February 2011
28 posts
NUTTY STUFF
Look what I got for my birthday! Paul Shaffer’s autobiography We’ll Be Here For The Rest Of Our Lives. Pretty daunting name. Any title that suggests the slow creeping pace of time as it, you know, happens is usually pretty iffy. Like that movie The Hours. But this title is kind of like calling it: While Reading This Book, Have A Good Book On Hand.
Though I haven’t read this yet, let’s...
I'M VERY CONFIRMED.
Heard it hailed in the Valley today. Or yesterday. When was it? I missed it. You’re not supposed to talk about how cold it’s been in Southern California because all the other places where it really is cold will kill ya. Or they would kill ya if they could break out of the ice coffins they’re incased in because they’re really cold. I’m wearing my damn pea coat right now whilst typing this. ...
SLO (2)
My shoes keep coming untied. No matter how hard I tie a basic knot, it’ll come undone. I think it’s my stride. I walk like a champ. I walk fast and lengthy. My stride is wide. The only one who can keep up with the speed of my walk is my eighty-year-old dad. If my dad has to walk with others, he’ll give them a head start just so he can follow them at his own speed. Yeah. ...
SLO
You drive three hours plus through rain on the 101 and little on the 154 to San Luis Obispo to do comedy and see if it’s worth it. And it is it turns out because people up here—get a load of this—like coming out to see comedy. Like, they wanted to be there. Hard concept to grasp when most of the comedy you do is in L.A. Like the crowds up here last night were so into wanting...
LEARN TO TALK IRISH! I DID IN COLLEGE!
Just came across some college handouts from when we were working on dialects. Here are some tips on how to speak with an Irish accent. Try ‘em!
1. AH is substituted for AW and O (as in “odd”):
cough taught walk talk Cork born song wrong law small god beyond not hot Tom toddle somber got on smock
*We’re talking of him, and himself walks in the door.
*Yourself it is that’ll...
AN OPEN LETTER TO WHOEVER OWNS THAT PAIR OF SHOES...
You left your shoes on my street, man. You want ‘em? Not on the sidewalk. Not on the grass near the sidewalk. In the street. In the middle of it. Looks like you were running from a crime in 1959 and left your shoes behind. Did you get involved with some bad guys running numbers? You didn’t act wise with the wrong palooka, did ya? What was the rest of your night like, man? You don’t got...
ZOOEY'S
Did a great show at a place called Zooey’s last night in Ventura. Well worth the drive. Damn. When was the last time I just tried new stuff out in front of people who actually wanted to hear it? Who actually didn’t look like they were gonna get up and walk out of the damn place? Or fall asleep with their phones in their hands? Oh Los Angeles! The rigors of your comedic requirements! The...
SOME DAY, SOME DAY...
I’ve auditioned for The Wizards of Waverly Place for a total of about six times now and I’ve never gotten on. Never once. Not even a call-back. Can they smell the rage? Is that what it is? Can they see the fury trickling out of the corners of my red, red eyes and simply decide: “Well, we can’t have this guy on. He’s gonna eat the children!” And I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that...
NUKE THE WHALES
After eating with my family at the Macaroni Grill in Seal Beach (yup!), I walked back to my car and found a leaflet on the windshield. It had a guy skydiving on the front with a circle around him and a line through it and it said: “If At First You Don’t Succeed…DON’T TRY SKYDIVING!” Underneath that, it said: “101 of the World’s Funniest One Liners.” It rained last night, so it was all opened...
"THE SERVER HAS UNDERSTOOD THE REQUEST, BUT IS...
I asked my computer to do something this morning, as I’m sure you did. And this is how it answered me:
“The Server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it.”
That’s from my computer. Not from my maintenance man. Not from my landlord. Not from my agent (although there have been plenty of times where my agent has understood my request and simply refused to fulfill it). This...
THE INCREDIBLE SULK
That’s Bill Bixby showing his best side as David Banner in the ‘70’s TV show The Incredible Hulk. I used to watch the hell outta this show. Unlike in the comic books, they didn’t call him Bruce Banner on the show. They called him David because they thought Bruce was “too gay.” Yeah. Not because it was “gay at all,” but rather because it was “too gay.”
Here’s the point though: See that bag? ...
OH MAN...
(This post is gonna read like one of the last entries in that Stephen King short story “Survivor Type.” You know, the one about the guy stranded on an island with no food and so he starts to eat himself?)
Day two of sick. Throat hurts. Took lozenages. They were old. Do lozenages have expiration date. Hard to keep my head up. My dreams are weird. Had one about an elephant shaking its...
YUCK. AND, OH YEAH, YUCK.
I am so sick. Holy shit. My head’s killing me. Last night before going on stage, I was having a sneezing fit in the green room. Just one after the other with the sneezing and I felt horrible. Blowing my nose. Trying to get it together. Wondering if I was gonna sneeze all over the stage once I got up there. Then I get up there and for seven minutes…I’m fine. No sneezes. No snot. ...
RESPECT THE BINGO.
Kinda (not that much really) bummed recently because I was told—in fairly uncertain yet still foreboding terms—that I probably wasn’t gonna be getting a callback for the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival. (Yeah. These are the problems I got in life. Poor me. What’s that? You’re homeless and don’t know where you’re gonna be sleeping tonight? Well, I might not be even getting a Montreal...
OOOPS.
Just had to make an executive decision here at Remain Champagne.
I put up a post for February 13, 2011 that made fun of television reporter Serene Branson for speaking gibberish on live television. It’s all over the Internet right now, and what’s also all over the Internet is that she may have had a stroke. Even if I turn out to be wrong about this, I’ve decided to delete the post. I love...
I'M GONNA GO PLACES, GUYS.
Yeah. You’re probably like: “Sure, I’ve seen this picture before but I can’t tell you the name of the movie it’s from and I certainly can’t tell you his name.”
That’s Harold Lloyd. And I met this guy’s daughter yesterday. I did stand-up comedy at a Culver City retirement home where his daughter (his daughter) lives. Yeah. That’s all. Just the daughter of Harold damn Lloyd, one of the most...
VERRRRRY GOOD BOOK (SO FAR)
I’m doing it again. Talking about a book I haven’t finished yet. Not good form, but here goes.
I’m halfway through Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom. And I’m way lovin’ it. Surprisingly. It’s fiction too! I’m normally not much of a fiction guy; I usually enjoy non-fiction more. But suburban malaise will always get my attention. I’m rooting for every fucked-up, sadly flawed character in...
"UUUUUH...EXCUSE ME!"
“Uuuuuh…excuse me! Excuse me! Mister—I’m sorry—Photographer? I don’t know your name. Ha, ha. Over here! Yeah! Uuuuuuh, hi. We drew blades of grass to see who got to be the designated messenger and, well, looks like I won! Yay for me! Uuuuuh, anyway…we have a bit of an issue in the town here. We—what? Yeah. Town. That’s what we prairie dogs call our collectives. Towns. You didn’t...
I THOUGHT A MARTINI MAKER WAS A BARTENDER.
About five months ago, I was in a stand-up comedy contest sponsored by Hustler. (That just might be the most tawdry thing I’ve ever written in this damn blog. [Yeah! What’s up, relatives who might be reading this!]) Yup. Hustler: the sex shop on the Sunset Strip as well as that magazine known for its probing insight of women’s issues combined with some well-balanced journalism. I didn’t win...
HAUNTED HEATER
You know you haven’t used your heater in a while when, mere minutes after turning it on, your smoke detector goes off. Same thing with cooking; the stove will do the same thing. When my smoke detector goes off, my neighbors go: “Oh! Matt’s cooking!” I keep a bunch of old c.d.s right by the heater (by the way: the term “old c.d.’s” is redundant) and I wonder the damage I’ve done to them. ...
MERELY GO WITH IT.
Just Go With It, huh? That’s the title? It’s good to see someone’s putting in some effort. Just Go With It. More like: Just NO With It! Am I trite, people?
Just Go With It. I have an idea: Why don’t you just go with me just not going with it? How ‘bout that? In fact, not only am I not going with it, I’m not going to it—as in, to this movie. Yeah. By calling the movie Just Go With It,...
GO "WOA!" WITH ME.
I don’t know if this is a real road, but I want it to be. I keep waiting for two giants to come along, one grabbing hold of the north end, the other the south, and both pulling the road taut, flipping it up straight into the air, like two soldiers preparing to fold a flag, sending cars high into the air. Maybe one giant takes it, wraps it around his neck and ties it into a nice half windsor...
IT'S JUST A WOMAN SCREAMING.
I was looking at the news yesterday (and isn’t that the way we absorb news now? We don’t read it really; we look at it) and I saw a headline that said: “Woman’s Screams Heard From Trunk” and there was a little camera icon next to it. And at first I thought: “Hey, I’ll click on that to see what the story is,” and then thought: “You know what? No. I’m gonna sit and wonder what the hell that...
I DON'T KNOW...
They’re gonna make prequels to Alien. That’s plural. Yikes.
Prequels? To Alien? Shit. It’s like…cool? Maybe? My mind races. One nagging thing about the three movies that followed Alien (among the many nagging things about them, namely that some of them are just not that great) is that we never get to see Earth. I always wanted to see the extent to which the corruption ran in the evil...
"YOU'RE SO WET."
All right, Moist Towelette. Your feminine suffix can’t help but suggest a certain—shall we say?—daintiness or delicate disposition. But something tells me you got power in there. Like you got some sauce in there. Inside your wrapper with the several illustrated water drops in piranha formation. I can press your paper-thin casing together with my dry, unmoistened fingers and feel your wet...
CURSE YOU, THIN WALLS.
I played on one of these babies last Sunday. My friend Kyle calls me up sometimes and I take my guitar and my sax and my accordion and go over to his place and we play covers. We play “Welcome to the Working Week” and “These Days” and “Queen Bitch” and “I’ve Got a Match” and “Streams of Whiskey” and “Here Comes Your Man” and “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and, hell, even “Rehab.” That one really...
"UM...HONK."
Every Friday afternoon, at the intersection of Sunset and Hollywood and Hillhurst and Virgil and Complication and Hell, right in front of the Vista Theatre, there’s this guy who stands with a big sign that says: “HONK FOR PEACE” and whenever he gets a car to honk, he does a little jig and goes bat shit crazy. Last Friday, one car honked and he yelled: “YEAH BABY!” Another car honked: “THANKS...
