The title of this post has to be read with a hard ‘R’ intoning the sweet dismay of doe-eyed Nancy.

M. likes to say it just so, as an homage to Nancy that also serves to make me wonder where exactly I am in my life. Oh, Lord.

It suits my mood, though, after a special evening in comedy-contest surrealism. The inherent flaw in any comedy competition is that they lend themselves to the worst part of old-timey talent shows. If it were music, you’d be pitting accomplished string quartets against death metal head bangers with folksy singer-songwriters, drunken karaoke, spoon and saw players and some Tuva throat singers. Just an unholy, wholey fucking random mix to determine “the best.”

For a variety of reasons, I suspect whatever bit I do have by way of ability to entertain it never, ever, never, ever, ever will be shown to best advantage in a contest. I know this intellectually and accept it fully in my heart and soul.

Nonetheless the fuckedupness of the human mind is that leap where you think, “I dunno, maybe I will win.”

D’oh.

On the crazy ass, what the fuck and why am I here? front–No fucking lie, this show included an angry-sounding bit of original guitar playing, a woman who could be described as in Mame (and much like myself) as “somewhere between 40 and death,” who calls herself a poet, comic philosopher and who had a spontaneous and dramatic nosebleed right before the show, several young men of varying degrees of interesting and/or talent, a performer with thick eye-stinging halitosis and a legally blind lawyer. I am making none of this up. None. And, tomorrow or some time soon there will be videotaped evidence.

It was cool meeting some folks and talking to a couple of others and just hanging out in that comedy hanging out way. I had a couple of brief, but interesting convos, all nicey nice, joy, joy to be putting on a show. There were even people comprising an audience.

Still and all, when they announced the winners, there were the couple of names, as there always are in comedy contests, where at best you think, “Huh?” and at worst you think, “No fucking way.” When the one douche did an endzone type dance with self-congratulatory yelping, it definitely leaned more to the second thought.

I can’t decide which was my favorite personal exchange of the night, though. Was it the quick dialogue that went something like:

Guy, “Hi, she said (gesturing to a woman off to the side) that you’re a Chronicle reporter doing a piece on the show tonight. Because you have that tripod.”

Me, “Huh, what? Um, it’s for my video camera, if I tape myself tonight.”

Guy, “Yeah. I thought you were a comic…”

In an appropriately short number of comic beats later, the woman referenced above walked up to me:

Lady with rich imagination, “Have you been to many comedy shows? (Or something like that.) Are you taping the show?”

Me, “Just my set,” followed by awkwardness and ensuing discourse about my non-reporter status.

Puzzling that whole thing was. Among the questions in my head, why would a newspaper report tape a comedy show?

The better to transcribe here in text, I think, was this exchange:

“I get a strong sense that you are an air sign.”

“Nope.”

“Oh, than earth.”

“No. Is there just one left?”

“Fire, then? I didn’t see that.”

“Um, uh, no, water. I’m Pisces.”  (I kept inside my head, “Now you want to guess any other random facts about me that prove absolutely nothing about my personality?”)
Fucking California.

Nothing makes you feel older than seeing someone who’s butt you once wiped holding a teeny weeny human being with her own diapered butt.

I feel like a grandmother and I ain’t even had any spawn.  Going to have to start attending the meetings to equalize. 

I sit in a cube.  That’s the shit end of the popsicle stick at my place of employ.  But, every now and again, it’s my little bit of cheery workaday fun.

Today’s episode was overhearing someone unhappy with accountants being all bean-counterish and wonderfully full of accounting goodness.  It was Proust’s madeline to me.  Or maybe some other pretentious imagery that’s a mnemonic segue.

I suspect in the quiet moments of my dismal worrying life that a cabal of accountants was complicit in my undoing.  But, you know what I fucking figured out today — Duh, it wasn’t me, it’s them.  I actually understand that accountants are what they are and do what they do, and I don’t hassle them for it.  I don’t roll over if a soupcon of imagination could bring them to the old cliched win-win.  But, yeah, an accountant jugular will never be my fight.

At the old job, my accounting skirmishes were abberrant.  Quite a few were about, um, ah, arithmetic.  You know the counting shit those people are supposed to be good at.  Yeah, if you tell me two plus two ain’t what I think it is, and need to whip out a calculator to show me how you got something else, I’ll fight you.  ‘Cause, like, you know, reality is cool and shit.

Nah, truth is, I’ll let some shit go at work, if it can just make my life a bit tasty sweetier.

So, once again, a big “fuck you” shout out to folks at the old bad place.  And, an equally big “yay me” for, well, being me.

I’m falling asleep at the wheel, ah, couch, here. So, I can’t get it up for actual coherence. Bullets, the non-violent hippie writer kind, that’s all I got.

• Welcome to the world, Rachel. (I generally don’t out folks by name. But, she’s too fresh to read, and dad’s too creeped out by the “blog-o-fucking-sphere” to see this note.)
• The bonus of working at a place so much smaller than all others is that there are fewer maroons to dope slap per capita. But, fucking A., the majority of one I got working my last friendly nerve into a crispy, fried treat, deserves repeated ear cuffing and forehead thumps. (Note, Cali is all free and easy and tree-huggy, weed chuffing goodness, so I don’t feel so stabby stab, just slappy slap and punchy punch.)
• Can snopes.com or somebody write up a summary of the debunking the fucking global warming “controversy,” to whit “There’s a debate over whether (global warming) is manmade or naturally caused…” and slap it up on the web? Then, could some one else email the link to GW, buffoon in chief?
• Number of legit scientists, who didn’t get cash from oil companies, Bush cronies and what not who believe global warming could be nature-made: 0.
• Maybe this study is another reason for Catholics to have smaller families. Maybe it also explains the older tradition of having one son who’s a priest.
• Hmmm, cigarettes, drool.

Uncharacteristically, we got our asses out of bed to meet with a guy who’s going to help the man with a bullet-proof resume. Of course, between the two of us the DIY approach could kick cliched ass. But, the older I get the more pumped I get with the notion of paying someone else to do my shit.

Why walk when you can fly? OK, that makes no fucking sense there, but goddamn it I’m American and we know how to write checks and process credit cards.

Got my first rejection from a short film submission. Yay. For brief, unrealistic, unfocused moments I thin, “aw shit.” Then, after a couple of whacks up my own head and some earboxing, I remember that my exercise was process. Gotta get into the groove of trying, submitting, blabbity fucking blah.

You ain’t getting laid if you don’t get in the game.

I, of course, am sitting here writing about my dreams and aspirations (to get laid), because M.’s going on to the resume man about his old curriculum vitae. Small and closed that I am, listening in makes me think of me, Dee-Rob, center of my own miniature universe.

I’m procrastinating on shit that I actually have tons of time to do. So, I got nothing all around.

In the back of my head is the thought of devising some kind of funny set list of jokey jokes and merriment for tonight’s show. But, really, wouldn’t it be funny enough to see me whimper, drool on myself blankly and then leave the stage?

Other than that, I love the fucking world wide web. Back in the horse and buggy days you couldn’t get an email from millions and millions of fucking miles away and eons of time. OK, make that 3,000 miles and some years, but you know fucking far.

Thanks to this bullshit, I’ve heard from different people from old jobs, old friendships, old passages of time, who otherwise would have fallen into dim, dusty, vague, “Huh? What ever happened…” memory, much like my virginity. I’ve almost kind of met new people, too.
And, I’ve got to stalk a few old chestnuts and whatnot from an incredibly safe cyber distance of weblog reading.

GOOGLE, I salute you.