If you've stumbled onto this site you may be asking yourself, "Just who the hell is this guy and why should I care?" Okay, maybe you wouldn't ask yourself that. I would ask that, but then who am I? You begin to see where that line of questioning can go.
I'm just some schlub who has dabbled in this and that, as opposed to having had any kind of realistic goals. As child of the Space Age (that was before the MySpace Age) I wanted to be an astronaut, until I found out that actual work was involved. Then I wanted to be a cartoonist, largely because I was the best cartoonist at Byron Elementary School. Sad to relate, I spent the next 25 years pursuing art as a career only to discover that I had pretty much peaked in the third grade. Still, I managed to make some money along the way.
I jumped on the standup comedy bandwagon in the early 1980s in Atlanta and took mediocrity to a whole new level. This was at the urging of my good friend Dr. Emil Fazuil*, who was drunk at the time. So was I. I worked with a lot of pretty big names before they became famous. One or two of them might remember me vaguely, vague being a fairly accurate description of my act. I might have succeeded but for a lack of insane ambition. I had the talent, I think, but I wasn't willing to work to acquire the skills.
I was 27 when I first got the comedy bug. At the outset standup comedy looks like a pretty good deal. It's the only job I know of that allows you to drink on the job, it's a great way to meet women and, at the top, the pay is crazy good, hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hour. Even on the lowest rungs you can make 20 or 30 bucks a minute. The downside is sometimes you might have a 14 hour drive to work. A few years of that and a day job starts to look not quite so horrible. See, the thing is, from out there in the audience, standup looks easy. It ain't.
*Names have been changed to protect the guilty. I don't know very many innocent people.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
This is for the Jesup Press Sentinel. I'll be doing a column for them which will appear the first Saturday of each month, or until I piss someone off. I'm just saying.
Model Citizen
I haven’t always been the model citizen I appear to be today. I was talking to Ware County Sheriff Randy Royal the other day and it occurred to me that back in the day, any interaction that I might have had with law enforcement would likely have started with blue lights and a siren.
“Could you step out of the car, sir?”
“No, sir, I could not. I could prolly fall out…”
Why is it the only time anybody calls me “sir”, it means I’m in trouble?
It’s the same way with ”Mister Deal”.
“Mr. Deal, could you recite the alphabet backwards for me, please?”
“Okay, you go first…” Seriously, how fair is that? “Recite the alphabet backwards…” What if you’re dyslexic? I’ll tell you what the officer won’t like: turning your back and singing, “A, B, C, D…” I cannot emphasize enough just how much the officer won’t like it.
The fact is I just can’t believe that I’m a grownup. I don’t mean that the same way my wife can’t believe it, like when I watch Spongebob Squarepants. I mean in the sense of “Hey, Baby Boomer, you’re in charge now! That’s right Mr. Big Talk; you! What’s that? How does the economy work? You knew when you were 16, didn’t you?!? You knew everything back then, didn’t you, Smart Guy?”
And I did. Mark Twain once allegedly said (and if he didn’t say it, he should have), “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” I am not as quick to learn as Mr. Clemens, but more and more I see the point. A lot of what I used to know, I only thought I knew. A lot of the rest, I can’t remember.
As to why I can’t remember? Let me put it this way: I don’t worry much about microwaves from my cell phone burning out brain cells. Any brain cells that I didn’t kill off back in the seventies are natural born survivors. After I’m dead those brain cells will climb out of the grave, like roaches. Zombie brain cells…
I’m amazed that my g-g-g-generation is allowed to drive cars without supervision, much less vote in Presidential elections, perform surgery and fly airplanes. I have a lot more faith in Gen-Xers than I do in my own age group. They can’t possibly be more dangerous to themselves or to the world at large than we were.
I’m sure some of you may be thinking, “Not me! I never did that kind of stuff! Humph!”
Humph, indeed. Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t, but if I were a betting man (and I am) I’d bet that 80% of the male population born between 1946 and 1965 has something in their past that they don’t want their kids or grandkids to know about. Any takers?
Model Citizen
I haven’t always been the model citizen I appear to be today. I was talking to Ware County Sheriff Randy Royal the other day and it occurred to me that back in the day, any interaction that I might have had with law enforcement would likely have started with blue lights and a siren.
“Could you step out of the car, sir?”
“No, sir, I could not. I could prolly fall out…”
Why is it the only time anybody calls me “sir”, it means I’m in trouble?
It’s the same way with ”Mister Deal”.
“Mr. Deal, could you recite the alphabet backwards for me, please?”
“Okay, you go first…” Seriously, how fair is that? “Recite the alphabet backwards…” What if you’re dyslexic? I’ll tell you what the officer won’t like: turning your back and singing, “A, B, C, D…” I cannot emphasize enough just how much the officer won’t like it.
The fact is I just can’t believe that I’m a grownup. I don’t mean that the same way my wife can’t believe it, like when I watch Spongebob Squarepants. I mean in the sense of “Hey, Baby Boomer, you’re in charge now! That’s right Mr. Big Talk; you! What’s that? How does the economy work? You knew when you were 16, didn’t you?!? You knew everything back then, didn’t you, Smart Guy?”
And I did. Mark Twain once allegedly said (and if he didn’t say it, he should have), “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” I am not as quick to learn as Mr. Clemens, but more and more I see the point. A lot of what I used to know, I only thought I knew. A lot of the rest, I can’t remember.
As to why I can’t remember? Let me put it this way: I don’t worry much about microwaves from my cell phone burning out brain cells. Any brain cells that I didn’t kill off back in the seventies are natural born survivors. After I’m dead those brain cells will climb out of the grave, like roaches. Zombie brain cells…
I’m amazed that my g-g-g-generation is allowed to drive cars without supervision, much less vote in Presidential elections, perform surgery and fly airplanes. I have a lot more faith in Gen-Xers than I do in my own age group. They can’t possibly be more dangerous to themselves or to the world at large than we were.
I’m sure some of you may be thinking, “Not me! I never did that kind of stuff! Humph!”
Humph, indeed. Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t, but if I were a betting man (and I am) I’d bet that 80% of the male population born between 1946 and 1965 has something in their past that they don’t want their kids or grandkids to know about. Any takers?
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