Well, just when you think “kids these days” ain’t got a thing goin’ for ’em, they do something like this.
Principal subject of one of the ‘coolest senior pranks ever’
The Sound Of No Man Laughing
A buddy and comedian buddy and good guy and friend of mine, Brett “One-L” Hamil, just published another great article in City Arts… that was the link you just went past… about a phenomenon that comedians can be afflicted by, known as “The Ears” or “Laugh Ears.” It happens when a comedian is not getting laughs with material, yet isn’t really aware of how poorly they’re doing. Perhaps somebody up close is laughing in a room full of 200, so they think “Hey, I’m doing pretty well tonight!” Or they got laughs on ONE bit. Or the audience started laughing at how poorly it was going. Regardless of why the comedian is eating a bowl of Poop Soup, The Ears really is more painful to those who are NOT on-stage.
Brett’s article has perspective from a few comedians, but I answered a few more questions that didn’t make it to the final edit… no hard feelings… Here are some thoughts about being delusional on-stage. I think this carries into other professions as well…
1) What is “the ears”? Where did you first hear the term?
“The Ears” or “Laugh Ears” is a temporary sensory disability when a comedian thinks they are doing well and their material is hitting, yet neither is actually happening. They are most-likely eating hot garbage, but are too detached from the moment for whatever reason to hear the silence after their punchlines. It’s a persistence problem; the afflicted party isn’t self-aware enough or just willfully ignorant of their inability to elicit laughter.
I first heard about “laugh ears” from a local club owner, after we watched a well-rehearsed, nearly response-less set from a performer we’d seen muddle or bomb 99% of his prior sets. The guy’s cadence was the same for each joke, regardless of subject, and wasn’t getting any laughs AGAIN. It didn’t bother me, it was like, “meh… next.” Then he asked the owner for some feature work at the club, and the owner kindly rebuffed it. Guy made a stink, asking “why not?” and the owner finally said, “You kinda got Laugh Ears, like, you’re not doing as well as you think you are. People aren’t laughing but you’re, like, not even hearing it. All I hear is nothin’.” The guy didn’t get it.
2) Have you ever suffered from it?
Suffered? No. Didn’t even feel it.
I’m sure I have, but it’s been a while. I do recall a set where I just “did my time,” and thought “well that was pretty good,” because I hadn’t forgotten anything. The headliner, and the MC, and the booker, all asked me “Whaddya think happened up there?” I was honestly confused, like “Huh? I’m not saying I killed, but I didn’t dig a hole and fill it back in with a watery carrot-laden shit, either, dickhead.” Paraphrasing, it’s been a while… But later on I thought, “Yeah, it was pretty quiet for a while, and not like they were listening. Oh gawd…” Pain set it.
3) How do you assess your sets?
Purely on how many post-show offers I get for drugs or threesomes. But sometimes it’s a moment-to-moment thing now, like calling plays in a football game. I know what I want to do because I know me and what works and how to structure things, but sometimes you audible, you go easy because the audience clenched up. It’s part of my ability to do well, reading a room’s reactions and tailoring my material and pace to that. There’s no reason to bore them.
But also, I did a set for 3500 people last Summer, outdoors, and thought I ate so much crap that it would be weeks before any other comedian could eat crap, because I’d eaten all of it that night.
But the stage manager and a ton of people said they loved it and were cracking up. I just couldn’t hear the pack of laughs because it was all going up, lot of people milling about, spread out over an acre, etc. I’d rather bomb outdoors in front of 3500 than bomb in a room of 35. That quiet 35 are just way too intimate. And on that stage that day I literally thought “Well I have to quit now, I’m the worst and I’ll never open for Earth, Wind, nor Fire ever again.”
4) How do you balance self-criticism with maintaining a healthy level of confidence in your abilities?
Who the fuck said I do? Unhinged, manic delivery is my style, they’ll laugh because it is undeniable even if it’s unoriginal. It’s loud, man, they dig that.
I think I balance it by not doing anything I’m not pretty damn sure will work in one way or another. And if it doesn’t work after the 3rd time, I give it to an open mic’er. I will challenge myself sometimes with material that I know could divide a room, but have to dig for the funny parts of it. But also, balance that with asking myself what I’m trying to prove by doing that type of material. And i never think I’m so great that I’m not one set away from the one that makes me rethink calling myself a comedian.
Sick Of It
Far too long ago I posted a blog here. A lot has happened since then, and I’m writing this one to be a bit selfish… moreso than usual… so I can tell the story of how I ended up in the hospital twice in 3 weeks one last time. I’ve told it a lot lately, to many people, and I can’t tell it again. Too tired. Too tiring. Wanna focus on the Now and Forward! To make it somewhat fun, I’m interviewing myself the way I’d interview a friend at a bar who I haven’t seen for 5 weeks since he posted on Facebook that he was in ICU for some lung thing.
Rewind to Nov. 11, 2014. We had just finished another round of weeding a large portion of a garden behind our house, and instead of throwing down a weed-suppressing warfare like I prepared for, we went with my wife’s idea to keep it ORGANIC! and threw down a bunch of hay from a bale we bought for Autumn decorating outside the house. My flamethrowing would have to wait…
Now, back to the program…
If you want the short version, it’s right here in a hidden color. Just click your mouse BETWEEN the {{{ below, and drag down to read the short story!
{{{ I had a severe allergic reaction known as Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis, brought on by a previously unknown or undetected allergy to a high-enough intake of a mold commonly found in hay. It shut my lungs down via inflammation and swelling of the alveoli. }}}
DUDE! HOLY CRAP, you’re alive!
I know, I made it. Tell me, seriously… anybody bet against me?
HA! OH YOUR GOD, dude, seriously… I was worried, what the hell happened? Did you get some bad weed or something? HA HA HA
Ha… No. It’s legal now here and I’m sure the standards are pretty high for the quality control. It was kind of bad weed though, now that you mention it.
OK, seriously (welling up with emotion)… What happened to you?
Well, the same thing, both times, happened to me. The doctors didn’t really catch the real cause until the second time, though. I’m sure they will discount the first visit for that. But yeah, I woke up one morning about 3, and could barely breathe, like half my lungs weren’t there. I toughed it out, downed some cough syrup and took a hot shower thinking I could loosen it up, because I’m a MAN.
YEAH, not much of one, but go on.
What?
Anyway, yeah, I just couldn’t get a full breath. So I go all day, grinding through it thinking it’ll go away, and it doesn’t and I am really starting to freak out. I just don’t get sick, so we really got freaked out a bit. Went to an urgent-care clinic, and they threw me in an ambulance to the ER, where they started doing all the could to figure out why the hell I couldn’t breathe.
What’d they say?
Basically, “Well, hmm, it’s like pneumonia but there’s no fluid in your lungs, so we’re not sure what’s up.” Started pumping me full of antibiotics, oxygen in the nose, and I just wanted to sleep. I had the oxygen levels of a person who’d just been pulled out of a river and CPR’ed back to this shitrock.
Damn, that’s awful. So what happened from there?
I eventually got into ICU while they tried to figure it out, and they were checking on me every hour. I couldn’t breathe for shit, and this sensor they had on my finger would make this annoying BING BING everytime my O2 level dropped beneath 90%, which was often. I was miserable and didn’t want to deal with anything, couldn’t think straight or talk very well. Some dipshit nurse apparently missed the memo, kept ducking her head in when the BING BING would happen to, like, “remind” me to “try to take deeep breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Seriously? Did she not know what your deal was?
I have no clue. At the 4th time of her doing it, I was just fed up. This is kinda bad. She did her little pep talk and I, like, waved her over to the bed. I go, I whisper because I’m just exhausted, “I’m in here because I CAN’T take deep breaths. So that alarm is going to be going off a lot. Can we drop it to 85%?”
You told the nurse off?
Weeeelll… I was my own care-advocate, let’s say. So she started back in on why it should be at 90% and I just closed my eyes and said, “I’ll do my best.”
Editor’s note: The care team, ICU nurses, and respiratory staff that looked after me during both visits was absolutely WORLD CLASS. I was their youngest patient by probably 30 years, and they were attentive, good communicators, and worked their butts off for 12 hour shifts among the sickest of the sick, and never skipped a beat or copped an attitude.
How long did all this take?
First trip was a week in-patient. I went in on a Wednesday night, then started turning the corner on Saturday morning, then felt a lot better by Monday, but still just worn out. Went home, took it easy for a couple weeks, trying to get my energy back.
You got sick again, right? Like a couple weeks later?
Yeah, ironically, got sick the same day as my follow-up appointment with my lung docs.
No shit?
Dude, watch the language, there are kids here. Well, 22 year-olds. But yeah. So check it out. I went home after the appointment, played with my kids a bit, but still, like, my lungs felt like about 90% there. Worked in the garden, threw down the last of the hay over the last of the weeded areas, went inside but was way more tired than I should have been. 4 hours later I am lying in bed, full-body shakes from some reaction to something.
Oh jeebus, so, something at home or work?
I figured it was something in the garden, stirred it up again. Same thing that night, lungs shutting down, I’m breathing on this oxygen thing they gave me, and I’m freaking out thinking it’s gonna be worse. So in the morning, BACK to the doc, back to the ER, and back to ICU. But this time I told them all we did in the previous day, wrote it all down in a notebook.
Why’d you do that?
Well, mainly because I didn’t want to forget anything, but also they ask a ton of questions, and a nurse asks you, then a doctor you’ll never see again, then another nurse, and on and on. I knew I wouldn’t want to talk so I just handed them the notebook.
Did they clue in?
Yeah, but it was kinda worse the second time. They didn’t want to hit me with any drugs to knock it down so that they could get the full picture of what was going on, which meant I had to have a lung biopsy. So I grind it out while they think I’m having an allergic reaction to “something,” but I was like “I’m not allergic to anything!” Really weirded me out.
Biopsy, like they cut a piece of your lung out?
Yeah, next morning. I was miserable, no sleep again. They do the biopsy, insert a chest-drain tube between the ribs over here, and as I am in the recovery room they load me with a shot of Prednisone to see if that does anything.
What’d it do? You want a drink?
Yeah, uh, Jameson-rocks. So the shot, like a steroid shot, starts turning my lungs back to normal in a few hours. They kept hitting me with that until I got way outta the woods and my O2 started leveling out. Had breathing tube in, the whole deal, fun Friday.
Oh damn, you got intubated?
Yeah, easily the worst of the “bated” family. So I was out all Friday, drugged up. Saturday morning they pull the tube out, which is not fun. It’s like in The Matrix, where Neo wakes up in that mechanical womb thing and power-tugs the hose out of his throat. But I didn’t have to do it, the nurses yanked it.
How’d that go?
I started chatting right after, slowly coming out of the drug haze, bummer, I know. And by that night, steroids, decent day of rest and football and some food, I was on my feet.
So, wait… so this was allergies?
Yeah, apparently. I never had a reaction to anything before, so I had no idea. Then the blood tests showed I was fighting off this particular mold that is super common in hay and organic stuff that’s breaking down in warm areas. So, like, with the two times I was all up in the hay in the garden, both times I got sick like right after that.
Oh jeez. You almost died because of a scarecrow.
Yeah, so manly. So, I’m fine now. I feel awesome. I feel better than before the first time I got sick, so something had been bugging me for a while, probably that hay, and it just hit critical mass, changed the whole game. And it helps my case to drop some serious chemicals in the garden next year. Hay’s just too deadly.
==–==–==–==
So there ya go. I cannot express my humbled honor in the wake of the love, prayers, support, and care I and my family received while I was ill and getting back to normal. It makes me pretty emotional to have seen all the comments and prayers on my facebook page and in emails, that many people do care about my existence for more than just financial reasons. I am very blessed, very lucky, and very happy to be here, healthy, and focused on getting back to Better Than Ever.
Happy New Year to you. Thanks for reading.
You Big Dopamine – Motivation, Neurology, And Execution
There is a root cause of every problem, but we don’t always know something is a “problem,” and often think whatever “is” just “is.” Like having 11 toes, that extra piggy isn’t a bother until shoes don’t fit right or somebody says “Hey, what’s THAT?” In trying to find out the Why of things in Life, I highly recommend a little RCA, or “Root Cause Analysis.” That’s the cause, not the symptom. If your carpet is wet every morning and you dry it out every night, you don’t need a carpet that dries itself (symptom), you need to stop taking Ambien and urinating in the family room (root).
I found this article about what Dopamine is, what it does, and how to start harnessing it for your own good. You don’t have to be ADD’ed to benefit from the news here, as Dopamine comes into play in many ways in our daily living and “GSD” (gettin’ shit done).
HOW TO HARNESS YOUR BRAIN’S DOPAMINE SUPPLY AND INCREASE MOTIVATION
A major issue with ADD (which I am writing to include ADHD) is the lack of dopamine or the ability to process it properly in the brain. Dopamine is the “outcome predictive” chemical. It is also the “pleasure bath” your brain is submersed into when you accomplish something. So it’s feeding your brain a signal that “Something we like can be had if we do XYZ, even if it’s a moment of saving our own ass when the cops show up.” (or whatever you do on Thursdays) This also plays into our metabolism, sleep, and interpersonal relationships. Take Dopamine down, or out, and you’re gonna be a crank.
“Increased dopamine in the nucleus accumbens signals feedback for predicting rewards. Your brain recognizes that something important—good or bad—is about to happen, thus triggering motivation to do something.”
I always research anything I think is going poorly, can be enhanced, or needs to be down-regulated, even if it’s my behavior, my kid’s behavior, or my friend’s use of the phrase “a whole ‘nother” because ” ‘nother” isn’t a word.
I have supplemented with NOW Foods DOPA Mucuna and Tyrosine, 2 natural dopamine precursors. The former provides a very easy focus and mental ecosystem of being motivated and process-oriented. The latter is a little more “tightly focused” without the kind of chilled-out feeling DOPA gives you.
I’m not a doctor, but I do advocate for my own well-being at all times. I’ll soon post a note about how I had to close a treatment-gap I had with an endocrinologist, one where the two options he gave me were so far apart you could almost fit his desire for a bigger boat in between them.
Thanks for readin’, sorry this isn’t too funny…
Internet Mosh Pit – Weird, Funny, Annoying Stories – Body Lab, Baby Gone Bad, Bugged by Ebola, Be It Ever So Humble
UK SCIENTISTS MAKE BODY PARTS IN LAB – More men putting in orders for a longer… well…
I like this technology. I like this marriage of biology and humanitarian efforts (lost a nose to a chimp attack? here ya go!). Eventually somebody will donate their kid’s umbilical cord blood’s stem cells for research into curing a family member’s illness. Debates will rage over whether or not stem cells from embryos – a long-standing point of contention with Right-To-Lifers – should be made available to those same Pro-Lifers when they think they need stem cells to cure their children of homosexuality.
And I’d bet that a high number of pervs are already squirrelled away in a corner lab growing their own fleshbot for reasons too BLAAACGHHGH to mention here.
PAKISTANI BABY ON THE RUN AFTER BEING CHARGED WITH THE CUTEST ATTEMPTED MURDER EVER
“Baby Musa Khan was charged with attempted murder along with his father and grandfather after a mob angered by gas cuts and price increases turned violent, throwing stones at police and gas employees trying to collect bills. Apparently, the baby was slapped with the charge when a victim complained that the whole family had beaten him up. The complaint was taken very literally.”
I know we’re not supposed to judge another culture without being inside for a significant amount of time, and being inculcated with its ways and laws and morals, and being afraid of repercussions from authorities if we DO speak out…. but f*ck these guys. F*cking f*ck their ass-backwards laws and how they treat their women and the inability to trudge into even the 19th century from a societal perspective.
BUGGING OUT OVER EBOLA IN AFRICA
Ebola’s a bad one, guys. It starts off annoyingly enough with hiccups, then profuse bleeding, circulatory shock, and then you turn the corner and FINALLY die. It seems like a snakebite reaction. Loss of control internal bleeding, then ya drop and a snake or a lion eats you.
Worried you may get it? Well, don’t travel to West Africa for a while, and if you are there, don’t eat any of the following animal meats, cooked over a coffee-can fire or not…
- Antelope
- Bat
- Squirrel
- Porcupine
- Monkey
HOUSING IS OUT OF CONTROL ALMOST AGAIN
I live outside of Seattle, but I can see it if I get up a tree high enough, so I am in the Seattle area. The ability to buy a house is getting tougher again through no fault of my own. As we align our finances for a down payment and inspections and escrow and gawddam remodels and renting out our condon’t, I see how the market is slowing down as supply and demand battle it out. People aren’t moving as much because there isn’t much to choose from… So there isn’t much to choose from, and people aren’t moving as much… because…
What I do see are homes being sold at $700K+, sitting empty for a year. Dozens of them in one development. And more over there… and more down there… So while some people come in and bump their asking price up ($350K for a 1450sq-ft home with no yard? WHERE DO I SIGN UP MY KID’S COLLEGE MONEY?) due to falsely elevated property values, I understand why people eventually just leave the area. Why give a bank more money than you ought to for a badly-valued item?
BECAUSE YOU CAN’T LIVE IN 983sq-ft of splendor forever.
Seattle, WA, 1998
Managing ADHD Without Medication
It can be done, this whole management of ADHD and ADD without the use of medication. If you have the precursory chemical and/or behavioral makeup for either, you have likely coped for many years with the struggle of focus, focus, focus, listen, store, recall, etc. I am amazed at what I have been able to accomplish in my life prior to my diagnosis.
That being said, I still think if one goes to a doctor who is a specialist in a field, and you DON’T walk out of there with a diagnosis in their field of practice, that doctor isn’t doing very well in general. That may explain why I took my wife to the doctor last week and now I have a pap smear in April, but anyway…
This was a great LifeHacker article wherein the author stated their ability to manage ADHD while in school, and I can see how it would fit very well into the real world. Not that school isn’t real, it’s just not reality. Wait until those “Tiger Kids” start hitting the job market, with their Valedictorian status, and their ability to play 3 instruments and speak 4 languages and completely deny all levels of social leisure. Nobody wants to work with a person who can’t chill the hell out for 10seconds.
There are many silos of diagnoses for ADD, btw. I can focus on something I am interested in for long periods of time, including writing. For some people it may be gardening, but not plumbing repair, nor dryer vent-cleaning. So, what, that person has ADD, right? Do we have to focus on everything all the time? Maybe all I needed to get over my intellectual inferiority complex in high school was a tap on the shoulder in Trigonometry class, and somebody to tell me;
“Hey man, you’re sitting between 2 of the hottest girls in school, an hour before lunch, and you lifted weights 30min ago. You shouldn’t be interested in graphing cos t any more than you’re interested in wearing a high-top fade. Chill. Get Kristie’s number and chill.”
With all of science working as hard as it has, there has yet to be a pharamceutical breakthrough that makes boring people more interesting.
America; The Greatest Idea In The World
This may very well fall into the “Love It Or Leave It!” category for many people, but it is something that is gnawing at me, and has been for almost 2 decades. In the near future I will write up a few entries on the topics of American History, Idealism, Patriotism, Culture, and Future. I am by no means a narrowly-focused Ph.D’er in love with the topics of Social Refurbishment Of The Family Model and/or Societal Economic Impacts On The Middle Class in Pre- and Post-“Oprah!” America. But as a guy with a family and an underwater mortgage and 2 kids to feed and clothe and send into the world with a postiive outlook on life, there’s a growing sense that either SOMETHING is in the air to keep people in financial quicksand (move slowly and you can get out!) so they stick around and feed the Beast that is Bad Government, or it’s always been like this and nothing is in control and this ship is rudderless and why do i even give a shit, because it’ll be over too soon anyway?
So that will be coming along in case anybody cares at all, and it will be very opinionated because I don’t want to research a ton of stuff and also I’ll have some great recipes to share! Thanks for reading!
My Smartest Joke Of All Time?
My humor really comes from a few layers under the “joke,” finding wit and layer under the window dressing. Sometimes it’s mean, sometimes it’s really lame, sometimes nobody gets it.
But this may be the smartest joke I’ve ever written.
“And as Pheidippedes last few breaths came and went, he uttered to his Athenian brethren;
Let history resound my love for Greece on every new moon, with 18 consecutive hours of reality television programs!’ “
In other words, we use the word Marathon quite liberally in the American language (I don’t want to offend the English). We misuse a LOT of words for slang and what-not, but sometimes, were you to put yourself in the place of the person who invented or is afflicted by a word used for marketing or humor, hey, maybe not so funny.
Another example;
If I were an addict, I think I would take great offense to somebody tagging their peccadillo with “-aholic.” Like a “shop-aholic” or a “chocoholic.” Because alcoholics struggle to control the signals in their brains and thoughts on a moment-to-moment basis so they can keep their lives together, and that shouldn’t be taken too lightly. Unless of course you tried to rationalize that time you blew your friend’s step-dad for a bag of miniature candy-bars, of course, OK, you ARE a Chocoholic! Now THAT is a Hershey’s Kiss. You need to get to a meeting and stop Looking For Mr. Goodbar.”
So anyway, don’t accept lame comedy. You’re better than that.
The “Ray – Lee” Files; Female Edition pt 2!
In a rare version of the “Ray-Lee Files” saga, we have a FEMALE participant.
It happens, but it’s rare!
In blogs-past I have noted that the purveyors of violent crimes seem to have the middle name of Ray or Lee.
I’m not sure if it’s the brevity of the name where people feel slighted and act out, or perhaps the names belie an upbringing in environmental factors ranging from low education, inability to spell longer/4+-letter words, or hatred of syllables. Regardless, it’s pretty simple to see that these two names usually mean trouble…
Charge: Mom stabs woman caught in bed with son by Levi Pulkkinen
“King County prosecutors contend Christina Lee Robinson stabbed her adult son’s girlfriend in the leg after finding the two of them in bed together at the family’s Haller Lake neighborhood apartment.”
Daaaaam-n. Mama felt disrespected that her son was bumpin’ booties, took a knife to the bed while they were still in it!
IT GETS WEIRDER…
“Writing the court, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jeffrey Dernbach said the woman’s son had been shot in the leg. Police recovered shell casings from the apartment.
“However,” the prosecutor continued, “no one at the scene claimed to have any knowledge of the shooting.”
So, just something to keep in mind when choosing your kid’s middle names. Sound it out. Does it sound crimey? Does it sound like a judge will shake their jowls while pronouncing it? Then NO. Spartacus needs a new middle name.
20 by 40 part 3 – Stagnation Motivation
Wellllll… crap.
I have totally stagnated in my weightloss efforts. 2 weeks with nary a budge on the scale. Dropped a total of 6.5 for the month of November. ThanksGiving didn’t help, though I didn’t partake in too many pies. The first 5 came off quickly in a week, so I’ll recount what I did there and see if I can replicate it for future success.
- Water! I drank more during the day before I got home after work. Probably 32oz more than normal.
- Sleep! At one point I slept 21 hours over 3 nights, which is good for me. One night was a deep 7.5, then an 8, and horrible 5.5 due to the hacking chest-cough of my oldest boy. But after that night, I was still feeling pretty rested, and I don’t fault him for the hack. I also didn’t stress out about not getting to the gym that morning. I wouldn’t have had a good workout and probably would’ve taxed myself even further, driving cortisol up and stressing myself out.
- 30g in 30min! I first read about this in a Tim Ferriss book, 4 Hour Body, I think… something like that… ANYwho, it’s a principle of consuming 30g of protein within 30min of waking. I did that pretty much every day for a week. It is geared at getting your body into a metabolic surge w/out spiking insulin (and thus, no crash & scavenging to curb cravings), and keeping things in check. This seemed to help a lot, plus I usually undereat during the day by about 500cal below the range of where I “should” be to drop fat. So my bod could use the extra calories in a good way. Just a 30g scoop of protein powder in a shaker cup, chugged it, get on with the day.
- HIIT The Gym! I started every workout for 2 weeks with a short, intense cardio session of intervals. At least 8, 20sec sprint intervals on an elliptical machine. I crank the level up to where my legs feel like they are in cement, then drop it down to whatever level feels like I’m nearly floating. Then some lifting, and usually in supersets.
- Sugar Out! I didn’t “cut carbs” per se, but I surely didn’t indulge in a lot of sweets. I don’t really eat bread or pasta, but I looooove chocolate. I don’t go for dessert unless it has a cocoa component. I shrug it off. So I didn’t buy anything chocolate or eat any secret brownies in the first couple weeks. Seemed to do the trick. There was 1 night where I caved and did serious adult-themed things to a Marie Callendar’s single-serve Chocolate Satin Pie, but was back to the gym in the morning.
Bummed but not broken. I’ll have to keep it tight in the food world and be conscious of my intake and blah blah blah.
Geoff Lott - Comedy And More 