Monthly Archives: December 2004

Comedy, that bitch

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A couple times recently I’ve dropped by this place even though there is essentially no margin in it for me. The owner is not overly fond of my shit, and he begrudges the success of some of my funniest friends, so it was an obvious choice to limit that tension in my life.

Why beg someone to be part of a show where they ain’t supporting what you have and work out a whole lot of passive aggression on you to boot? (Actually, I think my camel’s back/straw thang was not over comedy, it was the owner advising and criticizing my relationship unbidden. Fuck with me all you want, if you must, but leave those closest to me out of your nasty shit, OK?)

But, every now and again, as a once fertile ground for innovative comedy that now feels a bit like scorched earth, there’s a show worth seeing. Tonight had a mix of a great joke writer, who happens to write Conan O’Brien’s monologue, an old team from back in Boston comedy’s heyday in the ’80s, and this guy, Louis CK, who is fucking amazing on two of my highest values — (1) Seeming on stage like someone who’s just shitting around, telling stories and talking in a personal, sharing kind of way, you know, like, human, and (2) getting away with the most horrible shit a person could say. The unwritten value is, of course, he’s fucking funny. Not wry, smiley funny, but spit-take beer in your nose funny.

Louis opened with stuff about rape. Almost no one can make rape a funny topic. He did it. The fucked in the head comics were laughing, but so were the paying customers.

The only downside to the night for me was the club owner, who didn’t respond three separate times when I nodded and said “hi.” Gotta love a guy who is so practiced in passive aggression that he can pretty much cue the “can’t make eye contact” walk by perfectly several times in a row.

But, what fucking irked the shit out of me was when Louis was late, and the owner was desperately looking to kill some time, he bitched directly over my head, literally, since he was interrupting a conversation with a friend of mine, and was looking for someone to put up for five minutes. Gee, douchebag, you don’t have to put me on stage, but you also don’t have to be an insensitive prick either and pretend I’m not there.

The thing is I probably would have done fine had I gone up. But, either way, it was moot, since the headliner arrived right before these guys jumped on stage and did pretty damn well.

I just can’t help but wonder whether the owner making me feel invisible and unworthy could have been avoided. I guess the brightside is, by my moving west his unfunny, dickheaded self will become the rosey shit defined by nostalgia.

Perversity in the modern age

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Thank fucking christ the almighty that the reason I joined the gym was pragmatic hygiene not actual self improvement.

I’ve weighed myself coming out of the shower four days in a row, and each day I have appeared to gain a few pounds. So, from joining the gym last Wednesday and working out everyday for a week (OK, I confess I took Saturday and Sunday off), I’ve gained, according to the locker room’s measuring device, about 10 pounds.

I’m hoping to hit 200 by Christmas.

Hell, other people have paid money and pissed away entire careers on this kind of bulking up. I’m psyched, and it doesn’t appear I’ll have to worry about back hair, acne or shrinking testicles.

I do hope I get some rage along with the bulk.

Playing with sound

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Here’s another podcast kind of post. It’s from the Walsh Brothers Show last Thursday. It’s not a stand-up set; I’m basically telling a story. It runs about 9 minutes.

(I kept in the intro, because it made me laugh, which you can hear loudly, as I was holding the recorder.)

Dee-Rob at the Walsh Brothers Show, December 2, 2004.

Ravages of time

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I found this old picture of me at five years old and mentioned it here.

Not sure if it’s the hair (which I combed myself) or the bitten lip, but something ain’t right looking with this kid.
DRkinder

Compare that picture to 35 years later:
headshot

Frighteningly retro

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M. just sent me a link to this article: about Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs.

What the fuck? Death threats for an interracial couple? In New York City? In 2004? Not Alabama or Arkansas in the 1950s, but today on BROADWAY.

Jesus Christ, if the retro, “Christian,” moral society continues at it’s current pace, I’ll be stoned to death for a variety of reasons before I reach 50.

No friggin' idea

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I wouldn’t have thunk in a million years that the gym doesn’t suck absolutely. It still ain’t on my list of dream destinations. By virtue of no shower and the loud use of tools, I’m up earlier and more active and even with the gym I have more hours to do stuff and more inclination to do them.

How fucked up is that? I thought I was storing energy to be released in a giant ball of activity before, while I was lolling around the couch vicinity.

Grown-up primer

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Today’s lesson in living life as though I was all growed up is never tell a construction contractor how much your paying for a job. I made that mistake this past week. Twice.

The thing is, I think we all operate on our own internal economies, and you can manage just fine if you know where your tolerances lie. I know for a fact I’m paying high for the work I’m getting done on the bathroom. I know it in the same way that I know a pork chop is gonna cost me the price of a pig if the menu is vellum, the napkins linen and the family name LaFitte appears on the wine list.

I also know that if the work is done right, it’s a wash in my overall investment, if I rent, and definitely when I sell. And, if it’s done on time (i.e. before Christmas), I get to enjoy it a bit longer and so does M. on what could end up being one of his last ever visits to my place.

It’s not a point of view that guys who can construct stuff can really grok. Why would you pay for stuff they could’ve done on the cheap?

My mom was like the construction guys. It was physically impossible for her to truly enjoy a four-star meal, because the guilt or consciousness over the real cost of the raw ingredients swamped the enjoyment. “$10 for an omelette? I could buy seven dozen eggs and have omelettes for months for $10.”

No distinction was made for skillful preparation and artistic flavors and presentation.

I think that mind set was partially responsible for why she lived so long allowing her house to collapse around her. The sense that if you could do yourself, or if a couple of friends helped out, or if you called around and got the best offer, all of those ifs, caused nothing to get done. Because, in the end, it’s almost as though if you can’t put in the sweat you’re not worth the extra expense.

I let my bathroom go for too long, too. Getting over that hump meant I needed a lot of extra hand-holding and assurances and guarantees and the contractors to return my calls and give me just a little bit more service. For that, I will pay.

I spend a lot of energy trying to live a bit happier or more contented than my mother, or trying to fathom her choices. I have the extra money to improve my house, my investment, my lot in life, because she lived frugally and sacrificed and left the cash behind. But, she lived many years untenably uncomfortable (e.g. turning the water off and on in the toilet rather than getting a leak repaired) and seemed so physically and mentally pained and exhausted by the time she died.

So, is that trade-off worthwhile? Struggling, but saving, versus spending freely and gaining some piece of mind? I realize the inherent indulgence of opting for the comfortable route, but I don’t truly understand the struggle just to save a couple of bucks for an unknown, possibly unrealized, future.

The other side to all of this nonsense about how much should my bathroom cost is a great lesson in human nature.

Not matter what, anyone in any given field will tell you that s/he could have done things better, faster, cheaper, prettier, whatever. Which gets me back to our own personal sense of economics.

In my world, I will pay well for someone to rip out walls, re-wire some ‘lectricity and build up tinker toys of PVC, so I can shower and shit in luxury. But, I will pay nothing for someone to hook up my computer, my network, my home entertainment center or install anything to make any of them work or do more things. Other people pay for that stuff, but I’m going DIY all by myself on that electronic shit.

I also do my own taxes with the help of that ‘puter, and there’re about 712 craft projects I would opt to figure out and not pay anyone to do.

Everyone has their own list of what’s worth doing and what’s worth farming out. Once you have that list worked out, it ain’t no thang to start writing the checks and lying back to watching someone else toil.

Photographs

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I think among the reasons I have had a vague, yet continuous, headache is the fabulous work ethic of the siding guys. Those guys don’t stop from 7-7:30 a.m. until darkness makes it impossible to continue.

For the first couple of weeks, they were banging and sawing on the side of the house away from my bedroom with the hallway acting as a sound-absorbing buffer. Now that they bang around just past my headboard through what must be a half inch wall (judging only by the effectiveness of sound wave transmission), I almost pray for less industrious contractors, ones with a work ethic such as mine (currently non-existent).

I can’t remember from last week if they take Sundays off, but I fucking hope Jesus stills their tools for one peaceful day.

I didn’t shower today (although I vigorously sponged myself and washed my hair in the kitchen sink). By this action I have skeeved out and alienated my gentleman friend. Even over a distance of 3,000 miles, he expects his woman to be clean.

It’s too bad if my hygiene comes between us, as I have begun Christmas shopping. I’d have to find another guy with a similar build and tastes for the stocking stuffers I’ve picked up.

Just in case, if you are an American with an entreprenurial spirit who likes the color black, reads non-fiction, is into fitness and has a fit, trim body, send me an email.

I have no great ideas at all for Christmas shopping sadly.

I spent awhile flipping through a good 30 pounds of old photographs. I think it’s time to throw away the truly shitty and useless and gather the rest into albums to conserve space. Throwing away out of focus or otherwise terrible or stupid would bring the number down to one page.

I thought about making a family album to give to my sister or possibly one of my sisters-in-law, who I think would dig it, with an assortment of old school pictures and stuff from all of us mixed with the next generation. Unfortunately, the old bag of pics my mother made me carry away one day a few years back is thinner than it should be. It contains a handful of photos, where I remember a fair amount, and two siblings are missing entirely.

There is one picture of yours truly. I’m five, and it’s my kindergarten picture. Portrait of the artist as a young dork. I might scan and post it alongside my headshot, so you can track the dork effect across four decades.

Not having the pictures I thought also thwarts the joke gift I was thinking of for M., namely a collage of me. The sheer ego of making a self-collage for someone else tickles me (although the time required versus the laugh resulting may be skewed to make me seem just an egomaniacal dick). Probably, it’s better this way.

Besides, I’m sure he would much prefer a collage of himself.

No shit

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I have the longest lasting headache that I can remember having. But, that is not why I’m posting. (Literally, at 7:30 a.m. the siding guys were pounding just outside my bedroom walls. Considering I went to bed only 5 hours before, I think it fair to wonder if they have helped extend the headache shelf life.)

Last night, I decided to try not really telling jokes at all, but just telling an extended anectdote with some jokes thrown around it. Seemed to work, and I had fun. Of course, it was these guys’ show, which I usually have fun at even when it’s going so badly they start to fight and/or people leave with looks of confusion and thoughts of escape.

Overall, last night was a fun, relaxed show. There were a lot of different types of people/acts on, and it flowed comfortably, even with (or because of) the differences.

Anyway, though, back to my point — and, “yeah, right,” you’re thinking, “as though you have ever had one.” Last night, and pretty much in most of my comedy, everything I said was actually true. Possibly embellished, but factually true. It makes me laugh afterwards, though, whenever people question me about whether stuff really happened or how I thought of it.

I am actually a lazy writer. I do very little thinking. If shit didn’t happen, I suppose I would just sit quietly and have no tales to tell.

The most amazing true thing I said last night, because I do consider it meaningful although I have yet to discern the meaning, is my locker combination. In order to join the dreaded and feared and otherwise horrifying gym, I had to buy a lock to protect my humble belongings. The combination was a portentuous 36-22-36. Measurements I likely will not have when all is said and done.