Oscar Night

First of all, who does Martin Scorsese have to blow to get an Oscar? Has he ever even touched one? He's deserved at least one award for best picture or best director since Raging Bull. I'm not knocking the winners, or the sound and photography people who did win for The Aviator, I'm just saying he's overdue for his very own statue.

Chris Rock seemed nervous the first couple of minutes, and those bits were so-so. Of course, TV-friendly humor is not Rock's forte, and a theater full of fragile egos must be the toughest room to work. The response never seemed that enthusiastic. Still, he warmed up soon enough and lobbed a few good grenades by the end of the opening set. The 'Stars vs. The Merely Popular' bit was good.

I did Friends & Co. again last night and did the routine from the Funny Bone two weeks ago, unedited. I swapped out the Larry King bit (college student crowd) for a bit on a couple pharmaceuticals commercials - easy stuff, but they liked it. For some reason the Olson Twins abducted by aliens went over like a passenger flight on 9/12, but I got several enthusiastic compliments afterwards. I went up earlier than last week, and the crowd was thinner - maybe that and the lower alcohol content of the audience played a role. Maybe I just wasn't as "on" as I thought. Within 10 minutes of my leaving the stage, the crowd had doubled, and the place was a little more revved up. Note to self: don't sign up for the first few slots, and scrap the commercial stuff. It's easy laughs, but I know damn well 300 comics are doing the same bits.

Friends & Co.

Did 10 minutes at my local open mic last night to about 50 people and did very well, despite the fact that a drunk guy got onstage with me and "Def Comedy Jammed" my punchlines. After each bit he would say "Damn!" or "Aw Sheeeeaaat!" It blew one line of the bit, but I recovered. I got heckled by one of the bartenders. She is Polish. My closer almost bombed when I didn't get a laugh on the penultimate line, at which point I realized that the leap that seemed so logical to me on paper really made no sense to a bunch of drunks, but I salvaged that well enough, too, and made my exit. Some college student did 10 minutes or so a couple of slots before me. He had a nice blazer.

Today I Wrote a Dick Joke

I've always loved director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, especially the scenes in Evil Dead II where Ash's (Bruce Campbell's) own hand becomes possessed and tries to kill him. I've had nightmares about that from time to time. My hand doesn't try to kill me, though. It hires a lawyer and charges me with rape.




Thanks, I'll be here all week.

The Censors

Reading Joe Duemer's post of 2/11 about a David Rees event reminds me just how much I detest those who would censor artistic expression - either directly or through bullying benefactors, sponsors, advertisers, universities, etc. The impulse to censor, coerce, edit, or eradicate that which does not fit into one's philosophical, moral, or political worldview is one that I have never shared. Telling adults what they can and cannot say is essentially telling them what they should and should not think. People who have no problem doing so should feel fortunate they are not being punched in the head every second.

+

Currently reading:
Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian
Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture

Books on the toilet:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
William Burroughs' Junky
Erich Fromm's Man for Himself

Just in from NetFlix:
Die Mommy Die
The Magic Christian
Barbarella

I have been assured that these latter two are celluloid abominations, but I have yet to see either.

Springfield

Did the open mic at the Springfield Funny Bone. 12 years of teaching is no prep for trying to impress 20 strangers with jokes. I wasn't terribly nervous, and I did pretty well, I thought, despite the fact I didn't win (it's a $5 entry/winner take all thing), and got good laughs in the places I wanted them. I ended up switching routines at the last minute when the MC requested that everyone keep their stuff as clean as possible. I managed to make the adjustment and keep most of the bit, but I didn't fill the whole six minutes. I did alien abductees instead of pubes. Afterwards some guy came up to me and said he thought I should have won the thing, which was real nice and means more than the $40 that was up for grabs. I'll definitely go back next month, and in the interim do Wednesdays at an open mic in my own town and hopefully a couple of Tuesdays in Indy.

Shit

Few things give me more satisfaction than throwing things away. I have no illusions about my shit being stuff - my shit is shit. Aside from a handful of items - books my (successful) friends have written, a few first editions, some heirlooms - probably not two boxes worth - everything else could get sucked into Star Jones' ass tomorrow, and I wouldn't miss it. In recent years I have become especially fond of gutting my shelves about once a year and selling or donating my books. When I was a primadonna (if this is spelled wrong, and you know how to spell it, please feel free to kiss my ass) college student and later a grad student, I tried to fill my apartment with as many books as I could afford. I was an English and Creative Writing dude, after all, and nothing turns on hot nymphomaniacs more than 37 back issues of The New Criterion. I'm pretty sure that I never finished a third of my books and another third I never even opened - I just kept collecting them the way fat thirty-year-old women with short hair and bobbly earrings collect stuffed cows. Now, whenever I watch a show on, say, the History Channel (more on this piss poor excuse for a network another time) and see some smarty being interviewed in front of his giant collection of books, I just want to beat him to death with three feet of dry-rotted garden hose. Not that I dislike reading, mind you. I love it, in fact. I just decided that having entire rooms of furniture designed specifically to store and show off shit I have maybe read once and don't entirely understand probably qualifies as a pathology.

Student

Tuesday afternoon last week a student calls, a student who has only been to one class and has done zero work, a student who is repeating this course because he was too stupid to get a C the first time around, a student who was clearly stoned when he did show up, a student with three functioning brain cells, two of which were keeping his asshole shut, he calls before class on Tuesday and says he's rushing a frat this week and, gosh darnit, all the rush activities just happen to overlap my class hour.
This type of thing is not new to me, and I try to (pretend to) be a professional, and so I politely remind him of the attendance policy and his free will as an adult, etc., and as soon as I hang the phone up I wish I had told him to stop wasting his and my time. Forget college, kid, use the money for that much-needed knuckle transplant, ya mouth-breathing retard. Become a skilled worker, like small engine repairman or fluffer. Wait, here's an idea. Boil yourself in horse piss. Or set yourself on fire. Just take your hand off your cock long enough to fill out a drop form before you do. Student.

schtick

The wonderful thing about the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is that it won't last, because schtick never does, and the first casualty will be Larry the Cable Guy's contribution to worthless catch phrases, the ubiquitous "git 'r done." I hope he uses it liberally in the second installment, just to hasten its exit from public discourse. Ron White is the only one of the bunch who strikes me as genuinely funny. On the rest I wish an eternity of sell-out crowds in Branson, MO.

Recommended Listening

I saw this band last week here in our little burg of Charleston, IL. They're from Indy. They rock. The end.

Six Minutes

As I mentioned before, I missed last month's open mic at the Springfield Funny Bone, but I see no reason to miss it next Wednesday. The question now is which 6 of the 45-60 minutes I've written in the past two months I should use. I don't live in a metro area, so it's not like I get to try out two or three bits a week. The answer is, of course, whichever bit is funniest, but as all you creative writer types out there know, everything you do is equally fantastic until someone you respect and admire tells you otherwise. I think I'll go with my routine on pubes. Everyone loves pubes, don't they?

In other news, I am continually amazed at the amount of typing Ron Silliman does before breakfast, not to mention the kinds of things he is lucid enough to think about at that hour. He is one of those rare individuals who seems to be able to type as he thinks and make sense all at the same time. I am not one of these people, and I think this is a large part of the reason why my writing has gravitated towards comedy so much - once the gag is on the page, I lose any interest in dressing it up more than is necessary. For a long while I tried funneling my humor into essays, a la David Sedaris, but what I ended up with after days, weeks, or even months of effort was some funny bits stitched together by outstandingly shitty prose. I think this is why I started writing poetry in the first place - poems are brief (and I was a wit). Anyway, Ron, or one of his more attentive readers, or both, was going on about Charles Olson's idea of notions giving rise to notions, perceptions giving rise to perceptions, as a technique for writing, as if to ask whether it is a viable method.

Robin Williams.