Geoff Lott – Comedy And More

I have two sons who are the reason I get up every morning, and leave the house as fast as I can.  To go to work, usually.  They really are the best thing t’ever happen to me.  And I’m hoping my wife/their mom and I are the best things to happen to them.  It’s still early.  A lot can happen, but we’re really involved in Parenting as a responsibility and passion, and not a hobby.  They’re still little, 6 & 4, but already have big ideas about the world, friendship, the passage of time, the afterlife, and Star Wars.  Life works in phases, everything that progresses works in phases, and to pretend we always have to do everything at the same pace is counter-productive to Life.

Our kids are involved in just enough to keep them, and us, nearly over-active. It’s all for the kids.  I totally get that.  I hear that all the time.  And sometimes it’s complete bullshit.

It really dawned on me last Summer, and hit home in October, when somebody took it upon themselves to act as Authority! in a situation that needed Guidance, not a Crossing Guard, and caused bigger problems than they solved.  At each of these scenes we were in “holding patterns” for “the kids” to get in line, or arranged or whatever, before starting things up.  It’s always For The Kids, if it’s at a little league baseball game, or a Junior Hoops 7U Basketball Camp, or a Tiny Tae Kwon Do seminar.  I GET IT. THE ROOM IS FULL OF KIDS, NOT DRUNK ADULTS. SO THIS, YES, THIS IS FOR THE KIDS.  What’s the actual reason for this horse-shit, time-wasting, misguided, poorly-planned event backsliding to the slop-trough of “Reasons To Disengage From This Organization”?

In both situations the “authority” figure disallowed any progress until all the kids were paying attention and in line and smiling and holding 2 fingers over their hearts and mouthing the words to “Bringing In The Sheaves.”  Pretty much.  Getting 100+ kids to do any combination of that (and to be honest, 4 year-olds are 100x better behaved than 9-12 year-olds with their yelping and backslapping and gas-masking*) is like herding birds.  But when I asked “Can we start with this section since they’re ready?” I was told “We have to wait so the kids near the back don’t feel left out.” 

Dwell in that space for a moment.  The kids in the front, ready to go.  The kids in the back who are farting around, not ready to go.  Kids in the front, attentiveness being tested and punished for the misbehavior in the back.  But this is for the kids, again, so there is no “starting” until the kids in the back are ready.  So do we reward the kids in the front for being ready to go (these are the youngest of the entire gang), or do we shame and push and loom over the kids in the back for holding everybody else up?  Because the latter is what was going on.

In the moment the Keeper of the Potluck stepped away to find out who had napkins, I started handing plates to hungry parents and kids at the front of the line and said “Here ya go, enjoy!”  And I have to be honest about what happened next, which I wasn’t expecting… Total normalcy.  Nothing weird or sloppy or violent.  No fights, line-cuts, or RNCs**.  Nobody threw-up from confusion (salmonella, yes), nor blacked-out from excitement. Captain Potluck wanted to know who said they could start. I said “That was me, I figured these little kids were close to a meltdown so we got started.”  Zero reply.

So when somebody says “it’s for the kids,” whatever it is, it’s often more about making themselves feel better about doing something involving kids, but not actually helping.  Coaching is helping.  Teaching is nurturing.  Parenting is cultivating.  Mentoring is empowering.  Telling people to hold their horses until we get feedback on who brought Sunny D is bureaucratic bullshit and should be met with a gas masking and RNC, even if they’re just figurative.

* Gas Masking: Placing one’s hand over the mouth and nose of a bystander, friend, cousin after breaking wind into said hand moments before.
** RNC, Rear Naked Choke:  A potentially deadly choke-hold placed from behind on an opponent, assclown, or suspect by wrapping the forearm around the neck, under the chin, and locking the hand into the elbow of the other arm. 

I really enjoy shining people on and being a bit of an ass sometimes.  I reeeeally do.  If I think somebody’s not in on the joke and I have even 1 other person as an audience, sometimes just me, I’ll start turning their knobs to see which one is most sensitive.  I never do it from a mean place, but I surely will twist the knob of anybody who is doing something kinda dumb or annoying.  For example…

So, you order something off Amazon.com and sometimes, a ways down the road a bit, somebody has a question about the product you bought.  Amazon notifies you after somebody posts the question on the product’s Amazon page, instead of the person taking the question out to a search engine, or to the product’s actual homepage, which is likely online to the tune of a couple thousand dollars a month.

I get a lot of questions for this product, the LifeStraw Go Water Bottle.

It’s part of our EPK, or Emergency Preparedness Kit. You have one, I’m sure. Anyway, according to the website, and the Amazon page, the capabilities of this bottle are as such…

So I’m battling the early-Winter illness that comes with having 2 kids in school, as their classmates all contribute to the weekly SnotLuck pool.  I rarely get sick, so when I do I just turn into a grump from 9pm to 5:30am, especially if I can’t sleep.  I usually try to sleep in that timebox, but if I have a hack and the meds aren’t doing their JOB LIKE I PAY THEM TO DO, well I’m as pleasant as an boily-ass-rash on a sweaty August roadtrip.

Last Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I was that kind of sick. Head full of stuff, throat on fire, and my body was grinding out a cagefight against whatever was trying to get me. Battery at about 10%.  I was miserable and probably contagious.  So I didn’t go to Thanksgiving dinner with my wife and kids.  Also, it was an event that didn’t interest me in the least.

In reality, there was nothing about the day, the food, or the holiday that excited me.  I’m thankful, daily and deeply, for the things closest and most-real to my life.  I have many blessings seen and unseen.  The food being served didn’t make me think “I can’t miss that.” I can get that type of meal any time.  I dreaded the thought of feeling over-fed.  The invitee list grew from 6 to 10 to 15, which is exponential growth when you have a low-grade Social Anxiety like I do; 15 people might as well be 2 people standing 1 foot from my face and asking me about my political affiliations.  The gravy on that potato pile is, of course, being sick and not wanting to do anything  other than not feel like a pile of gravy-coated potatoes.  And it also gave me time to think… always dangerous…

The past 3 months have put my mind into a very defined space of “Is this worth the time?” Or as Adam Carolla says, when deciding on a project, “Does it make me money or does it make me happy?” If neither, then move on.  When it comes to my kids, 95% of the time I am all-in as we have new experiences, or they grow into an activity, and we build our bonds as a family.  5% of the time – like a parent not doing jack shit and no-braining a party to Chuck E Cheese on a Sunday – I’m vocal about not wanting to be part of the event.

Attending everything without question and showing up with a smile on your face is akin to having no boundaries, no respect for your own time and energy, and also subconsciously telling the invitee that having a mistimed, mismanaged, run-of-the-mill party poses no problem at all.  If I attend your party with a gourmet buffet, swag bags from Michael Kors, and live music from Brandi Carlile, I would be endlessly thankful and impressed.  But in turn, if I have a no-host bar & food event at Karl’s Kraut Schack with my polka band, and get pissed that you don’t show up, it’s because I’m a bit of an asshole.  We don’t have to reciprocate, dollar for dollar, in planning events.  But I shouldn’t have the expectation that every evite sent will get an enthusiastic OH HELL YES reply.

From the report of my oldest son, the day went like this:
“There wasn’t a lot of good food there.”
“It was really loud. They put on a movie for us but we couldn’t hear it because the adults were so loud.”
“We got to watch some Minecraft stuff that was cool.”

Sounds like the kind of day I’ve had a hundred times, and don’t need another one of.  Laying on the couch, sipping bone broth vs. Loud people missing the meaning of the day?  I give thanks I missed it.

We got through Halloween without much damage. Nobody came by to stomp our pumpkins. Also, we lost power about an hour before some friends came over, so we made an executive decision and headed over to their house. They live in a much more populous neighborhood than we, and also quite a bit more affluent. It’s adjacent (i.e. a few blocks from) the homes of Seattle’s uber-wealthy, software creating, neurologically pioneering, online shopping jungle running people. It was cold. It was a bit rainy. It was, frankly, Seattle in October.

It sucked. For a lot of reasons, it suuuuuucked. Not in a good way. Wasted Costume Efforts. Weather. Other Kids. Costume unawareness. Unfriendly candy-handers. And for what? Candy. That’s it. Some candy. I know it’s “for the kids,” but that’s what people say when they lack the creativity about how to manage an event. (I’ll post something about the “For The Kids” cult another time.)

After watching my wife spending a LOT of time to procure the materials for, and creating costumes for the kids (they were characters from the Build-Grow-Kill-FreakOut video game Minecraft), I was sure this wouldn’t work. Not because of her effort, but due to the format of the main part of the costume. Here’s the first issue: Costume Operational Viability. The kids had huge cardboard boxes on their kid heads, with 2, 2”x2.5” slots cut out for eye holes. Zero peripheral vision. Almost no fake costume-head stability, heads were waggling all over the place. The heads were great for pictures, and totally useless once the kids started moving. So they didn’t wear them for trick-or-treating.

Not that the costume would have mattered. I saw a lot of kids just wearing a Seahawks jersey and boom, here comes candy. Why even try? Plus, the candy-handers get so inundated with the various costumes that a quality costume has to be immediately eye-grabbing to be really noticed. And the reward? Maybe an “Oh, wow!” or hey, here’s an extra 3-bag of Whoppers. All that work for zip-point-Whoppers. Costume Unawareness. They just want to say “Hey, hi” and get back to letting that Tylenol PM kick in (not a sponsored ad, yet).

The waves of other kids, wow. The neighborhood we were in was awash in pre-teens to toddlers. The only thing they had in common was that they wanted candy. Not all of them were in costume, and the 10-12 year olds (judging by height, though with today’s kids not eating peanut butter or drinking milk, there could have been a few community-college freshmen in there), were screeching, loud, annoying, and should all be in a church parking lot for candy and counseling.

Mix up all the hours of effort to create a costume the kids love but can’t wear, getting candy regardless of the costume quality, hormonal pre-teens, and 40 degree weather, and I was totally ready to set things on fire. More than usual, I mean.

Next year I will be making a strong case to keep the festivities to our carport, inviting over a few families and their kids, have a shame of a Costume Contest (everybody wins a bootleg copy of “Evil Dead 2”), and we can drink hot booze drinks outdoors, undercover, in the semi-dark while wearing weird masks, the way Benjamin Franklin would want it.

Hi! Thanks for reading!
The odds are that you haven’t ever seen me perform stand-up comedy. I can’t hold that against you, I know life gets busy and crazy.  They still haven’t finished the work on my water-damaged condo, btw!  So awesome!  Never buy a condo.  I’m probably gonna get a lawyer and have to sue a few people to make it all work out properly.  Yay!

ANYway, I’m in the middle of a “Contest” being held by a Seattle-area TV station for “Best Comedian of Western Washington.”  To give you a sense of who I’m up against, see this link below.  Of the people ahead of me, Ralph Porter is the only one I’d call a comedian. I have never seen the other 2 guys perform comedy in the 13 years I’ve been at it. This is mere fact, not a dirty campaign, so save your angry emails!  Unless you want to take a dump on the other guys, then send those my way.

Technically, this entire contest is about who can get the most votes, not who is the best performer in Western WA.  Joel McHale, originally from Mercer Island, WA is on the list and doesn’t even live here. He’s a “star.” He has “made it.” And I’m ahead of him, so there ya go.

So Here’s the link to my page if you’d like to vote for me, which I think would be awesome.  If I win I plan to create major havoc in the system that allows this kind of contest to happen.  I’ll have them recount votes until their fingers bleed!

Clearly I am supposed to be in this power position.  Plus my headshot is the best on the whole site.  OK, thanks!

The Seattle area got blitzed by a wind and rain storm this past weekend, and it caught a lot of people off-guard.  I know… Seattle, synonymous with rain, was surprised by the high winds (+60mph gusts) and much-needed rain after an unseasonably haaaawwwt Summer.  Lotta days over 90 degrees F, we’re just not used to it here in the NorthWest.  We want 68F-75F, light breeze, and a few clouds.  Not a lot of us getting Vitamin D, which probably rolls into our penchant for reading, binge-watching TV shows, and Lumbersexual Culture.

Don’t I look rugged holding this rugged outdoor thing? I think it’s a tent or something.

In the meantime, a condo I own was in the middle of a re-roof when the company’s project manager was visited by a structural engineer and reminded that, hey, you didn’t pull a permit for this addition!  Ha, silly little oversight by the Project Manager, I’m sure they are a professional who never slips up but it was a bad day at the track and he was probably an idiot anyway and this was part of a long line of missteps.

And in needing said permit, PM called his crew off the job with work only half-done.  And then A Circus of Dipshittery followed, leading to a number of condos getting water damage.  Because they didn’t finish the job. Nor check-back on it. Nor do anything to keep it from getting properly sealed.  Too busy to come by and do the work.  Kinda like your neighbor borrowing your lawn mower and then acting like you gave it to them, but with sober adults.

So I wrote this letter to the property management company to make sure we all got  level-set and were in-step as we moved ahead, to assure a cool-headed approach to remediating the damage caused by a tiny oversight.  Golly, gang, let’s do it right!

Let me know in the comments f I hit the right tone.

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From: gblott@
To: dave.k; jasonm; taylor
CC: thomas & peggy
Subject: Bad roofing vs. Rain & Weather at Cambridge Place
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 11:11:16 -0700

Hello Taylor, Dave, and Jason;

 I can’t really do any “business speak,” so please accept the candor in this communication as my utmost honesty.

My condo was one of too many that sustained water damage from this weekend’s rain.  The damage was the result of short-sighted and poorly managed work done by the roofing company that cut & run a couple weeks ago.

Sunday morning I was brought up to speed on why the roofers left over 10 days ago, but I don’t care.  The “why” is NMFP, or Not My F’ing Problem.

Somebody needs to be fired, and I hope more than a couple of people feel embarrassed by the “effort” on the roofing. I am not directing this blame at Rise, but since I don’t have the address of the guy running the show for the roofing company, feel free to help build our case to boot the roofers and make sure shit gets done properly.

Somebody got paid to not do this, then to not do it again.

I suggest, seriously, sending these pictures to the owner of ROOFING and asking them if they’re happy with the result, and if they’d like us to post these pictures on Yelp and Facebook.  Happy to do so. 

The amount of money wasted on such a small area of work, which is probably 1/50^th the amount of money that will likely be spent if this gets to legal finger pointing, was minuscule.  Maybe $10 of roofing paper?

 Look at the pictures I have sent along, the first one being the corner of the roof above my unit’s master bedroom BEFORE MaintCo and the roofers were called on Sunday, 8/30.

The second picture is AFTER “work” was done on the corner by somebody from the roofing company.  No, seriously.  Somebody was paid to come out and do that, and they shouldn’t have been, and better not charge a penny for it unless they want to get kicked in the crotch.  I can’t imagine this shit was checked by anybody at ROOFING before they walked off the job. This is a huge “eh, screw these guys” as their own poor planning kicked them off the clock.  Not our fault, but we get to pay for it. Get pissed off, you deserve it. 

 Then please discuss amongst yourselves – PROP MGMT & ROOFING, who should take the blame, be fired, and pay for the remediation of the water damage to the units. I am working with MaintCo on that.  The MaintCo team was very helpful but shouldn’t do anything before the roof is fixed.  I also suggest calling R Freeman Roofing at (425) 825-7220.  The owner, Roy, is a 2^nd Generation owner there and is local to Kirkland.

It seems like a severe lack of foresight to see the work as-is, and untouched for 2 weeks, and feel safe in assuming it would be fine in our area.  Obviously they don’t care about the work they do, or else somebody would have come by last week to check on corners like this. .

Here are the issues all the way around…

–        My friend and tenant alerted me on Saturday night of the leak, in the middle of the storm.  That’s a shitty thing to have to deal with on a Saturday night, or any night, but that’s how she got to wind down the evening, with water dripping into the master bedroom closet all over her clothing.

–        Whomever has damage now gets to deal with the shifting of their schedules to accommodate remediation. 

–        It’s a shitty thing to have to burn an entire Sunday morning on, when I could have been spending time with my family. 

–        The problem was so avoidable, and the solution is so simple that any of us with a ladder and a roll of roofing paper and a staple gun could have handled it: Cover the edge with paper, staple it, get off the ladder, have a beer.

–        It’s more of our time talking to an insurance company about the aftermath of some dipshit’s inability to properly finish their job, instead of spending my time getting work done to earn money to pay for projects like this.  Or maybe we don’t have to make a claim and MaintCo can handle this remediation, and we bill ROOFING for it and still throw down a painful Yelp review.  I’m at the point where I’ll fight them in the parking lot, but they’d forget where their corner is and leave early. 

–         Pardon the language, or don’t, but what the actual fuck? What else would you rather do with your time and energy today? This week?  We shouldn’t have to babysit this stuff.  And this may be a small issue in the bigger world of property management, but again, Life is Time, and the roofing company screwed themselves, and in turn, screwed us.

I can’t think of any other way to say it, gang.  Lazy and inexcusable work, low-level professionalism, poor/no communication.

As of this morning there was still no remediation on the roof.  Dan from MaintCo and I talked on the phone and he said he’s going over there to repaper it.  I hope he does.
Again, please forward these pictures to the owner of ROOFING.

Thanks all, have a good Monday,
Geoff Lott

Even with all my time on stages, performing stand-up comedy, I am an introvert.  Not painfully shy, nor anti-social, nor asocial. I do like to socialize. As much as anybody, i’ll hang out and have a drink(s) with anybody who is cool and fun to hang out with. And wouldn’t be mad that I ended that sentence with “with.”  But still, when there’s stuff to be done, or I’m not feeling the vibe, I bail to finish the stuff that needs doing.  This sometimes rubs people the wrong way.  They think I am not interested in their stories, or that I am surly, or maybe other stuff they haven’t vocalized.  Usually I step-out or turn-in so that I can finish my own thoughts and “stuff.”

Case in point… I’m managing a project at work to finish up some technical yadda-yadda.  My brain is active enough when I’m engaged with work, but when people around me are talking, I hear their words as well as what I’m trying express in an email or presentation.  Try singing a song with a different one blaring on the radio.  Now try it with 8 songs blaring.  That’s how my work set-up is.  So I have had to excuse myself… well, just got up and left… from the large conference room we’re calling home at the moment.  That’s just how my brain works.  Of course somebody else has to say “Well I can work with the radio going, windows open, dogs barking, wife yelling at me, no problem.”  Wow, you’re gonna die in a fire or from a monster attack there, Mr. FocusOlympics.  You must be so proud.

Anyway, I had to move.  I had to get this done, so I left the room for a spot 2 doors away.  In doing so, it wasn’t 30 minutes later that I, fully immersed in updating the work in front of me so that I could maybe get caught-up today, was interrupted twice.  I was not “updated” with important information.  Neither person asked after nor offered project-critical news.  I sat with my back to the office door, but I could hear their approaching steps and “Oh, there’s Lott.”  One guy did a great impression of a guy doing a horrible impression of Bill Lumbergh, the boss from “Office Space.”  The other guy said, jokingly, “Hey, do you not like us?  I think they think you’re antisocial!”

To which I responded, jokingly, “Oh come on, I like some of you, on a rotating basis.” Big laugh on that one. But come on… I’m funny.

And introverts aren’t bad people.  Don’t confuse “reflective” for “introverted.” I am reflective, pondering, and thoughtful sometimes.  I think a lot of people do that, taking stock of the day, ruminating on the state of the True Detective franchise, thinking of what they’d do if they were on an episode of “CHOPPED” and had to save their own life with a dish.  I can stand on-stage in a room full of strangers and be comfortable and empowered, but I know that I know what I’m doing, and it’s a power-position in the room.  But off-stage, you put a half-drunk divorcee with a half-tooth and a tan that says “I drink outside a lot” in front of me with questions about my bit on Death With Dignity, and I’m scanning for an exit or friend to pass her off to.

So this surely bleeds through to my work life, I know that.  It’s always been this way. Probably fear of rejection or self-esteem issues.  Usually I just don’t have the “THING” that seeks engagement with people on a broad basis.  Forced into the situation, I fall back to being reticent, inquiring of others, and cracking small jokes.  This usually helps me relax and we all get along.

But if I have a deadline and a co-worker who eats in a manner reminiscent of a large working dog – I mean like a Mastiff, big-head breed – then I’m gone.  I see other people wondering if they might offend others if they leave the room.  Then I do it a few times, and the place begins to break up a bit. Not all are introverted, but at some point you just need to break off the noise and the blather, and get to the important stuff like writing a blog for the first time in forfuckingever.

And if I were on CHOPPED I’d probably die. They just don’t get the majesty of a well-seasoned tuna melt for one.