Here You Have It.

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

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.

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):

1. Cell phone porn joke:  Dick Joke.  (About choking yourself while touching your dick.)
2. Derek Jeter joke: Dick Joke. (About how thoughtful Derek Jeter is while sucking a dick.)
3. Blood Donation Joke:  Dick joke (About how you can’t give blood if you’re a guy and you like dick.)
4. Sex Toy Joke: Dick Joke. (About how girls give other girls a personal fake dick.)
5. 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.

1. 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!”)

2. 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.

3.  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.

4. 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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.