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Comedy Night at Food Emporium

Last night at about 11 pm I went to Food Emporium across the street from my apartment to buy some bread.  I find Food Emporium a soothing place at that hour.  They have air conditioning going full blast, a selection of rock ballads playing on their sound system and almost no one there.  Even if I only need to buy one item I will take my time to soak up the cool, calm emptiness (possible title for my CD in November).

But last night was not an ordinary night.  When I got to the register there was only one woman in front of me in line, but nothing was happening.  She had bought only what appeared to be four items, but the cashier did not know the code for the particular vegetable she was attempting to purchase.  I looked at the woman and noticed (in order) that she had the large perky breasts of a 20 year old and the old, stretched face of Joan Rivers, but more masculine.  I had strange feelings happening because the breasts looked fantastic, but the face looked like that famous woman who looked like a cat for getting to much surgery.

She had a voice that was also ambiguous – is it a man with lots of hormone therapy or is it her lip injections and skin tightenings just manipulating her speaking style?  Fortunately confusion, revulsion and erection were all suppressed by my most reliable emotion: anger.  As my bread slid down the conveyor belt, she began to give my bread the Heisman.  Even though her items were already registered except for the vegetable, which the cashier was holding.  She must have stiff-armed my bread three times in five seconds before I could get the plastic divider down, which wasn’t even necessary because her items were done.  Of course I was slightly less combative because her rack had just enough power to stop my anger from becoming verbal and confrontational.  But right on cue to back me up, another person got on line behind me.  And it was apparent from his bloodshot eyes, his all organic purchases and his fierce gaze that he was a gay.

And after about ten seconds of waiting he was none too pleased.  Here is how the rest of the Food Emporium trip went down:

Cashier: What is the code for this? (holding up odd vegetable)

Cashier with more experience coming back from her break: 6563 (or something like that)

Cashier types in code with vegetables in bag.  Nothing happens.  Gay guy is steaming.  Seriously.  Puffs of white smoke are coming from both ears and his asshole.

Experienced Cashier: Oh that is because the bag is affecting the scale.

Experienced cashier removes vegetables from the bag and weighs them with the code.  All seems well.

Titsface: That is what I was trying to avoid.  Now they’re dirty.  I am not sure I want them.

Guy Fierce: Are you serious???  They’re perfectly fine.  Just buy them.  They have been a million disgusting places – just wash them.  God!!!

J-L inner monologue: Oh good lord.  This is what happens when you mix Glee and alcohol.  Calm down and save your voice for singing along at your next Britney Spears commercial.

Titsface:  Oh you can wash these?  You can wash them with soap?

(I assumed Titsface was being sarcastic)

Guy Fierce: Yessss!

Titsface: You can wash vegetables with soap?

Guy Fierce: Yessss, my nutritionist told me that that is the way I should prepare my food and it is perfectly ok.

J-L inner monologue: Dammit Glee!  I was on your side against this Tit monster, but you bring your nutritionist into an argument?!  Do your private yoga instructor and anal bleacher want to weigh in as well?

Titsface: You wash all of your vegetables with soap and water? (I suppose trying to catch him in some sort of lie or inconsistency about vegetable preparation)

Guy Fierce: Yeah!  (“gotcha bitch” voice)

Titsface: Even lettuce?

Guy Fierce: No

Titsface: So not all vegetables! (I rest my stupid case!)

During these last few lines the cashier cashed me out and I left to the sounds of bickering.  I had a smile on my face as I left Food Emporium, but that quickly went away as I realized that old women with too much surgery and shrill gay men with substance abuse problems are who I will need to impress if I am ever going to make it in this business.

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Two Tickets To The Gun Show – Scranton Recap

This weekend I performed at Wisecrackers in Scranton, PA.  Here’s the re-cap:

The Trip

Being only two hours, fifteen minutes from NYC it was obviously a Greyhound trip.  Fortunately, since Greyhound knows of my love for long, uncomfortable rides, they decided to leave 40 minutes late.  Other than that the bus trip was uneventful.  In fact, Greyhound buses now have nice leather seats and extra leg room, which must be nice for the people six-three and shorter who benefit from the extra leg room.  However, Greyhound continues to discriminate against the exceptionally tall.

The Hotel

The Wisecrackers in Scranton is located in a Clarion Hotel.  My warning that I was no longer in metaphorical Kansas (but much close to the mindset of Kansas) was the sign outside the hotel:

Now gun lovers and “real Amurrrricans” are big fans of saying guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  But for such inactive objects, apparently guns can still have a show and get top billing over the comedy show.  As expected I did observe several guys who looked like Larry The Cable Guy in sleeveless shirts and camouflage pants.   I was just happy none appeared to go to the comedy shows.

My hotel room was nice enough and as a bonus they didn’t even require me to use a black-light to see the stains on my comforter:

The Shows

Friday’s show was fantastic.  Overcapacity and very receptive crowd (the emcee did a great job getting them to settle down and focus on the stage – for a while it seemed like it was going to be a crowd full of people going, “Watch this I am going to make this show better by shouting things and talking” kind if crowd.”).  The show was so good I celebrated like a rock star with my favorite post show beverage:

Saturday’s show was a lot tougher.  I would rate Friday’s an A and Saturday’s a B+/A-  I did manage to get away with calling the crowd racist in four different ways without losing them so that was a definite high point (my favorite being “Everyone calls Obama a black President, but his Mom is white.  Now I know in 1950s America or 2011 Scranton he would have to use a different water fountain, but he is half-white.”).  But I will give Wisecrackers-Scranton some credit.  For the two shows there were 2 black audience members, 1 Asian man and scores of white people.   Almost always a crowd that homogeneous, my humor doesn’t hit well.  There is often a series of correlations:

  • All white crowd = all white community
  • All white community = afraid of minorities
  • Afraid of minorities = ignorant
  • Ignorant = give me simple, or goofy or unoriginal humor
  • Give me simple, or goofy or unoriginal humor = rough sets for J-L
  • Rough sets for J-L = bad few days for those around J-L

But this chain was broken.  Somehow this was a segregated, white community (some of whom did boo non-political Obama references) who had more sophisticated senses of humor than expected.  So maybe they were not afraid of minorities after all!  Or there actually were some people from the gun show at the club and their heat gave them courage.  Either way thanks Scranton!

 

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A Comedy One Hit Wonder

I realized this morning that in a few months it will have been four years since I appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, my only modest claim to fame.  I think at this point I may be able to call myself a comedy one-hit wonder.  And being on Ferguson is not like having a #1 one one-hit.  It is more like I peaked at #27 on the charts back in late 2007.

Sadly, for comedians there is not the same effect of being a one-hit wonder as there is in music.  I remember being in Birmingham, Alabama back in 2009 and hanging out with some guys after one of the shows who were in a rock band.  Their claim to fame was that they were opening up for Hinder (a one hit-wonder band from the mid 2000s).  The conversation consisted of them telling stories of what their favorite threesomes were.  In other words they had had enough threesomes (and from a comedian who knew them – the women they had were quite attractive, which is not surprising since southern women only come in two varieties: women who love pastries or women who look like porn stars/beauty queens) to then rank threesomes.  And they were the opening band for a one hit wonder a few years removed from their one hit.  Meanwhile in Ferguson land, the closest I ever got to sex for fame was when a buddy of mine told a girl that I had been on TV in a bar, asked her if she wanted to see the set and then got a blow job from her in his apartment.

In all fairness I was engaged when I did Ferguson.  I remember after I did Ferguson I got several MySpace friend requests and comments (see how long ago it was) and one was from a woman who said “When will you be back in LA?” because Ferguson is filmed in LA and this woman had no reason to believe that I was a lawyer and not a full time comic at the time.  My significant other at the time told me she found the comment overly suggestive (especially when she read it back to me over the phone in a 1-900 sex hotline voice).  I replied – “I think she was just a fan – I have never met this person.”  She responded: “You don’t have fans.”

And of course I got a great response from a then-up and coming comedian who is now pretty well-established who decided to sh*t on me (behind my back of course, but overheard by a friend) about me getting Ferguson (“who watches that anyway?” I believe was the mocking statement he made).  Of course his success as a comedian should dispel any notion of karma.

So that was basically what I gained from a Ferguson appearance – a blow job for a friend, an insult from a comedian and a piece of humble pie intended to choke me to death.

If this were music I could look forward to that retro-comeback reality show bullsh*t world that exists for them, but no one is wondering, whatever happened to that guy from that one appearance on Ferguson?  And of course without management that is most likely the outcome for me.

I do have something to do with my one-hit wonder status (here is the cautionary tale part for all you newbies or people starting to get some heat).  After getting Ferguson and another regional tv spot (both of which I did well on), my manager parted company with the management agency (a big outfit well known in comedy).  Being new and nervous I decided to stick with the management company and learned too late that it had been the individual manager who had pushed for me, not the company.  So like Don Corleone after the strangling of Luca Brasi, I was left unprotected.  Without him I was worthless to them.  So after one mediocre showcase and one admittedly awful NACA audition (but I did not think that eating it in front of a few hundred college students from Montana could derail a budding career) I heard nothing for about 6 months (every 4th e-mail I would get a useless response from the person who I had been assigned to).  They then told me at the end of a fruitless six months that I should seek representation elsewhere.  I don’t know how I would have had the foresight to make the right decision there, but obviously I will be more careful in the future.

That is it folks, in those few easy steps you too can become a one-hit wonder in comedy.

So this Fall I will be making a big attempt at getting management again.  Some people may say that management is not necessary, but those people are often those who got a head start thanks to management or are just full of sh*t.  For example of the “New Faces” at Montreal, only two of the comedians were without representation.  They are the gate keepers to a lot of this industry.  Whether you like me, love me or hate me, I am objectively a much better comedian than I was 4 years ago.  Significantly better.  So it should stand that having been on television already and having had a very good set, it should not be that hard to get back on, right?  All I can say to that is I will not be looking for the television cameras at Wisecrackers Comedy Club in Scranton this weekend where I will be performing.

This may sound bitter and it some ways  it is.  But I am happy with some areas of improvement – I am a better comedian and I have gotten more gigs each year than the year before for four straight years.  I really want to get more TV credits to just increase the bookings I get because the life of the up and coming feature is not economically sustainable and not mentally healthy.  So hopefully efforts I make this Fall will pan out, but if they don’t my experience is still no less instructive to up and coming comedians.

Now let’s crank up some Hinder!

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The Last Bringer (part 17)

I needed a clean tape because I want to submit for a few TV things so I did a bringer last night at Gotham Comedy Club (this is what someone might say at their first meeting of Comedians Anonymous to treat their addiction to laughter-based approval from strangers).  To put that in civilian terms, imagine you are a married woman and you just found out your husband was in a gay gangbang porn film before you got married.  And all your friends have copies now.  That is the level of internal embarrassment I feel doing a bringer at this stage of my comedy career.  But more important that my sense of pride, which I abandoned sometime in 2009 with regards to my comedy career, is getting a a good clean tape.

To get on the show last night I had to scrounge together a bunch of friends, who literally represented every part of my life other than law school.  I had at least one representative from my family, family friends, high school, college, comedian friends, the Bronx DA’s office and Blank Rome (the firm I worked at).  Considering I was annoyed enough doing a bringer and the lengths I had to go to get people I said to myself that I could no longer do another bringer so I had to make last night’s set a good, nay, a great one (I also probably said this three years ago).  And as it turned out my set really did turn out great.  I have almost never been happy with a set, especially when taping it for a specific purpose, but last night was the exception.  Crowd was great and I felt like I stuck the landing.  In fact it took me longer than usual to fall into a post show funk.  Here is the set:

But it was as if Gotham knew that it would be my last bringer ever because on the lineup was Jim Gaffigan, Sherri Shepherd, Jeff Dye, Judah Friedlander and Louis C.K.  I have said and still believe plenty of terrible things about bringer shows, but last night was actually pretty damn impressive.   Oh well, thanks to everyone who came out and hopefully the tape can do some work for me.

Comics Unleashed HERE I COME!!!!

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Movie of the Week: Harry Potter 7.2 (Plus a…

Harry Potter was a no-brainer for the movie of the week.  The other semi-notable film opening was a Winnie The Pooh movie, providing a ton of things that children DON’T want.  First off, did anyone think Winnie The Pooh was good, even when you were a child?  Incredibly boring and stupid characters (if marketing to kids and not British adults in their 50s) – a soft spoken bear, a manic depressive donkey, a flamboyantly gay tiger, a rabbit, a kangaroo, a piglet and I think a British owl (because when I was a kid I know I was a big fan of late 1970s Brit-coms).  Take that Looney Tunes!  These guys could not even do research like Pixar so that at least the animals in the forest could conceivably co-exist in the same ecosystem (a blue whale living in a nearby lake was nixed last minute).  So we are simultaneously boring children and making them dumber as well.  And reaching back for Winnie The Pooh represents a new low (see upcoming Space Invaders and this Summer’s crop of third tier comic book-based movies) in Hollywood’s inability or refusal to come up with new ideas.  Now they are simply banking on, “Hey I heard of that.  Did I like it?  Of course not, but I heard of it, so I will see it!” level apathy among movie goers.  Next Summer – Pet Rock: The Movie.

Then WTP movie is hand drawn.  Because what kids want nowadays is boring cartoons drawn in an old fashioned-style.  Could they not make it black and white also?  Then there is the preview for Winnie The Pooh, which apparently takes itself too seriously as nostalgia.  Winnie The Pooh sucked!  Playing Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” does not make a piece of sh*t nostalgia just because you are slamming me in the face with a nostalgia hammer.  Then you open it the weekend of Harry Potter?  I don’t believe Harry Potter to be as great as some, but it is certainly solid and very popular, so who exactly is Winnie trying to court this weekend – evangelical Christians who protest movies abut wizardry?  Good luck with those 580 people nationwide. Your other demographic is people who are disappointed by sold out shows of Harry Potter, but cannot wait 8 minutes until the next showtime.  “Hey kids, Harry Potter is sold out, but there is a huge piece of sh*t playing right now – how’s that sound?”  I hope Winnie The Pooh is a colossal failure and that a hunter kills Winnie and molests Christopher Robbins.  That ought to end that franchise once and for all.  Just be happy Winnie – you can get married in NY, why do you need a movie as well.

If you want to vomit here is the preview for Winnie The Pooh stain:

As for Harry Potter 7.2 or as the woman purchasing tickets ahead of me said to avoid any confusion, “1 ticket for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” (you know, to make sure there was no confusion about which Harry Potter film she was seeing), it was very good.  Now, of course, I was offended that they broke the final book (which is becoming the trend) into two parts, which yielded an exceedingly boring 7.1 last year, but this finale was action packed (and allowed Harry Potter to pass Police Academy on the all-time list of “Did we really need that many movies?” which of course is still topped by the Bill Russell/Yogi Berra of prolific shi*ty film franchises – Friday the 13th).  No one who likes this series will be disappointed, unless you were hoping Hermione would have sprouted a bigger rack by now.  My only complaint is the same complaint I have with every other film in this series, and most films in general – not enough Alan Rickman.  The dude is an acting beast.  Few people can do with an entire script what he can do with a silent stare of disdain.

But since I have read the books and seen all of the movies I will now go back to hoping that we return to the days where timeless classics required a long duration of time before we declared them “historic” or “timeless.”  I feel like Harry Potter was getting “beloved classic” thrown about halfway between the printing of the 4th of 7 books.  In our time we have no patience for the time needed to marinate a work of art into a classic because we want what we like to have more cultural relevance (ironic, given that outside of television drama I feel like most art is in a downward spiral – I am talking to you poetry slammers!).  Harry Potter will have more staying power than “sagas” (another word overused to described for modern drivel) like Twilight for sure, but we should not diminish Harry Potter or the word classic by joining the two in the same sentence.  Harry Potter was a pleasant literary and cinematic journey, but let’s not pretend it will have the staying power of other amazing works of fiction.  Like Winnie The Pooh.

Grade – B+

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The Casino, The Bloody Toilet Seat & Vanilla Coke…

So after a few weeks of dominating Call of Duty: Black Ops while stationed in my man-cave, AKA  studio apartment, I headed back out onto the road Wednesday for a two week comedy trip.  The first gig was a spot at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY, which is somewhere near the north pole.

The Casino

Wednesday I drove up (well, rode shotgun) with comedian Joe Pontillo to perform at the Turning Stone Casino.  It is my third time performing at the casino and I am glad to say that the gig keeps improving with each trip.  The first time I went there was a crowd of 25 in a room that sat 400.  Then the casino re-configured their night club into a comedy room that was much smaller and more conducive to comedy.  The last show I did there probably had 50 audience members and Wednesday night we had about 80!  At this rate I will be a world renowned comedian sometime after my 147th birthday!

But the show actually went really well.  Fortunately Joe and I did not perish in what has become a traditional, Act-of-God weather phenomenon on the drive up to Verona.  Last winter we drove up and encountered three separate snowstorms.  However, none scared me as much as the thunderstorm we passed through on the way up Wednesday.  I actually thought we were witnessing the end of the world.  But I’m sure everyone upstate would attribute increasingly severe weather to it’s obvious cause: the onerous tax burdens on wealthy Americans and businesses.

After my set a young man bought me a drink at the bar and told me he thought my jokes were awesome.  Then after the show he came up to me with his girlfriend and said, “Awesome stuff man – I didn’t buy you a drink like as in ‘I’ll suck your dick,’ but (gesturing to his girlfriend) she might suck your dick – hahaha.”  I told him, “Yeah that was so weird and awkward until you clarified it.  Now no one feels strange.”

But speaking of sucking dick I observed something even more bizarre towards the end of the show.  Three women, who on average were a 9.3/10 (and not in that stupid way where most women assume they are already a 7 or an 8 when they are 4s and 5s – these chicks were Hollywood 9.3s).  They were accompanied by a few men all of whom appeared to be 2-3 times their age.  This brought up several thoughts/questions for me:

  1. Attractive women can be found anywhere where there is the possibility of money, except for candy stores selling lottery tickets.
  2. The Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY has prostitutes?  And hot ones?
  3. Why are comedians not offered prostitutes in lieu of cash and/or hotel room?
  4. Is it possible these women are not whores?  Or even if they are, has living in Verona, NY made them unaware that being a 9.3 (or a flat out 10 in the case of the woman wearing the white dress – if you are reading this blog) carries a much higher exchange rate in major cities?  Old men in Verona can offer you what?  Applebees’ gift cards and discounted hunting permits?  In the city you are looking at a 1 bedroom apartment on Central Park West and a purse dog.

Well the gig ended – I got a good night’s sleep and then made my way to the Syracuse Greyhound Station for a 7 hour ride from Syracuse to Cleveland, Ohio while the haunting opening chimes of AC/DC’s Hells Bells played in my iPod.

The Bloody Toilet Seat

It should be no secret to the readers of this blog that like Republicans in Congress I am waging a war to cut benefits on the neediest citizen I know: me.  That is why I seek to end up in the black on every trip I make.  That means the cheaper the gig, the longer and cheaper the transportation.  I have taken 18 hour Greyhound trips and this fall I will add a 20 hour Greyhound trip and a 30 hour Amtrak trip to my Joey Chestnut/Kobayashi of self-destruction through transportation.  But Syracuse to Cleveland was only a 7 hour bus ride.  I can do that in my sleep.  But shortly into the trip I was yelling “This was supposed to be an exhibition!” like Apollo Creed’s trainer right before Apollo is killed by Drago.

One of the great things about America is its diversity, especially in cities like Washington, DC and New York City.  It means people of different backgrounds, hot women of all varieties, etc.  But these are the positives of diversity.  Taking a Greyhound bus for any significant distance (more than 100 miles) demonstrates how awful diversity can be.  Here is what one would learn from the diversity on my Greyhound yesterday:

  1. Amish people travel in large packs and not one of them has a stick of deodorant.  There is also no such thing as a handsome or attractive Amish person (sorry Kelly McGillis).  And even if one were accidentally handsome or pretty, lack of sunlight and grooming products would nurture what nature tried to fight.
  2. People of all races who appear to have felony records prefer Greyhound.
  3. Black woman having a conversation asked the following questions: a) “Her son is dead?  They was playing with guns?” b) “Them black vitamins was omega threes?”  I enjoyed this because as a heavy set black woman she endorsed two negative stereotypes (poor grammar and gun violence) but also showed that she does care about her heart and joint health.
  4. Only angry tall people read on Greyhound.  Everyone else maintains hour long phone conversations or listens to their iPod so loud that I can actually understand lyrics from three seats away (oddly a dude that looked like he was an extra on Sons of Anarchy was listening to No Scrubs by TLC).

But sometimes you learn something on a Greyhound bus that you already knew, but the magnitude of it shocks you to the core.  It should not come as a shock that bus bathrooms are gross.  For me they pose an additional challenge.  First, I have to duck in most (they seem to be about 6’5″ at best and I am 6’7″).  Second, the bus drivers prefer the stop and start motion as if they are in bumper to bumper traffic, and third, I try not to hold on to anything in a bus bathroom.  So under ideal circumstances a simple piss turns into a p90X level core strengthening and balance workout.  But the bathroom on this Greyhound had a special surprise for me:

Blood on the toilet seat.

Let’s do some soul searching.  I am not always the best bus and train bathroom person.  9 out of 10 times I will take a wad of toilet paper to lift up the seat, but sometimes the damage is so severe that some J-L urine may actually sterilize whatever the hell has gone on previous to my visit.  But those are all within what the reasonable person would expect.  But blood on a toilet seat?  Personally I think it was the Amish, but who knows?  One of my fellow passengers might have been fleeing a shoot out with law enforcement.  But in any case it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen.  And then I felt the most disgusting thing I’d ever felt.  As I was leaning and twisting to keep balance in the bathroom my back (which was only covered by a t shirt) made contact with a gooey, gel-like substance which quickly seeped through to my skin.  The next three seconds seemed to last an eternity as I believed that the blood was just a diversion to get me to inadvertently slap some ejaculate on my upper back.  Fortunately it was just some gel soap from the soap dispenser that someone had smeared on the mirror (hell soap anywhere is an improvement at this point).  As odd as that sounds it is what I observed and it is what I will tell myself to go to sleep for the next 6 months until the trauma of that bathroom subsides.

Cleveland Improv & The Birth of Vanilla Coke

By 730 last night, after I had scrubbed my back with alcohol and sandpaper it was time to perform at the Cleveland Improv.  What is normally a fairly diverse crowd (on average the crowds I’ve had at the club have been 60% black, 40% white + other) was almost 100% black.  And female.  And that can be a tough crowd for me.  If I don’t say some things that bush buttons racially (while urban crowds are still determining whether to consider me one of them or too close to a white dude talking sh*t) I will generally push some buttons gender-wise.  But the crowd was fantastic.  The last time I was in a room of black people that happy I was at IHOP with my Dad.  As I have always said there is no greater feeling than killing in a black room and no worse feeling than doing badly in a black room.  And last night felt great.

Here are some of the highlights (because this weekend will probably provide me with five opportunities to experience the full spectrum of urban comedy):

  • I finally came up with my stage name if I decide to go the BET circuit.  Vanilla Coke (alluding to my half-black, Algerian-at-best appearance).  At least half a dozen women shouted it at me as they left the club.  I will gladly change that to my officially name if Coca Cola wants to pay me $250,000 annually for the next 30 years.
  • When I said my Mom was white a woman shouted, “You look good anyway!”  Never has a compliment felt so weird.
  • When I discussed how my Dad was a tough disciplinarian when I was a kid there was no response.  I then asked, “Anybody know their Dad here?” Huge laugh.  When in doubt, in a room of 200+ black women, it is safe to rip irresponsible black men, as long as they already like you.

It is a weird phenomenon, but when you kill with mostly white crowds you feel like they want to buy you a beer or bang their girlfriend in Verona, NY.  But when you kill with a black crowd it feels like they want you to join their family.  Hopefully the good times keep rolling.

So that has been the trip so far, but with gigs spread over the next 10 days in Cleveland I am sure there will be more to discuss, but hopefully no more bloody toilet seats.

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A Night In Wilkes-Barre

This weekend I featured on a one night show at Wisecrackers in Wilkes-Barre, PA which felt like Old Detroit in Robocop, but with fewer people.  It was a typical weekend of luxury in the life of a comedian: Martz Trailways round trip bus, fully equipped with stainless steel toilet (unless you count brown streak marks as “stains,”  a night in a double bed at a Best Western (No HBO – but who the fu*k do I think I am anyway) and a show in front of 30 people with a 2×1 sign on stage saying Wisecrackers (broken into two words because the sign was too small to accommodate the name of the club.

I arrived at the Wilkes Barre bus terminal at 620 pm, in plenty of time for the 9pm show.  Conveniently, the hotel was one block from the bus terminal so I did not have to walk far. The town had the look of an old west town that had been abandoned because of lack of water or the criminals were running the show.  It may have just been because I was in the municipal part of the town and being that it was Saturday everything was shut down except for the Rite Aid and McDonald’s (and the hotel “bar/nightclub,” which would also be where the continental breakfast would be served so you could get your date rape and french toast all within the same 500 square feet.
So for dinner, given the choice between Rite Aid and McDonald’s I opted for McDonald’s, where my height was greeted by bewildered children and adults alike.  I felt like Indiana Jones arriving in that impoverished town in India in Temple of Doom.  So after answering the question “How tall are you?” three times with the word “very,” I made my way back to the Best Western I noticed a fight at the Salvation Army next door.  I was intrigued because there appeared to be about 65 people getting out of some meeting of some kind and the few people yelling seemed like they were going to come to blows.  It was a white chick being held back by a black chick, while yelling at a black dude (sort of like an uglied up scene from Hustle and Flow).  Here is the conversation I heard:
White Woman: Oh yeah, oh yeah, then why did you fu*k me when you was fu*king her?
Black guy: What? When did I fu*k you?  When did I fu*k you?  When?  I never fu*ked you!
White Woman: You telling me you never fu*ked me!
Just then a woman with a 2 year old in a stroller walked by and we looked at each other smiling and I said, “Put the earmuffs on.”  At the time I assumed it would be the funniest thing I would say in Wilkes-Barre.
Conversation continued and all I heard as I turned the corner was,
Black Guy: Man, you lucky they here…

So having had the full tour of downtown Wilkes-Barre I was ready for the show.  Turns out that Wilkes-Barre was not ready for the show.  Only about 30 people showed up (which on the plus side was about half capacity for the tiny room).  But they turned out to be a really good crowd.  They laughed, they bought a few CDs and no one threw anything at me so it was a good time.   The only two disturbing things to happen at the club were only comedian related.
The first thing was that the emcee introduced me as having been “on Bill Maher” (which either means I was on Real Time or that I was doing drastic things to make it in comedy), but it was the headliner who had “opened for Bill Maher” (and since she was a woman I guess the same thing could be said for her).  The second thing was that while I was on stage the headliner got into a quiet argument with a young comedian, who was doing a guest spot, who was taking notes during my set.  He claimed to her that he was just working on his own set, and I have no reason to think otherwise,  but if I ever hear one of my jokes coming out of Pennsylvania there will be Clint Eastwood-Unforgiven level style of hell to pay.  But for your enjoyment here is one of the new bits I was working on Saturday night.

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The Hills Have Eyes Wide Shut – A Weekend…

This weekend I was featuring at Wisecrackers in Allentown, PA, located in a Ramada Inn.   I had no idea what to expect but I did know that Allentown, PA was not located in the South so there was hope.  But I think most good comedians would be a little apprehensive performing at a Ramada Inn.  Am I going to have to do five minutes on GPS locators before I talk about how crazy my wife, kids and in-laws are before ending with a crowd rousing bit where I bash Obama and the Middle East?  Well fortunately that was not the case.

I actually went pretty grim during parts of my sets over the weekend and the crowds reacted positively for the most part.  It was a good moment for me because I usually save grim personal stories for open mics and bar shows in NYC where I know they will be appreciated more.  The sets went well and I sold 8 CDs which was a very good number given the crowd size and limited shows.  So professionally I was very happy with the way the shows at Wisecrackers went.   Here is a short clip from the show (note the handmade sign indicating that it is a “comedy club” and not in any way “the place where I eat continental breakfast each morning”):

When Saturday’s show ended something unexpected occurred.  I heard one of the tables discussing swinging.  Swinging, for those of you who do not know is when married couples sleep with other people.  Presumably it is to keep the marriage fresh, but really it just means you are missing a normal human component that allows you to not mind seeing some dude plow your woman (or see your man do some chick).  Well, my ears perked up like a golden retriever who has heard a bag of treats opening when I heard the word “swingers party.”  I just thought, “these people go to swingers parties?  Gross!”  Both because swinging is sort of nasty and these people engaged in sex is a gross thought!”

So I was getting ready to go to the bar to hang out with a friend from college who had come to the show, but one of the waitresses shared with me that it was a hellish night. Here is the exchange:

Waitress: Oh my God, tonight has been the night from hell. The bar is all messed up

Me: Why?  Are they missing someone”

Waitress: Yeah, (name I forget) had to work the swingers party on the second floor.

Me: Wait, there is actually a swingers party here?

Waitress: Yep.

All of a sudden, a weekend of surprisingly strong shows had the chance to elevate to an incredibly ridiculous weekend full of blog fodder.  In a Ramada Inn at the bottom of a lonely hill in Allentown, PA there were a bunch of 2s and 3s swapping partners and other things. So I went to the bar to have a drink with my friend, his wife and friends of theirs (they were there for the comedy show only), but I could not stopping looking at everyone in the bar with a suspicious eye.  Most of the men sort of looked like some variation of Christian Bale in The Fighter and most of the women looked like inappropriately dressed older versions of Christian Bale’s sisters in The Fighter.  As I continued to watch this I decided to bring my camera from the show back to my room before someone decided to steal it and make the worst porn of all time.  And then walking to my room I saw someone stepping out of the swinger party that took it to another level:

A Midget or little person!

WOW!

All of a sudden I was at a loss for what the weirdest night of my life had been before February 19, 2011.  It was literally like the film Eyes Wide Shut with the characters from The Hills Have Eyes.  And then it would get slightly worse.

I went to my room at 1:30 ready to go to bed.  As I walked to my room I realized that some of the swingers had the room next to me.  And I realized that they had young children.  How did I know this?  Because about 20 minutes after I retired to my room I heard two young children, that I had seen wandering the halls several hours earlier (my guess – ages 10 and 7) were knocking on their door because (this is an inference, but a well-founded one) the swinger parents/guardians had locked them out of the room.  So not only are swingers great partners; they’re great parents!

So the weekend was fantastic for both my stand up and for my blog.  But not so much for my Twitter account.  When I looked at my account last night, my shows and tweets for the weekend had only attracted one new follower “Adult Swingers Club” or something to that effect.  As of this morning they are no longer following me.

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Pretend Like You Don’t Know Me

Here are my two newest videos.  If you like them forward them around, the same way you would if you did not know me.  Because let us be honest – in the age of YouTube and Facebook you are comfortable bombarding friends and co-workers with videos of people you don’t know because there is no personal connection to the video.  However, if you forward something of a friend it is somehow embarrassing and lame, even if the video is much better than the panda jerking off in a zoo cage video you just sent them yesterday. 

So pretend you found these on the internet and want to share them instead of saying, “these are funny, but J-L can go fu*k himself” or “I don’t want to bother my friends with videos from someone I know because it will look like I am just trying to help out someone I know. And that is lame.”   Just do it – pretend they are videos of a cat getting kicked in the nuts or whatever video has gone viral today.  Thanks.  🙂

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Battle Of The Overrated – The 2010 Oscar Nominations

I did not realize that the Oscar nominations came out this morning, but when I did there were no big surprises.  Just a lot of frustration.

BEST PICTURE

‘Black Swan’
‘The Fighter’
‘Inception’
‘The Kids Are All Right’
‘The King’s Speech’
‘127 Hours’
‘The Social Network’
‘Toy Story 3’
‘True Grit’
‘Winter’s Bone’

My first beef is that Inside Job is not nominated.  A brilliant, penetrating documentary that is the scariest film since The Exorcist.  If you told me that Hollywood did not want to be too political so they did not select a film that clearly (but completely justifiably) lays most (but certainly not all) of the blame for our country’s economic woes at the feet of Republicans I would accept that.  But then explain…

The Kids Are All Right.  This movie is so fu*king average it is absurd.  But it has lesbians in a regular relationship.  WOW!!!!  Unlike Milk or Brokeback Mountain, which actually showed hardship and triumph in gay rights and gay relationships, this movie is just a bland, unfunny and unmoving film.  But it is about gay people and it does not suck so Hollywood has showered praise on it.  If not for The Blind Side last year, this would be the best case for moving the nominations back to five films a year.

True Grit – No doubt it would be nominated, but this movie was just not as great as everyone is pretending.  Everyone who was late to The Big Lebowski or No Country For Old Men has jumped on this bandwagon because they don’t want to miss the next “cool” movie from the Coen Brothrs or Jeff Bridges.  It was a solid movie, but the chronological error pointed out by Adam Carolla on his podcast a few weeks ago (I won’t spoil the ending by saying what it is) alone should knock it from the ranks.

Black Swan – Eh.  This is the movie for the pretentious, artsy folk who also pretend to love jazz music and modern art.  The movie kept my attention for sure and is not bad, but I think I am still bitter over The Wrestler getting fu*ked over.  And Darren Aronofsky – can you please come up with a different ending to your movies.  It was like watching The Wrestler if he had been a pouty, one-expression waif.

The King’s Speech – First off – can people stop introducing Colin Firth as “the handsome” or “the very handsome” Colin Firth.  He is like the male Cate Blanchette – the actress that Hollywood keeps calling beautiful even though no straight man gets even a little extra blood flow for.  But this movie has everything Hollywood likes – a lame disability like stuttering (for the Glee crowd that keeps talking about bullying), British actors and a backdrop of Nazi Germany (thank God – we almost made it a year without a major Hollywood film invoking the Holocaust).  The movie was solid and like Black Swan, and True Grit worthy of no more than a B+.  The Kids Are All Right is a solid C.  And the fact that Carlos is not nominated is also a fu*king joke.

And in the spirit of full disclosure I agree with Toy Story 3, The Social Network, The Fighter and of course Inception.  I have not seen Winter’s Bone yet, but it is on pay-per-view.

BEST ACTOR

Javier Bardem, ‘Biutiful’
Jeff Bridges, ‘True Grit’
Jesse Eisenberg, ‘The Social Network’
Colin Firth, ‘The King’s Speech’
James Franco, ‘127 Hours’

I have not seen Biutiful (Javier Bardem), but Edgar Ramirez of Carlos was off the charts awesome.  Speaking four languages over the course of a 5 hour film, weight gains of around 40 pounds and being a complex character seems like a combination of Christophe Waltz in Inglorious Basterd and Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull, but he was not worthy of a nomination I guess.

That said I will be pissed if James Franco does not win.  Then again he did not stutter during the movie so his chances are slim.

BEST DIRECTOR

Darren Aronofsky, ‘Black Swan’
David O. Russell, ‘The Fighter’
Tom Hooper, ‘The King’s Speech’
David Fincher, ‘The Social Network’
Joel and Ethan Coen, ‘True Grit’

WHERE THE FU*K IS CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!??????????  That is all I need to say.

BEST ACTRESS

Annette Bening, ‘The Kids Are All Right’
Nicole Kidman, ‘Rabbit Hole’
Jennifer Lawrence, ‘Winter’s Bone’
Natalie Portman, ‘Black Swan’
Michelle Williams, ‘Blue Valentine’

Who gives a sh*it.  I suppose it is down to Annette Benning (which is what I think Warren Beatty said when his penis was tired of slaying Hollywood) and Natalie Portman.  At least they are better than The Blind Side.  But don’t blame my indifference.  Hollywood uses about 95% of its female-directed energy making stars out of hot, untalented women (I’m talking to you Precious) so that the only time a woman is nominated from a movie people care about is when it involves Merryl Streep or Kate Winslet.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale, ‘The Fighter’
John Hawkes, ‘Winter’s Bone’
Jeremy Renner, ‘The Town’
Mark Ruffalo, ‘The Kids Are All Right’
Geoffrey Rush, ‘The King’s Speech’

Bale – deserved and the race is over.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams, ‘The Fighter’
Helena Bonham Carter, ‘The King’s Speech’
Melissa Leo, ‘The Fighter’
Hailee Steinfeld, ‘True Grit’
Jacki Weaver, ‘Animal Kingdom’

Reiterating my point – the best roles for women are consistently in this category because most great movies are built around men so this is the category where you can often see great roles in relevant movies for women.  Amy Adams, Melissa Leo or Hailee Steinfeld would all be worthy winners.  Fu*k The King’s Speech (on principle, not because it is terrible) and what’s Animal Kingdom?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

‘Another Year’
‘The Fighter’
‘Inception’
‘The Kids Are All Right’
‘The King’s Speech’

Inception is the most original story in a movie I can think of in a long time – The Usual Suspects comes to mind as the last extremely original film I can think of.  Any other choice in this category is a fu*king joke (only because of how awesome Inception was).

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

‘127 Hours’
‘The Social Network’
‘Toy Story 3’
‘True Grit’
‘Winter’s Bone’

The Social Network.  Aaron Sorkin can fu*king write circles around people.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’
‘Gasland’
‘Inside Job’
‘Restrepo’
‘Waste Land’

I saw Restrepo and Inside Job.  I have heard Exit Through the Gift Shop is very good, but if ever there was a time for the Hollywood blowhards to make a political statement it should have been to nominate Inside Job for Best Picture.  A best picture nomination raises the profile of a movie.  A best documentary nomination simply confirms the film’s image as some geeky, academic exercise.  Perhaps if Inside Job had spoken of how the banking industry had hurt gay couples and Holocaust survivors it would have been nominated.  Lesson for all you filmmakers out there.