This one will be quick and boring.

I hate award shows, but sometimes I watch the Oscars. Tonight, the incentive was, of course, John Stewart. I love John Stewart and wanted to see whether he was able to throw in some politics. The audience seemed restless, but I laughed out loud a few times.

The strangest thing for me isn’t watching the show. It’s that the show started at 5 p.m. It’s only 8:30 p.m. or so now. While it would have sucked to have gone to a glamorous party (if I ever were to be invited to one) so early, it rocks for my lazy Sunday.

Other than that, today is the anniversary of my last day in Cambridge. I drove through once since leaving, but I didn’t stop, I don’t think. I didn’t see anyone, I know that.

A fucking year since I ran away from home. OK, not ran as much as strolled.

I did my last comedy show at the Brothers Walsh. I think it was that roast that rocketed them (maybe not rocketed, but, like, led slowly a year later) to their show at the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen. In honor of my anniversary of leaving Boston and the honor of their getting some “industry” attention, I plan to throw up a couple of clips of the last show.

It won’t highlight their comic genius, as much as their drunken rambling.

It’s often bitched and lamented that the country, nay the world is becoming homogenous. Fuck that.

If it were true, in the past year (it’s just shy of a year since the big relocation) I would’ve gotten a decent slice or a good cone.. Pizza and ice cream blow in the Sunshine State. (Wait, is that fucking Florida?)

Tonight, for M.’s birthday I suggested dessert at Mitchell’s ice cream. I have it on
good authority it’s tasty. On top of that the new boss lady who got an advanced degree in my old ‘hood swore that Mitchell’s meets the gold standard, aka Toscanini’s.

Fuck me, that slop was unworthy of my tastebuds.

I will return to Boston. Forget about family and friends, I need dairy.

It started to rain around midnight. Why? Because the deities weep for me. I am 42 years young as of midnight.

If I stayed East I would be even older by 180 minutes.

For a bunch of frustrating stops and starts and pervasive angst, I am ded-dog tired. Fucking exhausted, and should be sleeping. Sleeping away the milk and honey job that toils in the same mire of any other work to restore myself to tomorrow’s onslaught.

It ain’t totally the “fresh hell” that Dorothy Parker inquired after, and my last job most certainly was. Nope. But it can blow like any other thing with work or job in its name.

On the side of weird, though, as my current employment lives ina bizarro plane, I did lunch a bit with the president and the CFO. The rule is on free lunch days, cuz there are no stringless free lunches, you must make some effort to converse with your fellow man. The lunchroom makes me nervous for that reason. But I was beckoned to join with ranks above my rankness. And, so it goes at 42.

I keep reading, seeing, hearing a headline variation of “A Passage to India” about GW heading east.

I can roll with anything that overlays Bush and rape, but I’m thinking no one ever read the book. Caves and rape and George Bush goes a-travelin’ that’s what that headline means to me.

Of course, he is raping the world metaphorically and rhetorically, so could be everyone writing the headlines has an awesome reserve of literary allusion padding their senses of humor.

I’m tired, because I stayed up pointlessly late last night. The plus side is I uploaded some stuff on a work drive for the boss quite late, and she told me I looked tired, and thanks for staying up late and all that. I copped to the truth. Whilst uploading her shit, I started watching Blade and listening to my brain cells popping in atrophied death throes.

It’s raining, it’s chilly and I want to take a shower and go to bed. But, now is the time I grab the television remote with wild abandon, clicking away searching for narrative, story-telling fun. Soon, M. will return from his shower, all sparkly clean in his PJs, relaxing into the evening. He will dominate the remote, making mockery of my own programming yearnings.

Watching a bit while he showers, knowing that soon will be a deluge of screaming heads from FOX, MSNBC and CNN when he’s done with his ablutions, is my survival. Honestly, I would hate to stab the guy over Bill O’Reilly.

As though my ego believes there could ever be enough about me. Nonetheless, gotta spread a little love, as the kids say.

They likely won’t ever see it, but big thanks to the chicks who performed in our little show tonight. Rock on, you talented, unique-voiced motherfuckers. Seriously, though, the kind of differences shown by each woman makes me hate even more the generic, generalizing bullshit of people talking about “female comedy” and “women comics suck” and “women are like this…” blah fucking blah. Just blow me already.

Thanks to Alana Devich, Betsy Salkind, Christine Gelat and Aundre the Wonderwoman out there in the cyber-ether.

By the way, I’m pretty sure if I were still in Boston, it would be a cold day in hell before that particular swirl of race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation and physical abilities ever would have fucking seen the light of day in a place that has “comedy” in the club’s name. No fucking way.

On the drive back from the show, here’s what occurred to me. In about a lunar cycle or so, M. got a new job, I got a performance review and sweet raise, we went to Malaysia, Chinese New Year heralded the dog year, Dick Cheney shot someone in the face, M. found out he’ll be speaking at an open-source conference in June, I hosted a show (and came out of the closet–my boss was there), M. got to promo his side business, and now, just as the moon is rolling into the next cycle, we’ll both celebrate birthdays. I’m fucking exhausted.

I figure if my aunt(s) back home see that my boss checked out my comedy, they’ll think I lost my mind. But, I think it was cool. If I’m wrong at least I got the pay raise before the flame-out.

On the plus side, since my favorite uncle (a phrase that is essentially copywritten in my head) got his leg cut off, he’s jested about amputee humor. The headliner for my special show that I put together and shot had but one leg. Rock on my mono-legged brethren and sistren.

Tomorrow night is the show I’ve been waiting on and dreading. Sure, M. was sweet enough to get the ball rolling, but he could have just shot me when he had the Berreta in his hand that time.

Anyway, it is for a good cause and if I don’t stiffen a la my first attempts at stand-up comedy or projectile vomit on the audience, it should be a good time. One more time, check out this website: http://raptorhead.com/comedy.html.

In unrelated to my self-loathing pursuit of jolly laughter, I found out what my raise was the other day. Considering through the luck of the draw and a change in policy I’m getting it as of 1/1/06, rather than the June 1 date discussed at hire, it’s pretty goddamn sweet. Plus it’s more than I expected, and there appears a slight threat they might check it out in June anyway and see what’s what when I crack a year.

That and the fact that the other day the president shouts down the hall to me, “Hey, D., did you see The Aristocrats?” makes me think it was an OK idea to take this job. (Better yet, he followed that with greeting my somewhat intensely serious boss (who’s yet to see hear the dirty joke of a movie) with a riff akin to the opening, “So a man goes into an agent’s office…” For a split second I thought he was going to launch into it. Would have been awesome.)

Even further afield of unrelated, the Shitboard at the Comedy Studio continues to haunt my hopes and dreams. A boy named “BarryK” whose douchiness is so extreme it’s boring actually PM’d me “Your about as funny as a sunburn. In fact a sunburn is actually funnier then you.”

I only wish I still had nine-year-old nephews, so they could help me craft the perfect response. (Sidenote: he appears to have attended the high school my uncle taught at, but he’s so boring I can’t bring myself to do any due deligient like detective work.)

As M. points out, many of the arts include delusional dreamers with no discernible talent on one end and geniuses on the other. And, it seems like comedy draws out and tosses together the extremes even moreso.

I sure wish I could fly back to Boston and punch the kid.

I’m torn about the future of my relationship with M. Not because of the actual relationship, that seems pretty sweet. Nope, it’s a question of national lines.

The further this nation sinks into a rhetoric cesspool, the more I yearn to live abroad. Not so much that I believe that there is a governmental utopia waiting with open arms to embrace this weary little trooper. Nope. I’m not that naive. I just want to live in a soveriegn nation that isn’t so fucked up that shit is truth and truth is shit.

On the other hand, M. is proud to be an American (and rightly so, given he fought and worked for it for many years). So, he will stay here, as I, like Diogenes, carry a lamp not to find an honest man, but a possibly not completely, foul, dishonest government, and become a citizen of the world.

My bags are almost packed after seeing in rapid succession, Ann Coulter arguing with Arianna Huffington on what should only be called Fucking Hannity and Colmes, and the douche-y and occasionally (deceptively, mind you) not 100-percent-wrong Joe Scarborough arguing with a student at U. of Washington. The thing about the Scarborough fight was the bliss in which words were getting put into some peacenik kid’s mouth, in which gradually seemed pro-Hitler and anti-all Marines, everywhere.

(The saddest part was the kid was actually pretty well-spoken. His point was that he was not against Pappy Boyington. He was against the cynical manipulation in the modern world, where a war memorial has become an issue through it’s use to boost a pro-military stance and bolster an unpopular (rightly so) war. There was nothing slacker, dopey, protest-y about the dude. I believe he has read a few history books.)

So, in ripping the kid, Joe moves on to some fat fuck alumni, and they toss around and refute anti-World War II rhetoric no one ever actually said and jerk each other off to Pappy Boyington’s heroism. In the fucked up world we now live in this bullshit naturally segued into SHOCKING, U. of Washington’s pro-Commie memorial. Not only are the kids over there against great WWII heroes, making them essentially pro-Hitler and Holocaust, they are Communist-loving bastards to boot.

Then they show the so-called memorial to communists. It’s a goddamn tribute to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Fucking A. Red-baiting in 2006?

I thought our national conscience voted and decided fighting facists in Spain was just swell.

The scary truth of all of this shit is M. is the one putting these images onto our TV. He’s driving me away. He clearly has a larger (crueler) motive. Why couldn’t he just fuck with my self-esteem like your average cruel boyfriend?

The post title is essentially my capsule review of Firewall. I’m sure others have written about Harrison Ford beginning to have that scruffy/doddery/old-man-spell about him, so I won’t go on about his wife around my age and non-adult kids in the flick. Afterall, Hollywood loves them some May-December casting bullshit.

Nope, what yanked my chain was the part of his administrative assistant. That’s whats got me all wound for days. Harrison is the head of security for a 27-branch bank that’s in the middle of a merger. In other words, he’s an executive with a giant-ass house on the water, expensive car and nicely tailored suits. Quintessentially, LaLa-Land’s depiction of the white-collar working man with a bit of a money clip jingling in his pocket.

Of course, Mr. Alpha-male, white-collar, banking dude has a secretary, who’s clearly the Gal Friday, helps him out of a jam, thinking on her feet, prescient and helpful as all shit type. You know, pretty much every exec’s wet dream of competent, friendly with a sense of humor, just young enough and plain enough to not be his wet dream of dick sticking, ’cause that would be another movie.

So, people who write movies sometimes no shit about the real world, and there’s a pivotal scene where he goes seeking out this admin chick’s help. He rolls on up to her apartment, and the hallway opens to cramped, numbered, thin, wood door portals to a littered, ghetto-reeking hell. The wrong door, the neighbor across the hall, is shrieking poverty immigrant stereotype of anonymous doors in slums across any major city. He hits the right door and begs for a ride, in her beat up, shitbox, he needs to roll down the hill, while she pops the clutch, junkety ass heap of a car.

Fuck you Hollywood. I’ve been doing that admin gig for a bit now and fuck you, you know what? I own a fucking convertible. I own a condo. I rent nowhere near the littered ghettos of housing projects.

Why might all this be? Because, sure, I’ll give you a bit of soul-mashing from making the copies, printing, fetching, filing and whatever bullshit. But, it ain’t frying fries or cleaning toilets.

Check your facts, dudes of movie writing. A bank exec over 27 branches would have someone making his copies probably making more money than the humps on your crew. Yeah, LA PA may be a creative artiste living his/her NYU dreams of someday working for some movie making big deal, but they likely be living lower than the chick at the bank. It might be hell in corporate America, but not that hell.