ryder did as he was told, but any health benefits were negated by the simmering heat in the cab of his car. Each drop of sweat that dribbled down his forehead was laden with grease and nicotine. A sour, repugnant taste.

The sun had set over Des Moines when Ryder pulled off I35. He stopped at a gas station and dialed Maggie again. Nothing. Last he heard, traffic was moving north of the city again but by now it was too late. He was still 200 miles from Minneapolis. By the time he got there she would be gone. Her plane would be somewhere high above the Great Lakes, on its way to Boston.

Ryder was lost. He was stuck in Iowa. He sat on the hood of his car watching the lights flicker on the skyline ahead of him. 1000 miles in 18 hours wasted on an exploding ink building.

Ryder opened his trunk and found his map, and by the pitiful glow of his cell phone, plotted his way east.

The End.

As I said earlier, this story is made up. However, I was driving from Austin, TX to Minneapolis, MN a few years ago only to be stranded in Des Moines because an ink building exploded. And the line about authorities advising commuters to keep their window up because of the possibility of hazardous smoke is true. But I wasn’t on my way to meet a girl, I was visiting my father. I wasn’t dipping tobacco either. I just thought it sounded cool.

Have a nice afternoon, friends.

He Cries Wolf.

2010-02-04T11:20:00.000-05:00

I love the phrase “I’m not just saying this, but…”

Comics hear this all the time. As in: “I’m not just saying this, but you were my favorite comedian!”

I love it. I especially like the implication that every time this person made a declarative statement that didn’t begin with “I’m not just saying …” they were totally full of shit. They really were just saying.

I like that people need to qualify thier compliments in order to distinguish them from straight-up lies.

Mothers, of course, are the biggest culprits. They have their own variation of the expression just for them: “And I’m not just sayin’ that because I’m your mom.” Thousands of awkward, clearly unattractive children grew up hearing:

“Any girl would be thrilled to go the dance with you, honey. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your mom.”

If you were like me, you would instantly think: “That’s funny, because you’re the only one saying that. You would think if that were true, other moms would tell me the same thing. But they don’t. In fact, most of them tell me to stay away from their daughter. Odd.”

Some people make it clear when they are just saying. In this case, it’s usually used to soften the blow after bringing up a touchy subject. “Listen, Gregory, you really need to consider flossing more then twice a decade. You’re going to get gingivitis. I’m just saying.”

Sometimes, you gotta just say.

Most of the people who read this blog know me well, and those who know me well know I lie all the time. I don’t have any idea why I lie about most of the things I lie about, as typically my lies produce no discernable benefit. Classic example. I have never seen Braveheart. Not a second of it. Yet I cannot tell you how many times I have answered in the affirmative when asked if I have seen the Mel Gibson epic. Same thing goes for Blade Runner, Gladiator, the 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings, and Godfather, Part II. I haven’t seen a single one of those movies. Most of my friends think I have however, and it hasn’t improved my life in the slightest.

Often while I am performing or writing, I feel a little guilty if I’m saying something I know isn’t true. But there’s really no need. Stand-up comedy is a performance. Even if everything I was saying were true, it would still be an act. I’m a performer playing a character. The character may have the same name, may be dressed the same, may have virtually the same voice and mannerisms, but it’s not me up there. It’s Gregory Quinn, the amateur comedian. And that character does not say the same things I say, doesn’t believe the same things I believe, doesn’t do the same things I do. I haven’t eaten an ounce of meat in almost two years, yet one of my standard bits is all about how ridiculous being a vegetarian is. My reasoning for this is simple: GQ the person hasn’t the slightest interest in eating meat anymore; GQ the comedian thinks that’s retarded.

It can be a difficult balance however. You don’t want to separate yourself from the performer too much. I did the monthly Root Hill Café show in Park Slope on Monday. Afterward, I walked to the 7th avenue stop with the host and she had this to say about my comedy:

I remember the first time I saw your set. Your jokes were good and you seemed very prepared. You knew exactly what you were going to say. But it didn’t ring true.

Of course my initial reaction was, “Yeah well, your face doesn’t ring true!”

I’m kidding. But I was a little shocked. Not that she felt that way but that she noticed, which is particularly telling because it was the first time she saw me perform. It was the first time she had ever even met me. I guess I’m pretty obvious. It’s not that I don’t want to ring true; I’m just not exactly sure what that means. And if I ever find out, I’m not sure I could ring true and still be funny. Right now, I’m way too concerned with being funny. Other things will come in time. I hope.

Well, I have to run. But thanks for reading though. I’m not just saying this, but I really appreciate every one who does.

Grisly Man.

2010-01-31T19:14:00.006-05:00

The beard endures.

It was supposed to be gone by now - last Friday to be exact. But here I am, 9 days later, still looking like Randy Savage. You see, a few days after Thanksgiving I made a pact with myself: no shaving until I am paid to tell jokes in New York City. I didn’t tell a lot of people about this plan because I was too worried of going forever without pay and looking like I spent the last four years living in solitude on an island talking to a volleyball.

So when I was offered a chance to perform in Manhattan on Friday night and get a cut of the door, I was understandably siked. Thinking that my beard was facing its imminent demise, I started to let people in on the pact. But I forgot to take into consideration that this was New York City and nothing is ever as good as it seems. I wasn’t paid and I didn’t shave and I can now floss my teeth with my mustache.

I’m glad I got that out of the way because I don’t feel like complaining. I had two shows this past week at the Grisly Pear in Greenwich Village and they both went great. I didn’t get paid, but I was compensated with two shots of invigorating, dream-chasing adrenaline, right in the vein. After shows like the duo at the Grisly Pear, I start to think this whole becoming a successful stand-up comic thing may actually be possible. Good stuff.

The first gig was on a Friday night and the house was packed. The Grisly Pear is on MacDougal Street, steps from Washington Square Park and as such, many, many opportunities to purchase marijuana. The Grisly Pear, you may have noticed, is clearly a pun for Grizzly Bear but with the odd misspelling of Grizzly. The word Grisly means “causing a shudder or a feeling of horror” so the bar’s name, taken literally, conjures up images of murderous, maniacal fruit. Comedy at the Pear is held in the back room behind the main bar. There is a small stage cluttered with karaoke equipment, and an ancient projection television, the ones where the picture all but disappears if you sit within 30 yards of the screen.

Thanks to the enterprising of my roommates, I had a small brigade of fans for my first show, and none of them knew how close the show came to not going on at all.

I was offered the gig by my friend Fabio Ianella, a fellow comic and one of the co-founders of Brooklyn Underground Comedy. But Fabio was putting on the show as a favor for a friend of his, who had booked his first show at the Pear and then decided he wasn’t going to show up. Rather then abandoning the show, the friend asked Fabio to run it and Fabio in turn asked me to be on the bill. The deal was half the door for each guest I could bring in, and at a $10 cover with around 20 people there for yours truly, I was standing to make a nice little bounty for 10 minutes of work.

At least these were the terms that Fabio was given by his friend. When we met with management, it was obvious they had a different idea. I was told that there was a $10 cover and no drink minimum, and this is the information I relayed to my friends. The boss’ at the Pear however, wanted to up the cover and enforce a two drink minimum. Now all the comics were put in a precarious position; either impose the house rules on their friends after telling them otherwise, or accept no pay in exchange for the bar waiving the cover charge. Or stand our ground and not do the show. Not surprisingly, there was a near-unanimous decision among the comics to work the show for free. I was actually in the minority. I wanted to enforce the rules and get paid, figuring they’re going to drink regardless of a minimum. But I was overwhelmed. If it weren’t for all my friends who made thier way down, I like to think I would have marched right out of there, taking with me every salt shaker and beer mug I passed.

But that’s New York. Your dreams really can come true here, but you’re going to get fucked along the way.

I went up there and I killed. I don’t feel false modesty is needed here. I’ve been willing to detail my many failures and epic bombs, so it’s only fair that I get to tell you when I really nailed it, and that first show at the Grisly Pear I was on fire. I’m finally getting a working set, jokes I know I can use at booked shows which in turn frees up open mics for new material and experimentation. This development pleases me.

Karaoke was scheduled for after the show, but none of us stayed. Which was fine; I wasn’t much in the mood to give the bar any more business.

I was back there in a few days anyway. The following Thursday I did the Comedy Party USA. It’s co-produced by Michael Reardon, another comic who moved to New York City from the Boston area. Mike and I met at our Alma Marta, Salem State College, where he co-founded Salem State’s venerable improve/sketch comedy troupe, Grandma’s Third Leg. I was a member of the troupe for two years, but after Mike had graduated. He had never seen me do stand-up before so when he booked me he was putting his entire reputation on the line. Not really, but I used it to pump myself up before the show.

The crowd at the Pear on Thursday was considerably smaller, but the energy was better. Everyone was killing. People were cracking up at the setups. It was one of the shows were I sit the audience dying to get on stage, worried I’ll get up after the buzz fades. The energy never waned that night. It was top to bottom excellent, the best show in my three months in New York.

Afterwards, all of us in a joyous mood, we drank. One woman, severely intoxicated, passed out in a booth and had to be picked up and carried out onto MacDougal Street by the bouncer, and then literally held up by the bouncer and a waitress while they waited for a taxi. Eventually they called off the taxi and ordered an ambulance. The medics dragged the poor woman in the back and sped off. We watched the whole scene, and then perhaps felt bad for drinking more. But we did, late into the night.

Comedy was good to me this week. Sure I didn’t get paid, but I’m feeling good about this again. Recharged. And of course, I still have the beard. Could be a while longer before that’s gone.

I must say, I look rather imposing with the beard. Violent maybe. I wouldn’t approach me on a desolate, midnight subway. I’d stay away from the grisly, grizzly man.

On Patience.

2010-01-26T11:48:00.002-05:00

This isn’t going to happen overnight. I know that.

It doesn’t change the fact that I want it to happen overnight. I hate waiting for things; if everything went as planned I would wake up famous on Monday, strung out on Tuesday, re-invigorated on Wednesday, revered on Thursday and retired on Friday. What I would do the following week is anybody’s guess.

Getting anywhere in this business is a tedious process. I know there are exceptions. For the thousands of comics grinding it out at open mics and bars for years there are few who explode to the top in months. I’m with the former group. Clearly.

I don’t mind the hard work, I really don’t. And I don’t mind a methodical approach as long as I am certain it’s going somewhere. In other words, I wouldn’t mind slumming at mid-afternoon Monday mics for four years if it meant I’d be on Letterman in the fifth. But sitting in dingy clubs while the sun is still out, buying beer for stage time, telling jokes to the same comics over and over – is really hard to do if you think it won’t lead to something more. It all seems so long, and I’m not a patient person. I’m afraid that if I’m stalled in a year, I’ll compulsively move out of New York City and rewrite my personal history to convince myself I’ve always wanted to be a magician.

I opened a show a few months back. The headliner for the evening was a hilarious woman, clearly on the way up. Before the show, we chatted for a while and she was wonderful. She was gregarious and casually funny, not the forced funny that so many comedians embrace when off stage (see: Quinn, Gregory R.) After watching her set, it was not hard to see why she was making great progress. Over neon-colored fancy drinks, I discussed the set with the booker, who remarked off-hand that it was incredible how far she came so fast.

“To think she is at this level after only ten years,” he said. “Comics would kill to be that good in ten years.”

I nearly vomited in my Margarita. Ten years?! Was I mistaken in believing that this was a considerable amount of time? I was under the impression that ten years from now I would be weighing the financing options on my second yacht. In ten years I will be whispers away from presidential eligibility, which I haven’t ruled out yet. If in 2020 I’m still working bars, please, find me and euthanize me immediately, or failing that, hand me a brochure for pharmacy school.

Apparently, ten years isn’t that long in comedy time. And if it takes me ten years to make it, I’m sure I’ll look back in forty years and remark how fast it all went by. But for now, it seems forever. Please forgive me 30-somethings who may be reading this, but 34 seems so old. I know, I know: I will scoff at the idea when I read this then, but consider that when you and I were 14, we looked at 24 years old like they were hopeless curmudgeons. I know I did. I have this complex where I always feel older then I am and that my best days are perpetually behind me. I remember swimming on Humarock beach as a child. I was hit by a monster wave and once submerged, noticed I could not pull myself from under the water. I distinctly remember thinking – at eight years old – that if I were to die I had lived a full life and it would be my time. I was a weird kid. Eventually my cousin pulled me from the water; leaving my submersion time at…oh I don’t know… 13 seconds.

My sense of urgency may be exaggerated, but I know I don’t want to wait ten years. But I will if I have to. I know I will.

I’ll go twenty, thirty years until I get there. I’ve never committed to anything in my life but for jokes, I’m a lifer.

I just want one moment. I want one undisputable accomplishment that I can look at and say “yeah, I made it.” As long as I get there it’s worth waiting for. It’s worth working for and paying for. Just one.

Because I really don’t want to be a pharmacist.

Amongst 20 Million.

2010-01-23T21:46:00.006-05:00

A comedian was riffing the other night.

Riffing: - verb. 1. Making it up as you go along; improvising, usually inspired by the surroundings, other performers, technical difficulties, etc. 2. What comedians do when they haven’t prepared any material.

He was doing a pretty good job of it. The subject of his riff was the comic before him, a pre-operative, male-to-female transsexual. The riff was relatively good natured; nothing like the usual mean-spirited vitriol that comedians often engage in when referencing other comedians.

(We comics are ruthless assholes – we will viciously ridicule another comic if we think it will get a laugh. Nothing is off limits. Jerry Seinfeld wrote in his New York Times obituary for George Carlin: The honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about.)

I wish I remembered the riff-ers name, so I could give him some credit, but I have forgotten it if I ever knew it. I also don’t remember exactly what he said, suffice to say it rang very true to me. I’ll paraphrase.

It says a lot about New York City when you can hear someone say they’re getting a sex-change and not think it’s strange at all. I was like “yeah, I know three other transsexual comics, what else you got? Oh, so you’re a comedian and you have a brain disease? Join the club!”

I collected a few nuggets of wisdom in this riff. First, it does say a lot about New York City. I came from a relatively small town. Plymouth's population hovers around 55,000 - about half the population of the Brooklyn PathMark on weekends. An abundance of transsexuals is just something you don’t encounter in Plymouth, especially ones comfortable enough to talk about it in a public setting. But in New York City, regular encounters with transsexuals is not only not strange, it’s almost boring. What else you got? Twenty Million people shuffle through the Greater New York Area every day. It takes a significantly odd calamity to stick out in that mass; sexual reassignment surgery isn’t even close. There are people who would bemoan the lack of individualism, of course, but there is a certain comfort in the anonymity. And if that gives conflicted souls the courage to be themselves, them I am all for it.

It’s not like that back home. When I was a child, a homeless man became a local celebrity. I remember him distinctly. He had long red hair and always wore a green flannel jacket. We would spot him at grocery stores and gas stations, endlessly searching the parking lot for cigarette butts with a few puffs of tobacco left in them. All the kids knew him. A homeless man in New York City wouldn’t get recognition unless he fell on the subway tracks.

The other part of the comic’s riff that stayed with me was his last line. Oh, so you’re a comedian and you have a brain disease? Join the club!

First off, I realize he is implying that transsexuals have a brain disease. I think he meant brain disease in a broad way, meaning less like an actual affliction and more like you and I would say “issues.” I don’t think too many transsexuals would argue they didn’t have issues. I mean, isn’t that the whole point? And most importantly, the transsexual comic’s whole style was self-deprecating. Most of his jokes were about the problems he faces with his sexual idenity. So saying brain disease was right in tune with the comic’s act.

And anyway, the point that stuck with me was the response, the Join the Club line. The comic basically said it’s nothing unique to find a conflicted comedian. It’s virtually a prerequisite of stand-up comedy to be someone who has serious issues. Laughter has always been medicinal, and never think otherwise – comedians are telling jokes for themselves first and foremost. It’s the best way we’ve found to deal with our problems. Most of us have been doing this all our lives, making jokes out of anything that scares us, or harms us, or threatens to get in our way. Comedians are lucky enough sometimes to get people to pay to hear their issues, but even then. We’re telling the jokes for us.

So it’s nothing unusual for a transsexual to gravitate toward stand-up comedy. It’s a good fit.

Think you’re a woman living in a man’s body? Having surgery to turn your penis into a vagina? Just another premise to make jokes about.

Texting on the Toilet (and Other Handy Tips.)

2010-01-19T22:43:00.007-05:00

Being a temp is an exercise in manipulation. I should know.

My shift is 9 and ½ hours long, with a preposterous 1 hour break for lunch. Of the remaining 8 and ½ hours, I am tasked with maybe 90 minutes of actual labor. That, my fellow math-majors, leaves a full 7 hours of the clock to chew.

The thing about temp work, is that it’s so temporary. I know! While this seems immediately obvious to all of you, when I got this job I started spending money like my position terminated only upon my death, like a supreme-court justice. Now, I’m kind of broke again, and I can’t afford to lose it.

Temps are hired to fill a short-term need. Diane from HR is having a baby, Walter from accounting is having hip-replacement surgery, Morty from sales is entering a Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation program. Whatever. The point is the temp is only needed until the regular employee can come back. After that, unless you can establish some sort of legitimate worth, it’s out the door you go. So it’s vital to always look busy.

Not an easy task for a temp. Fortunately, I have discovered several shortcuts. And I can think of no better use of this blog then to share my wisdom with you all. Not unlike what Jesus might have done.

Always take the long way. Let’s say you’ve just had a cup of water over by the copy machines. Now you’re only 20 or 30 steps from your desk, but we can make this journey take 40 minutes. First, remember the elevator? That thing is important, better make sure it still works. Go ride it up to the 11th floor. Get out and walk around, feigning confusion. Head back into the elevator, but don’t press for a level. Just stand in there and see what that hell happens. Maybe someone on a floor below will call for it and bring you down, maybe not. Life is a great adventure. Ok, you are back in the copy room. Relax, have some water. Now it's back to your desk to get some work done. Woah, not so fast! Make sure to tie and retie your shoes 11 times. Safety first, Commando!

Walk with intent. Sure, you’re just walking around the office trying to see if you can catch any thong-sightings. But do it like you mean it! People will be less apt to trouble you with actual work if you look like you mean business. Always walk with your upper body forward, never slouched back. Make sure your hands are clenched and your gait rapid. Every so often, stop in a random section of the office and throw your hands up in disgust, resting them ultimately on your hips as you shake your head. People will assume you were up to something important.

Always sit down to go. For ladies this is (usually) a no brainer, but men have a hard time with this. For some reason, it’s considered unmanly to sit while men do number 1, but believe me, men will embrace thier feminine side when they see how much time can be wasted on the toilet. Based on a recent University of Southern California study, a sit-down “go” takes an average of 42.4 seconds longer then a stand-up “go.” (Note: no such study exists.) Assuming you use the bathroom 17 times a day, that’s over 12 minutes of time wasted! Isn’t that worth your whole company thinking you have Irritable Bowel Syndrome? And while you’re sitting…

Text on the Toilet. My personal favorite. We all love to text. I’m constantly texting: I text my friends, my family, my pharmacist. But you don’t want the corporate brass to think you have all this free time on your hands. What better place to hide your texting then in the relatively private confines of the bathroom? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Fuck Reading. Texting is the new newspaper; the new bathroom reader. Get with it. But make sure you put your keys on silent, or people are going to think some weird things are going on in there.

Always act like people are wasting your time. While you’re constantly walking around, people will assume you’re not busy (the nerve!) and ask you to do them a favor. Master this reaction: Take your index finger and your thumb and squeeze the bridge of your nose, clenching your eyes. Look down, and if you can pull it off, grit your teeth. Tell them you’re really swamped, but you’ll get to it as soon as you can. Then go sit near the freight elevator for 45 minutes. When you return, act like it was a real hassle and your afternoon is ruined. Then give them the first-aid kit.

Goodnight.

Don't Gentrify Me.

2010-01-17T19:48:00.006-05:00

It was the middle of the day and I was meeting a friend for lunch. We were going to Park Slope for some sushi. My friend parked her car a block or so down the street, walked over to my place and then frantically called my cell phone. There is a disturbing gentlemen down here she said. Could you kindly come right away? At least I think that’s what she said. It was probably closer to: Get your fucking ass down here now!

Well I got my ass downstairs, toot sweet I might add, and my friend was standing over by the street sign looking perturbed. Before I could get a few steps from my front door, I was approached by an old black man. He clothes were in tatters and the smell of alcohol preceded him. He squared me up.

“And you can get out of here too, you patronizing cracker!”

Then he spit on me.

It was a not a direct hit. It grazed my left shin, and slowly dribbled down my pant leg, terminating on the pavement. I think, in the man’s defense, he was aiming for the ground in front of me. I did what I always do when I am confronted by adversity: I backed down like the spineless coward that I am. I think I actually thanked the man for spitting on me. The man shuffled down the street, sipping his disheveled forty and cursing.

My friend, who is a bit of a firecracker, looked like she was going to chase him and tackle him like a security guard running down a trespassing baseball fan. I asked her if she was all right. She was not spit on, but the man did insinuate that the only reason she was in this neighborhood was to “get some of that black dick.” She doesn’t really like coming to Crown Heights anymore.

This has been the only trouble I’ve gotten myself into in New York, and in reality it wasn’t that bad. But I thought about it a lot. The man was clearly disturbed. Drunk, old, probably homeless. But his animosity had to be coming from somewhere. It doesn’t take a sociologist to see it was coming from my race. He didn’t just spit on me, he spit on me because I am a patronizing cracker. It's clear. I don’t belong in Crown Heights.

I don’t imagine this man goes around spitting on every white man or accosting every white woman; I think it had to do with where I chose to live.

Unlike its bordering neighboroods, Crown Heights hasn’t been gentrified yet. But it soon will be. The gentrify-ers are coming; the real estate agents and brokers have their eyes on it, salivating as they imagine the rent they can levee on trendy hipsters looking for some phony street cred. Then the coffee shops will come in, the clubs and the underground music venues right behind them. And of course the organic supermarket; that will be the crown jewel of the new Crown Heights.

There are many types of gentrification. Often in New York City, an influx of artists is the catalyst. Wikipedia describes this type of gentrification as such:

…an artist colony in the city is transformed from a poor to a rich neighborhood when artists and sub-culture aficionados (e.g. hipsters, hippies, et al.) live in poor neighborhoods of devalued real estate, because of the low rents, central locale in the city proper, and "gritty" cultural “sense of authenticity”, of being true to life. As the bohemian character of the community grows, it appeals "not only to committed participants, but also to sporadic consumers" who eventually economically push out the earlier arrival sub-culture aficionados. Hence gentrification’s economic eviction of hippies from the East Village, Manhattan, New York City, in the 1960’s.

I’ve described this happening to the Village in Manhattan in my post, That’s New York For You. I believe I have mentioned it often. Gentrification is a very hot word in New York City. Virtually everybody deals with it, has strong opinions on it. You hear the discussions in subways and bars and office rooms. Because gentrification is a rapidly moving socio-economic phenomena, there are people who remember the neighborhoods the way they used to be. And I can’t imagine they like it. Often the neighborhoods the artists congregate in are ethnic enclaves, and the arrival of the typically white, suburban middle class taints the character, perverts the heritage. And, of course, raises the price of living. The natives move on to another neighborhood, waiting for it to happen all over again.

Crown Heights has remained relatively untouched. But then again, I came here. Perhaps I’m an indication. My roommates and I are the only white people on our street, maybe for many streets. And we look like hipsters. Our scraggly beards, our argyle sweaters, our fridge full of ironic malt liquor.

And maybe that old man who spit on me has seen this before.

He knows the signs and he wants us out. It is patronizing for us to assume that it’s OK to live here.

But I’m not an apologist. I may be a pussy, but I like to think I hold people accountable (at least from the relative distance of the internet.) No matter what we may symbolize to this delusional old man, what he did to me and especially to my friend was abhorrent, and it makes me lose my empathy for him. The anger is noble; the way it so often manifests itself is shameful.

I try to keep my wits about me when I walk alone. But I would be lying if I said I’ve ever felt unsafe on my street. The neighbors are all friendly, they all keep to themselves. They say hello when we pass. It’s unfair to make a judgment on Crown Heights based on the actions of one drunk. But it’s hard to ignore.

The trendsetters are coming to Brooklyn. That's for certain. Who they may ultimately displace is unknown.

In my Grandmother's Basement.

2010-01-14T23:40:00.004-05:00

The nipples are lonely. I can see that.

They are attached to no other decipherable body part. They do not appear to be mounted to breasts. They float waywardly on vicious strokes of brown, orange and yellow as if they have been thrown into an angry ocean. Each one is without a counterpart; they are cyclopic nipples. The one to the left, by the door, may be attached to a torso. In the corner of the frame there appears to be a bellybutton. But I can't be sure.

I do not understand contemporary art. Each of the paintings at the Tangine is of a single nipple, over a backdrop of merging colors. I'm sure there is some theme at work here, some demonstration of considerable talent. But to me, they're just nipples.

The Tangine is an Indian restaurant on Ninth Avenue, mere steps from the Port Authority Bus Terminal and a place that sells slices of pizza for 99 cents. It is here, in their decrepit basement, amateur comedy is thrown forth. The walk to the Tangine is jarring. It's only a few blocks from Times Square, certainly the most garish section of New York; a neon testament to excess. Once you leave the permeating glow and head west however, the streets turn dank and gritty, the light dissipating. This is the section of Manhattan known as Hell's Kitchen. Across the street from the Port Authority two lines form, one for admittance to a soup kitchen and another for a homeless shelter. The vagabonds cluster, protecting themselves from the cold. Hell's Kitchen isn't as bad as it once was (according to Wikipedia) and like many other parts of the city it is being rapidly gentrified. But walking down these streets, you would never guess it. The juxtaposition between Hell's Kitchen and mid-town is astounding. It's crazy to think that here, while hundreds wait for a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee, thousands are a few blocks away, paying $11 for a beer.

The first time I went to the Tangine was over a month ago and I was certain I was in the wrong room. It wasn't your typical comedy haunt. The Tangine is tiny, and adorned in a way that befits an Indian restaurant. In addition to the aforementioned nipple art, there are low-hanging lamps which do a pitiful job of illuminating the room. Most of the chairs are couches or ottomans, all red and orange, all ornate. There is a tiny bar up front. It’s just the type of bar I have come to hate, filled only with decorative bottles of liquor and drinks that glow. Here, it’s impossible to get a Miller High Life or Coors Light, but there is a wide selection of exotic, foreign beers which will undoubtedly taste awful and require financial aid. Tending bar was a trendy and sheik looking woman with a sign above her that read: Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution. I can only assume they mean stop bitching about the prices.

Round the corner of the bar are the stairs and the passageway to the Your Grandparent’s Basement open mic. The title is apropos; the room is quite literally a poorly furnished basement. Several old leather couches scatter about. Crude Christmas decorations -shabby lights and plastic streamers- hang on the walls. The microphone is at the front of the room, yards away from the crowd. I’ve done this mic twice and although I enjoyed it both times, I didn’t do so great at either of them.

The host is an amicable chap, goes by the name of Calvin. Calvin was good enough to refer me to his temp agency, which has since set me up with the only steady work I’ve had in months. Just another juicy tidbit for Gregory Quinn Trivia Purists. The first time I did Calvin’s show, the comics were heckled by a stray cat who managed to get stuck in the walls of the Tangine basement. It howled the whole night, and just about every comedian made reference to it, though none of us did anything to help the poor feline. We just riffed on it, as its screams and meows filled the silence of our failed jokes.

Last week at the Basement was more of the same. I started off strong but finished with a dud, which of course is not the proper way to structure your set, but they way I always do it anyway. I try to rectify it. If one joke kills at the beginning of a set on a regular basis, I’ll move it to the end and try it as a closer. But the second I do this, the joke ceases to be funny. It must have something to do with my delivery. Perhaps I am fuller of zeal at the beginning of my set, and it compensates for weaker material. All things to work on my friends.

I helped myself to 99-cent pizza after I left the Tangine. Hard to resist such a deal. The joint was hopping, clearly much of the clientele were the same patrons of the soup kitchens and shelters, their one slice of cheese pizza the reward for an entire day’s haul of cans.

On Looking Back.

2010-01-10T12:16:00.012-05:00

This article is only tangentially related to stand-up comedy, so you’ll have to indulge me. My good friend, Stephen MacDonald, drunkenly remarked on Friday night that blogs are by nature self-indulgent and their authors typically ego-maniacs. But mine, he said, managed to avoid that. Then he vomited into a grocery bag and left it in the living room. Anyway, what I’m trying to explain is that the following blog is very self-indulgent. I’m sorry, Steve.

One year ago today a chapter of my life came to an end. On January 10, 2009, I rode the Bolt Bus from Penn Station in Manhattan to South Station in Boston. I hopped a ride to Plymouth, and my mother picked me up at the “Totem Poll” rest stop off Exit 5 on Route 3. That was it. When I pulled home, it was twilight, and it was snowing. I went to bed only a few short hours later. The next morning I began looking for a job; a few weeks later I was employed and thoroughly immersed in a routine. It was all over.

I spent almost the entire period from September 6, 2007 until early 2009 scattered around the country. I lived in and traveled through 41 different states. I spent at least a week in five different time zones. I slept in state parks, high school gyms, college dormitories, homeless shelters, motel rooms, hotel rooms, Denny’s Parking Lots, Catholic Churches, Methodist Churches, Presbyterian Churches, cargo vans, youth hostels, Hawaiian beaches, and one drunken night on a park bench. During this 16-month stretch I spent no more then a handful of weeks at home. It was great.

I never meant for it to stop. Sure, this lifestyle was persistently infuriating. I never had any money, all my relationships were fleeting at best, and I never had an idea what I would be doing further than a month in the future. But still. For all my bitching (and I bitched a lot) I knew while it was happening I would one day look upon this era as the happiest in my life. And I was right; even a year later, I look back to it with hopeless nostalgia.

But a year ago today, I willingly ended it.

Money wasn’t the reason I stopped, by the way. I mean, I was broke, but money – or specifically the lack of it – never stops a drug addict from getting their fix, or a compulsive gambler from placing their bet, and I was every bit addicted to the road as they to their vices. I would have found a way. And it wasn’t homesickness. Hey, I love my family-Love Them. But I have an excellent family. Tops. The whole time we never ceased to stay in touch, never didn’t call on birthdays, never didn’t know what was happening in each other’s lives. They visited me. They sent me cookies, drove thousands of miles to take care of me when I fell alarmingly ill, flew out to Colorado and took me and my friends to dinner. And of course, they sent me unfathomable amounts of money. I never felt that homesick because there was no need to; I was close to my family.

No, there were only two reasons: I wanted to be with Lauren and I wanted to be a comedian. Now, I have to make it very clear: I don’t resent either of those for coming home. Not a bit. I’m sure it’s no revelation, (nothing I say is, but whatever) but the best parts of our lives often look that way from a comfortable distance. As great as it was, I couldn’t do it again. It was the perfect time for me because it was the only time. I was eager, idealistic, and had a robust ability to function after a night of excess drinking. (A skill which, it seems, has completely abandoned me.) If I didn’t go on the trip I would have regretted it forever and if I hadn’t stopped when I did, I would regret it all the same.

I wanted to be near Lauren. I wanted the relationship to be tangible. My mother, or my father, or my brother, or my step-father - these were all relationships that prospered in the abstract, they were easily sustained via phone calls, and postcards, and emails. But my relationship with Lauren required we be near. It needed more. For those 16 months, I did just about everything I could possibly do to ensure she never spoke to me again, (or sliced off my genitals) but she never wavered. She’s a better person then I ever deserved, that’s always been pretty obvious. I fractured our relationship, and it needed to be repaired. That just wasn’t going to happen from a payphone in Louisiana.

And I came home so I could move to New York, if that makes sense. The traveling bug, the endlessly itchy feet, is an obsession that started in college. My senior year I traveled to New Orleans on an alternative spring break and I was hooked. It was an incredible week of my life and I knew I had to have more and more of it. But stand-up comedy, and performing in general, is a dream I’ve harbored since I was a small child. Whatever psychological demons may push me to perform have been in me since as long as I can remember. Abandoning them, which I would have if I continued traveling, was something I couldn’t allow myself to do. I didn’t want to betray my 8-year-old self, who had every intention of being famous.

As I got older, and the skills I didn’t have became apparent, I would modify my career itinerary accordingly. It became clear I couldn’t sing; rock star was out. I couldn’t dunk a basketball; athlete was out. I got to college and realized I couldn’t act; movie star was out. But -as it always is- failure was a constant boon to my sense of comedy, and I never stopped thinking I wasn’t funny enough. Stand-up comedy is the only shot I have, which is for the best, because I love it. It’s clearly me. And the proprietors of it, the helpless neurotics and wise-ass instigators, are my perfect match. Whatever level of success I reach, if I’m working open mics till I die or I’m hosting SNL, I know this is what I want to be doing.

So I had to give up traveling. I would never get the experience and practice on the road that I could get in Boston or New York. Traveling is too much of a commitment to focus on anything else. I needed to dedicate myself to comedy. Ultimately that meant living in my mother’s basement and being a working stiff, but that was OK.

A year later I find myself living in Brooklyn. I’m domesticated here. I have a 9 – 5 now, I pay my rent, I make myself dinner. But after that is done, I’m out there, going for it. I’m in the clubs with derelicts and dreamers and dick jokers - my people. My friend Dillon moved to New York recently and he told me that living in this city was a dream come true. He said one day we’ll look back and realize this is the coolest thing we've ever done. I don’t know, maybe he’s right. Check back with me in a year.

Oh, Good Blog-fellows.

2010-01-07T23:16:00.009-05:00

I really don't belong here. I just can't stand it.

I'm not talking about New York City specifically, more the North East in general. And I mean Northeast in broad terms. I don't want to live anywhere north of Atlanta and west of Illinois. Disqualify the Midwest as well. The Wild West? Maybe South Texas. No way, no how the following: Texas north of San Antonio, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana,Utah, North and South Dakota, Minnesota (holy shit, especially Minnesota) and Wisconsin. The Pacific Northwest? Never been there, but I'm going to be cautionary here and cross it off. How about the South, you ask? Deep South I'll consider. I'm talkin' real deep, though. Arkansas and Kentucky, forget about it. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana? Sometimes, although I'm only goin' as far north as Jackson, and I would need a big-ass coat to consider that. So what do we have left? By my estimation, this leaves the Southwest and Florida as the only hospitable areas in the lower 48.

I really, really hate the cold. Now is not a good time in the U.S. for me and my brethren. Take a look at the national map on Weather.com. Winter is marching inexorably south. Nipples are hardening all over Dixie. Today, Birmingham, Alabama was colder then Boston, Ma. Get your aerosol cans out; global warming is taking forever.

New York, for its part, has been glacial. The wind howls through the skyscrapers in Midtown, Manhattan. Luck would have it that I started my first real New York City job this week, an employment that requires me to walk to the subway at 7am. At this time, the cold is downright insufferable; the jarring, needling air pierces through my pitiful mittens and useless toboggan. Areas of my body that I had no idea could feel cold are freezing. I actually thought to myself that I really should invent knee warmers. I’m considering wearing a retainer to keep my teeth warm.

My new job is not without its perks. Besides the obvious financial compensation (and I am being handsomely compensated, toodle ooh) I get to work inside, where it is gloriously heated. Not all people have the same luxury at work and for this I am grateful

One man for whom work brings no relief from the cold is a dude who works on the corner of Varick and Canal. He is the AM New York Newspaper distributor and we have become regular acquaintances. Absolutely no one wants this tabloid. It’s free, but the pedestrians avoid him like the guy outside baseball stadiums handing out bibles. But yours truly has always been something of a philanthropist, so I gladly take my free copy of the rag. And the hander-outer - as they prefer to be called - has noticed this, and has started to give me 4 or 5 extra copies of this paper, on the house. I take them, we exchange pleasantries, and then I walk around the block and discard all of them in the garbage. And every day it goes like this. He gets rid of his papers, and I feel good about myself for doing a good deed. It’s a win-win.

Sometimes, however, the AM New York is quite good. Today’s headline was about California Chihuahua refugees, fleeing to New York to escape a "death sentence." Apparently, they are executing Chihuahuas left and right in California. The picture on the front was the Taco Bell Chihuahua wearing an “I ‘heart’ New York” t-shirt and in boldface next to him, the phrase, “Yo Quiero New York.” Now even with my minimal grasp of the Spanish language, I can tell that foul play is amiss. His shirt is proclaiming he loves New York, but the boldface maintains he only likes it. So either the Chihuahua has a commitment problem or he is being misquoted. (Damn Liberal Media!) Always something to discuss in AM New York.

The other day, I made the terminal mistake of walking to an open mic after work. Despite my detestation for the cold, I hate spending 2.25 for a subway ride more. Of course, because I’m an idiot and lack the ability to count upward, I got myself hopelessly lost. By the time I got to club, I had left frozen body parts scattered all over the East Village. I thought I might not be able to go on stage considering I had discharged with my tongue and burned my hair for warmth. But I persevered and went on. We comedians are a strong bunch.

Well, good blog-fellows, it is time for bed. But I only hope I can sleep, for the radiator, over which I have no control, is working at full steam and my room is unpleasantly hot. My how I hate the heat. It’s so hot that…

Alas, Satellite.

2010-01-04T22:21:00.006-05:00

Earlier today, I returned to the Root Hill Café for their monthly open mic.

This mic routinely features musicians and poets, so I felt compelled to try something a little different and do some storytelling. Storytelling is actually a common pastime in the south, and there are annual conventions at places all over Dixie. I went to one such convention a few years ago in Whitesburg, KY, and enjoyed it enough to try my hand at storytelling intermittently since then. I read this story at an open mic in Hyannis, MA, although the version below is significantly different. The Root Hill Mic only allots 6 minutes, so I had to cut the original story down about 1700 words. I thought it might be fun to share the story with you all.

This story is about a man’s tepid relationship with his first car. The title is in homage to Pat Frank’s post-apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon. (Homage is just a word you use when you don’t want to say “ripped off from.”)

This story is semi-autobiographical. I have fictionalized several parts of the story, as well as changed names and locations. The car though… the car is 100% real. And Mom, I repeat: a lot of it is made up; don’t get upset over the references to underage drinking. Everyone who knows me remembers I didn’t drink in high school. I waited until college to start my illegal drinking.

Alas, Satellite. By Gregory Quinn.

The knee-high grass lacerated our bare calves as we made our way across the precarious dunes. We were going the long way. Too many sections of Amber Beach were full of too many bathers; there weren’t a lot of good places for a couple of 16-year-olds to have a drink.

Just across the sand was a lingering salt-water marsh interspersed with dilapidated, useless docks. After this, it was a short walk down Franklin Ave to the Point, an eternally eroding cliff at the tip of Amber Beach. 50 feet below in the crashing tides, fallen rocks congregated with harbor seals and pot smokers and underage drinkers.

It was the summer of 2001.

I had finished up a morning shift at the local General Store. My friend Kessler met me as I counted the draw. He had a devilish grin on his face; an impish, half-smile indicating he was about to make me do something devious. He led me to out to the trunk of his car and revealed his bounty - a fresh six pack of Natural Ice.

When we finally reached Franklin Ave we turned left and headed for the point, and there on the front lawn of an ancient, wind-weary beach house was my future first car. A 1974 Plymouth Satellite, 500 bucks.

It was four-door and faded brown. The passenger side was facing the street, the molding on the driver’s side was missing, and on the fender there was a large hole surrounded by what could have been decade-out rust. In resembled - in what could be described more tactfully but never more honestly - a giant turd. I fell in love with it instantly.

Kessler, who had abandoned any pretenses of hiding his drinking, took a sip of his warming Natty Ice and said: “that car… is fucking sweet.”

Looking at it then, I thought of my dad - a real kind of car guy. We could spend weekends working on it together. Fix the Landau roof and replace the molding. It would need a new paint job. Blue, for sure. Red, my dad would say, will only attract the cops.

Two weeks later the Satellite was mine. Kessler and I took it for illicit test drives around Amber Beach, thinking we were so cool. Everyone else’s first car was generic; faceless. Their ’88 Camry’s and their ’92 Civics were interchangeable amongst the masses. But not mine - mine was distinct, like a first car should be. 1974 – 2001: 27 years. In our own twisted logic, Kessler and I maintained, “Over 25, it’s a classic, over 30, an antique.” My 1974 Plymouth Satellite. Classic.

Things didn’t go as I planned. I started driving it to school and discovered that my fellow classmates didn’t share in my first-car romanticism. To them, the Satellite was only distinct because it was a laughable piece of garbage. I was constantly ridiculed. I never had the skin to handle it. I started to long for the days my mom stayed home so I could take her 1986 Volvo Station Wagon to school. I remember my senior year. The senior superlatives were coming up, and amongst the categories was worst-car. I became ill with the thought of winning the “award.” The idea of having to walk down the bleachers in front of my howling classmates made me want to faint. I made plans to go Marlon Brando on the event and have a Native American woman accept my award. In the end, I underestimated my class’ sense or irony; they gave the prize to Erik Fulmar and his pristine Mustang. He was an ass hole.

One afternoon that same senior year, I discovered the Satellite covered in a barrage of egg shells and sticky yellow yoke. I was mortified, not because of the damage done, but because I was clearly going to have show someone of authority the car. The Vice Principal took a look, and he immediately assumed it was a random act. Someone just saw this ridiculous car and thought: wouldn’t it be clever to egg it. Nonetheless, my mother insisted I file a police report. Now, I would have rather let bygones be bygones then do that, but my mother won out.

The police officer arrived and got me started on a pile of paperwork while he accepted all my mother’s offers of coffee and bagels. As much as I dreaded this whole ordeal, I did enjoy feeling notorious. After being as absurd as possible, (Suspect allegedly infiltrated school property and vandalized said automobile is a I sentence I actually used) I handed in my report and to my horror the officer said he would need to have a look at my car.

My first thought was to steal his gun, shoot the officer and my mother, than make my escape to Mexico (In my mother’s Volvo, naturally.) Instead, I showed the officer the way to the car.

“I fail to see the damage.” The office said.

“If you look here, you can see where the egg yoke stained the paint.” I said as I tried to point over a softball-sized hole to a stain that was barely noticeable.

“Well…I can’t file a damage report if we can’t discern which damage was caused by the incident, and which was preexisting. It looks to me, that most of these blemishes were caused by other factors. Honestly, the car’s not valuable enough to make any effort to find the assailant. Understand?”

I understood.

“It’s valuable to us,” my mother said. She was only trying to help, but it merely riled me more. The officer apologized and exited, and to no one’s surprise, nothing ever came of it again. I had fantasies of sleuthing around and seeking retribution, but I never did a thing. I just hated the car.

My dad, though, he loved that car. In didn’t occur to me when I was younger, but my initial attraction to the Satellite, (and my overemphasis on the importance of first cars) had nothing to do with me loving it, but my own desire to please my father, who really did love old cars. All the things I hastily assumed I loved about the Satellite, were actually what my father loved about it.

And boy, did the Old Man love the Satellite.

I would spend the entire day trying to convince myself the car didn’t exist, only to hear my father rave about its limitless potential. The problem was it never reached this supposed potential. Every dime earned went to fixing shit I didn’t care about. The money saved for the paint job? New radiator. The money for the stereo? New fuel injection system. The money for the roof? New tires. Always those goddamn tires! New front tires, new spear tires…new snow tires! New tires are a grim symbol of adult reality.

That my father’s endless hope for the Satellite was met with apathy by his son was a serious blow to our relationship. My father was justifiably annoyed with the lack of gratitude I showed for all the hard work he did. I wanted to spend the time with him, but not if it meant working on the car. In that case, I would prefer to be alone.

Plans to fix up the car were halted as my family’s finances deteriorated. Money was put into cars only if absolutely necessary. At this point it was all my father and I could do to keep the Satellite from exploding. For the last 12 months of the car’s life, I used two feet to drive: my left foot would ride the break as I gave it gas on stops; otherwise it stalled, leaving me at the mercy of anxious commuters.

When I went to college I left the Satellite at home. The car lived out its days rust-collecting in the driveway before we had it junked. It was an ignominious exit. I went out with friends for the night and when I returned it was gone. Maybe I was relieved. Maybe regretful, after all, the Satellite did have potential. I don’t really remember how I felt, but to this day I’m certain of one thing. My dad was heartbroken.

I don’t have a car now. I live in New York City - I don’t even have a Metrocard. But I got wheels back home, left – once again – to die in my mother’s driveway. That car, a 1996 Geo Prism, has taken me around the country and back a few times. I suppose it was junk too, but I loved it. I got it a few years back for nothing. My grandmother had passed away, and I was bequeathed the Geo.

It was very much an old-lady-who-only-drove-it-for-church-and-groceries type of car. When I got it, it had 50,000 miles despite being a decade old. Everything about it was odd. There is no name on the trunk of the car, no Geo Prism in writing, no Geo symbol. There was nothing at all; as if even the car is embarrassed to admit what it is. We made a good match.

The color was unfortunate. Light Blue like the sky, only gayer. The rear of the car was emblazed with a giant pink breast cancer magnet that my grandmother left there. The trunk looked like a banner at a women’s rights parade. Driving the car during this period was a virtual admission of having a vagina. But I didn’t have the heart to rip the ribbon off – who would? Eventually, it rotted away.

Driving cross-country, I thought endlessly about how lame a road trip car the Geo was. I wanted to be in a classic car, goddamnit. Then I would recall the opportunity I was missing.

On the road one night I gave Kessler a call.

“I wish I could be there with you, man.” Kessler said.

“It would be nice to have some company.” I said

“You know what would be really sweet though? If you made this trip in the Satellite.”

I had thought that myself many times. I spent a few sleepless nights in the Geo, thinking of the space I would have if I were in the Satellite. I could have danced in that thing.

“Oh well,” Kessler says. “It’s too bad.

Yeah, it’s too bad

That's New York For You.

2009-12-31T14:31:00.005-05:00

I don’t pick up on things. I have what you might thoughtfully call a slow mind.

Whenever a pretentious individual comes to me and begins asking me a riddle, something that inevitably begins “you have 30 cents but one of them is not blah blah blah,” I immediately ask them to stop, because I know I will never figure it out.

Often times I will go out to breakfast and discover to my horror one of those infuriating “golf tees on a wooden triangle” games staring me in the face, just waiting for me to embarrass myself. You know the game. It’s the one where you have to hop over the other golf tees to eliminate them until there is one golf tee left, or you can no longer hop a tee. The chart in the corner indicates your relative intelligence based on how many tees you left behind. The usual scale is 1 equals True Genius, 2 -3 is Pretty Darn Smart There, Cowboy, and 4 and up reminds you to have mommy cut the sausage. I usually strand between 11 and 17 golf tees. Like I said, I ain’t the sharpest cookie at the candy story. Or however that saying goes.

All of this is just an extremely longwinded way of telling you that it took me 4 weeks of attending The See You Next Tuesday open mic to get the joke. I didn’t even know I was supposed to be looking for one. It seemed like a perfectly fine name for an open mic. In case you haven’t figured it out yet (bless you) the joke is in the name. See You Next Tuesday. Take the first letter of each word and form an acronym. Now imagine you’re texting, and replace the “See You” with “C U” and wallah! Hilarity ensues.

How absurd I must have looked telling my comedy friends that I would see them next Tuesday and being sincere.

At any rate, I always do see them next week because this mic is awesome. Everything about it is agreeable, right down to the location. The club is on the corner of MacDougal and Bleeker St, on the west side of Lower Manhattan. This is Greenwich Village, called simply by the locals, the Village. Apparently the Village was a thriving artist community before high cost of living essentially exiled the artists to Soho or Tribeca and eventually to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The neighborhood is still lovely though, the back streets skinny and lined with bars, coffee shops and theatres. Merchants set up shop along the side of the road, selling books and records and thousands and thousands of back-issue Playboys.

The mic is in the basement of the Comedy Corner. It is somehow routinely packed and, in vast contrast to other Manhattan mics, full of rowdy, attentive comics. The hostess, I’ll call her AC, is a lively woman, and can often be found smuggling bottles of beer into the club via her purse. She clearly revels in hosting, and is a pro; mastering the balance of being funny and friendly, but also getting people off stage when their time is up. Always appreciated. AC has a tradition where she presents a topic of the day and challenges the comedians to riff on it. The comic with the best riff gets their $5 mic fee back. I took part in this contest once. The topic was "first crush," and I detailed my childhood obsession with The Little Mermaid. Not the titular mermaid herself, mind you, but the obese, sea-witch antagonist Ursula. I liked ‘em freaky from a young age apparently. I did not win the contest.

The lineup of comedians at See You Next Tuesday consists of a group of regulars and the occasional oddball walk in. On one particular night, I shared the stage with both a pre-op and a post-op transsexual. Now that’s New York for you.

A few weeks back a comic got on stage with a unique shtick. He was flamboyant, decked out in a preposterous fur coat and pink boa, looking how I imagine Jesse “The Body” Ventura looks at church. He went on and claimed that he was simply modeling for his acting class, and needed pictures of himself telling jokes for an “assignment.” His assistant was sitting front row, silently taking pictures. (This was the Teller to his Penn) After three minutes of striking various poses, often with props, he vowed to tell an actual joke to close out his set. He spent the last two minutes constantly getting around to his joke, stalling, until he was given the light and got off stage without ever getting to the punch line. And it was all kind of hilarious.

I also had the pleasure of meeting the Bad Slava at the Comedy Corner. Anyone who has ever told a minute of comedy in New York City knows about the Bad Slava, as they most certainly use his website on a daily basis. Badslava.com is a site that lists all the open mics in the city. Indeed I used the website to discover the See You Next Tuesday mic. I had no idea, but the Slava is an actual person and a comedian himself. We’ve chatted after a few of the shows. Slava is - by far - the most famous person I have rubbed elbows with since becoming a comedian.

All things considered an excellent mic. Well I suppose I should be on my way now, it’s New Year’s Eve after all and I still haven’t figured out which trains to take to meet my friends in Manhattan. This, clearly, could take a while.

Pay Your Dues.

2009-12-29T11:11:00.008-05:00

People mean well. They do. I think that’s an underrated virtue in the long list of virtuous things people do. For the most part, people like when other people are happy and will act accordingly. The people who don’t - the people in the minority? Fuck ‘em.

So it is this virtue that I have to remind myself of on a nearly daily basis. It has become some what of a personal mantra to me.

You See, my career-choice invokes curious reactions from people. It eventually boils down to three groups.

Primarily, there’s the group of people that constantly shoot me comedic advice. I would venture that 50 – 60 % of my conversations now start with the words “so I thought of a great idea for a joke…”

This well-meaning individual will then rattle off a personal anecdote or observation that they think would be killer material for a bit. I respond to each person in the exact same way: I nod accordingly and smile intermittently so as to appear to be listening intently (I do this like a pro) and then give a light guffaw at what I assume to be the punch line. I then give each one the confirmation that, yes indeed, that might make a good joke and then promise to see what I can do, like I’m trying to get someone invited to a party.

Stand –up comedy, for all its worth, is a low-discipline art form. It appears very “doable” to the average onlooker, and it a lot of ways, it is. Look at a beautiful piano concerto. Anyone watching a performance or listening to a record can tell that an immense amount of work went into the creation. It’s clear that not just anyone can do it. The same goes for a painting, or a sculpture or a dramatic performance. There is an obvious craft on display. But stand-up comedy doesn’t have that gravitas. For every George Carlin or Chris Rock, comics whose mastery is so apparent it dares you not to call it art, there is a Gallagher, a comic who became a millionaire smashing fruit.

(For what it’s worth, I believe that comedy has the ability to be art every bit as important as Beethoven or Michelangelo. It’s just that it can so easily not be art that people get confused. It’s the artist not the art-form. Hell, I could blow into a tuba every day of my life but I promise you, art ain’t coming out the other end of it.)

I hope all of this doesn’t sound like I don’t appreciate people trying to help me out. I really, really do. I think it’s wonderful that people think enough about me to share their humor. And, it must be noted, that on at least one occasion this helped me write a joke that I actually have used. But so often the joke I am bequeathed is so ridiculous or so downright offensive, that it boggles my mind to discover these people are sincere. Sometimes afterward I have to just shake my head in disbelief. People mean well. People mean well. People mean well.

If they aren’t giving me material, then perhaps they belong in the second group. I call this group the joke archeologists because they like to dig through my life and point out which experiences could be ripe for material.

Almost every time I complain about anything, group two responds by shrugging their shoulders and telling me: “at least you got some good material out of it.” And that’s an interesting way to look at comedy, and life in general. Every terrible event I have to endure can be mined for comedy gold. With this logic, I can’t tell if I should be pissed I’ve lived a generally blessed life. But comedy is great because it doesn’t have to be true. You may have to pay your dues to sing the blues but you really don’t have to pay your dues to tell jokes. You really don’t have to do anything but make people laugh. Such is a benefit of a quasi-art: since people don’t take it so seriously, the stakes aren’t as high. This relaxed atmosphere could encourage people to take more risks, which in turn could lead to truly artistic material. It’s actually kinda cool.

If they aren’t giving me material or helping me find my own, then they might be group three: people who want me to prove my merit. Comedy is one of the only professions where a practioner can tell a stranger what they do and then immediately be asked to prove it. The response usually is “Oh you’re a comic? Say something funny.” These people are maddening; they are the minority who doesn’t mean well. I usually get very upset at their audacity, until I realize I do this all time. Every time I meet a dentist or a doctor, I immediately ask for a mini-checkup, or use the occasion as the perfect time for someone to take a look at this bothersome rash. Everybody’s gotta pay their dues sometimes, I suppose.

Merry Christmas, Ra Ga Ga.

2009-12-25T21:31:00.004-05:00

On Monday I attended the Christmas Party at the Broadway Comedy Club. Well, attended may not be the right word; crashed would be more appropriate. I was not invited.

It was no matter. This was not a terribly formal affair. I arrived on time, because I am an idiot. There was a buffet line, although the only thing I could actually eat was some awful pasta salad that probably had chunks of meat in it anyway.

After only a few minutes there I was verbally chastising myself for not getting drunk before coming to the party. Mental lapses of this magnitude are simply not acceptable. Not only could I get drunk on the cheap, but I'd have the courage to converse with the crowd. I could buy drinks there of course, but I only had 20 dollars, and 20 dollars wouldn’t get a squirrel drunk in Manhattan.

I resigned myself to paying eight dollars per drink. I figured I’d get something stiff, a Vodka tonic or a shot of whisky, something to make the two drinks worth it. The barkeep, a young man with arms covered in pseudo-tribal tattoos, informed me there was only beer and wine available, but not too worry because cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon were only a dollar each. Merry Christmas.

Hearing this news, I felt a wave of joy and relief wash over me that I’m sure is similar to what Sir Edmund Hillary felt when he reached the summit at Everest. I wanted to scream out to the bar-dwellers, like Kramer: “It’s a Festivus MIRACLE!” I asked the bartender if I could get more then one at a time, and the conversation went, almost verbatim:

Bartender: “Yeah sure man, get 10, 11 whatever.”

Me: “But I only have two hands…[index finger to mouth, head-down in deep contemplation] Better give me six.”

And so the night got better and better. I quickly sat down at a corner table and began speed drinking, anticipating my metamorphosis. The club was playing a loop of the same old Christmas songs that probably played at Jesus’ prom. But inexplicably, every fourth or fifth Christmas song was followed by Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and this pattern continued all night. Silent Night and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, were followed by Bad Romance, and then back to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. As puzzling as this trend was, it was a great way to keep track of how drunk I was becoming, as this could be gauged by how happy I was to hear Bad Romance come back on. My affinity for Gaga escalated slowly from “What the hell is this song playing for?” to “Hell yeah! This is my jam!” as the empty PBR’s stacked up.

Once I felt the warm buzz I got up and started to mingle with the crowd. Even with the drinks I didn’t have the courage to just walk up to people alone, so I followed close behind my friend Angela and forced her to introduce me to everyone she talked to. This led to some awkward moments as I shuffled my cans from hand to hand in order to shake with people who couldn’t care less about meeting me. I decided I needed to be drunker. As I headed back to the bar, Bad Romance came back on, and I remarked to myself that it wasn’t really that bad…

I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything, as long as its free

I loaded up with three more PBR’s and headed back to the crowd, which was now filling up the club. I reconnected with Angela and we talked with Mike, a comic from Long Island. The three of us talked for over an hour, ostensibly about stand-up comedy but increasingly about the fact that the beer was so cheap. Mike had been a comedian for a couple of years, and was a genuinely nice guy. He introduced me to several guys around the party who booked and ran shows, wonderful connections, but I was getting to drunk to retain any of the information. The PBR’s were accumulating, the night beginning to blur, the Bad Romance, as always…

Ra Ra, Uh Uh Uh, Rum-a Rum-a-a, Ga Ga, Oh La La

Now the bartender was a short older lady and I was disappointed; I enjoyed the first bartender’s escalating bewilderment at my behavior. I grabbed a few more blue-ribbon-winning dollar beers from her and headed back to the floor, stumbling over the buffet table on the way. I talked with a belly-dancer, a woman at least 6 inches taller then me. I asked if her she was some kind of stand-up comedian, belly-dancing hybrid. I vaguely recall asking her if every time she practiced her belly-dancing, snakes appeared from random baskets and started doing the hula, which may or may not have been a racist question. This conversation, as drunken conversations tend to do, didn’t end in any conventional sense, it just kind of melted into conclusion, probably because one of us had to take a leak

I had three dollars left and I used two of them for my final two drinks and one to tip the short old bartender lady. I drank one waiting in line for the bathroom and most of the last beer while in the bathroom, because I am a that classy. I finished and staggered around, my mind pulsating and my eyes dancing. A man sing-speaking in bass was detailing the many reasons the Grinch was an a-hole. I walked around inserting myself, uninvited, in as many conversations as I could. Then I started dancing, I believe.

By miracle alone, I made it back to my apartment. I nestled snug in my bed, and head-spinning dreamed of sugar plums, humming that venerable Christmas Classic:

I want your horror, I want your design, ‘Cause you’re a criminal, As long as your mine.

On Subways.

2009-12-21T13:36:00.004-05:00

About 3 times a week, my ride on the subway is interrupted by a speech, sounding more or less like this:

Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. I hate to bother you but I am in a very bad place right now. I’m homeless, living on the streets, and I need your help .I’m a veteran of the gulf war. The government benefits are coming too slow. Any change or food would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Then they walk around the train, holding out a basket, or bucket, or an inverted ball cap. Nearly everyone patently ignores this person. Their conversations come to a halt; their pale faces belying deep embarrassment. I am not above ignoring. I bury my face in a book or just stare at the floor, barely moving.

I had no idea these were a regular occurrence on New York City Subways; it never happened in all years I rode the T in Boston. The first few times it happened I was deeply disturbed. On the street, beggars can be averted or sidestepped or otherwise easily ignored in the expanse of shuffling feet and wailing ambulance sirens.

But on the subway you are forced to make a decision, and that decision is usually: “no, I will not be giving you any money.” You rationalize the same way everyone always does: they’re going to just use it on booze and drugs, or they're not really a veteran. And you're probably right. But that doesn’t stop the guilt, at least not for me. On a dense and dirty subway car, with no easy exit, the guilt percolates, like a slowly baking turkey.

The suitably ragged, usually toothless individual will be lucky to get one person to unload a few rogue nickels and dimes into their filthy Yankees hat. They are never rude, never intrusive beyond their initial speech. Just defeated. They shuffle past the denizens of apathetic commuters and out at the next stop, their identities never considered.

The homeless aren’t the only group who employ this tactic. Of more consternation is the starving artist, typically a musician, who will step on the train and give a similar spiel, but then proceed to play some maddening solo on a violin, or flute, or no-shit, a trumpet. These people have all the shame of begging but inspire none of the empathy. They haven’t earned it, or perhaps more importantly, they do not appear to have earned it. They are annoying, and their gall is appalling. There is no reason why they can’t set up legitimate shop at a corner of any subway station, and eek out their existence like any decent street performer. These people are not desperate, not defeated, just self-important. They have egos large enough to believe that people want to be forced to hear a trumpet solo on their way home from work, where they otherwise might be reading, conversing, or sleeping. They do the walk of shame after their performance as well, going to each person with some-sort of money-grubbing receptacle in hand. I wouldn’t give this person spare change if I were hemorrhaging coins from every orifice on my body.

You would think as somewhat of a poor artist myself (the artist part is certainly debatable) I would identify. But I don’t. Art is a mutual experience. It is equal parts sender and receiver. If the receiver is held hostage by the sender, forced to receive, the dichotomy is clearly perverted. I wouldn’t assume that random strangers want to hear jokes about my sex-life on the subway. I think the same goes for violin solos, no matter how beautiful.

A few days ago I was riding the subway late at night. The door opened, and a man with no legs pulled himself through with his arms. His torn, mud-soaked jeans followed limp behind him. He pushed the bottom half of a milk carton in front of him. The man didn’t say a word; he just pulled himself down the car. The subway was silent as people tried desperately not look. No one had any idea how to react but most put change in the carton. Any sort of justification not too would be wrong. Anything a man with no legs would like to spend his money on seemed just fine with us.

I had no money. I just stood their silently as he made his way passed my feet, his face looking more weathered then his pants.

A subway is a place where strangers sit within inches of each other but never engage one another, as any attempt would make you seem strange, or more likely, dangerous. Despite this, a group of people skip right over the formalities and go straight to begging for money, something I’m uncomfortable doing to my mother. How desperate they must be; how sad it all is.

In Brooklyn.

2009-12-19T14:59:00.002-05:00

Three straight nights of Brooklyn Mics turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.

On Wednesday I tried out an open mic at the Bellville Lounge in Park Slope, which Gregory Quinn trivia buffs will recall is the same neighborhood where I did my first New York City show at the Root Hill Café.

The Belleville Lounge was a small place - maybe the size of a middle-school classroom. It was barely lit, the only light coming from the tea candles on the tables, and a few, sparse gas lamps hanging on the corners. The dearth of light muted the paint on the walls; different hues of brown, beige and black melted into each other, making the whole place look like the inside of a cappuccino.

This mic wasn’t exclusively comedy, and it was nice to hear something other then the usual parade of dick jokes. (Of which I am certainly guilty.) The musicians were surprisingly excellent, a nice variety of singer-songwriter sincerity and country-rock banality. My set went very well. The audience was receptive and polite, and I seemed to grow on them as my time went on. A number of them came up to me afterward to offer a good word. For the first time in New York, I failed to stay the entire show. But approaching midnight, with a 45-minute walk still to go, I decided to bundle up and brave the frigid night air.

On Thursday I was in Williamsburg, at the Taco Tacu on N. 6th Street. The comedy took place in the basement, in another dimly-lit haven. The walls were lined in crème-orange padding, and the seats were similar-colored ottomans or faux leather couches. It was as if Macdonald’s designed a line of mental hospitals. The comedy was scheduled from 8 until 10pm, with a karaoke party to follow. The closer it got to 10, the more people in the audience who were confused and slightly annoyed to find comedy in the basement. A party stage left was celebrating a young ladies birthday, and more partygoers arrived as the show went on. By the time I took the mic around 9:40, the birthday party had swelled almost 30 deep. They were a raucous bunch. They were dolled up and greasy, awash in make-up and hair-gel or some other amalgam of creams and lotions, looking exactly like the pampered inhabitants of reality shows they were clearly (or instinctively) trying to emulate.

They heckled the shit out of me.

But it wasn’t awful. I proclaimed immediately that I was from Boston, and I insinuated in so many words that their beloved Yankee shortstop has an alarming affinity for fellatio. They did not like this one bit. They screamed and hollered and insinuated with just one word that I myself may be a homosexual. Being called gay by drunken people doesn’t really rattle me -- I went to high school. They eventually calmed down, and carried on with their remarkably clichéd existence.

Friday night was easily the best of the bunch. This time I was at the Williamsburg Art Room. Located in Bushwick. The WAR is not an easy place to find. It’s on the corner of Ingraham and Morgan, a section lined with small abandoned warehouses and desolate, horror-movie-ready alleys. The WAR gives no indication to its presence, and when I found myself at 35 Ingraham, staring at a black garage door and not a window in sight, I was certain I had written down the wrong address. But after a few frantic phone calls, I was reassured this was the correct address.

There indeed was a bar at 35 Ingraham. It was a wide open room that looked like someone cleared out their two-car garage and threw in some lawn chairs. The wall to the front was white and unadorned, and would be used after the comedy show to project giant clips of Michael Jackson news bulletins.

Before the show, I waited out by the front door for my friend Lisa because I feared she would never the find the place if I didn’t. Lisa is engaged to be married to my best friend since childhood, and he will be moving to New York City soon. More and more people I like and care about are living in the city, and it’s making it feel more and more like home. I offered to buy Lisa a drink, but not surprisingly the WAR didn’t take debit and I had no cash. She bought her own. I suck at these types of things.

The show was uniformly excellent, the first show I’ve seen in New York that rivaled the best I’d been a part of in Boston. The show was produced by Brooklyn Underground Comedy and hosted by comic Jackie Cheng, who was delightful. She asked me if I wouldn’t mind going first, and even though I really did, I said I didn’t. I did around ten minutes and my jokes went over well. Afterward I sat back down next to Lisa and we debated how wise it would be to eat from the bucket of bar pretzels, especially considering neither bathroom had a sink. Eventually out hunger got the best of us.

After the show, we rode the L train back into Manhattan with a couple of the other comics headed in similar directions. Lisa and I parted at Union Square and I rode to Franklin Ave with Rae, another comedian, and she made pleasant company.

Today, a blizzard is hitting Brooklyn, and I won’t be doing any comedy. I may however, get drunk and walk around Prospect Park in the snow. A nice end to a good week.

GQ's Top Ten Tips for Bringer Success!

2009-12-16T12:33:00.005-05:00

All comics hate bringers.

I know…more fancy comedian lingo. A bringer is a show that requires the performer to bring a certain amount of paid guests in order to get time at the mic. It’s not unusual for this to be some exorbitant amount of people, like 10. The guests then have to pay a ten dollar cover and buy at least two drinks, which are usually around 12 – 13 dollars. Not a drinker? That’s OK, you can get an 8-dollar Coke anytime.

This rant has been ranted thousands of times by thousands of comics, so it’s not much use for me to continue. Instead, I’m going to offer some solutions to the problem. Not how to avoid doing bringer shows- that is all but impossible – but how to maximize your bringing potential and make bringers a breeze. So here it is, GQ’s (me, not the magazine - happens all the time) Top Ten Tips for Bringer Success!

10. Do all favors solely based on whether you can ask that person to a bringer. See that little old lady trying to cross the road? I got news for you, she ain’t coming to a comedy show anytime soon. Let the boy scouts handle it. But, wait, what’s this?! This young lady needs someone to escort her home safely at 2am? “Well that depends…what are you doing Friday night?”

9. Get James Cameron to front your bringer show 500 million dollars, then do your set in IMAX 3D. If possible, have sex with Kate Winslet in an antique car.

8. Craigslist personals, Casual Encounters Section. Not just for pictures of your genitals anymore! Be sure to use steamy language: "I'm 24, and I loved to be watched. It’s my fantasy to have a group of people pay to see me perform. I love when people laugh at me during the whole thing. I’ll also be holding something closely resembling a phallus.” Throwin' in a picture of your genitals at the end couldn't hurt.

7. Fake terminal illness and advertise your bringer show by constantly reminding your friends that “this is it.” (Note: this one only works once)

6. The classic misdirection. Remember when you worked at Dunkin Donuts, and you put a sticker that said “Feed the Homeless” over your tip jar? (You’re a bastard, by the way.) Why not do the same for your bringers? Personally, I dress up like Mr. Mistoffelees from CATS. Now if they thought an actual performance of CATS was going on, well I can’t be blamed for their assumptions, can I?

5. Go all Roman Catholic on them, reformation style! Promise forgiveness of sins and automatic admittance into heaven in exchange for a ticket. And the two-drink minimum, of course. You know as well as I do, some idiots will fall for that.

4. Just make it a Facebook event, and everyone who said they might go, really means they will definitely be there!! (Note: this has never worked ever.)

3. “Listen Uncle Steve, if you’re not coming to COMIX on Saturday, you’re not getting the Kidney. End of story.”

2. Three weeks before your show, publish a book where you admit to years of drug abuse and mullet-wig wearing. Or be chased out of your home at 2am by a nine-iron wielding, vindictive wife. Or impregnate a governor's daughter. Or…

1. Theme nights! Why let Major League Baseball have all the fun?! Some that have worked for me: Free Gregory Quinn bobblehead to first 25 guests. Get both breasts signed for the price of one! And my favorite, first ten guests receive cordial invite to next bringer show!

And there you have it. With these ten simple tips, you’ll be an expert bringer in no time! Now get out there, and make those club owners some money!

Sincerely,
Gregory Quinn

Breaking in, Part Two: On the Road.

2009-12-15T12:17:00.002-05:00

The road from Brooklyn, NY to Plymouth, MA is a little over 250 miles, and I have come to know it well. This road, lined with office buildings and gas stations and transient glimpses of Long Island Sound, has become my sort-of Walden.

Scenically challenged though it may be, I have grown fond of this road. It either signals excitement and trepidation (on the way to New York) or calmness and relief (on the road back home.) In the 6 weeks since I moved, I have made this trip five times, always to perform a show back home in New England.

The first trip to New York was early on Sunday morning, the day after Halloween. I don’t remember what was going through my head. On one hand, I was only going to be gone a few days, as I had a show in Rhode Island a few days later (See: On Sucking) but I also knew that part of me had changed forever. Though I had lived all over the country for two years after college, I had spent the last 8 months living at home in Plymouth and I think I knew then that I would never go back. Not permanently at least. I may rue the day I said this: but I felt (feel) my days living at home with my mother - were over.

It takes a dozen directions to make it from my house in Plymouth to the highway, and double that off the highway to my apartment in Brooklyn, but in Connecticut there is one. Get on I95 South and go 110 miles. This leaves me ample opportunity to indulge in daydreaming and contemplation. Usually I go over the show that I am returning from. Sometimes I go back triumphant, racing to New York City and ready to show them what I can do. After a bad show however, I go back apprehensive, slowly making my way through Connecticut passing town after town I would rather live in then foreboding, fearsome New York.

I make sure to stop at a rest area just west of Clinton, Connecticut, even if I have no reason to. Because I am obsessively nostalgic, I stop at the same one every time, and each time I feel I’m recapturing my youth. It’s one of those all-purpose rest stops, ubitqitous on freeways all over the country. I manage to somehow park in the same spot every time, and when I enter I throw a quick head nod to whoever is working the little convenience store, as if they would ever recognize me. The bathrooms are expansive, with several low-hanging urinals lining the back wall. Since there are no partitions between each one, even one other man in the bathroom means I am forced into the stall to take a leak. I just can’t handle the pressure.

With my coffee in hand, I will usually sit in the food court and watch people go by, wondering about them. Connecticut isn’t the Wild West, so a good many of them probably stop here on their daily commute, merely miles from home. But I wonder about some. At this point, a lot more lies ahead going south then it does in the opposite direction. Perhaps some people are making their escape, migrating to warmer climates. No one talks to anyone, too enamored with their Big Macs or too scared of murderous drifters out scoping their next mark.

After leaving Clinton, I’m about two hours from Brooklyn. At this point, the first bit of New York stations appear on the airwaves, rescuing me from the drivel that is Mid-Connecticut radio. New York’s shadows looms thicker and thicker as I continue west. The stickers on the cars gradually change from Red Sox to Yankees and it is clear Western Conn. is more New York then New England. And even though each time - each mile farther from home - I’m a little scared, as soon as the impressive Manhattan skyline appears over the Whitestone Bridge, I realize I’m heading in exactly the right direction.

That’s Pretty Much What I Do.

2009-12-14T16:28:00.003-05:00

A minimal comedy weekend was in order after the disaster that was Friday’s midnight show. For the first time since moving to New York City, I worked some jobs for pay. Over the weekend I started my new career as a food demonstrator at a Stop and Shop in the ominously named Brooklyn neighborhood of Gravesend.

For those intrigued, a food demonstrator sets up at supermarkets and hands out samples of whichever product they have been hired to push. On my first day, I was doling out free samples of Starbucks Ice Cream. Have you ever visited a Dairy Queen or a TCBY, and a thoughtful employee offered you a sample of ice cream to help you decide? Now imagine if that thoughtful employee’s only job was handing out those samples. That’s pretty much what I do.

As pathetic as it all sounds, (and is, really) I did manage to run into some interesting characters. One particular man, with a forceful, perhaps Russian accent (if I were inclined to guess), came within inches of my face, and looked me dead in the eye.

“I need you listen to me very carefully,” he says. “I need you tell me where the female products are. Do you know what I mean when I say female products?”

A couple of old acquaintances happened to bump into each other right in front of my table. They were elated to see one another, and despite showing no interest in a free spoonful of Starbucks Java Chip Frappachino ice cream, proceeded to stay right in front of my table, where they carried on a conversation for over an hour! I’m serious; I timed it. It did not take long for the conversation to switch from niceties to a full rundown of each parent’s recent medical troubles. Apparently, the woman’s father was having a considerable amount of problems with his colon.

“My father…my father, the doctor’s noticed a lot of blood in his stool.” The woman informed.

“Huh?” the man asked.

“My father, it’s his rectum.” She makes an exaggerated hand gesture toward her rectum, to clarify.

“Huh?”

“IT’S HIS RECTUM! HE’S BLEEDING FROM HIS RECTUM!”

This conversation went on for so long, with such a majority of it focusing on bleeding from one’s rectum that I swore I was on some Candid Camera. I thought any minute I would flip out and tell the couple to take their anal hemorrhaging tales elsewhere, and then they would burst out laughing and a guy with a camera and a host would walk out. They eventually parted, leaving me with buckets of Caramel Macchiato to hand to the masses. The whole job seemed so pathetic. But considering I was paid to do this job, and I’ve made zero dollars doing comedy in New York, it’s fair to say I’m a far more successful food demonstrator then stand-up comedian.

But I really needed a comedy free couple of days anyway, even if it meant constantly explaining to the elderly that Starbucks makes an ice cream now. Friday’s show, while not anywhere near my worst show, was among my most disappointing. I am reluctant to get into to many details. It’s hard, performing – working – not only for free, but so often at the expense of my dignity, and the burden of my friends. You would think in return for so much free labor, comics would be thrown a bone every now and then, but it just seems to make us more vulnerable for exploitation.

I wasn’t aware of it going in, but there was a booker at the show on Friday, an industry man. It was a tough room to be critiqued in; 2:30 in the morning, 7 people in the audience. I talked to the man afterward. He said he liked me and said I was far along for someone so new. He said I seemed like a smart kid, maybe I shouldn’t write so many sex jokes. I do have a lot of those.

Comedy Central Contest Winner.

2009-12-11T13:01:00.009-05:00

On Wednesday I performed at the New York Comedy Club.

A layperson could be forgiven for thinking that a New York City comedy club called the New York Comedy Club would be a prestigious venue. One might reasonably assume that this would be the premier comedy club in Manhattan, the only one worthy of bearing the name of the greatest stand-up comedy city in the world.

But it only takes a few seconds inside to realize it should be called Uncle Dick’s Comedy Brothel. It resembles a rejected set for the next Saw movie. The brick façade behind the microphone is the fakest looking I’ve ever seen.

The comedy legends chosen to be immortalized on the walls of the New York Comedy Club are an interesting selection. The front wall features portraits of a young Andrew Dice Clay and Rodney Dangerfield, striking his familiar pose. Not that weird really, until you put them together with the paintings in back: a giant Ace Ventura (from the cover of When Nature Calls no less!) and Eddie Murphy, not in his prime Eddie Murphy Raw jumpsuit, but as Dr. Doolittle, the veterinarian who could talk to animals. Put this all together: Dr. Doolittle, Ace Ventura, the Dice Man and Dangerfield, and you get such an odd mix that I am convinced I’m missing some hilarious connection between the four.

But despite all this, I really like performing here. The ramshackle, loose atmosphere usually translates to the crowd, and the club’s many oddities provide perfect fodder for new comics.

Two of my biggest fans, Risa D and Kelsey M, met me at the show and without complaining, shelled out over 60 dollars in one night to see me perform. In my modest estimation, that translates to about 12 dollars per joke. Not a cheap night out. I’m not sure how much longer I can in good conscience keep asking my friends to drop that kind of change to see me do the same 7-minute routine. I feel myself inexorably marching towards barking for fans in Times Square...

But Risa D and Kelsey M were, as all my friends have been, real troopers. They even managed to make the woman sitting next to them stay a little longer to catch my set. The host of the show was the daughter of legendary comic Jackie Mason, who you might all know as the voice of Hyman Krustofski, Krusty the Klown’s father on several episodes of The Simpsons (Thanks, Wikipedia!) The host came up to me before my set and asked if I have any credits. This is fancy comedian lingo meaning things I would like the host to wow the crowd with before calling me on stage: “This next guy can be seen on MTV..." When I told her I didn’t have any credits, she said she would make them up. She then introduced me as the winner of a Comedy Central Stand-up Contest. Clearly not true, but it’s going on my resume from now on.

My set went pretty well. The Derek Jeter joke continues to kill, while my blood-donating joke, which was crushing when I first started to use it, has bombed on consecutive shows. Halfway through my set, I yelled at two women carrying on a full conversation. Dealing with hecklers is so easy; just calling them out usually gets a laugh. The women were embarrassed and afterward one of them came to the back to give me a hug.

The waitress gave the patrons blue tickets, signaling they’ve closed out their tab. This is a way to keep people from sneaking out without paying, and Risa D quickly pocketed the two tickets, proclaiming that next time she would not be paying. On the walk to the subway, a giant red balloon whirled across the street and right into our arms. Kelsey M played with it delightfully before smacking it high into the frigid Manhattan air and onto 23rd street, probably causing a car accident.

On Technique.

2009-12-09T12:45:00.004-05:00

I’ve started taking showers specifically to write new material. Jokes come so fluidly in there. It seems that my naked body is my muse. But it has to be in the shower. I tried just standing around my room naked but it was to no avail. No good material came out of it.

But in the confines of our world-map themed shower curtain, blistering water spitting all over me, I am an ancient comedy seer. Some of my best material has been written in here while my unmentionables go unscrubbed.

Usually my roommates have left for the day, off pursuing some sort of gainful employment (idiots.) Before entering, I stand naked in front of the mirror, envisioning a svelte version of myself by wrapping my towel several inches above my waste to hide my expanding stomach. I can’t make my pectoral muscles jiggle independently, but I use this moment to pretend that I can.

ANYWAY, once prepared I enter the shower and let the water rip. I surge through the cleaning process as quickly as possible, sometimes using the body wash and shampoo interchangeably. I don’t even bother below the knees. Please. Once this is taken care of I turn my back to the water and just stand, usually 30 to 35 minutes, while I await comedic inspiration. Once I have it, I fist-pump to myself and sometimes high-five Turkmenistan.

Grabbing one of the shower bottles as an impromptu microphone, I begin riffing on my new material. Recently I got into a bit about a substitute-teacher boot camp, in response to New York State’s ludicrous assertion that substitute teachers go through a training program. Come On! How much training does one need to force children to watch Miracle on 34th Street while he checks his Facebook?

In the rare instance that comedy gold eludes me, I resort to drastic measures to conjure up the funny. Often I engage in a little amateur alchemy, combining conditioner, shampoo, and soap into a mega-cream and then I massage it on my temples or drink it. Watch out it doesn’t get in your eyes though. Ouch!

Following three of four hours of vomiting, I’ll make a last ditch effort and pour myself a tub. I don’t slack on the ambience. I grab red-wax candles, the bubbles, and a bottle of Duboeuf Saint Amour Domaine du Paradis (I Googled “romantic wines” and this came up. Truthfully, it would be ginger ale.) Have you ever wondered where I got the joke about watching porn on a cell phone? Bingo.

So there’s my comedy writing technique. I’m not saying it works for everyone but if you find yourself dealing with a bout of writer’s block, feel free to give it a try. But the part about drinking the shampoo-soap-conditioner mix? Don’t do that - that was a joke. It might actually be poisonous.

On Sucking.

2009-12-08T16:18:00.001-05:00

I drove back to New England on Wednesday after only three nights in Brooklyn, to open for a hypnotist at the Comedy Connection in Providence. The night was an almost unqualified disaster, my first truly epic bomb. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve failed to make people laugh many times before. I once worked a lonely tavern where the only couple in attendance spent my entire set reading the back of their KENO slip. Usually these events are very easy to let slide.

But my slot at the Providence Connection, a 15-minute paid gig at a considerable club, was the first time I ever really ate it at an important show. The place wasn’t packed, but at around fifty people, wasn’t desolate either. I’ve worked bigger rooms with smaller crowds before. I was so bad, half way through my set, a waitress came and handed me a note, informing me to bring up another comic when I finished rather then going right to the hypnotist. Apparently they wanted to salvage the show before the headliner came on.

Nothing, and I really mean this, nothing makes me angrier then a comic who blames the audience for their shitty performance on stage. It’s one thing to finish your set, shrug your shoulders and say: “tough crowd.” It’s a completely different thing to act as if your failure to make them laugh was the crowd’s fault, as if they did it out of spite. Any crowd can be won over. Some may be harder then others, they may indeed be a “tough crowd,” but it’s up to the performer to find a way to engage them. No one comes to a comedy show not wanting to laugh.

I am prone to this thinking too, and I made all sorts of observations to make myself feel better. I told myself the crowd was only their for the dance party that was taking place after the hypnotist, that they were waiting for their tardy friends and were distracted when they showed, that they weren’t looking at the stage. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I could have got to them if I had approached them differently. Usually when I encounter a crowd that’s hostile, or distracted, I use crowd work to reel them in, figuring if they’re not going to leave me alone, I might as well take it to them. I did a bar in Revere, MA once with a crowd of middle-age drunks who wouldn’t let any comic get a word in. One sad, drunken lady at the bar actually walked on stage and tried to grab my crotch before I got her to sit down. I spent the rest of my set making fun of every last wannabe cougar and balding, fat guy at the bar, and they loved it. I came away unscathed and had them all buying me drinks after.

But I didn’t take it to them at the Connection. I had fallen way too in love with my material. When the crowd talked to each other instead of listening to me, I carried right on with my routine instead of calling them out and riffing with it. I thought my jokes were good enough, and I must have seemed sad: carrying on with jokes about vegetarians and sex toys, oblivious to a crowd that had long stopped caring.

The comic who came on after me, Brian, who is excellent and a pro, riffed with the crowd and actually got a good reaction. They hypnotist had a rough night as well. We consoled each other afterward.

On the long, tedious ride back to New York through Connecticut, I had a sickly feeling of panic. It’s much easier to abandon reality and follow your dreams when you think you’re good at it. But if you think you suck, then all of the sudden all your goals seem as impossible as they actually are, and the anxiety lays down on you like a wet Snuggie. Luckily, I wouldn’t feel this way long…

Breaking In: Part One

2009-12-07T15:56:00.000-05:00

I will try to cover now the first few weeks.

I knew that moving to New York City meant virtually abandoning the progress I made in Boston and starting over at the bottom. I just never thought the bottom would be like this.

The first show I did in Manhattan was 5:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. The Big Time. My friend Scoots accompanied me to the show because we both didn’t know any better. The price for 5 minutes of stage time was 5 dollars and a beer. The practice of charging comics to perform at open mics is unheard of in Boston, but ubiquitous in New York. I suppose five dollars isn’t that bad. But the beer, the beer is where they get ya.

A single can of Pabst Blue Ribbon will put the fledgling comic out a cool 6 dollars. The same beer sold for a buck-fifty from 2 till 5 on weekdays in Boston, costs about the same as two gallons of milk in NY. I remarked to the bartender that for four dollars more I could get 30 of these, but he was unimpressed.

A 50 year-old corn-rowed white man emerged from the bathroom and offered Scoots and I his still wet hand, pulling each of us in for a one-armed male embrace. He must have smelled the new on us because he soon began a diatribe about the dangers a comic will face should they decide to move to Los Angeles without first making the proper connections. Such as himself, of course.

As the only non-comic in the house, Scoots was the only one we deemed, “a real person,” and the comics acted like he was booking for Letterman. A laugh from Scoots was akin to an applause break. This was Scoots first time at an open mic and he was thoroughly bemused, chuckling or cracking an awkward smile at the mere mention of the word “penis” and hooting whenever a comic inquired from the crowd: “Where all my pot smokers at?” I went seventh, to a crowd of about six people, one of which was literally asleep, sprawled across several chairs like he was waiting for a subway train that long since stopped running. I got almost no reaction, but Scoots seemed to like me. He loved my closer. A dick joke.

Scoots and I stayed the entire show (which, I would soon learn, is something of a miracle at an open mic.) Mostly I just counted the remaining comics in the crowd, trying to judge how much longer I had. I’d grimace each time a new person wandered in an hour late to do their five minutes and leave immediately. I would not like to go into the details of the jokes, suffice to say there were not one, but two canine-rape jokes. Which, even being a cat person, I find a little distasteful.

The mic was over by 8pm, odd as I’m used to shows not even starting until sometime after that. The night still young, Scoots and I went to a bar on the Lower East Side. I left after one beer, going down at least three different subway stations before finding one actually heading in a direction I needed.

First Night: At the Root Hill Café.

2009-12-06T21:06:00.002-05:00

I suppose this was inevitable.

I moved to New York City - Brooklyn to be exact - just over a month ago. I loaded everything I owned into my road-weary 1996 Geo Prism (not the first time I’ve done this) and headed for interstate 95.

It’s funny how much you think you own until you spread it all out. My new room resembled a well-stocked prison cell - like one they might give you if you do all the guard’s personal accounting – underscored by a single window with bars over it. On my wall, only the same Rolling Stones’ poster I’ve had since high school. This was it; the Geo was empty.

My first New York City comedy experience was an open mic in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called Park Slope. On the corner of 4th avenue and Carroll St, was the Root Hill Café, scarcely populated on a Monday evening. It’s one of those places that goes out of its way to be quirky, rather than just stumbling upon it. Instead of seats, the Root Hill prefers thick wooden planks jutting from the wall, so at first glance it would appear they were floating in the air. I couldn’t help but think how impractical it was, as any rearranging that might be needed for large groups would require several power tools and at least a dozen unionized workers.

I told about seven minutes worth of jokes, to a waning crowd consisting of comics yet to perform and a stalwart comedy host. The man who followed me did magic tricks, including turning a one dollar bill into a hundred and pulling the world’s largest magic wand out of a brown paper bag. The host gave me her business card and wrote: “Welcome to New York!” on the back. I considered myself welcomed.

After my set, I tried to buy a bottle of water, but my debit card was rebuked because my Dasani did not cover the 10-dollar minimum. After contemplating buying a few slices of carrot cake, I returned the water and drank out of the sink in the bathroom

Thus was my first night in New York.