28 posts tagged “comedy”
So it's been 8 months since I posted...that's not so long, is it?
I've been doing a lot of things, very few of which make for interesting online reading, so there ya go. Fishing and biking and playing with my kids and getting x-rated with my wife. Good summer. Bad blog fodder.
However...my latest endeavor MAY just be a little interesting. In just under a month, my partners and I open this bad boy:
That's right. Our very own comedy club, right in the heart of Boston and just around the corner from the empty space where the Comedy Conneciton used to live.
P.S. Anyone know a decent web developer that'll work fast and cheap?
I'm posting, frankly, just to be writing something. I've got inertia of the fingers, if not of the brain, and the only way to shake it off is to start slapping words onto the screen. So here we are, me and this blog, staring each other down like cowboys in a Leone film (I get to be Lee Van Cleef; fuck you, blog). It's been a while since I've been here. I'd totally forgotten I'd picked a theme of skulls with cranberry eyes. I'll leave it for now.
Querying continues apace. I've had two requests for the full manuscript now (one agent, one publisher), and got two very nice, very positive, very energizing "no, thank yous" for my trouble. The publisher used words like "intensely readable" and "laugh out loud funny without trying too hard," and the agent said it was like a Miranda July movie produced by the Coen Brothers and directed by Tarantino. So as rejections go, I'm feeling pretty good. I took some time off over the holidays because I figured everybody was busy being a slackass drunkard like me. But I've gotten a membership in the Mystery Writers of America and plan to keep sending the book out, hopefully using their resources to work smarter.
The missus and I weathered a big time crisis and have come out better for it. It shook us up but also seems to have gotten our priorities back in whack. A conscious kindness to each other has morphed into re-kindled attraction and a fair amount of hot, groping sex. Which is good. We like each other better and love each other stronger (and bang each other goofy). A-plus on that.
I'm still ambivalent about comedy. Still doing two or three shows a week and making good dough, but the Eye of the Tiger has dimmed, and frankly, I don't miss it so much. I'm definitely thinking of my career in the past tense, even if the financial reality hasn't caught up to that yet. It's still fun, I'm still funny, and I can still hold my own, but I don't have that hunger anymore, and frankly, I'm beginning to see that hunger for the pathetic desperation it really is. I was never good at the "hey, look at me! look at me!" aspect of being in showbiz, but now I'm finding myself with active contempt for people who're good at it. I'll still sell you a CD if you want, though.
I now like basketball, and want a Rajon Rondo jersey stat.
The knuckleheads are maniacal, destructive little bundles of unconditional love, one of whom won't wear pants and the other of whom is getting ninja-like in his sneaking of snacks, and I thank the God-Universe for them every single day, even when I'm scrubbing jelly off the TV.
And the new American Gladiators? Oh, HELL YES.
Things continue apace. My half-assed shows this weekend turned out to be incredibly fun. I sold plenty of CD's and killed all three sets. The opener was a good friend and great comic, and the feature was someone I didn't know and completely underwhelming, but all in all, a fine weekend of comedy jokes.
I continue to query agents (plural, thanks to Jodi's bad influence) who are far too important to deal with the likes of me. That's not false modesty - I'm just querying rock-star-level people at the moment. Nothing ventured and all that. I'm building a mail merge file of mere mortals and will start sending those letters out once I reload on stamps and envelopes.
Me and the Missus are doing well, I guess. We've had a sort of passive/aggressive detente going the last couple weeks, and I'm not sure exactly where it's coming from. I either feel like a victim or an asshole, depending on the hour of the day. But then everything will be hunky dory and giggling at the Simpsons, so I don't know what's up. Maybe it's just living in a house with two crazy kids.
I miss Colorado like anything. Mountains make me good inside.
Jesus god, am I a lazy fuck.
I simply don't want to do anything except sit on my ass, drink hippie tea, and listen to Gram Parsons for the next 48 hours. Instead, I have to headline 3 shows at a local comedy club, and brother, let me tell you, I am already planning to phone it right the fuck in.
I will do the first four bits from the first record, the first four bits from the second record, and then thankyougoodnightyou'vebeengreat and out.
I am lame.
15 minutes ago, I found myself walking across the sun-baked parking lot of a dead mall, carrying an 18-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon with one hand and updating my Flickr page with the other.
What a truly wonderful world this is.
Found a couple of old videos stashed in a folder on my web server. Chucked 'em up on YouTube and posting 'em for you here:
I have fully and completely embraced coffee as my one last unabashed vice (which is to say, I have others, but I feel bad about them; not so sweet java). The day gig has free unlimited cups of the stuff, and I avail myself as often as possible. It's one of them cup-at-a-time machines, where you put in the little plastic pod, and press a button, and out comes your fix, er, a delicious cup of joe. I can't even imagine how environmentally unfriendly this system must be, but I tell myself that using an unwashed ceramic mug somehow brings me back into balance. Anyway, I'm guzzling some hot, delicious Sumatra Blend even as I write this.
You'd think, with all this caffeine, I'd get something fucking DONE, wouldn't you?
Alas, not so.
In his book On Writing, Stephen King insists that if you want to be a good writer, you have to be a prolific reader, and that reading helps get your brain ready to write.
Well I'm here to testify that I believe ol' Stevie was right about that. I think I've written here before how certain unsavory elements in my life were attempting to bring me over to the crack-like world of comics. One of said pushers dumped two crates of graphic novels on me, and, being only human, I finally gave in to temptation and went hog wild. Nothing but comics for weeks on end. Total comic orgy.
And my writing dried right the fuck up.
Here, my "real" site, my short stories, my novel. All if it. Kaput.
I mean, I read some really great comics. Incredible stories, beautiful art, and let's be real: Brian Michael Bendis's dialogue puts every other writer's to shame, no matter what the medium. Yes, Mr. Mamet, that includes you. But ain't none of 'em prose; ain't none of them the kind of thing I'm theoretically supposed to be writing, and they sucked the words right out of my head.
A couple weeks ago, I realized what was happening and I gave all them crazy comics back. Then I started reading some real books again. Lo and behold, my writing's coming back, or at least my ability to sit down and get to work is. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Psychosomatic? Quite possibly. But also true. I am going great guns on the second draft of my book, and I'm not so much as touching a comic until it's done, done, done.
Unrelated side note: at a truly wretched and downright scary comedy show this weekend, in a club filled with drunken thugs and associated floozies, on a stage next to a pasta buffet and surrounded by TVs still playing the Sox game, and after watching my opening acts go down in big, bright flames, I got the first standing ovation of my career. Weirdness abounds.
So dig this clip from a show I did this weekend:
The funny part isn't the joke (though I think it's pretty good, too). The funny part is that if you watch closely, you can see that I get my thumb stuck in the mike stand at the beginning of the bit and spend the rest of it trying to get unstuck without the audience seeing me.
Just a post to assert my existence. I don't know that I've been busy, but I feel like I have.
I did this show this weekend:
And saw this baseball game last week:
And to everyone in my house's annoyance, I've learned to play (and sing) "Mister Jones" on this guitar:
What more do you need to know?
