Well, You Two Can Go Straight To Hell

WARNING: The following post contains content not suitable for small children, workplaces, most dogs, your mother, people with a reading level lower than that of a 4th grader with a wicked crack addiction and anyone who watches Jersey Shore without a hint of irony. You've been disclaimered, jerks.

I see you sitting there, looking confused, probably wondering what the hell that magic box in front of you is doing and how it is doing it and why warlocks weren't all rounded up and put in some sort of super prison like in that movie with the wizard child. If that's the case, please stop reading this blog immediately. I do not want you to read this. At all. I'd rather, for the sake of future generations, you go back to doing what you do best: being really fucking stupid.

I'm not kidding.

Seriously.

Leave.

NOW!

Alright. Now that I've cleared the room of all the idiots, let's talk turkey (or "turkeys", he says auditioning to write for a future Seth MacFarlane project that is largely pun based). Aren't stupid people amazing? Are not the morons of the world the most fascinating people lucky enough to wake up every morning grinning at the coming dawn with a smile that proudly tells us all "I enjoy cake?" The short answer to those questions is: Yes, they are. The long answer to those questions is:

No. Idiots are the fucking worst, and an incident today proved that to me once and for all.

Reader, I work in a labyrinthine hospital that at any given time houses roughly 15,000 employees alongside the incalculable number of patients, family members, visiting guest and hobos looking for a warm place to rest their weary hobo bones for a spell. It is a confusing place to get around in made doubly more exacerbating by the myriad signs that seem to be pointing you in the correct direction, but are actually carefully placed in such a way as to make your journey more damnable than you could ever have possibly imagined.

As simple as red tags on a ceiling leading you to an elevator that is also red in color may seem to you or I, this method is actually very confusing to most people. As part of my commitment to my day job I will occasionally help people out if I notice they are deep in the middle of a distressing moment of misdirection. This is something I am supposed to do as an employee of this institution. I am supposed to be helpful when I see patients or guest wandering around, looking confused. So, today I did that, and, boy howdy, was that ever a big fucking mistake.

(I'm keeping "boy howdy" in there. I don't care what you think of me. I like that phrase.)

See, Reader, there were these two young ladies walking around earlier today looking very confused. They were huddled together like some symbiotic coven of uselessness splattered with an ungodly patina of what I'm assuming they would tell you is "Hawaii Bronze," or some other ridiculous tanning parlor name for a color that only exists in nature as made by man. One of them, the taller of the two, kept referring to what I know is a sheet of directions that offices here will send out to people coming in for an appointment for the first time so they don't get lost quite as easily as they would with no directions at all. The taller one looks at her sheet again, shows it to the shorter one and they both start giggling like morons.

"Isn't this fun!" I imagined the shorter one thinking. "We're lost, I'm totes going to text all my friends how we're lost," I thought I heard the taller one whisper to the shorter one, but that may have just been the siren song of multiple gold hoop earrings clanging together as they put their stupid heads together to look at a sheet of paper with arrows and words on it that clearly stated they were not where they were supposed to be. So, me, being uncharacteristically nice and helpful, sucked it up and walked over to where they were standing (in front of a sign, placed there by the people who designed the building as a guide for visitors to make treading the maze of this place a little bit more realistic) and politely asked them "Do you guys need help?"

Here is the tall one's response: After looking me up and down like I'm some piece of fucking Salisbury steak she was about to eat and subsequently throw up later in the bathroom at whatever hair salon I'm sure she works at, Snort "From you? I don't think so."

Here is the shorter one's response: After her taller friend so viciously cut me to the quick, "yeah, dude, I don't think so." Giggle.

I walked away to the sound of these two cunts giggling like hyenas that just discovered whippets, grew opposable thumbs, bought the necessary equipment and learned how to use the aforementioned whippets in order to make them laugh like insufferable young women who consider being "airheaded" "dityz" "bronzed" and "full of someone's penis, I don't care whose" full time occupations. I'm so mad about this I'm not even going to look if I just used "whose" correctly. That's how mad I am. I'm "fuck correct grammar" mad. (To be honest, I am usually "fuck correct grammar" lazy, so you guys won't notice)

And now I explain my ire in a humorous way...

Reader, this shit needs to stop and it needs to stop quick, because I am sure I am not the only person affected by the zombie like plague of idiots currently calling this planet their home. Sure, there have been plenty of stupid people throughout history that have at one time or another been famous for a minute or two, but we just pointed and laughed at them and went on with our business like we were supposed to do. You know what would've happened to Snooki in, say, 1963? Nothing! She would just be a dumb slut from Marlboro, New York working her way through the world one bad decision at a time, spitting out a half dozen kids, working as a secretary for a guy who clearly only hired her because he was drunk, and then she would die. Probably of old age, surrounded by her unloving grandchildren, cursing the day she ever met Frank and decided to settle for him because he was nice to her that one time they went to Sabastino's and got a slice. 2011? Now she's an international celebrity making millions of dollars and her squished up stupid face is everywhere and it has invaded the minds of future generations of children and young adults who are now learning that "if I let someone try to fuck me all the time, or if I act crazy enough and let someone try to fuck me, or if I have no talents whatsoever but completely buy into this very specific frame of mind and let someone try to fuck me, and there's a camera around, I'm going to be hugely successful and famous and have mountains of money to let someone try to fuck me on," and this is not okay.

We need to let these kids know that these people are clowns trotted out for our amusement and not for our enshrinement and idolatry, because they are the worst. We will, I swear, trundle further down into the rabbit hole of stupidity that is very quickly making America the most moronic nation in the world. I was trying to help two people find their way, and I was punished because I do not look like DJ Pauly D or The Situation (who both, by the way, look way too "rapey" to me), and not only that, but these bitches didn't even wait for me to walk away before they decided it was okay to try and make me feel bad; which I guess they succeeded at since I'm fuming on the internet right now and, probably, look worse than these assholes who are probably to busy wondering how bells work right now to remember what happened earlier, but what I'm trying to say is not only were they really, really fucking dumb, but they were also consciously rude. How... how does that even happen?

I don't know. I really don't, and I'm not going to blame parents or television for this because it very well might be that the more the gene pool is stretched the dumber it becomes. It could be that the human race has just been slowly evolving into a poorly crafted sack of limbs attached to what future scientists will point to and call a "thinking box." I don't know. I'm not a soothsayer and I can't predict the future and I absolutely will not apologize for the past. We are what we are and this is where we are headed, but there's also a chance to change things and make the rest of my life a little less filled with angry and a little more filled with people that make sense when they talk.

Or, I'm just really pissed off at two girls who made me feel ugly. Whatevs. Totes just going to go home and drink and watch TV anyway.

The Bomb: Failure At Its Finest

Reader, you and I both know by this stage in the game that I dabble in the world of amateur stand-up comedy (I will be able to remove the "amateur" part of that as soon as I get paid one of these days; but to be fair, I did a show in Little Falls, NY and was nearly paid with a nice breakfast, but being the jerk that I am, I picked up the tab and, unfortunately... well you get the idea) and as such I am incredibly familiar with "bombing;" which is, if you're unfamiliar with the term, what comedians call it when they fail on stage.

It sucks.

It hurts your soul.

It makes you wonder why you're doing what you're doing in the first place and whether or not it's time you took your Dad's advice and went back to college to get that degree in stereo repair, but it is an essential part of the process of making a stand-up comic what he or she will one day become. This could mean it makes a comic tough enough to endure any crowd, any situation no matter how dire and helps to shape his or her material accordingly. Or, it could mean it breaks a comic's heart so thoroughly that he or she never recovers and, overtime, develops a phobia of microphones so severe that he or she may develop hives whenever confronted with a PA system. (Yeah, it really is that bad.)

If you're running from the room screaming right now, you may have bombed a few too many times. I'm so, so sorry.

The absolute best thing about stand-up is how instantaneous the feedback is, because laughter is an involuntary reaction. If something is funny, you laugh and you really have no choice. You can stifle it as much as you want, but deep down your brain knows that joke about AIDS-zombies is hysterical and it wants you to laugh, but your better judgement, the type you do with your "thinking brain," doesn't want the people around you to know that you find AIDS-zombies hilarious and so you cover your mouth or do one of those weird, spastic silent laughs. Or, conversely, you think something is so unfunny that you sit there cross armed, smugly frowning, because you really think nothing to do with AIDS-zombies is funny, because you just lost a pet to the AIDS-zombie pandemic and the joke cut too close to the bone. But, here's the rub, no matter how the material lines up to your own sense of humor there's a better than average chance that you will connect with it on some level. So, the guy who thinks AIDS-zombies are the funniest thing in the world has been just as affected as the guy who would rather stab himself in the thigh with a fork than here another stupid AIDS-zombie joke. One of them is laughing like an asshole, the other is hoping whoever is on stage finishes as soon as he or she possibly can in the hopes that whoever is coming up next may have some other, non AIDS-zombie related jokes to tell.

Neither of them are wrong.

It's okay, guys! You're both right!

Now that all of you are well aware of where you stand as an audience member and how, regardless of your reaction, you're never in the wrong (it is, after all, the comic's duty to make you laugh, not the other way around) let me tell you what it feels like to "kill" (which is what comic's say when they've done really well with an audience) versus what it feels like to "bomb."

I really can't say that I've ever "killed," because I haven't been doing stand-up that long, my craft is not honed into perfection yet, so I'm generally spotty at best, but I have done well with some audiences before, so let me give this a shot. "Killing," is like having sex while eating spaghetti and watching the best episode of Mad Men ever, because there is very little that can honestly compare to the feeling of making a crowd laugh exactly how and when you wanted them to. You feel like a rock star. No! You feel like someone more in control of their surroundings than a rock star, because at a comedy show there aren't a bunch of guitars or drums to draw attention away from whoever isn't picking up the slack that night. It is just you, a microphone, some lighting and a bunch of chairs filled with people who came there to be made to laugh. These people are usually strangers who have no idea who you are and only know the barest history of stand-up comedy. They may have heard of people like Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt and Louis C.K, but, for the most part the average crowd knows the bigger named guys that play to much larger audiences; which isn't to say the audience should seek out the material available for the people I've mentioned, but they totally should, because I'll bet Paul F. Tompkins can make them laugh a million different ways than, say, a Dane Cook would. (Not to take anything away from Mr. Cook, who has done very well for himself) Having said all of that, when Joe Comedyseeker shows up, has no idea who you are or what kind of jokes you tell and laughs at you throughout your entire set, there is little in this world that makes you feel that good. It's amazing, really, and I have yet to experience a high even close to that.

On the other hand...

"Bombing," is, to put it lightly, hell on earth made out of acid, soaked in the saddest rainbow you can imagine; it feels like being raped by a syphilitic puppy. There's so much potential at the beginning of every set, so much that can go right, but sonofabitch if you don't know almost immediately if you're going to fall flat and that's when the puppy-rape starts. It's a slow, burning feeling within you that doesn't take full effect until you get to a joke you "just know" is going to work, going to win the audience back over to your side... and there's nothing. Silence. Not even the fucking crickets could bother to show up for this, and if they did, they're just sitting there not laughing because you fucking blew it, man. You couldn't even make the crickets laugh and crickets have a notoriously broad sense of humor. It hurts. A lot. More so than most anything a human being can put him or herself through short of losing a loved one. I'm not kidding. It is that atrocious an experience. It calls into question not just your existence, but your purpose, God's existence, God's purpose and it shines a light on every mistake you've ever made in your life that lead you to that particular point in time. You wonder if there's a way to reverse it, if you can get on stage again and prove yourself to the audience a second time, but you can't. You're time is up and you have to move along, because that's all she wrote, Jack, and there's another comic coming up that has to try and dig himself out of the grave you just dug.

Oh yeah, there's also that.

When you do stand-up, unless you're a headliner -which is almost a "bomb proof" position to be in, since it means you've crafted an act good enough to have people pay to see you based on name recognition- there's usually a person waiting to follow you. That person, if you bomb, will want to murder you for leaving the audience cold like you did, believe me I know this from experience. So, on top of disappointing the audience and yourself, you now have the added knife in the gut of making a friend or fellow comic have to work themselves out of your pile of shit. It sucks when you're the bomber and it sucks just as much when you're the guy who has to follow the guy who just made your job that much more difficult. Because, after a truly awful set, the audience is thinking "why am I here? I spent money on a ticket and drinks and this is what I'm paying for? Bah! BAH I SAY!" and so they're pissed off and unruly and want to laugh; which hopefully the follow up act can make them do, but it is harder than if, say, the person right before them didn't suck the life out of the room with their lack of funny.

I've done the latter a few times (probably more than that, honestly) and it has taken me days to realize what an asshole I was because of it, but you live, you learn and you move on. Otherwise you get stuck in this cycle of self-loathing you'll never be able to get out of; which is the worst, believe me. Most comics are depressed or mentally not all together as it is, so when you strip away something as meaningful to them as the laughter they try to create it can be devastating.

Luckily, most comics are also pretty delusional. They hang on even the smallest laugh as proof that they did an okay job that night. They go home and tell their loved ones it was "alright" and they keep at it, but the pain lingers. It festers. It is always there in the back of their minds clawing at their preciously delicate psyche waiting to scratch its way to the surface to blow their confidence out of whack and ruin their night. It's bombing. It's part of the deal you sign when you get into comedy, and it is something you can embrace or reject, but it is always going to be out there. That potential for utter failure is waiting around the corner of each comic's next set and, believe you me, Reader, it haunts most of us.

But, you live, you learn and you move on or you quit. I've seen extremely talented friends of mine not at their best one night come back a few days later and absolutely destroy, because comedy is a fickle mistress that will not be tamed like some common shrew. It needs work. It needs practice and it needs humility. Or, at the very, very least, a steady diet of delusions of grandeur in order to succeed, because without the taste of failure (and it is a wide palate of taste, I'll have you know) you're never going to know what it means to "kill."

Having said all of that, let me remind you -and any comics reading this- that I am very much a hack who just happens to love comedy more than almost anything else in his life, and so I've learned to stop caring and love the "bomb," because it is all a part of this incredibly stupid life I'm trying to make for myself. Make of this what you will, but if you want to experience it for yourself, find an open-mic in your hometown and see for yourself. Its amazing to experience. Trust me.

I swear there is a post coming this afternoon.

Don't be alarmed, children! I will be posting a full, awesome, probably mind blowing post later on today! I just needed to type something and post it to remind myself how this whosiewhatsits works!

In the meantime, take a look at this picture:

It has nothing to do with anything, but it is an awesome picture and it is making me thirsty.

7 Things I've Learned In The Last 4 Months

Last night, had I actually been on a stage telling jokes to a room full of stranger, would have been the night I celebrated my fourth month doing stand-up comedy since coming out of retirement in June. But, since the open mic where I got my re-start is in a state of hiatus for the time being, I was out drinking, carousing, pizza eating and laughing with my girlfriend and some other friends of ours (whom we would never have met if I did not get back into stand-up). It's been a fun, sometimes torturous ride so far and since I've been trying to chronicle as much of my return to being funny as possible, I wanted to share with you, my dear readers, friends and fellow jerks of the world that may be interested in this sort of thing, just exactly what I've learned so far.

1 - Comics React Poorly To Stolen Material, But It Is Justified
Recently I blogged about the trials and tribulations my favorite open-mic in the world is going through with a certain dicknosed individual named Shmantonio who has been blatantly stealing material from, of all people, Martin "Shanaynay" Lawrence.

Sure, why not?

Since that fateful night not that long ago when the plagiarism bells rang loud and clear at Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY the open mic has gotten darker, more rambunctious and a lot more fun to be part of. There's something genuinely amazing about a room full of angry comics that causes them to bond and become friends even if they didn't especially like each other before, because we all suddenly realize the hard work we put into our jokes (even the stupid ones are written, rewritten, edited again and told to our significant others at least 16 times before making it to the stage, for the most part) is something to unite us. It's a struggle to make 5-7 minutes of stand-up good enough to make people who may or may not be paying attention stop what they're doing and laugh. So the shared ire, the shared anger at the idea that some dickfaced piece of shit would walk in, rip off someone who was incredibly popular while most of us were growing up and get angry when he was busted is something the real comedians, the ones who write their own sets out and cry themselves to sleep when they don't work, can point to and say "well, at least I'm not Shmantonio, because he's a jackass." (It should be noted to my readers that this Sunday is Shmantonio's last chance to prove he can write his own stuff and not crib from other prominent comedians, should he fail he will be banned for life. Them's the breaks, budding stand-ups, know this particular rule extremely well or you'll find yourself on the outside looking in incredibly quickly.)

2 - Writing Jokes That Make Other People Laugh Is Really Hard
The biggest piece of advice I would ever give to someone who wants to take a crack at stand-up is to write as many of your ideas down as possible and to try them out on the general public (at work, school, etc. wherever it is appropriate) and not sitting around with your friends, girlfriends, boyfriends or family, because that is not an objective audience.

Your friends and significant others are too nice and too hard wired to encourage you to give you the real skinny on whether or not what you're saying is funny. What I'm trying to say is they'll laugh at anything you preface with "I just wrote this joke," or "I'm thinking of trying stand-up, what do you think of this?" This doesn't mean what you have written isn't funny, by the way, it just means you're getting a reaction that isn't as genuine as what you'll get your first time on stage (which is terrifying in the best way possible) from an audience who is unsuspecting and absolutely will not laugh if you aren't funny. But, if you're around the water cooler and have a work appropriate joke you want to try out on a few of your coworkers go ahead and do it, because they won't know what's coming and it'll be a real laugh as opposed to a "hey you're my friend and I like you so I'm going to laugh" laugh. Just be ready to fail, even at work, because awkward silence following a joke whether you're on stage or off is just plain terrible.

3 - Make Friends With People, It Makes Your Life Easier
The stupidest thing I did when I started stand-up the first time around was to not make any efforts to reach out and get to know any of the other comedians at the various open mics around town. Sure I would see the same people week in and week out and they would see me, but I was a little too ahead of my self and overly cocksure about my abilities, so I stayed on the sidelines watching and nodding my head and never ever went up to anybody and said, "Hi, I'm Jim, I really liked your set tonight;" which I will do now at the drop of hat if someone gets me to laugh. This is how I got to know Bryan J. Ball, Billy T. Anglin, Vinnie Paulino, Jeremy Eli, Wes Bauer and Dan Maslyn, who are now some of my favorite people in the world (it doesn't hurt that they are just as funny off stage as they are on stage).

Now, I can't sit still during open mics and shows when all my friends are there because I'm up and around talking and joking in the wings or outside having a beer with Billy and Jeremy while we discuss some of the finer points of a cleverly crafted fart joke. Or 3 or 4 of us are standing near the stage, watching someone try out new material for the first time that we haven't seen, and oddly (unless it's terrible in which case we're pretty brutal to each other) we're all very supportive and helpful.

That's pretty much true across the board. If you're friendly, supportive and even the least bit funny and you reach out to some of the comics you see week in and week out the chances are they'll be equally as friendly and supportive. It helps more with the actual craft of doing stand-up than I can put into words, but riffing back and forth about something trivial at a bar on a Thursday night has spawned more great ideas for jokes than I can ever remember happening while on my couch, alone watching TV.

4 - Do Not Rush Yourself
It is very possible for people in stand-up to get very big in a very short amount of time, but it's also incredibly rare. Even in Rochester, NY I've seen people go from first timer at an open mic to getting paid shows in a few months to traveling across the North East from college to college making pretty good money, but, like I said, that doesn't happen too often.

What you should expect is to take your time honing your material as often as possible to the best of your abilities. This could take weeks, months or even years before you're at a level where you'll be able to travel the college, club or coffee house circuit getting paid somewhat decent money. I recently re-watched the documentary Comedian starring Jerry Seinfeld (ever heard of him?) and something he said really stuck with me. Keep in mind this is Jerry Seinfeld, creator of "The Marriage Ref," who said "6 months is not a long time to put together an hour of material." 6 months seems like forever when you're new to the game and trying to get your name out there and, eventually, get paid, but you're not Jerry Seinfeld. So don't expect to have 30 minutes of material immediately. Shoot, don't expect to have 10 minutes of material immediately. Get your 5-7 honed to as near perfect as you can and, when you can do that without feeling like there were saggy bits in your set, start writing longer sets out.

To be honest, I probably have 30-40 minutes of jokes written right now, but only about 10-12 minutes of performable material; which is going to be an issue in the not to distant future if I move forward in this comedy contest I'm participating in right now which would require me to do 20-30 for the first time in my life. Nervous as hell? Yes. Yes I am... but that leads me into...

5 - Embrace Those Nerves, They Are Your Friends
You're going to be nervous your first few times (I, to this day, am still nervous for the first minute of any set) and that's totally fine, but remember that those nerves are a sort of adrenaline shooting through your body, and they are there to help. Harness them as best you can and redirect them back into your stage presence. Unless you're trying to have a nervous, jittery stage persona, in which case, carry on.

6. - At Some Point You'll Just Know What You're Doing
I am not at this level yet, but it's coming on fast. I've been doing very well the past few weeks and I even made it into the aforementioned comedy contest with 7 other local comics (out of 25 that auditioned) and that was a sign that things are moving in the right direction, but I have not had an overwhelming flood of confidence hit me yet which has been described to me as an "ah ha" moment when everything just clicked into place and the person on stage new exactly what they were doing, how to do it and felt great in the process. I've been very close to this, but I know it hasn't really happened yet, but hey, I'm in no rush.

7 - Hey, A Cliche! Just Have Fun With It.
My friend Billy asks me after every set if I "had fun" or not. Usually, I do, but there have been moments where it's been the opposite of fun and it shows in every little tic. Stand-up is such a strange form of entertainment in that 1 person has complete and total control over everything that's going on in the room. If you're nervous? The audience is nervous with you. If you're happy? The audience is happy. If you're stealing jokes because you're an asshole and the comics off stage are getting pissed off? That anger seeps into the crowds mindset, I'm not even kidding, it's like a disease that has become airborne and Shmantonio is the outbreak monkey killing us all slowly with his pilfered material. You don't want that to happen all the time, though it can be fun when the momentum shifts from anger to goofy agitation and beer drinking.

There you have it, reader, make of my shitty pearls of wisdom what you will.

My Follow Up Interview With God

Reader, quite some time ago I landed an interview with God; which went pretty well to be honest. We covered some pretty confusing stuff, but I think He gave me some great answers (or at least confused me enough to believe he gave me some great answers) that really shed some all knowing light on some subjects that were pretty dimly lit.

Well guess what? His publicist called me the other day "just to check in and see how things are going" and ask "when are we going to do another interview?" I damn near fell out of my chair. Here was God's publicist calling me about a follow up interview with Him! I asked Mary (God's PR representative) "Why me?" She paused, probably trying to figure out how to be as gentle as possible, "He likes you... and you're not important or heavily read enough for this to be controversial, so it's safe." Whatever, I don't care. I get to sit down with the guy who created the universe again and ask him whatever questions I want. What more could a guy like me want? (Answer: more money)

Jim - So it's been almost a year since last we spoke, what's been going on since then?
God - Not much, man. Not much.
J - Really?
G - No, no. (Laughs) I'm God, for Christ's sake. (Laughs) I'm always busy, man. Just the other day I was trying to figure out what to do with this little planet in a corner of the universe that you guys won't discover for another 2,000 years or so; which was fun. It's like Farmville or The Sims, but y'know, reality.
J - Come up with anything good?
G - I think, think, it's going to be populated by creatures that very closely resemble human beings in that I've made the effort to sort of shape it the same way I did with Earth, but nothing is finalized, everything is always changing and shifting and I'm the kind deity that just lets things happen until it gets really out of control.
J - What about Noah?
G - What about Noah?
J - It says in the Bible you flooded the Earth...
G - No, I know what The Bible says, but do you really think I flooded the Earth to prove a point about humanity? Do you really think I would raze entire cities to the ground because they slightly disagreed with me or annoyed me?
J - I guess you would be a pretty shitty God if you did. No offense.
G - Oh, none taken at all. It just gets frustrating after a while, you know?
J - I understand where you're coming from on some level, because if you were the type of God that did something like put dinosaur bones in the ground to test humanity's faith in you, you'd be narcissistic, selfish and kind of a dick.
G - It would be very "look at what I can do! I'm God! Here's a mysterious bone that I want you to scrutinize and, eventually, dismiss as a test of faith, because I'm God and I can do that sort of thing! Now get on your knees and pray for my love."
J - "You think you're better than me? I'm God, damn it! Here's a plague to remind you that I'm the shit."
G - (Laughs) Exactly. I wish people would think more. That's why you all have these marvelous, miraculous brains and not just a head with an I.O.U note stuffed inside it.
J - So we can think and solve problems for ourselves without having to rely on your God-Finger to nudge us in the right direction all the time. We talked about that a little bit in the last interview.
G - I remember, and I've thought about it here and there since then and the only thing I can come up with is that people are so brazenly desperate to know what's going on in the world, to have some idea of whats happening that they use Me as a scapegoat. Which is lazy and offensive because, again, you're wasting this beautiful brain, but it's also a little unsettling.
J - Because they can blame you for, literally, everything that's ever happened ever? Or praise you for, literally, everything that's ever happened ever?
G - Exactly. Just the other day I was eating a burger, sitting on a bench watching the world I created roll on by in front of me, trying to soak it all in and just be, and a Mormon -a kid, 17 years old, named Jeremiah- walks up to me and he's got this backpack on and his little short-sleeved, white button down shirt and clip on tie outfit and he goes, "Can I talk to you for a second?"
J - Christ. How'd that go?
G - How do you think it went?
J - Poorly.
G - Not at all, really, the kid was just confused about what he wanted to believe in because his parents never gave him a chance to figure things out for himself -going back to the home schooling thing we talked about last time- and he's just running through the world without a clue. So after a while of politely listening to him speak to me about Mormonism I interrupted him and said, "How do you know this is what God wants?" He looks me square in the eye and says, "I have faith." I was f_cking floored! I'm sitting right in front of him thinking "Do I tell him? Do I tell him?" And instead of wrecking his entire life I just let it go and said, "keep plugging away," I took his pamphlets and asked if he wanted the rest of my fries; which he did but was too polite to take.
J - It's a strange way to end an argument, you know? "Oh, why is the sky blue?" "God." I mean, fine, believe what you want and yes to some extent the sky is blue because of you, but when the questions go deeper like "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The answer is more complicated than "God is testing their faith," or "It's God's will;" which clearly isn't the case.
G - And it's dangerous, because you can justify anything that way. "Why did you murder your husband Mrs. Smith?" "It was God's will." No it was f_cking not. Mrs. Smith is still going to jail because of what she did, you know? But her husband is dead. Another human being, whom was loved by friends and family, is gone from the world for no reason at all other than Mrs. Smith wanted to murder her husband and the only way she could rationalize that urge was to say it was My will. Which is ridiculous. So, instead of seeking help for her thoughts, what's she do? She just goes with it, never questioning that she may be insane or going through something that requires psychiatric intervention or medication, and it's my fault, because she won't take responsibility.
J - Sounds like you have a thing against crazy people.
G - Oh, no, not at all. My heart cries out for those people. But I can't just reach down and say "you're fixed, you're welcome, see you in church," because I would have to do it for everyone, and I just won't do that.
J - It goes back to you wanting us to think for ourselves and fix things without having this distressing reliance on a God who, excuse me, is basically an absentee landlord, right?
G - Right. Exactly. I did not create mankind so that I could be praised, I created Earth to evolve into something great, something brilliant and it has and it will continue to do so if humans don't blow it up first; which is a very real possibility by the way, and I'll take the heat for that too.

A Note On Stealing

Reader, let me spin you a tale of discontent and anti-merriment brought to you by the tortured souls of the stand-up comedy open mic night at Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY (every Sunday at 8! Hosted by Bryan J. Ball! I plug things!).

A good friend of mine, Billy T. Anglin, and I were hanging out at my house a few weeks ago before the open mic at Boulder Coffee Co. talking through our upcoming sets, drinking a few beers and writing down ideas that we came up with in conversation. This is how I do my best "writing" for the stage. I have a terrible time sitting down and trying to write jokes, because I get bored with it quickly, but mainly because I believe that my best stuff comes up on the fly; which is why I usually have a very small notebook and a pen with me to jot down the stupid things I find funny and hope to shoehorn into my set. Billy, on the other hand, actually sits down and writes out his stuff in a very diligent, professional manner that I am jealous of. I one time asked him, "Hey, Billy how do you get through writer's block?" I got 6 text messages back to back describing a very scientific approach to writing jokes that I immediately deleted for fear that it would creep into my mind and make me feel even more worthless than I normally do. We spent a few hours together, Billy and I, getting ready for the show. It was fun. I got a little drunk, came up with some ideas for bits I'm still working on and really enjoyed myself in the process.

My other friend and I, Bryan J. Ball (mentioned above in the shameless plug for the open-mic he hosts at Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY on Sunday nights at 8) hang out a lot during the week. We grab a few beers at Tap and Mallet or go out together with our girlfriends or he makes me amazing mac and cheese and I eat it. I'm going out on a limb here when I say this, but when Bryan and I start riffing on something the jokes that come out of it are phenomenal and usually more suited to him than to me, because I can only think of one joke I've done on stage that has come from our conversations and I was less than pleased with it. Bryan is also a writer, I think, because he takes the usable chunks of our conversation and crafts them into a longer format that translates incredibly well on stage. I've never seen him sit down and write out a joke, but I have about 4,000 texts on my phone from him about 1 joke, so I know he thinks about it and works hard to make sure his set is tight, timed well and something to be proud of.

What Bryan, Billy and 95% of the comics that do open mics in Rochester have in common is that they work really f_cking hard on their material. Actually, this is pretty much the case across the board with stand-up comedians. It's really difficult to write good, solid jokes that will play in almost any room you can think of, and it takes a metric shit ton of effort to figure out the pacing, timing and presentation (this is something I am starting to work on more, as I'm beginning to realize I suck). Until a few weeks ago I had only heard some comics use a line or a phrase that sounded similar to the work of another, better known comedian, and until a few weeks ago I had never known what it felt like to be in a room when the audience has little to no clue that the person on stage is lifting his entire set from someone, yet all the comics do.

The tension, needless to say, was palpable and disturbing.

I'm not going to name names, but it rhymes with Shmantonio (which is how he'll be referred to from here on out), who was a first timer, energetic and overly confident on such a huge level that it bordered on psychopathic or sociopathic delusion. I watched with the audience as Shmantonio prowled around the stage, yelling loudly and enthusiastically into the microphone with timing eerily precise for a guy who had never done stand-up before. It felt more polished and put together than the sets of some people who have been doing stand-up for months. The honeymoon phase lasted about 2 minutes.

After that, I started hearing punchlines and set ups that sounded strangely familiar; which honestly isn't that rare, because comics do tend to pounce on similar subjects, have similar opinions or mindsets that make their material sound like someone elses and vice versa. There's a reason every comic in the country told the same Tiger Woods joke when they heard about his car accident and the fallout that came after it, it's because everyone thought of a Tiger Woods joke and told it on stage, but if you were paying attention you'd notice that only the theme was shared and not the entire joke (for the most part). It's just the way things go and it's the main reason a lot of the more successful people in the stand-up business do not do pop culture, this just happened yesterday humor, because it's timely and not timeless and grows old faster than a shitty peach. This wasn't Shmantonio's case.

Shmantonio completely ripped off 5-7 minutes of Martin Lawrence's stand-up. Yes, Martin Lawrence. Yes, the same Martin Lawrence that brandished a pistol while screaming at tourists on Ventura Blvd.. Yes, the same Martin Lawrence who almost died because he went jogging in 100 degree heat wearing several layers of clothing. Shmantonio decided to rip off the star of Big Mamma's House, because evidently Shmantonio thought that a room full of comedy nerds (mostly white comedy nerds, so I can see why he would racistly think none of us would even be aware of Martin Lawrence, let alone be able to recognize his material... seriously, now that I just wrote that, I'm even more pissed. What a dicknose) wouldn't notice. Big. F_cking. Mistake.

I'm an idiot, as I've said countless times right on this very blog, so it took me a lot longer to catch what was going on than the other comics in the room who noticed almost immediately. The host, Bryan J. Ball (remember, Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY, Sunday nights at 8) got pissed. Dan "I'm Already Mad At Everything" Maslyn got pissed. Billy T. Anglin was mildly upset; which for him is like being pissed. Everyone who caught it was upset, as they should've been, but this was his first time and we all must have thought "ah, he'll never come back, just let it go..."

Two weeks go by and Shmantonio returns to Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY (which has a stand up comedy open-mic night on Sundays, at 8). Being the consummate gentlemen and host that he is, Bryan cautiously warned the audience and all fellow comedians that "stealing other people's material will not be tolerated," and to stick it to Shmantonio and see whether or not he had evolved and recognized the error of his ways, Bryan put the plagiarist up first. The weird thing is, neither I nor Bryan nor Billy thought that he had lifted someone else's stuff at the beginning of his set and we had decided "well, he doesn't steal, he's just terrible." Fair enough. We were dicks to assume the worst anyway... or were we? (Hint: We weren't.)

Luckily for us and the audience another comic went up to Bryan and said "I can pull the YouTube clip of Martin Lawrence up right now and show you where he stole this from." This is the point where everyone started to get a little crazy about what was happening, so crazy, in fact, that I actually did very well that night; which doesn't happen as I am terrible. Bryan, again being a gentlemen (though, pissed off and ready to make with the punching should he be pushed enough) went outside to talk to Shmantonio and advise him on what to do in as nice a way as possible. I snuck out with them to eavesdrop and be ready to support my friend should the shit hit the proverbial fan. Bryan didn't out and out ban Shmantonio, but he told him he couldn't come back the following week (which means you really need to pounce on the chance to see the open mic this week before Shmantonio drags his shit cloud back into the building) and needed to write his own material or he wouldn't be welcomed back. Bryan even went so far as to say "you can come back and watch, but you're not going on stage" The conversation was more polite than I thought it was going to be.

But, Shmantonio didn't leave; which would have been the proper response after getting called out on stealing. Shmantonio should have slipped out of the side door quietly with his head down (and walked straight into traffic... I really hate this mother f_cker, by the way) and gone home to think about what he just did, but he didn't; he stayed and decided to be a jackass. I mean, a complete and total jackass who sat in the audience and cackled and basked in the attention like some freak of nature who, due to an evolutionary mishap, didn't have shame or the wherewithal to understand he was goading people into getting increasingly more angry with him.

His whooping and hollering and idiocy lasted the rest of the night. Even as people pointed out, on stage, that he was a thieving bastard who deserved to get pinched rigorously by the ghost of Andre The Giant until the pain was so unbearable he could do nothing but submit to the sweet release of a coma; which he would remain in for years and years until waking up one day to find the world completely bereft of the memory of Martin Lawrence, thus creating the opportunity Shmantonio needed to kill at Boulder (which, by the time he awoke from his pinch induced coma would have been renamed Bryan's House O' Coffee and Jokes). But I digress.

What I came to realize through gritted teeth and angrily clenched buttocks is that Shmantonio very well might be insane, or just painfully stupid, I can't decide and part of me, for a minute, started to feel sorry for him. I started to think "here's a guy who really doesn't have the mental facilities available to him that most of us do. I bet he lives in a group home surrounded by people who have other, similar disabilities, and his only joy is watching Martin Lawrence stand-up specials on VHS when all the other people go to sleep." I thought, "Maybe the only memory he has of his mother or father is of them watching Martin on Fox when he was younger, and this is some twisted idea of a tribute to the quickly fleeting memory of his life the way it used to be." I thought, "Jesus f_cking Christ now I'm going insane. This guy is just a gigantic, sociopathic prick who has no idea what's wrong with what he did and I guarantee he'll come back in two weeks and do the same f_cking thing." Which I dearly hope he does not do, because I am frightened by the possibility of comics getting into an actual fist fight with each other, because it would be the most unintentionally gay fight in the history of fights as most comedians actually developed their humor as a way to avoid getting punched in the face. Except Maslyn.

Looking from the outside, you're probably thinking "what's the big deal?" And you'd be an asshole for thinking that, but not really to blame if you don't do stand-up. There is a common misconception among people that comedians just go up on stage and be funny, that they don't work hard to nail a joke down perfectly or that jokes are just community property that anyone can cherry pick and do on stage if they want to. Nothing is further from the truth. Comics work really f_cking hard on their jokes; which is why when no one laughs it can be crippling, but when they do it's the best feeling in the world. It really is. So when some dickfaced piece of shit waltzes in after putting zero effort into his set, because he just rewatched a DVD a few times and memorized another person's jokes, the stand-up comedians who live for their weekly open mic, and put so much of their self esteem on the line in the process (like myself and others) get pretty upset. And we have every right to be. Those 5-7 minutes mean so freaking much to most of us, and to have someone come in and make it seem like all we do is other people's jokes just isn't tolerated. That's why we get mad. That's why, not some stupid superficial reason. It runs much deeper than that.

I just thought you might want to know.

UPDATE: Shmantonio came back last night to Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY. Completely disregarding the fact that the host, Bryan J. Ball, was more than nice in saying "take a week off," which meant "do not come back next week expecting to perform," yet he did and he made it awkward and dark, because like the huge pile of dick that he is, he sat right next to the stage and stared at everyone. I did tell him to f_ck off while I was on stage, which is one of my prouder moments, and another comic called him a "joke stealing piece of shit" when Shmantonio was trying to heckle him.

Here's the thing, reader, my fellow comics and I are giving this cretin too much attention and starting this morning I am in no way going to enable his douchebaggery by even acknowledging his existence. I suggest we all do the same.

You're Dead To Me: Jersey Shore

"You're Dead To Me..." is a new, recurring feature of "Where the Wild Things Were Last Thursday Around 8" chronicling the Hindenburgesque fall from my good graces of various pop culture icons.

I know, I know. Taking potshots at Jersey Shore at this stage in the game is pretty old hat. It's so easy. So simple. So... something else that would be funny if I had the brain power to think of it right now. See, this is the problem, just thinking about Jersey Shore makes me one tenth more of an idiot than I already am; which is deadly since I'm pretty stupid as is. While I think of where to take this post please look at this picture and gauge your ire accordingly.

Back Row (left to right): Grandpa Face, Pinky, Moose and Derek Jeter
Front Row (left to right): A lady I'm scared of, Dumb, Dumber and Hatchetface

This is tough to admit, but I used to love watching Jersey Shore so much so that I would mend my schedule around it to avoid missing one, soul crushing instance of morbid stupidity. I could not wait for Thursday nights to roll around so I could lavish in the sheer dumbassery taking place in Seaside Heights (which I have been told is a real place and not, in fact, purgatory for the tanned). I would explain my fascination away with the trite, ubiquitous explanation that everyone who is too smart to enjoy Jersey Shore, but does anyway gives, "it's like watching a train wreck!" And to some extent it is. There are body parts strewn about chaotically and there's a good amount of blood left on the boardwalk whenever Ronnie (Moose) goes on a cocaine, steroids and rum fueled bender, but that's about it. The problem is, I've never actually watched a train wreck and can only imagine the metaphor is inappropriate based solely on the fact that, from what I've read on the internet, train wrecks are in no way entertaining and in every way a horrible tragedy.

Being the intellectual sort that I am (he writes while thinking where to place a fart joke in the post later on) I decided it would be in my best interest to stop watching Jersey Shore and start studying the ever loving shit out of Jersey Shore. Off I went into a world where I tried, pathetically, to come up with some logical reason why Grandpa Face (The Situation) and the rest of the home for tortured Italian stereotypes was so captivating not only to myself, but the world.

My findings were less than pleasing. Here is a picture of a kitten for your sanity to hide in while I continue:

Aww.

Turns out, everyone on the show -even Vinny, the lovable scamp- is a gigantic pile of douche with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They just are. Seriously. Look at the picture of the cast from earlier in this post and point out one non-douchey thing happening in it. You can't, because these people are soulless douchebots sent from the future to rape our minds with their narcissism, stupidity and three letter acronyms. They have single-handedly turned me off of working out, being in direct sunlight or putting my clothes in the washing machine (I can't even look at the dryer anymore). Having said that, I would like to point out that this does not apply to JWoww, as she scares me more than Ray Lewis riding a T-Rex. (If you ever read this Jenny, and you won't because you probably can't read anything that's more than 140 characters long, please, please do not use your heightened senses to track me down and murder me for sport; that would be very un-Woww.)

This had better not be the last thing I see before I die, or I am so kicking God in the junk.

If I'm in the mood to be fair, and I sort of am, I could blame the entire fiasco on MTV and whatever dickface in a suit over there came up with this idea, but I'm not in the mood to be that fair since the cast obviously cannot get enough of themselves and will never leave our society alone until they punch themselves to death over a hair straightener or some equally dumb object that should not ever be fought over, or the show stops getting millions of viewers every week (fingers crossed for the punch fest to the death). So, really I blame myself and you (mostly you).

To further illuminate why this is all of our collective faults, let's take a person by person look at the cast, shall we? We mother f_cking shall!

Grandpa Face (AKA The Situation) - He has abs that are nice. Just ask him, he'll show you whenever and wherever. At your wife's funeral and need some cheering up? Just whisper "The Situation" five times into a mirror and Grandpa Face will show up and show you his rock solid abs; there may be a high-five involved, but I'm not positive.

JWoww - Just a sincerely wonderful woman that I have nothing bad to say about.

Pinky (DJ Pauly D) - The one with the hair. You know, the hair! Anyway, he is a DJ in Rhode Island; which I guess is a thing.

Snooki - this vacuous shrew is a mix between a troll doll, a half melted barbie doll, some sort of Chilean wildebeest and pure, unsaturated stupidity. She was punched in the face by a guy. Also, she is the "star" of the show. Go figure.

Moose (Ronnie) - Cocaine. Steroids. Bad Decisions. Lots of Rum. Shake. Stir. Serve hot and bothered inside TV sets nationwide.

Sammi - Have you ever looked at someone and known without a shadow of a doubt that they are going to be a downtrodden housewife with love handles and shitty kids in about 10 years whose husband probably beats them and her because he was over shadowed by The Situation when they were on Jersey Shore together? No? Well, meet Sammi.

Vinny - Of the entire cast, Vinny is the most likable. He is still a mesmerizing master of douchebaggery, and his super stereotypical Italian Uncle Nino (or something) makes me hate myself for some reason, but he's not the most terrible person on the show.

Hatchetface (Angelina) - Speaking of the worst person on the show, the self proclaimed "Kim Kardashian of Staten Island" is the worst person on the show. Everything she does bothers me on every imaginable level. Literally. I am metaphysically fuming whenever she opens that miserable hole in her face she thinks is a mouth, but is secretly a portal to hell... and herpes. Mostly herpes.

If you read any of that and thought to yourself, "hey, this show sounds fun," then you haven't been paying attention, and probably can't read anyway, so how are you reading this right now? I could say anything and you'd just giggle and say "look, those squiggly lines on the computer box are trying to tell me something, LOL" and then you'd fart and lay around in your own self loathing until someone, somewhere came to your rescue and got you that job at Denny's your parents wanted you to get because they needed you to move out of the house, because it was embarrassing every time one of their friends came over and they had to explain why their 29 year old son or daughter was still living at home, didn't have a job and watched MTV all day.

If you read the above paragraph and thought, "holy shit, Jim seems especially pissed off today," then you'd be correct and literate; which is a plus and means you have absolutely no reason to watch Jersey Shore ever again. It means that you, like myself, have the cognitive facilities available to you to help make the decision to just stop giving a shit about the antics of the aforementioned horrible people on this show. It's not worth it, and I've already done the leg work for you, my dear, dear reader, so please when you're sitting at home alone Thursday nights with a tub of ice cream balanced on your belly, wondering what to do with your life or what to watch on TV, just put on Mad Men or Breaking Bad or any other show that makes actual damn sense, and stop giving these talentless whores the attention they need to live. Except JWoww, because she will beat the shit out of you.

That is all.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Jersey Shore; which is now dead to me.

Yes, I Was Adopted.

From time to time it becomes incredibly obvious that I was adopted to someone I work with, am friends with or know via some other tenuous connection.

It usually hits them when they see this picture of my Dad and I.

It's not that I won't talk about it if you bring it up, and I don't hide this fact about my life from the general public because I'm not ashamed of it, but when some people find out they take it upon themselves to be as aggressively intrusive as possible into my personal life and feelings on the subject. So, to dissuade anyone from making me want to punch them in the future because they won't stop asking me questions about things I have no answer for, I'm going to answer the most asked adoption questions right here, right now, for you my beloved reader.

Do you know who your parents are?
Yes, there names are Jim and JoAnn LeChase and they adopted me when I was 3 months old, and they are awesome people that I love very much.

No, we meant, y'know, the parents who had you..biologically?
Oh, you mean the woman whose vagina I came out of and the man who put his penis inside her during sexual intercourse, thus impregnating her? No. I do not know them at all.

Do you know anything about them?
I know they were young (about 18) and did not have an abortion. (Thanks for that, by the way.)

Do you want to meet them some day?
Not at all. I have never had a desire to meet them, nor do I predict my mind will ever change about that subject... unless I need an organ transplant of some kind (probably my liver), at which point I will play the "long lost son" card like it's my job, ingratiate myself into their lives, play to their every emotional weakness and, after a few weeks of this, casually mention at dinner one night (probably at Arby's or some other depressing fast food restaurant that the sperm donor and human incubator that are my biological parents probably think is haute cuisine) that I need a liver. One of them is bound to step up, riddled with guilt at my plight and their lack of involvement in my life, hoping that I will live longer just to get to know them even more. Only to see me check out of the hospital a day early and move to Montana, where I will start a small business that specializes in duping biological parents into giving you, their unwanted spawn, their organs ("Adopt A Liver").

You seem bitter.
I'm not bitter at all, that's exactly what I would do.

Was it difficult growing up, knowing you were adopted?
Uhm, no. My parents were f_cking awesome and did everything they could for me, not to mention they never brought my adoption up, like, ever. It was just not a thing. I was their son, they were my parents and that's how it went until my Mom died 3 years ago. Now my Dad apologizes for my very existence on such a regular basis that I'm starting to suspect my adoption was not his idea. (Kidding... obviously... he's been apologizing for me my entire life)

Is it weird having siblings that weren't adopted too?
Weird? No. I have 3 sisters and have towered over them most of my life and they are all older than me by at least 7 years anyway, so our lives didn't really start to overlap until I was old enough to ask them to sneak me into bars (about 8, 9) at which point we got really close until I was 21 and did not need them anymore. Now I forget most of their names, but I'm pretty sure 1 of them starts with "J" or "L" but it's been so long since we've talked I can't really be sure.

Wer..
I just remembered one of their names, it's Susan.

Great. We were going to ask you if you were ever made fun of for being adopted.
Oh, all the time. Seriously. In grade school once people found out it was like there was a bounty on my head. Whoever could make me cry the hardest would win some ribbon candy, or something, but to be fair I was a giant pussy when I was younger. Aside from being the tallest kid in the entire school between the ages of 6 and 13, I was also the second kid to start reading, the first kid to get into comic books; which did not bode well for me socially. I once burst into tears because someone asked "how's the weather up there?" After I was done pummeling him, I pulled myself together and decided "hey, I really don't need to take this shit anymore. I'm freaking huge compared to these people." And that's when I became a bully.

Really?
No, I was never a physical bully, but I did master sarcasm at a very young age as a way to deflect ever really getting to know anyone or talk about anything of substance. This threw a lot of people off and I started to have a reputation as the "funny one" in class who made teachers laugh and the like, but what they didn't understand was that, for the most part, I truly despised almost all of them. Except my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Kirwin, he was awesome.

Oh, that reminds me, in 6th grade I had 2 teachers that all of my sisters had before me, and on the first day of school one of them introduced me to the class as being "the adopted brother of the LeChase girls;" which was nice. Once I was done pummeling her I thought to myself, "hey, maybe I have too thin a skin." And that's when I became an even bigger pansy than I was prior to becoming a bully.

If you could say one thing to your biological parents, what would it be?
I really can't stress this enough, because it's the only thing I could imagine saying to them that would be earnest and sincere and straight from my heart to theirs with every ounce of feeling that I could muster in that situation; "thanks for not having an abortion."

Equal Grounds Stand Up Comedy Extravaganza!

TONIGHT at 9! All you need is $5 and a sense of humor!



Because I dropped the ball and submitted the event too late to some of the local papers and web pages that promote things of this nature, I've taken it upon myself to do a little something here on my web page to support my friends and fellow comedians who will be appearing tonight at Equal Grounds Coffee House and Gift Shop in Rochester, NY (750 South Ave.).

Bryan J. Ball, Making With The Funny

The host of tonight's show is none other than my friend, neighbor and insanely funny comedian Bryan J. Ball. Bryan has been doing stand-up in Rochester and beyond for a little more than a year and he is honestly one of the areas biggest rising stars. He hosts the weekly open mic at Boulder Coffee Co. on Sunday's; which are not to be missed if you are a fan of comedy, and is also the areas longest running event of its kind. If you like smart, charming, creative humor you really do not want to miss out on seeing Bryan perform tonight. Not to mention he is an incredible host who manages to bring a room up and down with him at the drop of a hat. I really can't tell you how highly I think of Bryan (very).

You know what's hard to find on the internet? A picture of Vinnie Paulino.

Tonight's featured comedian is, by and large, one of Western New York's best stand-up comedians, Vinnie Paulino. Regularly hosts at The Comedy Club in Webster, NY, Vinnie shows a wide range of amazing comedic skill that can be at times charming, disarming, genius and goofy, but he's never not funny. I've had the pleasure of seeing Vinnie perform on numerous occasions and he's never disappointed the crowd or his fellow comedians with the way we can absolutely command a room with his charisma. No other comic in Rochester has his way with crowds as often or as easily as Vinnie, mark my words: you will laugh your ass off.

I am staying up way past my bedtime just to see Ms. Becker perform tonight, you should too.

Tonight's headliner, Kristen Becker, was a semi-finalist on Last Comic Standing and named one of CURVE magazines "America's funniest lesbians" and started and still hosts the "Doin' Time Comedy Showcase" at Nietzsche's in Buffalo, NY (one of the Rust Belt's premier stand-up open mic destinations). Now, I have never had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Becker perform live (because I am a hermit who hates leaving his house unless there is a zombie apocalypse or meteorite headed right for me), but I am more than excited. Every comedian I have talked to has described Kristen's shows as "can't miss;" which, coming from other comedians is basically like being anointed as the second coming of all things comedy. So, am I excited? Yes, incredibly so. If you live in Rochester you really need to find a way to get to Equal Grounds tonight and check out Kristen's comedy, she doesn't get around here very often, so you really, really, honestly, truly, literally do not want to skip out on this opportunity to see her live in a small venue before she is selling out entire stadiums.

TO RECAP:
Tonight's show starts at 9, but get there early so you can get a good seat. It is at Equal Grounds Coffee and Gift Shop, located at 750 South Ave. in Rochester, NY and costs $5. Hosted by Bryan J. Ball, featuring Vinnie Paulino and headlined by Kristen Becker, it is sure to be something Rochestarians will not want to miss. I promise.

Support Your Local Comedian

In between sips of Jameson, standing to the side of the stage at Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY last night at the comedy open mic I felt, for the first time, that I was part of something bigger than my own intentions. Shoulder to shoulder with some of the smartest, funniest people in the entire city I knew I was where I belonged and, though I may not be on their level or anywhere near their ability, felt accepted into a strange club where the members meet in public a few times a week to tell jokes to a room full of strangers. And, now I'm hooked. More than hooked, obsessed with the idea of growing and supporting the comedy scene in Rochester as best as I can; while, obviously, trying my hand at it as well.

Having said that, I'm sure more than a few of the comics that performed last night would disagree with me. They don't really know me from a hole in the wall, but we chatted amicably and traded some zingers back and forth like I imagine established comics (like Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Brian Posehn, etc.) do every night in green rooms and backstage areas across the country. It was, pathetically, a dream come true for me to rub shoulders with the likes of Vinny Paulino, Dan Maslyn and Dr. Will; whom I've seen perform countless times but had rarely approached before or during a show. I didn't feel worthy of inclusion into their secret society of funny people, but after a little more than two months doing open mics around town I felt comfortable not only with my ability, but in their company and that has made my life a whole hell of a lot easier and my stand-up a whole hell of a lot better.

I know I'm gushing uncontrollably right now, but I can't help myself, so please forgive me for showing human emotions and blogging riotously about my love of all things having to do with Rochester, NY comedy. There's just too much talent in my hometown to ignore now, and the fact that I get to hobnob with them, delusional though it may be, has made me the happiest I've been in a very long time. Really, though, this post should be about encouraging you, my faithful reader, to go out and support these people as much as you can.

The open-mic night, Sundays at Boulder Coffee Co. at 8:00, is free and features -in my opinion- the best stand up comedy in Rochester at the moment and the crowds have been showing up in full force over the past month or so; which has been great, but I'm crippled with dread that once the summer ends and people start heading to college or get back to work or do whatever they do that keeps them from going out on a Sunday night, the crowds will dry up. This can't happen, fellow Rochestarians and readers from abroad, and I don't plan on letting it happen as long as I'm involved. I will, badger you with my belligerence on these pages and on twitter where I will shamelessly self promote myself and humbly request your attendance and laughs for the other comedy minds my hometown has to offer, and they are legion.

I feel now, that I can kind of, sort of introduce you to the cream of the crop with brief profiles here in this blog; just to wet your whistle and encourage you to come join in the fun, so let's give this a try.

Host of All Hosts: Bryan J. Ball.

True story: Bryan lives about 4 houses down from me on the same street and we did not meet until the end of last week's open mic night at Boulder. Truer Story: He is one of the funniest people I've ever met or seen perform. He is a slick crafter of jokes and makes with the funny on a painfully regular basis that makes me boil with jealous rage. He makes it look so easy I almost expect him to take the mask off and reveal himself to be Louis C.K. in disguise. If he doesn't make it big outside of Rochester I will be shocked, amazed and disappointed to the point where I'll be inconsolable for days on end. Good thing I'm pretty sure it's going to happen for him though, when you're that good, you generally don't fail.

Jokes That Make You Go, Huh?: Wes Bauer

Every time I've done stand-up since I got back into it 8 week ago I've had the pleasure of being there with Wes Bauer; who, for my money has some of the best material I've ever heard locally or nationally. Honestly, when the audience isn't responding to Wes positively I question whether they have pulses or just aren't paying attention. Maybe they're just playing catch-up, because his jokes have a tendency to make you think prior to laughing, and that can work against a guy on stage seeking instant gratification for his cleverly created chuckle-fare. I love his stuff, his stage presence and the fact that it took us 6 weeks before introducing ourselves to each other. Comics are, by and large, shy people who hate everything, but Wes and I click on a weird level in that we are not filled with outright consternation and capable of mentioning Rasputin and then going through the litany of ways in which a joke could be made about him. sigh He's really, really funny and very bright and smart and missing out on his set will sorely disappoint you.

My Personal Favorite (No Offense Guys): Billy T. Anglin

I don't even know where to begin. I envy this man on so many levels it's not even pathetic, they haven't even created a word for how jealous I am of his ability to make a room full of strangers laugh at things like God making it rain because he felt like seeing a wet t-shirt contest. (No lie, my friend calls me once a week to remind me of that joke, followed by "you should be that good...some day.") It goes beyond that though, he has a passion for comedy that is mother f_cking infectious to be around and out and out delightful. He was the first person I introduced myself to on the fateful night at The Otter Lodge a long, long time ago when I got so drunk I forgot my jokes. After my set, he said to me, very wisely, "yeah, you don't want to do that again do you?" And I never have. It was advice without being "advice." Though he's many years my junior I find myself forgetting that whenever he's around, and if I can make him laugh during my set I know I did something right because the funniest man in the room is giggling in the background at whatever stupid joke I just told. (His only downfall is that he insists I am a "smart comedian;" which I just don't believe, at all.) If you live in Rochester, you need to come see Billy before he's on Comedy Central and too big and important for the little people.



I'll write more itty-bitty profiles of local comics in the days and weeks to come, but there's a few for you that hopefully sounded enticing enough for you to come out and support your local comedian. It means a lot to me, but for the guys with actual talent it means so much more.

Coming Tomorrow: My write up and encouragement/plea for you to attend the upcoming Fall Comedy Contest at The Tango Cafe!

Standing Up, Falling Down

"Oh, I don't drink," he began in a low, growl of a voice that often times would skip up or down in pitch and tone depending on the emphasis he was trying to put on a certain word or sentence. If his voice went up an octave or two he was joking, if it slipped down he was deadly serious; somewhere in the middle is where you'd want to find him on any given day. "I never saw the point. I was fine with it, really, until I was about 22-23 and I saw all my friends going out to drink night after night," his voice climbs up, his eyes bulge slightly, "but I thought to myself, 'self, why would anyone want to do something that makes you forget what you just did?' This is why I stick to pot." As he said "pot" his voice got almost cartoonishly high and excited, this way the crowd new it was his punchline and they could laugh now.

The joke, on it's own, is layered and not terrible, but it's outdated and a little broad for the tastes of the apparent comedy connoisseurs in the audience who came to hear jokes written by Chomsky. As if dissecting the crowd with his eyes, the comedian made several decisions almost instantaneously -or so it seemed- that would steer the next three to five minutes of his set. Should he continue on with his normal material and hope to god that the next joke he normally tells -one which involves a reference to a bear shitting in the woods next to the pope- or if he should riff on something he was thinking about earlier in the day to prove to the starched shirts in the crowd that he is more than just an automated joke machine with a microphone.

"Have you ever noticed," he chooses to riff on whatever it is he noticed. Possibly something pertaining to city living or how it's impossible to get a cab in Rochester, because there are no (voice very high, very nervous, very excited) cabs in Rochester even though that's patently untrue. The death knell, it seems for all comedians not named Jerry Seinfeld, is the opening line "have you ever noticed," it befits a sort of hack quality to the coming joke, but also allows the audience to bathe themselves in a half remembered, but oh so comforting form of entertainment that was only ever perfected by one man. "Yes," they nod almost in unison, "I have indeed noticed that," they say to themselves, but they aren't laughing and they don't want to be. This is the point where the audience is lost and the comedian is in purgatory blindly flailing away inside his brain to find the thing that will bring them back.

"Fuck, just fuck it, you know?" Ah, he goes blue, the guaranteed audience attention getter that never fails. What Lenny Bruce began other comedians, less talented comedians, have been using and reusing to, at the very least, get the audience to look at them and, seemingly, say, "I too, use swear words." The following 2 minutes of stand-up comedy is riddled with words that mean nothing in correlation to the words before it. It's a lot of "fucks" and "shits" and various combination's of the two that would make even the most weathered sailor blush (if even just a little bit). Still, there are no laughs, there is no sign that the audience will ever warm up to this fellow. He's drowning on stage and the audience is throwing him anchors.

"At least they haven't turned on me," he mutters to himself, voice deadly serious and so low that even his own thoughts have a hard time sussing out what he just said. As if sent from heaven above to teach this man a lesson, a voice from the back of the dimly lit room cries out "you're mumbling! What the fuck?!" Indeed. What follows could be an interesting case study in unwritten laws of social interaction. Mere seconds before, the crowd was willing to sit silently as the comedian tortured himself on stage practically begging for their affection, but now that one of their own has aired his dissent the rules no longer apply. "Hack!" A voice yells from somewhere the comedian can't see. "Loser!" "Douche!" "I can't believe I paid for this!"

"You paid for this?" The comedian asks sincerely. "Why the fuck would you...really? You guys spent, what, $4 to come out here and sit there and drink your sangria and beer and listen to someone you've never heard of before tell jokes and I'm the idiot?" The crowd quiets down. The comedian's previous nerves have been replaced with a vitriolic disdain and overwhelming desire to mete out his own specific type of justice to such an ungrateful crowd. He stops. He collects his thoughts and decides to take the high road, "fuck every single one of you people." A laugh comes for the first time all night. "You've got to be fucking kidding me." Another laugh, this time bigger than the last. "Next time, let's start with the heckling and go from there, okay?" Huge, inexplicable laugh. "Ah, I wish this is how it worked at home," he begins, "my wife never laughs at me when I tell her to go fuck herself." Gigantic laugh, and the comedian is perplexed but taking mental notes all the same, caressing his ego in the process and wantonly unleashing his id. "My kids," he pauses, voice raising in preparation for the punchline, "think it's hysterical."

I Like You... Louis C.K.

As I write this I'm listening to the sound of grumbling thunder pass by the window near my cubicle and the lady who now shares the office with myself and a few other co-workers is yipping like an injured chihuahua every time there's a boom or a streak of lightning illuminates the sky, and it is taking every ounce of self control that I have not to tell her to eat a bag of dicks and get back to being quiet while she works on whatever spreadsheet or word document she's supposed to be slogging through like the rest of us. Until sometime last week I did not even know the phrase "eat a bag of dicks" existed, nor would I have thought about using it so freely and easily in the middle of the working day, but until sometime last week I only had a very cursory knowledge of stand-up comedian, writer, director, TV star and hero Louis C.K. This is not sometime last week.

I'm a very amateur comedian, or what some would call a hack, and I'm fine with that. I go to the occasional coffee shop or cafe here or there and peddle my jokes to an unsuspecting group of strangers who are usually too involved in their mocha-chinos or laptops to give me, or the other struggling comics, the time of day. Which is fine, it's our fault for not being compelling or interesting enough to grab their attention and hold on tight, and right now I'm in the middle of a cosmic struggle to find my own voice and write and perform material that will do exactly that. It's really f_cking hard. From week to week performance to performance I've dabbled in everything from politics, race, economic struggles, stupid fart jokes, an occasional impression and a whole lot of other bullshit that would make Carrot Top look like George Carlin by comparison. (Yes, I am that bad, or at least I think I am) I never once thought comedy would be easy, but I never once imagined it would be so hard to do something that seems to be so natural to me when I'm at work, home or out with friends. (Yes, I'm the guy who listened when his best friend and girlfriend told him he should give stand-up a try.)

As per usual, when I'm feeling a little lost in the wilderness, I put on "The Comedians of Comedy Movie" and sit and watch Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Brian Posehn and a pre-fame Zach Galifianakis go through the grind of traveling from city to city performing their unique brand of hilarious comedy. Now, I've seen this movie maybe a dozen times and almost every time there's something I catch that I missed before that allows me to shake the cobwebs away and get back to being somewhat funny on an intermittent basis; which is what happened this time around, sometime last week. During a radio interview filmed for the movie, when asked which comics people may not know about that they should, Patton Oswalt said the name Louis C.K. immediately and without hesitation, and I thought to myself, "Okay, I've got to really get into this guy to find out what the deal is," adding, "for real this time."

It's not that I haven't known about Mr. C.K. for the past few years, because I have. I just didn't really give a shit because I was so into myself that I thought, "yeah, yeah cheap laughs and crude humor, I get it and it's not for me," but I wasn't paying attention to the material I was just hearing the language and seeing this middle aged, pudgy, red head on stage getting huge laughs from an audience that I assumed probably consisted of red necks and dip-shits. My second attempt to "discover" Mr. C.K needed a different boost in a different direction and as luck would have it I came upon an interview he did with The A.V Club about his new show "Louie" (which airs Tuesday nights at 11 on FX).

I missed the first couple episodes of "Louie" so I felt left out and in the dark, but to my extreme delight and surprise the first two episodes popped up on Hulu and, holy shit, the man's a f_cking genius. "Louie" is more or less two short films with some of Mr. C.K's stand-up interspersed throughout and it is the best new comedy to come to television since the British version of "The Office," and I am brutally addicted to it. I find myself feeling withdrawal symptoms when too much time passes between the episodes, so I went and bought all that are available on iTunes and I annoy my girlfriend by watching them as frequently as humanly possible. "Louie" speaks to me on some strange, incomprehensible level that is sometimes a little scary to admit, because I don't know what it is about it that makes me feel like I'm shooting heroin and listening to Thelonious Monk on vinyl each time I see an episode, but it does and I do not plan on attending rehab anytime soon. I would gladly sell my body on the streets for nickels and dimes if it meant I got to go home and watch more "Louie," it really is that good.

From "Louie" I went to the internet and sought out every piece of Mr. C.K.'s stand-up that I could find and found myself respecting and listening to him on a very different level than the old, comedy snob me had a few years ago. His jokes, while littered with the foulest words imaginable have very little if nothing to do with the language and everything to do with the context it is used in and I am more than amazed that some of his more raunchy sets have gotten huge laughs from my girlfriend who, normally, doesn't find that sort of thing funny, but Mr. C.K. is so good it's unbelievable and anything close to normal. One piece, displayed at the end of last weeks episode of "Louie," where Mr. C.K. tells a story about his cousin visiting New York City and seeing a homeless person for the first time is above brilliant and should be studied until the end of time as the pinnacle of what comedy should aspire to be, and with my obsessive nature firmly dictating that I needed to consume as much of his stand-up as possible I rented his 2008 stand-up special "Louis C.K.: Chewed Up" and, to my knowledge, it's the hardest I've ever laughed for an hour of my life.

From there I worked backwards and watched "Louis C.K.: Shameless" and anything else I could find on YouTube, and I have yet to be disappointed or left feeling like the person I watched is anything less than the funniest man alive. As much as I used to look up to guys like Patton Oswalt, David Cross and Zach Galifianakis as the ultimate leaders of the comedy revolution, I can say right now that I only did so out of my own ignorance of Louis C.K.; which is not to take way from the others I have mentioned, they are 3 of the best comedians in the world and they make me cry with laughter on a regular basis, but Mr. C.K. is just, well, special and maybe it's only me and I'm just an asshole, but I don't care. If you take anything away from this stupid blog post of mine, please let it be that you go and seek out Mr. C.K. and his television shows (he had a much praised sitcom on HBO called "Lucky Louie" that was canceled after 13 episodes; which I am waiting for to arrive in the mail via Netflix), stand-up comedy, movies and whatever else of his you can find, because it's just beyond description how f_cking good it is.

Somewhere along the way of my excessive, obsessive, borderline compulsive quest to track down everything Mr. C.K. has ever produced in the history of his life (Jesus Christ I'm entering stalker territory now, Mr. C.K. if you ever read this piece of shit, don't worry I'm not that crazy, just a huge fan) I found myself writing better jokes and speaking more confidently and more like myself than I ever have in the past; which I entirely attribute to seeing Mr. C.K. do his job and do it so well that it could do nothing but inspire me to go in my own direction and become my own comedian for the benefit of everything I do on stage and off. I've re-embraced my love of swearing without trying to tone down my act or make it overly crude and about shock value and all that; it's just how I talk and think and that's what people want to see, right? (Probably not)

In closing, welcome to the "I Like You...Hall of Fame" Mr. C.K., you are my new hero and I look forward to, hopefully, seeing you perform on stage and television for years and years to come. Thank You.