Tom Cruise, A-List Idiot

If Gary Coleman had jumped up and down like a retard on Oprah, as Tom Cruise did last week, he would have been prescribed Ritalin. But Gary Coleman won't make it onto Oprah or be interviewed by Matt Lauer because, though he is also an idiot, he is not a good-looking A-list idiot who put his wee wee in Nicole Kidman's and Katie Holmes' woo woos. Tom Cruise told Lauer he "knows" psychiatry is a pseudo-science, which is a sure sign (as if being a Scientologist weren't enough) that he needs psychiatric care. Once again the American masses could see for themselves that talent and money are not immunizations against stupidity, and once again, they don't care. Right now thousands of high school girls are surfing the internet to "learn more" about Scientology, their woo woos stuck firmly to their desk chairs. Wait a minute, isn't the root of the word "Scientology" science? If you're going to subscribe to a religion wholly invented by a science fiction writer, try Christianity. At least Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John's contributions to SF have stayed in print.

Just when I was beginning to think Stephen Spielberg had half a brain, he has volunteered that he is confused by the fact that there has been a decrease in video-documented UFO sightings since the 70's. I'm not confused - they don't exist. Yes, I've seen the video clips of alleged alien craft on TV. Yes, some of them look odd. But the only thing that confuses me is how video of UFO's is always fuzzy and dark while video of Junior hitting Daddy in the balls with a bat (Ha ha ha ha ha ha that one always kills me honey pass the tater tots!) is always crystal clear.

Fuck War of the Worlds. I'm through contributing to the bank accounts of morons with preferred media access.

One Giant Step Backward

The Ten Commandments can be displayed on government land, sayeth the Supreme Court, but not inside court houses. Like most of the folks in D.C. these days, the justices came to a compromise. Isn't anyone willing to publicly tell the Bible-pounders that they cannot recreate the country, and everyone in it, in their image?

You'd have to be living in Star Jones' ass not to know that there is a very vocal fundamentalist minority determined to eliminate the separation of church and state and remake the United States according to their own theocratic wet dream. I have a theory about such people: they are not satisfied with life as it is, live in fear of not only what happens after death but also what happens in other people's homes and minds, and so devote their lives to altering it - through legislation if necessary. I've met a lot of religious people - Xians, Buddhists, Jews - and most of them are perfectly satisfied with their faith and practice regardless of what others do or think. Not so with these assholes, who won't rest until everyone conform to the morality dictated by their superstitious bullshit.

I have to hand it to them, though, their kicking and screaming makes for great PR. You want your 15 minutes of fame? Just piss off the evangelicals. Witness Robert Mapplethorpe, a merely competent photographer who made a mint when they bitched up a storm over his pics of men fisting each other.

In other news, the House has approved a constitutional amendment that would outlaw desecration of the flag. As usual, the conservative control freaks will argue that it is unpatriotic and offensive to burn a flag, while the ACLU will argue that such a law is an affront to freedom of expression. We'll be subjected to this tired debate 24/7 via the news, and we'll never hear a word about the real issue, which is: Why the fuck is Congress, whose ever-increasing salaries are paid by us, spending one second of time on this non-issue when so many Americans don't have health insurance?

Now we can look forward to endless coverage of hippies burning flags as a symbol of their inability to do anything worthwhile, like bathe.

"News"

Here are the number of news segments that mention these stories: (from a search of the main news networks' transcripts from May 1-June 20).

ABC News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway":42 segments; "Michael Jackson": 121 segments.

CBS News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 70 segments; "Michael Jackson": 235 segments.

NBC News: "Downing Street Memo": 6 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 62 segments; "Michael Jackson": 109 segments.

CNN: "Downing Street Memo": 30 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 294 segments; "Michael Jackson": 633 segments.

Fox News: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 148 segments; Michael Jackson": 286 segments.

MSNBC: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 30 segments; "Michael Jackson": 106 segments.

The Voice of Reason

http://www.venganza.org/

I win

I advanced to the finals at the Jukebox, which will be July 28. Between now and then I will need regular oral so I can be relaxed for my set, and you can say you blew me before I became too famous to talk to you anymore.

In all honesty, the competition was young and/or unprepared, so I can't brag all that much. I tried a slower, better-paced delivery, moved around the stage more and felt like my performance was a large notch above what I had been doing previously. It felt good, even though I tried a brand new bit (not the "done thing" in a contest), and stumbled through it a little. But the vibe at the Jukebox is great and the crowd was cool, except for three people in the front row who looked like pissed-off vampires. Or maybe it was just the heroin they did before the show.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Round One of the annual amateur competition at the Jukebox in Peoria, which I am very much looking forward to. I'll spend the 6 minutes doing proven bits, plus one new bit that I am very pleased with and can't wait to try out. There will be a handful of working comics as judges, and the scoring is 50% audience response, with the other 50% divided into categories like stage presence, originality, etc. There will be eight comics, two of which will advance to the next round.

In looking over my set list, a few of the general topic areas seem hackneyed (NASCAR, Spam, "This is Bob"...), but I'm confident that my take on these subjects is original, and I've gotten laughs from these bits every time out. My goal for round one is to squeeze as many bits into the six minutes as I can without rushing. Some of my best bits are longer, say 3-4 minutes, and while they've worked in front of audiences also, I'll save those for subsequent rounds should I be lucky enough to get there. As I mentioned in a previous post, at least half of the comics at my first open mic at the Jukebox were abysmal - I don't mean just not getting laughs, I mean bad writing (or NO writing) and no attempt to connect with the audience. If that's the case tomorrow night, good for me.

But I hope it isn't. Good competition means a better set from everyone and a night of good comedy and high energy where the winners can feel like they really accomplished something. I'd rather go up against that than merely be the lesser of eight evils.

flix

You have to love NetFlix - not only do they have Bill Hicks Live and the complete series of Alan King's Inside the Comedy Mind but also send the unrated/uncut version of Team America when you order it. My video chain would be zero for three this week if I had gone to them.

The Bill Hicks DVD features three sets - one half hour HBO special and two full shows, one in Montreal and one in London. There's a lot of overlap in the material, but both shows are enjoyable. I had to skip the Alan King interview with Robin Williams. In every interview I've seen with Williams, he never gets around to answering the questions.

The web site has hit a snag. Hopefully everything will get ironed out this week.

No Show

No Springfield, Bloomington, Indy, or Peoria this week. I could have gone up at Friends & Co. tonight, but 9 people at a music open mic - all of whom have seen you perform half a dozen times - you end up just irritating them, usually. I do feel a little withdrawal though, and I'm psyched about the Jukebox competition next week. I spent this week ironing out that set and getting some good new stuff on paper.

Tonight was the first time in a long time I sat in a bar and didn't have a drink. It was good. Not as good as downing three Newcastles and a couple of Jaeger shots. But good.

The web site should be up in a day or two. The main pages are done and look great. The URL is http://dantessitore.com.

Jukebox Redux

Last night's post was brief due to fatigue.

My great expectations for my first visit to the Jukebox were partly realized in that I got to get onstage there, meet a couple of good folks, and put myself on the list for the upcoming competition. In other respects - getting a large, enthusiastic crowd and seeing some killer comics - things didn't pan out. Two or three of the open-mic performers top the list of the most atrocious I have ever seen. This means nothing, of course, because any one of them could get their shit together and wind up making it some day. I won't name names (because I don't remember them), but at least two guys told jokebook jokes.

Really.

"Three kids go to a whore house - a white one, a black one..." you get the idea. One guy had a red-stained maxi-pad as a prop. I assume it was food coloring because this guy's set wasn't getting him near any vaginas. At one point he smacked his own ass and said "I'm a pad pad boy." I'd rather have my eyelids pried open in the front row of a Gallagher performance, my fellow droogs, than see one more minute of that.

But the most interesting set was Travis Lipski's. You might recall that I tied for first with Travis last month in Springfield at the Funny Bone monthly open-mic. At that show Travis turned out a damn good 6 minutes. He's got the angry-comic persona - raw, rude, etc. - and it works. He opened for Doug Stanhope at least once. The guy's gotten paid. Last night, however, Travis was clearly a little more inebriated. He pulled out two 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper and tried, unsuccessfully, to read whatever jokes he had scrawled on them. There were several moments of silence. There was slow blinking. It was weird. The one admirable thing is that, clearly, Travis Lipski doesn't give a shit, and if you want to be a comic, that's one quality you need.

Despite my fatigue, I couldn't sleep last night and ended up writing/editing a couple bits for an hour or more. I looked at the tape from last night and thought hard about exactly what it is I want to do as a comic. Most of what I've done onstage so far has gotten a good response at least once, but the material is inconsistent. Some of it is cast as short personal narrative even if the stories are not factually true. For example, one bit describes a girlfriend's trimmed pubic hair and segues into a criticism of "porn-fashion" and male vanity (body-hair shaving, etc.). The writing itself is good (toot toot), but while the male vanity bit is me, the little narrative is not - it's wholly fabricated and seems too rehearsed onstage. Because it is. I try to make everything I write multi-layered; even if it's rude or raw, there's a social or political comment underneath it. It's the "underneath" part that's off - my best writing is where that comment is closer to the surface, the impetus of the bit. You can't win an audience by preaching on issues (even George Carlin has once or twice fallen into that angry social critic pit once or twice and gotten fewer laughs), but you can't fake it either, burying the meat of an idea behind a facade.

The most interesting thing I've learned from doing this comedy thing is that you have to learn how to be yourself. Writing funny bits is fairly easy, getting to the heart of what you care about - and making that funny - is tough.

My anonymous poster from last month has returned and posted two comments to my entry of 5.19 (see archive if you care). Here they are:

...

So now poets and comics have universal rankings, eh? You would not remember me, nay, for I was one of the "cast out" ...cast out from the Welter. Oh, the shame of it all! You even published a poem by Mario Rossetti, of all people! Why did Dorie Cohn's boyfriend get ink? "...the wind mocks her, as it actively manipulates her hair?" Yuk! How atrociously vomitous.

...

I am neither a stalker, nor would you want to shag me. But I am hurt at your lack of external validation, especially when you included two poems in the Welter from someone who had just started writing poetry. Excuse me now. I am crestfallen, and must weep.

...

I have no idea what the "universal rankings" comment refers to. As to the remainder of these comments - I edited the UB English Dept.'s litmag The Welter in 1989-90, maybe 1991. It was your typical undergrad mag from a small department in a small school. If half the contents were crap, and they probably were (including my own contributions), the work that didn't make the cut was crappier. In any case, it is now 2005. I can't place a face with the name Mario Rosetti either - that line Anonymous quoted is, admittedly, terrible.

What I can't figure out is whether Anonymous is deeply troubled or just trying to pull my leg.

Jukebox

The bad news first: the crowd at the Jukebox for the Thursday Pro-Am was about 20 people, 11 of whom were comics. The good news: Dan the owner is a cool guy, and I got on the list for round one of their annual competition - June 23. Greg Lausch did a good half hour following the "Am" portion of the Pro-Am night, and he was also a nice guy. Next door at the strip club there were two midget strippers performing. If we hadn't had a 2.5 hour trek back to Charleston, we may have taken that in.

2 Nights

I passed on Indy last night since I wasn't bumped up from the alternate list in time to justify the 2-hour drive. As much as I'd like to be onstage every night of the week - it's just not possible when your home is at least 90 minutes from every stage, and most open-mic's fall on the same weeknights. Tonight will be my fifth trip to the Springfield Funny Bone open-mic, which is monthly, and tomorrow will be my first trip to the Jukebox in Peoria, which I have a hunch is going to be a good time, regardless of how I do. The guy I met in Indy last week is Joey Kirkman, who, if my Google results are correct, is Todd Yohn's manager as well as a comic. His email to me (get ready for shameless whoring):

"I would call him [Dan at the Jukebox] about the competition coming up. You are better than what I saw Thursday night. Much better."

The headliner this week (6/9 - 11) is Greg Lausch, who just happens to be from Baltimore (I grew up near Annapolis and went to school in "Charm City"). I don't know Greg Lausch or what the Thursday night Jukebox crowd is like or what to expect, but I'm looking forward to it.

Looks like the new web site will be a few more days in the making - just tweaking the look, getting photos together, etc.

New Site

The site should be up soon - dantessitore.com - There's nothing there now so don't bother going just yet. I'll keep the journal there and retire this blog.

On the Road

I'm on the alternate list for the Crackers open-mic Tuesday - hopefully someone will cancel so I can get bumped up, otherwise I might skip it. Wednesday is the Springfield Funny Bone and Thursday the pro-am at the Jukebox in Peoria. Springfield is the closest at 90 minutes, so I'm in for some serious driving this week if I do all three: 6 hours of road for 20 minutes of stage. As long as I get some good sets on tape out of it, I don't mind - otherwise I'll just be spinning my wheels, literally. Gotta make it count.

Indy 5.31

Got a great response last night at the Crackers open-mic. I finally got a set on VHS, which means I can convert it easily to digital and post it on the new site, which is in the works.

Met a guy whose name I've forgotten (I suck) who is opening for Todd Yohn at the Jukebox in Peoria this week. He was very complimentary and encouraged me to head up there for their open-mic, which I did not know they had. The Jukebox is something of a landmark as Richard Pryor is from Peoria and worked there in his early years.

I mentioned before that I don't see the attraction in bad-mouthing other comics, but when someone is an asshole to other comics during his set, I think it bears mentioning. I've been to Crackers in Broad Ripple three times, and three times I've seen the same comic begin his set by criticizing the previous comic. The asshole in question is Luke Fair (sp?), and last night he took the mike and tried to make a joke about the previous comic's reference to Steve Austin, The Million Dollar Man: "Know your audience dude. They think Steve Austin is [blah blah blah - some reference I didn't get]." Then he tells us all he's moving to New York (pregnant pause) "CI-TY." He had no joke for that but simply segued into bashing his home state of Indiana and everyone in it. You can do that, of course - New Yorker/LA'er jokes are as old as NY and LA, but you need a glimmer of humility and empathy to pull it off, and Luke Fair hasn't figured that out yet. I sincerely hope he does. I applaud anyone willing to make the move to start a career, but I'm willing to bet NY audiences are likely to be less forgiving of arrogance.

As it turns out, the woman who made a backhanded comment - onstage - about my set last month is Luke Fair's girlfriend. She likewise has an arrogant persona onstage, which could work if there were at least a little crack in the facade, but there ain't.

End of rant.

Tonight is Weedeater at Friends & Co. here in Charleston. I have yet to see these guys, but I understand they are very loud and very nasty.