Keeping it Real

Last time I did standup I really thought it was the last time. Waiting to go on I felt old and out of place. On the way home, after the show I thought of a joke that addressed that feeling. That is my style, starting from someplace real and pushing it to where it would make people connect with that place and laugh. I knew exactly how to deliver it.

The next morning I woke up and had a complete joke in my head. An awesome joke, but one that was outside my usual style. I have no idea why I thought of it. It’s based on sleeping with the maid of honor at a wedding – something that could be real, but not for me. That afternoon, on the way home from work, I came up with the second half of that joke, which up until that moment I hadn’t known HAD a second half to it..

I knew I was going to have to perform again just to do those two new jokes. So figured out a way to take part of what I did last time, plus the two new bits and tie them all together with a theme about being old (because I am) and thus it’s all based on something real, just the way I like it.

The thing is, the material is all cruder than what I usually do. Not that I have ever shied away from sex as a topic or from a couple four-letter words; but, well, this routine might offers the suggestion that I like to play sex-education show-and-tell with your young children in the park. But that’s mild stuff for Go Bananas, so no problem, unless, say, my daughter decides to come to the show, which she never has wanted to.

Naturally my daughter decided she is finally comfortable with coming to see me do standup and brought her new boyfriend just to raise the awkwardness level to orange. Comedy comes from dark places but does anyone want his daughter to know he has dark places?
My five minutes went great. I did forget a couple lines, but they were incidental. I got laughs from the opening to the end (which sounds vaguely nasty). My daughter claimed she was not traumatized and we all went home happy. Today I did not wake up with a joke in my head. It didn’t come to me until I got to work. Something to do with whether doing stand up is better than sex. I might have to go back again.

Get Up, Stand Up

Every couple of hours I panic. I’m going to forget a hunk. I’m not going to hit the line right. It is just not funny. Not even to me any more. It’s not 5 minutes. It’s about 3. I have to add a piece of another routine. No, then I’ll go over. I’ll miss the light. They will start playing me off the stage

Every couple of hours I get psyched. This is funny. People will laugh – they will laugh where I set them up to laugh. The adrenaline will pump. I will do it under 5 and get off. I will feel the applause.

I can’t write music. I don’t “get” music. I see people pick up an instrument and look at music, and play it, and take it somewhere they I can’t even figure out, and I want so badly to go there. I can look through the glass and know it’s there but I’ll never be inside the music.

Comedy I get. I listen to comedians and I hear the joke and, at the same time, I see the construction of it. I see the notes and feel the timing. I can appreciate the talent behind it or I can see how to fix it. When I think of a standup bit, I have the voice inside me; I know how it should sound. Sometimes it comes out of my mouth just like I planned it, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m not a professional, I’m not that good, but I’m funny. I’ve done only amateur nights but I know I’m funnier than some of the people getting paid for it. At least, every couple of hours, I think I am. Then, later, I’m not.

I don’t know how it happened this time. I have not been sleeping well. Maybe my mind was foggy from fatigue. I had a headache at work and I asked someone for a Tylenol; she was out of those and gave me something else – supposedly an Advil, but possible quaaludes – you never know. Whatever the reason, I signed up to do 5 minutes Wednesday – amateur night at Go Bananas.

I had thought of something to write about for this blog. Then I remembered having done that topic in standup a couple years ago. I looked up the routine I wrote and, hey, it was pretty funny. What if I went back up? I love it when it works. People had been asking me for some time if I was going to perform again. I kept saying no. I gave reasons but the reasons have faded in my mind. It’s been a couple years. Why not do it again?

For the past week I have thought about this performance every hour of every day. Oh, I have been distracted by work and chores and food and occasional sleep, but it’s always there. I’ve gone over and over it and really made some improvements.

Every couple of hours I get psyched. This is funny. People will laugh – they will laugh where I set them up to laugh. The adrenaline will pump. I will do it under 5 and get off. I will feel the applause.

Every couple of hours I panic. I’m going to forget a hunk. I’m not going to hit the line right. It is just not funny. Not even to me any more. It’s not 5 minutes. It’s about 3. I have to add a piece of another routine. No, then I’ll go over. I’ll miss the light. They will start playing me off the stage.

I’m starting to remember why I stopped.

Send In The Clowns

When I was in the second interview for the CFO job I have now, the President/CEO of this architecture firm was in the room. He was clearly bored by all the accounting talk and I thought I was doomed. Then he turned to me and asked, “What do you do for fun?” I said, “I write comedy for Gary Burbank.” My boss saw the chance to be the only architecture firm in town with a comedy-writing accountant and he grabbed it. Humor makes mind-numbing financial tedium more palatable and SOME people in our federal government need to learn that

.“The Treasury Department revealed Friday that it is scrapping plans to hire a cartoonist to lighten the mood of its employees who manage the nation's $1 trillion-plus debt…”

I was referred to this story via Dave Barry’s blog. Dave captioned it with “Instead, They’re Going to Hire a Clown”. But, really, why would they hire a clown when Joe Biden is just down the street? (I was going to say “why would they hire a clown when Tim Geitner is right upstairs” but Tim is actually more of a weaselly racketeer than a clown.)

"Our training staff felt that at a time when employees are working extra hours, it might have been helpful," said Kim Treat, a spokesman for the bureau…. The contractor would have to be able to "create cartoons on the spot" about jobs at the bureau, according to the text of the solicitation.

Imagine you are working extra hours for the 20th day in a row. The cartoonist approaches your desk and hands you his latest cartoon. “I have drawn an amusing scene to capture the futility of your efforts and mock the way in which you waste the taxpayer money in this mindless bureaucracy. Don’t get up. I can just insert it into my behind with all the others your coworkers have placed there”

What Treasury needs is a full-time regular financial type employee who can bring the funny. Dear Tim Geitner, let’s talk, I could be available for the right price. What? That racketeer remark? Just a sample of my work, Tim.


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You Feelin' Me, Bro'?

I am not now, nor have I ever been, cool. I was never in with the in crowd, part of the scene, or remotely in synch with “what’s happenin’ now”.

For example: When I was a teenager, bell bottoms and flares were popular fashion items. We were the Woodstock Generation. It was Cool Times in America. However, those bell bottoms were way beyond my cool status level. But I did wear flares. I assume everyone knows what these items are, but, for an in depth discussion, click here. The short definition of the style is “Trousers with legs that flare at the bottom.”

Cool people wear bell-bottom or flared jeans or cords or even “pants”. Cool people do not wear “trousers”. But I did. I had “Trousers with legs that flare at the bottom.” What’s more, I was a tall, skinny child and the flared bottoms of my trousers were just above my ankles. Not dragging the ground, becoming fashionably frayed at the hem. No, my flared trouser legs flapped at my ankles, giving the cool folk a great view of my white socks and my Hush Puppies. I was not cool.

Having been around back then, I have now aged beyond hope of being cool. My daughter, who is cool, tells me that I get cool points for having done stand up in actual theaters and comedy clubs (strictly amateur). But those few points are apparently a mere drop in the cool bucket. If I accidentally say anything that sounds like I am trying to be cool (or “hip” or “hep” or “the shizzle” or whatever the kids these days are saying) she wall warn me “Dad. No. Don’t ever say that again.”

So I don’t try to use current slang (or “lingo”, or “street”, or “text-speak” or whatever the kids these days are saying). I speak, white, mid-western English, which is no better or worse than anything else, it’s just the language of my people: The Uncool. That’s not to say that a manner of speaking is limited to a given region, age or ethnic group, but we characterize certain ways of talking with such groups. Certain expressions are associated with white culture, some with brown and some as black culture. Cool people can cross over cultures, but uncool people who try that are what we commonly refer to as “dorks” (or “nerds”, or “fools”, or “dweebs” or whatever the kids these days are saying).

I told you all that to tell you this:
You know how certain expressions are automatic? You pick up the phone in the U.S and you say “Hello.” You don’t try to be Chinese and say “Ni hao,” unless you are from that culture. Likewise, at the end of a discussion about some conflict, some people would say “Are we okay now?” and some would say “We good?”, depending on culture. Again, you don’t think about what words to say, it’s automatic based on who you are and the way you learned to speak.

Last weekend an African-American man was explaining to me the service he was providing on the trees at our house. When he was done, he said “alright”, signaling, “Alright, I’m ready to get started,” and I said, “a’ight”.

What? (or “Say what?” or “WTF?” Or “Huh?” Or whatever the kids these days are saying). I could have said “alrighty, then” or “okey-dokey” and not thought I sounded any more uncool. ”A’ight” just came out of my mouth, leaving me wondering who had said it, while the black guy was saying “alright”. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it made me feel like I was Gene Wilder in "Silver Streak" ("Get down! Feelin' fine!"). For sure! (or “tru’ dat”, or “right on”, “I heard that” or whatever these kids today are saying).

"A'ight"? Seriously?

As my daughter would say, “Dad. No. Don't ever say that again.” To which I would instinctively reply, “A’ight. We cool.”

(Don’t forget to go to Humor Bloggers dot com, read all the “Funniest Post Ever!” contest entries and then vote for “What Chinese New Year means to Me” because it is the best one. A’ight?)

You Can't Go Home Again

Andy over at “PurpAnd” was pondering the number of residences he has lived in and wondering which was his favorite home. He commented that one “particular residence is also the one I spent most of my life in (about 10 years total).”
I was struck by a couple of things. On is that, for my friend Andy (whom I’ve never met), 10 years is nearly half his life – which just reinforces the sad realization that I am twice his age and nearing the point where I can not remember where I live at present, let alone all my previous ones. But really, Andy, based on the math clues you dropped in your essay, 10 years is closer to 1/3 of your life. You are closing in on 30 – deal with it!
The other thing that was interesting was that Andy has lived in a lot of places, which is similar to my experience growing up. A lot of people at Andy’s age don’t have so many homes to look back on and rank. My daughter had only one home until she went to college. So, if you are smart, you now know that I have lived in my current home a long time. But in the 30 some years before this house, I lived in (if my rapidly deteriorating memory serves) 14 different places, if college counts as only one. That is about 1 every 2.5 years, pretty close to Andy’s rate.
When we were growing up, my parents divorced and Mom moved us around to various parts of the Los Angeles area. Later, after I had failed to pursue her dream for me and I chose accounting over comedy, she revealed the reason for our nomadic existence. “The best comedians experience hardship growing up. It forms their comic persona. You were supposed to take your unstable life of a broken home and never settled living conditions and build a solid comedy life.”
I could only shake my head. “Mom, every kid in L.A. is an aspiring actor/comedian and every one of them has divorced parents and instability. The ones who make it have gone beyond that. You say you did it all for me, but if you wanted me to have a comedy base, you would have lost your job and made me wonder where my next meal was coming from. If you really loved me, you would have been a crack whore or would have given me an abusive step-father. Then I would have something to create a monologue around. But you did none of that.”
The original question here was which home was my favorite. Looking back on them all:
the duplex where my sister and I used to walk to the coffee shop for dinner or the apartment where we ate crackers and Gouda cheese sitting on the floor before the place was furnished or the house where I become cook and laundryman when Mom broke her ankle -
I’d say my favorite was the imaginary place I created in my head.

Be There or Be Square

I have square roots, so I am celebrating today, 3/3/09, which is a square root day. Any square can figure that out and a real square can tell me how many square root days there are each century.

These are my square roots:
My grandfather was a PhD in mathematics; it doesn’t get much squarer than that.
My father is a CPA; need I say more?

My mother wanted me to have a respectable L.A. type career as a comedian or street performer, but I could not break away from my square roots and I am, like my dad, a certified public accountant. I grew up and went to college in hip, cool Los Angeles. But I longed to seek out my people, so I majored in economics, got married, became a CPA and moved to the San Fernando Valley. When that wasn’t square enough, we came here to the Midwest.

Square, dork, geek, "L7" - whatever you call it, that's me.

So I am celebrating my square roots on square root day. I’m am cutting carrots, onions, fennel and potatoes into square shapes and making soup. That will be served with root beer in square mugs. For dessert we will serve pie baked in square pans so we can make jokes about “pie are square”. Ironically, pi*r2 is the formula for the area of a circle, which pie usually are. (SNICKER< SNICKER< SNORT!). Sorry, if you are square, you think that’s funny.

The Seven Worst Words I Wish They Couldn't Say on Television.

George Carlin is dead at age seventy-one. I grew up in a family that appreciated intelligence and loved words. Puns abounded and massive dictionaries were handy. We were introduced early to Scrabble and to the original "Password" on television.
George Carlin was known for words. He did the classic "Seven Dirty Words" routine. That routine is at the end of "Class Clown" and, as he starts into it, the audience applauds: this is what they were waiting for. "The other stuff was very funny, but now he's going to say those words. Those dirty words."
There are many comedians who use the word "motherfucker" as a punchline. The great thing about Carlin is that he didn't use those words just to titillate (heh, heh, that word has "tit" in it *snicker*). His routine was about the effect they have and the way people react to them. My favorite part was when he pointed out the words that go both ways and you have to be careful with: "you can talk about pricking your finger, but not fingering your prick."
Carlin talked about words a lot. He had a routine about contradictory terms such as "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence". It's hard to pick a favorite Carlin routine, but "Baseball and Football" is right up there for me, with the comparison of "diamonds" and "gridirons", "ups" and "downs" and how the words represent the sports. That was the thing, though, he talked about what words represent: ideas. He explored religion through the words, "Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Limbo" (seriously, get the album, I'm not linking to every routine he ever did).
Carlin is the most intelligent comedian I can think of. He will be eulogized equally by lovers of comedy and by lovers of words and ideas.
I wish he'd lived to 105, a much funnier age.

George Carlin passes = one grasps sacrilege

Born in Arizona, Moved to Babylonia

In 1963, when I was 8, we moved to Inglewood, where I attended nearby Highland Elementary School. I remember my first day of 4th grade; I met a guy who became one of my best friends for over a decade, though I haven't been in touch with him for the past 30 some years. The first thing I remember about him is playing "robots" during recess. Everything we knew about robots came from "Robby the Robot". My friend lived in a small bungalow on Venice Way, directly across the street from Highland school, so it was easy to hang out with him in the afternoons. We both got paper routes and would sit on his front porch folding papers and waiting for the Helms Bakery truck so we could get doughnuts, cream puffs and miniature pies for nourishment.
My friend's family and my family both moved away from that neighborhood a few years later. Then some other stuff happened and then, a few days a go, I received a copy of "Born Standing Up", by Steve Martin as a gift. Steve Martin was never as much an influence on my comedy as, say, Bill Cosby, but I really liked him when he first started and I saw him on the Steve Allen show. His "let's get small", balloon animals, and nose-on-the-microphone parody's of stand-up were so innovative at the time, I've never forgotten them. On page 16 of his book, Steve Martin is writing about his childhood: "A few months later, we moved from Hollywood to Inglewood, California, and lived in a small bungalow on Venice Way, directly across from Highland Elementary School." So if you've been paying attention, you now know that Steve Martin was my best friend in elementary school.
No, actually, Steve Martin is about ten years older than I am and his family lived there only a couple years, before I was born, then moved to the Oak Street School area. But maybe, just maybe, my friend's family moved into that house directly across from Highland School right after Steve Martin's moved out. And then, I spent time in that house. Is that an amazing brush with fame or what?