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Good Week vs Bad Week

Last week started out terribly with the sweeping of the Utah Jazz at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers.  If you missed it I tweeted incessantly, which just compounded my sadness (but I still feel I am less sad than the people who tweet about the weather, their meals, and other mundane things – namely a majority of people on Facebook and Twitter).  But that was just the beginning of the week.  I then had to cancel my show Always Be Funny that Thursday because we had 6 comics, 1 bartender and three people sitting at the bar, two of which were openly against the show and one who is a regular at the bar and is usually a decent audience member, except the time she heckled Jon Fisch.

This would not have been so bad if the show I was scheduled to be on earlier that evening was not also cancelled.

So feeling like The Nothing from The Neverending Story, as shows were destroyed in my path, I took Friday off from comedy to go to the Bronx DA’s Office for my former bureau’s annual Yankee Game party.  It was a good event, especially since A-Rod hit a Grand Slam to put the Yankees ahead in the game late (let’s look at the two live sporting events I have attended this year – the game of the year so far in the NBA in Utah and a clutch grand slam from A-Rod against the Twins – it is as if God is telling me that I should quit comedy and just go to sporting events professionally).

Well, it was time to get back to the grind of comedy on Saturday – I had a show at O’Hanlon’s on 14th and 1st, which I learned upon arriving, was… you guessed it – cancelled!  Fortunately I was able to observe 4 white guys threatening to beat up a black guy so that was entertaining.  The four white guys looked like they might have been firefighters – not the heroes that women want to have sex with of course. No, these guys looked more like the crew-cut, Irish, raised in effectively all-white neighborhoods, voting Republican their whole lives, racist type of civil servants.  Those guys, not the heroes.  Now I have to allow for the possibility that they weren’t, but they looked the part anyway.  The black guy was a black Israelite, who are known for their congeniality and open mindedness, but this guys was quadruple teamed and they were throwing his property in the middle of the street, hitting cars and cyclists while doing it.  So I did what any former DA would do – I called the police.  I offered a very detailed description, but I made two mistakes – one – i Said I did not see a weapon.  Two – I said it was four white males attacking a black man (I was not dumb enough to say he was a black Israelite).  I waited 20 minutes, which the four Klansmen did as well, but the police never showed up.

A more effective call on my part might have been:

“Yes, I see four black men attacking a white woman!”

“Do they have weapons?”

“Yes, if you consider their large, angry black cocks weapons!  Hurry quick!”

I think the police would have been there quicker.

So that was the end of my bad week.  But with Sunday comes renewed optimism.

First I was shooting my new video.  The story is about black guy wants to date a daughter of a rabid Tea Party member and the agency that helps acclimate Tea Party members to ethnic boyfriends.  Of course, it started out poorly because one of the actors backed out at 10:07 am via text for an 11 am call time because he had to wait for furniture for his move with his girlfriend.  Sounds like a valid excuse, assuming people  move on 30 minutes notice and lack a nervous system.  So after setting a new volume record for how loudly I could yell fu*k, comedian Matt Maragno came to the rescue at the last minute and delivered laughs.  The shoot went well and it looked like the week was off to a great start.

It got even better when I got an offer yesterday to open for Jo Koy in Cleveland starting this Thursday and running through Sunday.  That means big crowds and payment of money for my jokes.  Of course, without eating for the 4 days I will only net a little over $100 for my efforts.

Tomorrow night I am making my tape for college submissions and I am confident that will go well.

So, in sum a bad week in my comedy life is witnessing a hate crime and going 3 for 3 in having shows get cancelled.  A good week, by contrast, is doing a YouTube video, netting $100 for half a week’s work and doing a bringer so I can one day entertain college kids, with diminishing social skills and emotional connections.  Like I have told friends – if you have a choice between your son or daughter being in gay snuff films or being a comedian, go with the snuff.

Sunday will be the start of a new week, but it begins with the season finale of Lost (a show that proves that like Dane Cook comedy, as long as you have a premise with no logical conclusion you can actually make millions, even if everything following the premise ranges between nonsense and stupidity) so I am not too confident in the prospects for a good week.

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Despite The Nobel Peace Prize, The World Needs Obama…

In light of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize I must encourage him to engage in a newer and more muscular form of international and domestic governance.

(warning – you need a working knowledge of the first two Godfather films to fully appreciate)

Afghanistan

New plan that should satisfy everyone.  After consulting my advisers (NY Times, my uncle, my mother, history books) I have come up with a plan.  Several years ago a jingoistic and bellicose colleague of mine at the Bronx DA’s Office had suggested nuking the entire Middle East because you could not reason with that part of the world (most likely save Israel, lest his parents become upset with him as a military advisor) And I thought he was nuts, primarily because invading a country that you had no business invading (Iraq) and then claiming them to be unreasonable savages when they fight back is hardly conclusive proof of a people’s inability to use diplomacy.

But Afghanistan has proven a clearer quagmire (giggity giggity) if that makes any sense.  They attacked us and we half-assed fought back because Bush and Cheney had dumber and/or greedier ideas.  My advice to Obama is simple on Afghanistan.  I believe that is the real front on terrorism and that leaving it alone will only foster another 9/11 perhaps 10 or 15 years from now.  But at the same time the corrupt leaders of Afghanistan are more than willing to talk out of both sides of their mouths, letting America fight for it, while badmouthing America and all the while not preparing and securing their country as best they can.  So my solution is simple.  We leave.  Pack up everybody.

But at that point Obama should play Vito Corleone to Hamid Karzai’s Barzini, Tataglia, Strattchi and Cunio (seriously, who the fu-k was Cunio?).  We will denounce their heroin production as a dirty business which Karzai will insist on keeping among the dark people because they are animals anyway.  But then on to more serious matters – this Bin Laden business.  Obama should just stare at Karzai chillingly and tell him we are leaving and will let them do what they want, but if any harm comes to the United States in any form; if we should be attacked by terrorists finding safe haven in Afghanistan;or if our troops are harmed in another part of the world; or if Americans are struck by a bolt of lightening then this we will not forgive.  And we will literally erase Afghanistan from the map (I’m talking nuclear), or at least blow it into the 12th century, which may actually be an improvement in some respects.   But until that day we swear on Bo Obama that we will not be the ones to break the peace.

The Senate

The Senate, except for a few members, is a group of whores and prostitutes.  They have been turned out by corporations and industries and are no better than the women who date investment bankers (I feel the crack whore stereotype needs to be updated).  Health care reform, gun control, environmental legislation and a myriad of other issues are blocked, not by the minuscule consciences of the Senators, but by their corporate pimps.  So, what the country needs now is term limits for Senators.

Someone once wrote to me that we do have term limits; they’re called elections.  Not when we have allowed money to infect and dominate every part of the process we don’t.  The longer you stay in the Senate, the more corporations want your ear because of your seniority and influence.  The corporations buy your money and then give you more money to keep it, which allows you to advertise more and gain a stronger and stronger foothold for re-election.  Your constituents gain from your seniority in the form of small pork projects so they remain pacified.  The cycle continues until you are a big, bloated fat (sometimes both literally and metaphorically) whore of a Senator.  The ironic thing about men like Ted Kennedy was that he was able to be a champion of the people because his money and legacy did not come from, or at least was not reliant on, an industry pimp.  He did not rely (though I am sure he used) the wealth of soulless companies and lobbies to get him re-elected so he had the rare luxury of actually prioritizing people over companies.

Would the NRA really be the biggest lobby if Senators could only serve 12 years?  Think of how much more would get done for people if the Senate was not a de facto lifetime appointment.

Needless to say this might require more of a Michael Corleone approach, more aggressive than the diplomatic Vito.  After all, Michael put Senator Pat Geary of Nevada in his place, so if Chris Dodd or Max Baucus wakes up in a sorority at Oregon State with a dead co-ed, I assume Joe Biden will be there to assure them that they are lucky it happened there because that’s President Obama’s Brother-in-law’s place.

Saturday Night Live

Make a call to Lorne Michaels and have Fred Armisen removed from impersonating you.  Yesterday I received a call from my brother.  My 2 1/2 year old nephew had seen a picture of Obama on the computer and said, “Uncle J-L”.  One of three things is possible:

  1. My brother has shown my nephew my YouTube clip way to many times.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAyUoDEX0GE
  2. Obama is leading a double life.
  3. Fred Armisen needs to step aside.

I think the answer is #3.  Make the call President on all of these things.  Especially the SNL thing.  Lorne Michaels, I think you know what happened to that producer Woltz.