Wishin' Well

Hey there 'Redheads... Happy National Chili Day to one and all. For those of you who get to this installment on the 23rd, Happy National Violent Indigestion Day. Let's keep the well wishes a comin'...thanks to all of you who took the time to take a look around the premises that I put in the last installment. I got alot of positive and constructive feedback. The consensus favorite was the dictionary joke. Now, writing this tripe is one thing. Making it work on stage is quite another. I gave my first stab at the new material at Wiseacre's the other night, in front of an audience that was only slightly plural. My delivery was jittery and I was too unfamiliar with the verbage to confidently sell it right. All things in time. If you'd like to see me blindly wave a stick at the comedy pinata, I'll be at Ned Devine's on Friday night and the Laughing Lizard on Saturday. May the sweet sweet candy of laughter rain down.
I'd also like to wish a bon voyage to Rory Scovel, who's making the move to NYC and will, no doubt, find immediate work in show business...as Owen Wilson's stunt double. As a last hurrah, the DC comedy community descended upon Kokopolis in Adams Morgan last Friday for all manner of libation, conversation, and congratulation. I was very ready for the first of those after spending nearly 45 minutes trying to find parking in the frozen downtown tundra. Kokopolis is a pretty mellow little hangout, complete with comfy couches, pool tables, and plenty of suds on tap. I got roped into a tag-team billiard match up with fellow Jewish comic, Leo Goodman to take on Andy Haynes and Jeff Maurer. You'd think with two Jews, we'd be familiar with the color of money, but we displayed the hand/eye coordination of Joe Cocker in the throes of a grand mal seizure. Blind luck and coincidental collision are what sunk most of our shots. Speaking of shots, many of those were sunk down many a comic's gullet...it was a drunk drunk night. After the party broke up, I joined Jon and Amy Mumma for a trip to Jumbo Slice to soak up some of the evening's liquid cheer. I can't account for the taste, but Jon and I ripped through our respective slices like Takeru Kobayashi trying to defend his shit-on-a-shingle title. Make sure to look for Rory on an upcoming episode of Comedy Central's Live At Gotham. Meanwhile, I'll be doing the robot in front of the Best Buy security camera...look for that too.

And now, the news... Our top story tonight, Anna Nicole Smith is still dead. Here's something that's more than a little disturbing...did you know they still haven't buried James Brown? He died on Christmas Day. That would be roughly two months ago. They had to expedite the hearings for custody of Anna Nicole because of her rapid decomposition and she died last week. James Brown has got to be funky, but this is ridiculous.
Here's one last item that caught my eye...

WASHINGTON (Feb. 21) - Drugs prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder will include guides to alert patients and parents of the risks of mental and heart problems, including sudden death.

Now, I'm not a doctor but, it's my understanding that when a possible side effect of a drug is death, IT CEASES TO BE MEDICATION. Slap a Mr. Yuck sticker on it and keep it away from the children. Are these the lengths we'll go to in order to ignore the lure of shiny objects? "Geez doc, Johnny seems to have gone limp." "Yes, but he slumped over on his geometry homework." The article continues...

The alerts also cover psychiatric problems, such as hearing voices, unfounded suspicions and manic behavior, of which there is a slightly increased risk in patients who take the drugs, the FDA said.

Hearing voices. Unfounded suspicions. That's exactly what we need in kids that lose focus easily. Y'know, given my druthers, I think I'd rather be distracted by SHIT I CAN SEE. And nothing quite like a paranoid delusion to keep junior in his room with his nose to the grindstone. If you're not careful, this'll end up being his next book report...

Only two weeks left for you to get your tickets for the first ever local stand-up showcase at the DC Improv Comedy Lounge. Jon Mumma, Danny Rouhier, and your favorite amiable zany in an intimate setting. Doesn't get much hotter. March 11th. Click here. Be there.

To be continued...

Whatcha think?

Hey there 'Redheads... I was kicking around some new joke ideas and rewriting some shelved ones, and I wanted to get your feedback. Comments are welcome. I'm hoping that two of these have a fighting chance to pad the act. If one or two sound familiar, it's because they were culled from previous blog installments. Enjoy...

Feminine hygiene commercials are disgusting. I always cringe when I see the one with the lady who earnestly looks at the screen and says, "An amazing breakthrough. Daytime relief for yeast infections." I just can’t get past that word...yeast. If men suffered from that, it’d have a much less clinical name. Like, "An amazing breakthrough. Daytime relief for bread sticks".

I saw a billboard the other day that was advertising asphalt. It said, "Smooth and quiet." That advertising executive probably spent his budget on hookers and whiskey. I’m pretty sure the asphalt people have the road surfacing market cornered. There’s not a contractor out there that passes that billboard that says, "I need to change my entire schematic. I was going to pave my road with peanut brittle and broken dreams."

I love gas stations that put up inspirational messages on their sign posts:
- If you’re going through hell, keep going...because on the other side is China.
- If you seek vengeance, dig two graves...that is sound advice, because when I get revenge, it usually involves cutting someone in at least two pieces.

This morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed...the inside.

I went to a toy store in NYC. They had a bulk Lego section...buckets of pieces in every shape size and color for any size Lego project. Building a three-story replica of Tara Reid, but you don’t have enough purple for the crotch? I bought a couple buckets worth and distributed them to the homeless.

We’re getting lazy as a society. Even our information is lazy. I found this in the dictionary the other day:

inconspicuous adj - not conspicuous

Hey Webster, if I'm looking up inconspicuous, chances are I'm not stuck on what "in" means. Get off your stack of phonebooks and define shit. I blame the internet. Back when I went to school, if you wanted to find out more about a word or subject, you went to the library and found books related to that subject. Now, you go online...and find porn related to that subject.

I met the girl of my dreams last night. She had beautiful blue eyes, purple hair, and she was seventy feet tall. Then I woke up.

A recent study showed that LSD can prevent relapses of alcoholism. Nothing quite like treating dependence on an addictive chemical with another addictive chemical, "Thanks to heroin, I switched to decaf." That’s like treating a headache with a swift kick in the nuts.

A mixed bag of broken glass, cubic zirconia, and quartz pebbles...feel around in there and help me find a diamond. You are the wind beneath my wings.

To be continued...

Cold Hearted

Hey there 'Redheads... I hope you all enjoyed you Valentine's Day or, as we single people referred to it, Wednesday. I figure, by not having a significant other, I saved myself a little red wagon of cash. Cash which can now be spread among all of my insignificant others (you're welcome).
So, what the hell has happened in the week since the last installment? Well, we lost trainwreck pseudo-celebrity, Anna Nicole Smith. Nice to see she finally found a diet she can stick to. Don't get me wrong, it's a tragedy to see a life cut short, but I'm not sure that it's a national tragedy deserving of the coverage it's getting. The 24-hour news channels and entertainment magazine shows are wringing this tabloid chamois until the last drop of stupid juice is extracted. Just because she bore a passing resemblance to Marilyn Monroe she's being treated like American royalty. Her royal lineage is a touch spotty though, since it'll take a round robin tournament on Maury to figure out the paternity of her 5-month old daughter.


Moving on to a more lively subject, a big thanks goes out to Jodi, Vinnie, and the rest of the great people at the Saratoga Comedy Club for a fun, if frigid, weekend. I had a pretty cool experience the whole way around on this trip. I got an email from the headliner, Nick Cobb, asking if he could grab a ride with me up to the club. He was without a vehicle and he offered to pay for my gas in exchange for transport. This would save both of us some dough, this was a 3+ hour drive from the point where I was picking him up, and I had never met the guy. I said a prayer that he wasn't a douchebag and agreed to give him a ride. Turns out I should've prayed for a ton more, because he turned out to be a brother from another mother. We clicked immediately...BFF.

Whadda ya mean who's on first?

While we were kicking around Saratoga Springs, NY, we drove past a small demonstration against the war in Iraq. Maybe a half-dozen people carrying signs, trying to sway the opinions of the passers-by with their sharpie rhetoric. Most of the signs were simple and straightforward with three word phrases like OUT OF IRAQ and FOLLOW THE MONEY. The kind of message that you can wrap your mind around in the split second you see them as you drive by. Then there was one that read: ISN'T WAR STUPID? Way to take a definitive stand. Did a fifth grader make your sign? All that's missing is a second sign that says CHECK THIS BOX FOR "YES" OR THIS BOX FOR "NO". Or just go with the statement that sign implies: WAR HAS COOTIES. At least when I drive by I'll know you stood for something. I'm not sure if that last mini-rant made any sense or was worth the time to cover...what I'm saying is that guy's sign is like Anna Nicole Smith...and the circle is complete. Hakuna Matata.

The highlight of the trip home was the stop in Philly to see my nephew, Mo. Brace yourselves, these pictures may exceed the recommended daily dosage of cute...

Such a cutie patootie. Mo's adorable too.

For those 'Redheads who've been itching to see my act at a local venue, rather than hear me talk about it here, there's a very cool show coming up that should be just the ointment. On Sunday March 11th, I'll be a part of the first local comedy showcase at the brand spankin' new DC Improv Comedy Lounge. Your favorite amiable zany and two of the funniest guys in DC, Danny Rouhier and Jon Mumma, will be doing 30 minutes apiece. Click here to purchase tickets to the cherry-poppin' of this great new room. I'll be pimping this show more as it draws closer, but get your tix now before it sells out. Don't say I didn't warn you.

To be continued...

Chattering

Greetings from slightly below zero, 'Redheads... These past couple days have been downright frigid. The kind of cold that makes you want to kick Al Gore in his inconvenient truths. Ass-numbingly cold. So cold that I'm afraid to fall asleep, lest I wake up 1000 years in the future. Ok, you get it.
Howabout that SuperBowl, huh? Eight turnovers between the two teams. Four in the first quarter. Allow me to pull a line out of the blog archives (if you haven't read it, it's new to you) and say I've seen fewer balls thrown away at a dog neutering facility. And it was a sloppy bowl too. How would you like to be one of the poor shmucks who dropped a couple grand on a hi-def TV only to end up watching the crystal clarity of rain speckled camera lens? Hi-def blurriness...now that's ironic...rain on your SuperBowl day (wish that reference a happy birthday...it's 12). Congrats to the Colts, but I was pulling for the Bears. Not because I'm a fan, but because I wanted to see Peyton Manning push that boulder all the way up the NFL mountain only to see it tumble back down. Yes, I just likened Peyton Manning to Sisyphus. I'm all about the storybook endings...it's just that the story I had in mind was printed on parchment. The commercials that I saw were ok. I was a bit distracted during commercial breaks...the house I was watching the game at had a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This is an arcade machine containing roughly 3000 classic games from a half-dozen throwback systems. While the game was on hiatus, I took a stroll down memory card lane. Final Fight, Gauntlet, Altered Beast, Centipede, and a metric ton of obscure titles from the every corner of the digitized globe. Long story short: I want one.

Over the last couple of days, I've had the pleasure of judging the first two legs of the DC Improv's DC's Funniest College competition at George Mason and George Washington. It's very cool to see these young whippersnappers give stand-up a shot. They ran the gamut, from first-timers to stalwart members of the DC open mic scene. For one of the winners from George Mason, it was his first time on stage, and before the show he took out a piece of paper and jotted down, "a few topics that've been going through my head." So, it was his first time on stage and he went pretty much completely off-the-cuff...and he came off like a 5-year vet. These kids and their natural ability. Over at George Washington, there was a recurring theme...dick jokes...and their many conjugations, from frequent masturbation to blowjobs to erections...one dick, two dick, red dick, blue dick. It got to the point that they weren't punchlines so much as pecker tracks. As the evening wore on, my judging criteria became, the first person to not reference his dick or it's insertion into something, wins.

It'd be irresponsible of me to write a funny blog (play along), without mentioning the it story of the moment, that of lovelorn astronaut Lisa Nowak and her 900+ mile drive in an adult diaper, armed with pepper spray and a bb-gun, from Houston to Orlando, to whack the hypotenuse of an astronaut love triangle. All I have to say about this is, the pendulum of equality and empowerment swings both ways. Yes, any little girl is capable of becoming an astronaut, but any astronaut is capable of becoming a crazy bitch.

To be continued...