Comedian, Dad, Husband, Coach, Tax-payer, Weirdo.
Hey, you’re sitting there typing on a keyboard. I’m gonna jump in and start talking to you because I have like zero ability to judge a situation. Now you’re distracted and my question is confusing. Get out of your car and come look under my hood. Hear that? Yeah. What is that? I don’t know either.
Anyway, if there’s any justice in the universe, I’ll be shitting blood by lunch. OK, cool, I’m gonna get coffee.
Aaaah, the late show. In comedy, it’s either a blessing or a curse and it’s usually 40/60 to the curse. If you’re in a comedy club doing 2 shows a night, the late show on Friday is either very drunk or very underattended. I’ve seen some for comics (Gaffigan, Maron, Benson, Carolla) that are just as packed as others, but usually it’s 30-50 people who are either just out and about, or out and asleep.
No Time 1:
I accepted a good-money gig for a fundraising auction on a Saturday night. Everything was fine except the start time, in comparison to the time we went on-stage. See, if you give people in their 30’s-50’s 3 hours to mingle and drink before they have to sit and do nothing but try and pay attention… after drinking… and eatin’… and spending money… it’s tough stuff on the attention-needers (me).
The group was awesome, don’t get me wrong. They were all very cool people doing a great thing for their community, this time not involving a small-caliber rifle and rodents. So I was happy to be part of it and help out any way I could, which was just to draw a few more in with my comedy skills and local F-list Celebrity status. (F as in “who the Fuck is this guy? He’s Funny, at least.”)
So they have dranks and noshing happening for about 3 hours, and an auction, and the results of the silent auction (Pat & Marty Boudoyn took home the 8-lb chocolate box AGAIN this year, $300), AND the Dessert Dash. AND awarding a scholarship to a local student. AND then it was time for the first comedian, an hour after we were supposed to go on. Why would this suck so hard?
Well, we get paid either way. Regardless, it’s way more fun when the crowd is into the performance. And by then, they were way more into trying to sober up enough to get home before the babysitter went to $20/hr. I understand it. So the 250 people quickly dwindled (walked) to 200 in the first 10min of the show. By the time I went on, I was working with about 80.
And I basically mentioned it as such, really important to fortify the remaining people and give it all ya got to make sure they enjoyed it. It’s a one-off, so I won’t be back next year, but I don’t want to leave anybody thinking they should have left and got more hammered in their garage like they WANTED TO BUT THEIR HUSBAND WOULDN’T LET ‘EM.
So we did the thing and got the money + a little tip which was nice, and a lot of high-fives and hugs on the way out. Not even close to the worst show I ever did. That’s another time.
It’s always a sign of how things went when your closing line is “Thanks so much everybody, I hope you’ve enjoyed watching me fill my contractually obligated time, get home safe!”
The OTHER “No Time” entry is this: I have been doing stand-up comedy for a solid 12 years now. So when I get a text from a booker for a low-$ gig in less that 24 hours with a >100mile round trip, to open for a comic I wouldn’t stick around to watch? Well, I guess I’m beyond being anybody’s booty-call at this point.
Unless Jessica Biel texts me up…
If y’all like this post, let me know in the comments or the LIKES! or send me a basket of gluten-free brownies shaped like Jessica Biel or Diane Lane (whatever your local bakery will do for you based on their politics). “The Gig Files” will be recaps of shows I recently did from the perspective of the performer. Yelp seems to be a sounding board for everybody’s gripes and very few KUDOS! which is too bad. Then again, I think people want to complain, and a bad dining/entertainment/hash oil-making-via-Groupon experience seems to resonate more than a great one. I’ve had so many dine-outs that could have been ruined because of something small that I just brush it off now. Same thing with gigs; it’s been a while since I had 3 in a row like these…
NO MIC
Saturday night show, crappy sportsbar/roadhouse about an hour North of Seattle. I’ve done 8 shows there and I’ve been happy with 4 of them. 2 were complete failures (back when I was about a year into comedy), 2 were “meh,” and this particular gig I actually rate under the Happy-Withs.
I brought a newer comic along as an opener, dude’s very funny, and is much more slowly-paced than I am. That’s good because I won’t have to really go all-out to get the crowd to pay attention. The bar holds about 80 people, speakers way up in the rafters, and you have to be eating the mic to be heard. I have no idea what the transfer rate of lip-herpes via shared mics is among comedians, but it’s gotta be higher than, say, motivational speakers.
15minutes into my 45minute set, the mic stops working. Cuts out. Dead. I wiggle the cable a bit, it comes back. Then blacks out. Then it’s back. 2minutes later it dies again. Staff kinda works on it, but then it dies again. Dead. Done. DOS(tage). And then they tell me, “Sorry. It did that the last couple shows, too.” Oh, okay then. Happy I’m not the WHAT?
So I shouted the rest of my set into the air. And it was work. I felt like I had to project even more, and subtlety was out the window without being able to whisper.
And it was in those 30-something, unplugged minutes I really felt like, hey, I’m gonna make this a great show for the people who are here. Nobody left, and it wasn’t THEIR fault the mic cut out, so it won’t be MY fault if the show sucks. I was friggin’ exhausted afterwards. It went fine. But honestly, that kinda sucked.
If you’d like to see how quickly the civilized world is degrading, look no further than the Comments section of any on-line local news story. What starts as a forum for community members to express their opinions of how much clothing a barista needs to wear, quickly spirals into political pissing-matches, name-calling, race-baiting, Obama bashing, and general dumbassery. It’s the kind of language that if used in a public place across a table would get the speaker either removed from that city council meeting and/or punched in the face many times. Many, many times.
For example, after reading this article about a man arrested for cutting into safes and being caught, here is one of the comments… Is it about the detectives? The criminal? Let’s find out!!!
Thats why I read the story. Wasn’t anything near a safe. Maybe sheeple boxes, but definitely nothing I would have much less use for storing anything but crap in.
Keyboard Badasses. Qwerty Warriors. Internet Assassins. Trolls. This dude’s lettin’ people know ain’t nobody gonna do nothin’ to his safe that’s not a piece of crap no-how.
The anonymity of the internet allows people to express, at times, a linguistic acuity within a spectrum of “skull half-full of sloth vomit” to “prison-educated neo-Nazi.” And it’s all because we gave people with access to the internet a “voice” via the Comments section. And that’s how we’re using it. #ApocalypseNowPlease
But lately there’s a growing genre of internet input that I am calling full “BULLSHIT” on. It’s the “Epically Hilarious Customer Review,” which started, I think, with the Amazon reviews of the Bic “For Her” pens. The reviews took a sarcastic tone early on, and for good reason. While Bic aimed at a pretty pen women would enjoy, the interwebs took it to a new level, submitting reviews such as this one from “Amy O’Rourke:”
“For years I had dreamed of penning a masterpiece and yet, when it came to that blank piece of paper the harsh offensive masculinity of the pen was just too intimidating. Finally it seems someone has actually considered what it is like to be female in this cruel world and how easily our little minds can be intimidated and denied the opportunity to do our life’s work. Five stars. “
And this one… from a”daveyclayton:”
“I bought this pen (in error, evidently) to write my reports of each day’s tree felling activities in my job as a lumberjack. It is no good. It slips from between my calloused, gnarly fingers like a gossamer thread gently descending to earth between two giant redwood trunks.”
Right… Because lumberjacks use parentheses and words like “gossamer thread gently descending…”
Now comes the Haribo Sugarless Gummy Candy reviews.
Sugar-free candy is loaded with an artificial sweetener like a sugar alcohol, which is a solidified, probably indigestible form of the gas kinda like your intestinal flora create when it can’t digest something properly. Primes the pump for some serious issues in the back of the factory. If you like to fart, I mean like LOVE TO FART… I mean like “Competitively Fart”… eat some sugar-free ice-cream the night before a road trip with a friend. You’ll set a record for decibels and oxygen displacement.
So the reviews start off with a few funny ones, then somebody went all-in, and it got a little viral heat on the web. Then people went batshit and piled on and WOW, all of a sudden the internet is not only full of people who have a real gift for literarily expressing bodily functions, but THEY ALL SEEMED TO HAVE EATEN THE EXACT SAME CANDY WITHIN A FEW DAYS OF EACH OTHER… ? Is that possible?
Does a sugar-free gummi bear make you shit in the woods?
That’s why you gotta soak ’em overnight in tequila. Pfff… amateurs. Go back to your parent’s insurance coverage, noob.
Call me a buzzkill, a jerk, a loser, a pooh-poo’er, a handsome-as-hell-despot-of-backlashing-to-attempts-at-comedy, I don’t mind.
But here-forthwith, I put into this internet record a declaration on all “Hilarious, Epic, Embarrassing, Overly-Detailed Product Reviews” as BULLSHIT.
Please leave a comment.
Well it’s been a pretty crazy 2 weeks for me. Even as the year comes to an end, the world of business begins it’s own Casual Friday, and insurance companies stare back from the Abyss, my life has sped up a bit. In good ways, mostly. I can’t complain… WAIT, I take that back. I can, and will, because otherwise I’ll start crying and yelling at the same time and then i won’t be able to go back to that Starbucks.
Let’s work backward from today about crap I want to leave behind.
So hey, there ya go. I’m done. Friggin’ tired and gotta hammer away at this work stuff.
Have a Merry Merry Christmas, with family, friends, lovers, and losers. The gift of selflessness is what it seems to be about, no matter how it’s advertised.
So I’m like 3 months away from my 40th birthday, and I have a particular goal of dropping 20 el-beez. LB’s. Pounds. Lard Bricks. I wanna drop ’em by the Friday prior to the Super Bowl. I know I can do this, but I’m also stumped about how my droppage seems to have stalled. Admittedly, the past weekend of Halloween and eating like a foraging bear (candy, date night, pizza party and cake for the youngest’s birthday) didn’t help. I put on 3lbs since last Thursday morning. 3. It’s probably retained water and frankly I could feel it and my face looked it. So if my body will store it that easily, it can lose it that easily.
So what’m I gonna do? Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of violent minds meeting great opposition to mediocre dreams ~ Oprah Lincoln. Or whomever said it, people mash-up and misquote so many Faux-tivational quotes these days, even with the internet to validate against. Ridiculous. I have a dream that one day we will not be judged by the choosing of our quotes but by the accuracy of their citation.
So my plan is as follows:
It’s hilarious the games we play with ourselves about crap eating. “Oh just a little isn’t gonna be a problem.” Right. Put a cake out at your workplace and sit by it. Nobody will touch it, no matter how many people come by. Now walk around the corner, and hear the woodchipper that is your coworkers scraping the last of the buttercream off the lid. Do right by you, but no games, Geoff.
So I’ll post some stuff here in the “20 by 40” posts about what’s up with my bod and how it’s going. May even get some “BEFORE” and “LATER” pics if I’m feeling froggy. Sorry, this was kinda boring and self-indulgent, got low blood-sugar, gotta find some work cake.
Admittedly, I did use “GoFundMe.com” earlier this year to help a single mother get her car repaired. She had no money, was living in a church, and needed a new transmission in order to get her car running to get around for job interviews. The need was there, the means were there, so I cobbled together a few things and posted it and promoted it. We made our goal in a few days, and I can only thank the kind people who gave anywhere from $10 to $50 to $300. It was an inspiring influx of empathy and care, and very much appreciated. There’s always more to the story, of course…
Of course, like anything that goes online, it had its share of trolls asking why a transmission cost of $600-something (labor included) was the target, why she didn’t just get a better car, etc. By ignoring some of them or calling them out for being dipshits we were able to just focus on the goal. Don’t feed the trolls.
I’m not going to say this isn’t some sort of meta-trolling about the intent of using crowdfunding to fill a project’s financial gap. I’m not tearing a rotator cuff to pat myself on the butt for a job well done, either. Just stating what is possible when you present a need to people who want to help. It was really great to see it come together. Hell, what would YOU do with your pet project if you had another $1,043 laying around? Would you use it properly? Could you/I be THAT accountable? That’s why I wonder how much a person can appreciate the gifts they promote themselves to receive. Some people are making movies. Some people are trying to pay off medical bills. Who’s to say who’s right? The people with the money, that’s who’s.
The “more to the story” is that I had two situations where fundraising for a cause took very different turns. In one, I produced a comedy show to raise money for a family friend whose mom had been left with a mountain of medical bills after her husband passed away. I don’t know how much was raised, all I know is the place as packed with concerned friends and a lot of love. We did very well, and my friend’s mom was incredibly appreciative.
The other turn was that a person who I did something financially-beneficial for via fundraising really didn’t take advantage of the upturn. There was an option there to move ahead with what they had been asking for – and given, but they either moved at a glacial pace as to appear immobile, or just bided their time. Then kept hinting how they needed more of this, or didn’t have any of that. In a side-project we also provided a lot of resources to help them get back on their feet, but nothing in the form of straight-up cash. And pretty soon it seemd as if they’re just hoping to get more of something without putting out anything. As much as I want to see everybody doing better for themselves, I want to see people DOING, unless some sort of crippling disease has taken their ability to leave the house and interact with people or bring me homemade cookies and/or dark beers from around the world.
The Need exists for a little something more; schools, food banks, neighbors, drag show open mic nights, etc. People have needs that aren’t met because of – pick a reason. And if you can help meet their needs, do it. The 1% that made 95% of the income won’t. Our taxes aren’t going to make up for it. Gotta act locally.
Reminds me of a story my maternal grandfather told me. There was a bear who grew up near a campsite. Every Monday he would go to the dumpsters and pick through food and he grew strong and clever, but a little fatter than the other bears in the rivers eating salmon. One Monday morning a park ranger saw the bear and thought he may be a hazard, so he tried to scare him off. The bear didn’t understand the tactics; this was garbage, nobody wanted it, why can’t he have it? But the ranger didn’t want the bear coming into the park at other times, and didn’t understand the bear’s intent was simply to eat from a reliable source at a non-threatening time. In the end, the bear starved to death after getting his nose caught in a plastic holder from a 6-er of Miller tallboys.
The Lesson: You can always get garbage, the good stuff takes some effort, and park rangers are usually assholes. 
Just before she lay down her beautiful head to sleep the other night, my wife took the water glass from next to my laptop (I was working on a presentation for the next day around 9:15 that night), sipped from it, and said…
“I’m f***ing tired. The house is always dirty, I’m being disrespected, I hate this house, if I’m not here cleaning I’m off doing a bunch of other stuff just to keep the boys busy or in school, and I’m sick of it.”
So, what did I do to respond? What COULD I do?
She was done for the day. She had gotten up pretty early to go workout, raced home to get our kids in the car for preschool and general out-of-house tasks (what non-stay-at-home parents call Life or Work), and they were going a bit nuts the rest of the day. I got an earful when I got home from the kids, after a long day and meeting with a local entertainment comedy talent mastermind. Kids will wear you out. They will grind on you and they will break you down and they are unreasonable under the age of 5 or 19 and will just beat on your brain walls and sometimes you want to tell them to shut their damn mouths and go the fuck to sleep because you are a grown up, sex has been had, you’ve thrown an angry punch, and paid taxes but not enough to really help this flailing society you want to build a wall around to protect them, so go to sleep.
But you cannot do that. I cannot. I’m an adult. I’m nearly 40. I have embraced and accepted all facets of Parenting, which is a much more advanced form of caregiving, and shouldn’t ever be equated to having a pet. [ed. note; Equating child-rearing to pet care is on the same shelf as equating an compound femoral fracture to a sprained finger. It’s minimizing to do so, and you should really not do it, or I will punt your dog right down the frozen aisle of this Trader Joe’s it’s not even supposed to be in.] Because I’m an adult.
And no, you cannot flip out on your kids at the ages of 4 and nearly 2. You look like a complete asshole, first, because the kids don’t fully fathom the rage and the cause. You only scare them, you don’t teach them. And it’s much much much more frustrating than you’d think it may be to tell a kid for the 5th time who knows what you’re saying to put.
on.
the.
monkey.
underwear. Then they cry, and it’s like…
“Why are YOU crying? You did this to yourself! 5 times I’ve asked you to put your monkey underbips on and you keep trying to put your bobo on the gorilla pillow! Put your monkey underpants on, don’t put your business on the monkey!”
As adults, we’re supposed to be in control of things. I’m not. I control very little. I control myself, usually (except I’m a bit of a choc-o-holic, GUILTY!), but sometimes I just have to ask somebody at a grocery store “What’s going on here?” I know what’s going on. They are blind to anything else around them, dead-stopped in the aisle, looking at their phone. I promise you, ma’am, you are NOT about to get a prescient message that has the PowerBall numbers. I can’t always control what happens to me, but I can control whether or not I tell somebody their head is in their ass.
So here’s what I did the other night.
I wrote a note to my wife and left it up on the monitor for her to see in the morning.
This is what it read:
Here’s what I did NOT do, after she made her statement of frustration and walked away with my glass of water while I worked on my presentation…
“Hey hon? Hon?
Could I get that water back?”
Condominium: (CON-doe-min-ee-um) n. From Latin for “domi” (home) and “con” (together). Also from English for “con-dom,” meaning a small space for an uncomfortable screwing.
I made a huge mistake years ago in buying a condo unit. Basically you get to own an apartment alongside people who want you to observe quiet hours and hate yardwork. And then you get to pay a fee to an association to take care of all the issues, which usually will be a backed-up main-out for the building’s sewer system or the damage from that not being caught in time.
I compounded my idiocy by agreeing to be on the Board of Directors for the Association, which is combined with a few apartment buildings for reasons nobody can figure out. Like many celebrity marriages, this coupling happened in the 1980’s probably around money and hidden agendas and has always been a lie about what’s really going on. The grouping of Condos and Apartments into one association is like having the Montagues and Capulets in the same roller rink. Sure, there’s rivalry and … No? Um… Hatfields and McCoys? Nothing, huh? Well we shouldn’t be linked the way we are into one association. And now I’m leading the effort to split the condos from the apartments to have a single association. New real estate rules, for most major lenders, state that they will not lend money for the purchase of a unit in an association that rents out >50% of its units. The apartments are 80 units, the condos are 50, so we’re over the 50% and can’t get lending for people who wanna sell. Refinancing is also rolled into this issue.
A few years ago when the market adjusted downwardly, which was actually a correction spurred by the predatory and Soul-committed-to-Hell lending practices of the fucking bank dicks. Can’t pay + foreclosures = Lowered property values w/high mortgages and APRs (Astronomic Percentage Rape). Again, people can’t get refinanced due the >50% rule. So we’re trying to get our own world established and help everybody along.
I then pulled together a Dipshit’s Double and agreed to a SECOND TERM on the Board to allow for consistency in the transition. It has been during this split that I have felt the most like a traditionally-defined American in my life.
Ultimately we will end up splitting off and people can refi or sell. Lotta short sales coming. A few foreclosures, probably. Good time to buy a place. As long as it’s not a condo.
It’s a basic human right that if you have the ability to express yourself, you should be able to express yourself without fear of tyrannical, violent downforce, be it Governmental, Societal, or Cee-Lo. For real, tho. However, a growing number of people in society have confused “Right To Speak” with “Cannot Be Judged,” and “Should Not Be Reprimanded Whatsoever.” These people are either immature, overly-self-empowered, or a high-functioning mentally handicapped (MH) person. Many of them are probably still in High School, or (insert enemy political party here).
If you want to see what our society really feels, just go to any news story online that allows comments, make sure the story is about politics or has a person of an ethnicity that isn’t WASPy, and have a field day. Stopping short of using the “N-word” doesn’t show a person is intelligent and well-mannered; it only shows they WANNA USE IT, but aren’t sure if anybody’s got their back. In the previous paragraph I held back from saying “Retard” because that does offend some people, although I think you can call other people “retarded” if you have a diagnosed (and somewhat obvious) form of what was once referred to as “retardation.” I would say it’s funnier for a MH to call somebody a “retard,” though not as call as when Daquan calls you “his N-word.” If he called you his “retard,” that’s a bit much, unless Daquan himself is MH’ed, then he’s probably racist.
So when those comments are posted, or the comments people post on that Instagram picture of your first attempt at rose water-infused, gluten-free competitive cheesecake, make you feel like, golly, you could just rip the fucker’s face off and powershit into their now-lipless mouth-hole, WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Instead of shrugging off everything, mix it up. Keep people guessing. Ignoring stuff is the ultimate self-empowerment. Some folks, however, do it in real life and that’s inexcusable. I’ll address how to handle public judgment of others in a future post. Save yourself the hassle and just buy a boat horn right now, though.
Just remember… fighting on the internet is like being in the Special Olympics…
Find me on Twitter; @glottrules
Geoff Lott - Comedy And More 