May 2011
31 posts
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PERSON WHO OWNS THIS
(I had to find a title that didn’t use “whoever” or “whomever” because I don’t which one is right: “To whoever owns this” or “To whomever owns this.” They both sound wrong. The wrong one sounds wrong and the right one sounds wrong.)
I don’t know who owns this. I really don’t. I just washed this Rubbermaid take-along (had to look even that up) and only then realized that it isn’t mine. And I...
"IT'S JUST A SUGGESTION."
I love it when a headline says: “Jury Recommends Death Penalty For Killer.” They say “recommend” like that and it sounds like they’re giving the guy advice, guidance if you will.
“Hey, buddy. What’s going on? It’s us, the jury. How ya been? Cool. Oh, I see ya can’t shake our hands because yours are shackled. Oh well. Look, we were...
NO FAN OF AMBIEN
“Is it addictive?” I ask. My doctor looks up from his clipboard, stares at his trashcan in the distance, smiles even, looks back at me like the main bad guy in Witness (whom he sharply resembles) and says: “Well…it’s not that addictive.”
Ambien.
I’m happy to report that I am not a drug person. I always had a feeling I wasn’t a drug person from how horrified mushrooms make me and how sobby-sad...
WRONG APARTMENT
What happens when you get a wrong number? The person calls, they ask for someone you’re not, you say: “You have the wrong number,” they say: “Sorry,” they hang up, they call again, you answer, they ask for someone you’re not, you say: “You have the wrong number” again, they hang up. And that’s generally the end of it. Sometimes you’ll get someone who refuses to accept the truth and tries a...
"DO NOT ANNOY."
I don’t often travel, but when I do, signs like these are the best part. Really? The best part? Maybe. Sometimes. You know why? Because they work. I think they do. (I feel like one of these signs has been hanging outside of every apartment I’ve ever lived in.) I personally can’t think of a time when hanging a do not disturb sign on my door ever didn’t work. I think hotel maids are quite...
BAZOOKA'D AT A POPEYE'S
Fast food. If the food don’t kill ya, the customers will.
Lots of videos out there of one kind of altercation or another inside McDonald’s or Del Taco or Taco Bell or wherever. And hair ain’t the only thing getting pulled. There are knives, guns. I saw a headline the other day that said: “Woman Pulls Sword In Pizza Hut.” What? A sword? C’mon, lady! That’s outdoor stuff! You secure that...
MY APOLOGIES FOR BEING IN YOUR DREAM LAST NIGHT
I’m really sorry. I don’t know how the hell I got there. One second I’m fighting with the Zaporozhian Cossacks against the Ottoman Empire, and the next I’m wearing overalls and selling lemonade with you in the middle of a small town square in 1934. This, seriously, never happens! I’m usually pretty good about staying in my own dreams. I mean, sure, there have been a few times when I’ve found...
AN OPEN LETTER TO THIS MANNEQUIN
Girl, don’t you change a thing. Your posture, your hand placement, your attitude, your need to hide behind those shades (very important), your perfectly sad and pretty face, your literally wooden personality, and your rabid will to kill yourself if you weren’t already dead inside and out. Don’t change any of it. You are in the right town, honey! I don’t even wanna think about how many people...
COLOR ME ACCOUNTABLE
Wednesday, with my car, I slightly scratch another car parked in front of my place. Slightly. A little bit of a blemish on its left rear bumper. I think about the times when this—or worse—has happened to me. I walk back to my vehicle from Spaceland (now The Satellite) to find my driver side mirror down the street several yards from my car from which it was summarily ripped by what must’ve...
WOULD JU-BILEE IT?
Went to the Silverlake Jubilee twice over the weekend. Managed to finagle a performer’s tag even before I was asked to be in a sketch with Jamie Flam and Vanessa Ragland on the Santa Monica stage. I spent most of the time in the V.I.P. (?) area, drinking freely and for free and hearing once again (for three thousandth time) that no one hates hipsters more than hipsters. In fact, I discovered,...
DON'T RUNNETH OVER.
I drink water. It’s the easiest healthy thing to do. Yoga. Lifting weights. Eating right. Thinking positive. Exercise. None of that is as easy as drinking water. Sure. The water I’m drinking has rocket fuel in it (as every frothing left-wing documentary has told me), but let’s look on the bright side. I might become a super hero because of it. And a freak of course. But I’m already...
DIRTY TALK
My idea of good dirty talk is a when a woman whispers into my ear about how much she doesn’t want to be an actress. It’d go like this:
“Hey. Guess what I didn’t get back today. My headshots. You know why? ‘Cause I didn’t get any taken. In fact, you know when the last time was I got headshots taken? Never. ‘Cause I’ve never had any. Oh yeah, big boy. I have never once gotten headshots...
"AAACH!"
The most recent L.A. Weekly is the “People 2011” issue wherein a whole daunting slew of individs the periodical has deemed cool are prominently featured. People like Donald Glover, Mari Iijima, Robert Vargas, Pau Gosol, Jane Oshita, Henri Ford, Lenora Calire, Sarah Toon and I have no idea who any of those people are. Which means nothing. Which is the point of the issue. I’m supposed to read...
BABY GOT BAD BACK.
I tweeted this thing yesterday about how when I’m in a video store (already an antiquated thing to say) and I can’t decide what to get (already an anti-social, wheel-spinning thing to say) I tend to opt for the most depressing thing in my reach, in most cases a documentary about Nazis. I just reflexively reach for anything with a swastika on it, basically as punishment for my...
YOUR PAD'S LANDING PADS
My place is a mess right now. I was gone for ten days and now I’m back and I’m pretty sure no one was in my apartment while I was gone, but how do you remember exactly where everything was before you left? That’s a weird feeling. You’re gone for a week and a half, you finally walk back into your home, and you just trust that no one came in and moved anything around. “I guess it was me who put...
"THIS IS A CELLO."
(Two bears, LARRY on the left and BILL on the right, stand on their hind legs at the bottom of an abandoned silo. On top of the silo, sits a cello player named PRESTON. Preston is warming up with a few scales. Behind Preston stands some guy.
Larry and Bill look up at Preston and heckle him mercilessly.)
LARRY: Hey! Itzhak Perlman! Whattaya got for us today?
BILL: Yeah, Buck Owens! What’s...
COSTNO!
These are people waiting for food. At the San Francisco Costco.
“So how are those Costco hot dogs?” I asked one of the guys helping my friend Morgan and I carry this huge TV into this huge elevator.
“Not bad,” he said. “It’s like, the first few, you’re like, I don’t know about this. But after that, it’s pretty good, man. Especially at a dollar-fifty!” I didn’t even say: “Oh.” I just looked...
HUMORLESS DICKISHNESS
Last two shows at the San Francisco Punchline tonight. Everyone’s been great here! Great club, great performers! Totally perfesh.
Natasha and I went to this Russian place after one of the shows. It was pretty empty in there except for a couple staff people and this one Rasputin-lookin’ guy playing some really sloppy piano. He had a bunch of chains and bracelets on him, kind of...
HASH HAG
I do those hash tag games on Twitter for way too long. Yesterday was #OneManTributeBands and you had to take names of real bands and re-name them as if they just had one person in them. One of the best ones I saw was Zach Ames’ Les Zeppelin. Yup. That’s how you play. And you can do that shit for hours. I remember my friend Ron, before he was following me on Twitter, went:...
THE DISNEY PRESIDIO
Wednesday was Disney day with my mom, dad, sister, aunt and uncle. We didn’t go to the Land or the World. ’Cause why go the Land or the World for a huge chunk of your life when you can just settle for two hours at the museum in the Presidio. The Walt Disney Family Museum is pretty cool for the same reason I think most museums are pretty cool: I can do it at my own speed. I can...
HAPPY NAKED GUY
At the intersection of a busy street here in San Francisco, at the hour of one-fifteen in the American afternoon, at about the time that my body here tells me it’s definitely time for a nap, I saw him. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a wish. You know how sometimes you want to see something so badly you will your brain to conjure it up in front...
THE SAN FRANCISCO OUTDOOR EMERGENCY SYSTEM
Walking down Castro Street in San Francisco yesterday, I hear a huge siren. The kind in those old-ass Irwin Allen disaster movies. I can’t see the horn from which the racket emanates, but it’s gotta be big. It’s gotta be. Because I stop. On a downward incline (hell on the calves), I stop. It’s the kind of horn that I’ve heard in Pearl Harbor movies. You know,...
SHOCKS OF GRAY
I don’t have cable in my apartment in L.A. (By the way, the two nicknames I have for my apartment are my “Fart Box” and my “Fortress of Solitude.”) So whenever I’m in a hotel or a home where there is cable, I’m a total slave to it. And I saw those Bin Laden videos. Not just the “well-produced” ones where his beard is dyed black and...
SAN FRANCISCO
Great shows with Wendy Liebman at Rooster T. Feathers in Sunnyvale this past week-end. Fun times! Sean Keane was a great emcee as well. Looks Canadian, but isn’t! I rode in a stretch limo too. Yup! Not since prom. Whenever I wanted to speak to the driver it was like: “SO WHERE YOU FROM? HUH? WHAT?”
Made it to San Fran today (May 9th). That drive from Sunnyvale. How...
LIBRARY
You know what I may do is take a road trip across the country and review the nation’s libraries, but do it in the style of Sideways. Instead of giving my opinions of the wines and cheeses and the way fancy cultivated shit rings off my palette (or doesn’t ring at all off my palette), I’ll talk about the friendly service of the librarians of Sunnyvale, California. I’ll...
GOSSIP
The only thing I believe about all the Bin Laden stuff over the past week is that he’s dead. And fortunately, that’s the most important thing. The news always sounds like gossip, but never more than since Sunday. Every bit of “information” that anyone on TV or radio says about the mission to get him, the storming of the compound, the people that were there, what he was...
SUNNYVALE, CA
First show down in Sunnyvale, CA. Went pretty well. Headliner Wendy Liebman is a cutie and a sweetheart. Maybe we’ll play Scrabble in the hotel lobby. They have it here. Clue too. I sweated bullets during the show. Going months and months of snarky L.A. comedy shows performed for comedy nerds and then doing comedy for a bunch of polite and employed suburbanites will extract more...
I'M A MAN.
Been a long time since I’ve changed a tire. Embarrassed. Went down to my parents’ and practiced with Dad today. I do this. Got a long drive tomorrow to Sunnyvale and if there’s a flat (there won’t be) I wanna know what the hell I’m doing. I know. I do this when I go camping too. I never go camping. I have this tent and I wanna know what I’m doing in terms of unfolding it and putting it up...
WHO COVERED ME UP LAST NIGHT?
I specifically remember going to bed with no covers on. It was hot. The A/C/ was going. The fan was on. Even putting just my feet under the covers was uncomfortable. I fell asleep just as that guy on the radio (you know, that radio guy) was talking about Osama and Obama and how numerology plays a part in our understanding of how significant the two men are to history. Usually when a...
HUGGIN' OUT
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating because nothing’s changed: I’m a bad hugger.
I just am. Know that when you’re going in. When you’re going in. For the hug.
You’re coming at me with your arms outstretched and a smile on your face. I don’t know what you’re smiling for. This is gonna feel weird. For both of us. I’m flattered that you think you want this. You should know that. ...
"WHERE YA ANGEL WINGS AT?"
I like the scene in GoodFellas where Billy Batts (played by Frank Vincent) is busting the balls of Tommy DeVito (played by Joe Pesci). Billy is making fun of Tommy because Tommy used to shine the mobsters’ shoes when he was a kid. Billy says: “They used to call this kid Spit Shine Tommy. Oh, he’ll make your shoes look like fuckin’ mirrors. He was the best. He made a lot of money too.” Tommy...
