Where The Rubber Meets The Road

When it rains, federal agencies ignore your city’s need for reinforced levies for partisan reasons and the poor die in droves.

Of course, I’m paraphrasing. There’s something about pouring in there, I think.

We’ve sent the kids packing for the summer to their father’s, pulled some teeth, recovered from illness, made arrangements for travel, done a lot of work that is better done without little ‘uns underfoot…

You get the gist. It’s funny how some people say they don’t have the time for something, when they have all the time in the world – provided they put down the remote/controller/headset/other technological gadget. And then there’s the inverse: people who will never believe anybody is really that busy.

But it happens. And you literally don’t even have time to make so much as a phone call. My friend Shirley told me she once ate dinner while bathing, just to give herself time for other necessities. It’s a funny image, and it’s a familiar one. Though I’ve never munched on a chicken leg while scrubbing my unmentionables, I have conducted delicate, nuanced, negotiations with booking agents while producing a similar product from my other end. If you get my drift.

In short, you have to prioritize. And as much as this blog is both catharsis and a portal into the world of stand-up comedy, and as much as both functions are important to me, they do not win out over the necessities of life. Thus, a lo-o-o-o-ng silence.

Which is fine. I am not quite so egotistical as to believe it changes anything significant to not write, save that it’s one of my precious few great pleasures, and my fingers start to itch if I haven’t.

Fortunately, like all things, the storm passes, and you begin the process of renewal.

I’m still paddling.

The following is my previous post, now altered for mass consumption. It was originally titled, “In CENSORED and in CENSORED“, and due to circumstances beyond my control, had to be taken down and resubmitted in revised format.
Enjoy:

“I was the CENSORED to get CENSORED.

The CENSORED has been CENSORED around my CENSORED, and CENSORED is CENSORED.

Through the haze of CENSORED, fuzzy CENSORED, and CENSORED, I try to CENSORED. But I am CENSORED from both CENSORED. And now CENSORED is, too.

It really fucks with your CENSORED.

CENSORED seems to be CENSORED more quickly than CENSORED, as I am not invested with the CENSORED of CENSORED. But I suppose that’s the price to pay for getting CENSORED: you may have CENSORED, but you’ve lost the CENSORED of being CENSORED.

I shall CENSORED when my CENSORED stops spewing CENSORED, and maybe my CENSORED will, too.”

There. I hope that makes my wife CENSORED.

What a woman has between her legs does not make her special. Every woman has one of those. It’s what she has between her ears that makes her special, because not every woman has one of those.

I avoid comedy competitions like they’re the Dave Matthews Band. A long time ago, I was in one. Actually, two. No, this isn’t the beginning of a bitter rant by another self-proclaimed hard-done-by comic who “got the shaft” in a competition he lost.

I won. Technically.

It was after the competition that I was approached by one of the judges who anointed me. In an ill-advised moment of candid disclosure, he told me that the judges had already made up their minds who the winner was before the competition began.
“Sure, once in a dozen shows one of those other guys might have got the better of you, but we all knew you were the one,” he told me.
“Not much of a competition, then, is it?” I replied, my pale victory fading even into nothingness.
He shook his head with a patronizing smile. “This is how they all are. You’d better get used to it.”

And he was right. Sort of. The fact of the matter is that I did win. That is, I had the best series of sets and more consistently hit my groove – when it counted. Run that competition a hundred times, and you’d get hundred different outcomes. I flatter myself that I’d still have won most of them, but it would never be the same results – every contestant placing in the same order – twice.
The “sort of” would be best illustrated by the only other competition I was ever in. Despite grave reservations, I decided to participate because the carrot they were dangling was just too big. Literally, as it happened, because the carrot was big enough to drag some heavy-hitters out of the circuit to join the fun. At the time, I was barely a pro. I featured (I was the middle guy) regularly, but headlined nowhere. The comics who descended upon the competition were solid pros – folks who commanded rooms from coast to coast.
Mixed into the pool of hopeful talent were others at my level and below. One of them was a very funny and offbeat guy who was a comics’ favorite. Of course, that didn’t exactly translate to being a crowd favorite. In my humble opinion, he was simply wasting his time working in the midwest. He belonged in Los Angeles. He had that weird, character-driven energy that made people like Jim Carrey superstars in television and movies, but comparative flops in stand-up comedy.
That’s where the carrot came in. One of the judges – the only one that mattered – was an agent for HBO, and was there to scout for The Comedy Festival (formerly the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival). And our weird, offbeat, character of a local was the fair-haired boy. The chosen one. Just like I was.
Except that he came in second. Unfortunately for the powers that be, who were ready and willing to crown our boy, one of the heavy hitters hit too damn heavy to deny. Which was odd, since almost every competition is obviously rigged. And yet, those who rig them seem to think it’s still a secret.
Yes, they’re all rigged. And yes, there’s still a chance – an infinitesimal chance – that someone bucks the system. But, no, it won’t happen at any level wherein you’ll ever make a difference in your career.

Last Comic Standing was a perfect example. Ostensibly a show that allows anyone (okay, professional comics) to break into the industry (movies and television), it was little more than promotional tool for those already inside the industry. If you weren’t already signed to a development deal, then you were there to be lampooned and humiliated by wannabe Simon Cowells. Members only – no visitors allowed.

So, I hold any comedy competition, those who participate in them, and especially those who put them on in contempt. Including myself.
Oh, and the second competition? I came in fourth. That fourth felt a hell of a lot better than my previous “win.”

Well, the government now owns a controlling share of General Motors.

What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, while the federal government is an unwieldy, sluggish, blundering, rarely competent, bureaucratic behemoth, at least it’s not an unwieldy, sluggish, blundering, rarely competent, bureaucratic behemoth with the sole purpose of sucking the blood from the dessicated revenant of of the American consumer base. Mind you, they have been the biggest enablers of the people who’s sole purpose is to suck the blood from the dessicated revenant of of the American consumer base, so don’t get your hopes up.

Anyway, I sincerely hope the Obama Administration is merely spinning when they make all that laissez-faire noise about injecting 30 billion into GM without demanding anything in return. If they haven’t learned that handing rich white men a ton of money guarantees only that the rich white men just got richer – scratch that. Of course they know. My bad.
What I mean is that they’d better be lying about not running GM. Because I’d rather have the snail-paced, tunnel-vision, hidebound bureaucrats calling the shots than sadistic cash-junkies.
General Motors ran their company into the ground through a mixture of greed, arrogance, greed, stupidity, and blind, ugly, gimmie-gimmie-fuck-piggy greed. They were the architects of planned obsolescence; they pushed dreadnought-sized cars and trucks out of union-busting, third-world, sweatshop industrial-vaginas when the entire world was moving toward smaller, more fuel-efficient cars; they laughed at the Japanese (always a bad idea – just ask Sylvania) for their efforts, fought tooth and nail against environmental regulation, unions, anything remotely resembling business sense, and bunnies. In short, they failed in every way possible.

I can’t imagine the government doing worse. Of course, I said that about Reagan, and then we got George W. Bush.

Good luck, all.