We Talk The Talk

I Support Occupy Wall Street & Occupy Boston

2011-10-06T14:13:00.004-04:00

I support the occupiers of Wall Street, and by proxy, those of Dewey Square in Boston. I haven't been surprised by the coverage of it: Starting slow, becoming overly-dramatic and focusing on fringe elements, much like they treated the "Tea Party."

I want to be clear about why I personally support the cause, as I've seen a lot of criticism of it from places I didn't expect. I'll address why I support it, then I'll address those who don't.

To me, Occupy is an embodiment of people's frustration with big business and government. We've seen, in the past few decades like never before, rich companies getting much richer and taking no responsibility for their actions. They've achieved something of a corporate socialism in which they get all of the benefits but bare none of the responsibilities. Banks packaged mortgages and sold them, then made money hand-over-fist on speculation of them. But when people defaulted on them, instead of eating the losses, they had the US Government, and by proxy us, to bail them out. I don't necessarily think we shouldn't have bailed them out, but at the very least, I expect that they should have to follow new rules and not continue business as usual. Certainly, they shouldn't be hording all of the money they've been given by the tax payers while they deny new mortgages to qualified applicants, deny loans to small businesses, and raise fees and interest rates on customers who are struggling.

I support Occupy because I make about as much money as I made five years ago, but that money isn't worth as much as it was. I didn't devalue it and I work just as hard for it. Meanwhile, fine print that is now illegal allowed those same banks to raise interest rates on my credit cards and other debts, making a once manageable, if difficult debt load almost unbearable. And I know that I'm one of the lucky ones. While I am forced to hand over almost all of my "middle class" salary to rent and debt, my borderline wage-slavery situation has not left me without a roof over my head, nor did I have to move in with my parents.

That said, I see people struggling, and I refuse to believe what I'm being told from so many of my peers, who keep repeating this fallacy that if people are struggling that it is inherently their fault. Are there freeloaders? Sure there are. But there are just as many, and I'd argue many more people who are doing what they can and are still struggling. I'm sick of watching people work or try to work and lose while the so-called "job creators" of America horde more money, much of which is funneled to them through bonuses made possible by bailout money we have to pay. That's not American capitalism. That's American greed.

I don't hate bankers. I'm sure they're nice people and I'm sure they're just trying to look out for themselves and their families. Yesterday, when Cornell West spoke at Occupy Boston, and he said, "we don't hate the rich - we hate injustice." He was spot-on in that statement. It is unfair and unjust for these banks and businesses to take government money and give nothing back while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.

I cannot be at Occupy Boston all day. I cannot be at Occupy Wall Street at all. The reason for this is that I do have a job. But I refuse to denounce the Occupiers, even the alleged "professional protesters" and "trustafarians" among them for being able to be there. They represent a message that many of the employed lower and middle classes cannot state, and their occupation in our stead is welcome. They march under the banner of "We are the 99%, and so are you." When they marched by me on Monday morning at 8:30 AM on Winter Street in downtown Boston, I joined them, if only for 20 minutes, not because I was aching to smash the state, not because I hate business, and not because I'm a disappointed liberal. I marched because they were right. They can (and have been) written off by many as being dirty hippies, 60's throwbacks, angry students, and unemployed, but it doesn't make them any less right. Within my lifetime, the discrepancy between rich and poor has grown at an astounding rate. It is similar to an America of our past, but not one we're proud of. While we no longer work in coal mines for 16 hours a day or in mills we also sleep in, we are willingly dismantling the system that protects us, our children, our neighbors, and strangers we have nothing in common with but our home country from that life.

If Occupy is nothing but an expression of anger, it's an expression that needs to be made. Even if it's demands are impossible, if it makes people in Washington (and maybe even Wall Street) just an inkling more interested in economic fairness and consumer protection, it's well worth it to me.

As for my peers who have been quick to speak out against the Occupy Movement, I say to you this: Even if you are entirely right about the most negative opinions you have about the protesters and the people they represent, even if every welfare recipient, unemployment check beneficiary, and every public employee is hoodwinking you and getting something for nothing because they're too lazy to make an honest living, the amount of money that equates to annually is nothing compared to what the people they're protesting are extracting from you and me every year, not only in the form of tax loopholes and bailouts, but also in unfair and hidden fees and interest increases. You are welcome to believe that the poor are your enemy. I'm even happy to have a conversation about what we can do to reform welfare, health care, social security, and medicare. I'm just not willing to have that conversation before we go after the biggest culprits. Welfare didn't cause a foreclosure crisis, gambling bankers and traders did. Police don't spend all day going after street dealers - they go after the kingpin. Go after the kingpin. Occupy.

I'm not much one for arbitrary patriotism, nor am I overly concerned with proving how much I love America. I am concerned with accusations that Americans are doing un-American things. Specifically, I disagree with the sentiment that this, or any other movement, is un-American. It is comprised of Americans, and opposes entities that are primarily nation-less, with headquarters' all over the world to ensure that they can hide their money from the American tax system. If you find yourself wondering "how is it that I can show my love for America," let me make a suggestion: Try not to hate Americans. Even the ones you don't agree with.

Fuck Yeah America @ The LAP Gallery

2011-07-02T17:34:00.006-04:00

The prospect of going all the way to Waltham for an art show was frankly not that appealing to me. Going to any place where the T stop is a commuter rail station doesn't inspire confidence. My experience at LAP Gallery threw that position into question.

LAP Gallery is located on Moody Street in Waltham, a semi-hip enclave of Greater Boston's outer limits, fully equipped with a brew pub, small book store, an independent movie theater, and a waterfall. A pretty broad cross section of people walked up and down the drag, ranging from businessman to aging scenester to possibly mentally ill. It feels like an alright community, but also one where a robbery or two wouldn't be totally out of place.

The gallery itself is incredibly welcoming. Initially the entrance space and lobby to art studios upstairs, it was converted by proprietors Elliot Anderson and Pat Falco into a really well presented show space. It's super-sleek interior rivals any NYC gallery, and the pieces on display were nothing to scoff at, either.

Immediately upon entering the Fuck Yeah America exhibit, two unrelated things greeted me. One: a stencil and spray paint American flag rendered in Legos by Dave Tolmie and the welcoming face of co-founder Pat Falco. Pat was immediately friendly to new faces, jumping on the chance to talk about artists featured in the show. There wasn't a bad piece in the room. There were a number of standouts.

Among them was New York artist Jes Hughes' American Homestead: Summer, a really well composed mixed media piece primarily based in watercolor and letterpress, and Molly Kennedy's uberweird MEEE! (shown), a wax and plaster sculpture of what appears to be a stripped chicken with Teddy Roosevelt's head.

Dan Lambert's The Throats of 44 Men, a series of 44 pieces of white paper featuring a shadowed area where the throats are visible from American Presidential portraits was one of the more impressive parts of the show. It's incredibly simplistic, but really interesting. If I had two hundred seventy five spare dollars (totally a steal), I'd probably have this piece in my living room right now.

Throughout, the show is fantastic. The artists were personable and the venue is great. Locally brewed beer was handed out for free, apparently as usual at LAP's openings, and the contents will fuel your party with conversation pieces for the whole ride home.

LAP Gallery is located at 289 Moody St., Waltham, MA
Fuck Yeah America remains open until July 9. Gallery is open Wed-Sat from 12-6
Parking available nearby
Commuter Rail stop: Waltham (Fitchburg Line)

X-Men catch-up.

2011-06-21T21:00:00.004-04:00

Picked up and read X-Men (2011) 7-12 over the past few days. I sort of like what I read. Quick overview of 7-10: The X-Men hired a PR firm to make them beloved in San Francisco. They end up being dispatched to NYC where they and Spider-man have to duke it out with lizard people in the sewers. Turns out Dark Beast got his manipulate on and is using The Lizard to convert people - the more hateful and miserable they are, the better they are at being monstrous lizard people.

Good use of Spider-man, but Emma Frost reads a bit "off." Her tone shows up a bit better in #10, but beforehand, she's a bit more vapid teenager than materialistic cougar. The PR stuff is interesting. Not the best arc ever, but not terrible.

#11 is a one-shot about Jubilee struggling with being a vampire. It subtly shifts into a story about Xavier knowing a pretty swell vampire in his younger years. This issue reads like a morality tale, but it's not terrible.

#12 is a new storyline, so I'll hold back judgment for now.

What really stood out to me today was Uncanny X-Force. A few months behind, I picked up issue 10 (mostly for the awesome cover on the left here). This book is really excellent. It has this really interesting gritty feel, like they are finally able to harness all of the misdirected badassness of the 1990s into a cohesive, modern storyline. Angel/Archangel's internal struggle creates a mega-smart Mr. Hyde situation, like if grey Hulk had been evil incarnate. The cliffhanger, which brings the team along with Dark Beast back into Age of Apocalypse (my all-time favorite x-over. Leave me alone. I grew up in the 90s) essentially guarantees I'll be hunting down issue 11 (released 6/1) before issue 12 comes out next week.

All in all, good show Marvel. I'm interested to see where the writers are going with these storylines, but having solid narratives in each individual book makes me much more likely to keep following.

Sucked back into the comic vortex

2011-06-20T19:43:00.004-04:00

I saw X-Men: First Class this past weekend. I liked it. Didn't love it. It reminded me, though, that I like comics, and want to see what's going on in the comic world.

It prompted me to stop by a book store and grab a few comics. I picked up a collected X-Men 7-9 (2011) and X-Men 12 (2011). I read the first, and felt pretty similarly to how I felt about the movie. Liked it, didn't love it.

What struck me most from the experience was the check-out, when the guy behind the counter informed me that Uncanny X-Men would be ending in a few months at issue 544 and restarting. I was pretty horrified to hear about it, but after looking into it, I'm interested. Apparently, Marvel is giving X-Men their own version of Civil War to work with in a storyline called Schism. In it, the mutants will all have to choose sides between isolationism and integration, which is an excellent take on the historic undertones that have always made me love X-Men as a series.

So you got me, Marvel. I'm in. I'll read X-Men again. I'll read Schism. But if you undo everything like you did after Civil War, you might lose me forever.

Spring in Jamaica Plain - 1st Thursdays!

2011-05-05T19:53:00.004-04:00

It's gorgeous outside, and Jamaica Plain took advantage. Residents and visitors strolled the neighborhood's Centre/South district to check out local galleries, get some (free) booze here and there, catch a minimum of three bands performing with instruments unknown to anyone but Europhiles and carnival lovers, and maybe even buy something.

Generally speaking, the local marketing brainchild of Centre/South Main Streets didn't disappoint.

As per usual, Hallway Gallery stood out in a crowd. Gallery owner Brent Refsland has an excellent eye for the local and interesting, and the current collection may have been the best yet. P.M. Allen managed to make illustrations of local scenery made on an iPhone significantly better than it sounds when I say it out loud, presenting a really present and modern collection. Melanie Blood's almost skeletal creations were eerie and beautiful. P.M. Allen's pieces were both old and new in style, but consistent in their high quality.

The real show stealer was Aaron North. With what appeared to be pens, paints, and paper melded with wood and wheat paste, Mr. North produced a number of social scenes among Anthropomorphs that is worth the trip to the neighborhood no matter where you are in town. (And with $1 oyster Thursdays back at VeeVee, you should probably come anyways).

Aviary was also looking good. Danielle Spurge's stitched pieces were simple and lovely, and while the paintings/collages featured (I missed who did these) were not terribly appealing to me specifically, I could certainly understand their value. They just weren't exactly my taste.

Aviary also has a little table in the back full of books, including many from local artists and writers. I didn't get enough time to explore that, but I'd very much like to read some of the local works, and was thrilled to see people doing that.

Monumental Cupcakes had a really fun series of pictures - many requiring old 3d glasses to view - of rock shows, a tin man, and some staged images that could have been porn if they had any nudity in them. Particularly unsettling (read: my favorite piece in there) of a woman in a refrigerator snarling at the camera in throwback red-and-blue pop-out begged to make it to my wall. Alas, I'm a poor person. Other spaces within the bakery showed off Sex Pistols inspired pieces that may or may not have lacked any real merit, but were really fun nonetheless.

The dud was UForge Gallery. I'm going to be honest. I had my reservations about UForge before I went in. I had missed the first show of the "assignment" issuing gallery. It's theme of art deco seemed like a drab class assignment by an uninventive history teacher in the midwest who had what he perceived as the misfortune of having to teach art class due to budget cuts. This month's assignment, "remembering Andy Warhol," didn't make me much more hopeful. It did not let me down in letting me down, either. A series of pieces derivative of Warhol's famous and long clichéd silk screen prints and Campbell's Soup cans conjured the feeling one gets when his mom calls him from Target to tell him that she's found something "perfect for your apartment."

I don't mean to beat up on them too much, but in a neighborhood that is starting to really show quality work, a gallery that is so reminiscent of the stale Cape Cod-esque set feels out of place and disappointing.

Music was also on. Performances in City Feed & Supply and Dame were folksy and great, giving people something to watch and adding an impeccably appropriate soundtrack to the streets.

My wife and I grabbed some eats at James's Gate and made our way through all of it. Most places had wine or other refreshments. A few drinks in, along with a few bucks in drink donation jars, it was an enjoyable evening for sure. Rarely do I walk around my neighborhood thinking "I wish more people were here." Today was one of those days.

The path to graduate school: Entry 1 - studying for the GRE

2011-03-12T17:53:00.003-05:00

Having decided recently that I need to go to graduate school, I have begun studying for the GRE. Studying has been in spurts thus far as I acclimate myself to studying habits again, but I've been getting better at doing it regularly. Progress has been noticeable in the verbal section; I started out getting 15/20 on Barron's analogies and sentence completion exercises. Now I'm up to a pretty consistent 18/20. As I keep soldiering through the master vocabulary list, I feel like my verbal skills will continue to improve. Reading comprehension was a strong suit to begin with, though there have been slight improvements there, too.

It also turns out that I'm terrible at math.

I've just started the math section of the Barron's GRE book, and I do not like it. It makes some presumptions about my math ability and teaches tricks to do problems faster. What I need is a refresher. The REA book does a better job of that, so I'm glad I bought it before, even though it's demo test isn't Mac compatible.

I am absolutely floored by my total lack of math knowledge. I mean, there had to be a time where I knew basic geometry, right? I never realized until today that I hate circles. They always seemed so pleasant and benign. Who'd have thought they'd been plotting along with surface area to ruin my life?

I'm also concerned with the analytical writing section. This worry is completely unfounded. I've read about two dozen sample answers and I'm pretty sure I can write comparable essays with a hangover in a 104 degree room, but my inability to get a concrete result on my own samples is causing a mild panic in me that manifests itself almost exclusively at 3 A.M. (Note: I am not usually awake at 3 A.M.)

I am also trying to read books by professors at schools I'm interested in so I can get a feel for people I might work with. This has actually been a great exercise. It's interesting and surprising to see really great research get lost in complex writing, subjects I find uninteresting getting a polish by particularly skilled prose, and some really stand out work coming from less than top-rung schools. I've been particularly impressed with some folks at a certain Catholic college in town, and am becoming more interested in going there.

Just to pile on, I'm trying very hard to get a jump on my language requirements. Most history PhD programs require two languages other than English, and for many of them, the first test is the first year. I've decided on French as my language of choice, which simultaneously covers a requirement and satisfies the Francophile in me. I'd like to add German and Italian to my resume as well, as I'm primarily interested in WWII-era American history, and the German and Italian immigrant communities are quite a bit larger on the east coast than the French, but being able to communicate on vacations is a big plus, too.

After trying a number of cheap or free language programs (Rosetta Stone is just too damn expensive!), I've just come across a pretty basic program through Carnegie Mellon that is free and really interactive. Add France 2 news streaming on the internet, and it's a pretty good regiment.

The stress and worry are becoming more palpable now that I'm all in, but I feel good about this. I imagine I will continue to until the week before I take the GRE, at which point I will convince myself that I can't score over 1100. Then, when that (hopefully) doesn't happen, I can get my writing sample panic on!

I don't wear a bike helmet.

2011-03-09T12:50:00.003-05:00

I'm an avid cyclist. This does not mean that I own or wear Pearl Izumi pants or that I own neon. It doesn't mean I have a pile of bike friends with whom I ride, discuss riding, eat Clif bars with, or share cigarettes with while coasting in the Tour de France. It also doesn't mean that I wear a helmet.

What it means is that I own a bicycle, and whenever possible, I ride that bicycle. I ride it to and from work, between neighborhoods, or wherever I need to go. Sometimes, I even ride for leisure!

I don't consider myself part of a "biking community" any more than I consider myself part of a "hat wearing community" or a "guy who still uses the United States Postal Service community." As such, I tend not to give people free biking advice unless I'm asked for it. Unfortunately, I am not always extended the same courtesy. So I have decided to give out some biking advice: Stop giving out biking advice. Specifically, stop yelling at me for not wearing a helmet.

I know how important it is to wear a helmet. I know it protects my fragile, incredibly valuable brain from the cold, hard reality of pavement and car parts. I know that they've even figured out a few designs that don't look completely stupid. I don't need anyone yelling at me from across bike paths or on the other side of the road or even from a car asking me where my helmet is. My helmet doesn't exist. I don't own one. I don't intend to purchase one any time soon. Stop yelling at me about it.

I might appreciate your advice from time to time, if not for your tone. But like when an adult tells another adult that smoking is bad for them, there's no way to politely say "that thing you're doing is hazardous to your health, and while I know you've been told this for a minimum of 150 years, I am concerned you may not have actually heard/read/understood the warning. So just a quick reminder for you: Despite your being deaf, blind, and/or possibly mute, I care about your health."

Now smoking isn't a perfect analogy. There are selfish reasons to hate people for smoking. Smoking pollutes the air, makes things smell, and causes cancer among people who do not smoke. By saying "smoking is bad for you" to someone who marginally knows you or is a total stranger, you're being insincere in your approach, but your concern is justifiable. This is not the case with helmet wearing.

My lack of helmet doesn't hurt other people. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that should I be flung from my bicycle head first toward your head or body, you may even fare better against my bare skull than you would against the same cranium with armor. Helmets also smell. My head smells less helmetless. Finally, my smashed head does not cause cancer. You might even lose weight, because the sight might make you puke.

So okay, smoking and not wearing a helmet are almost totally incomparable. I guess it's possible that you're just looking out for my health. Maybe you even like me! But wait, why does your tone suggest that you think I'm a bad cat juggler who wears babies for shoes? I mean, you really sound angry! When you (and I am using a general "you," assuming you're all part of one smug, judgmental pseudo-liberal group mind) shouted to me "where's your helmet?" with an angry tone the first few times, I assumed it was just to make sure I could hear you. When it became "where's your fucking helmet?" I thought maybe you had Tourette's. It was "get a helmet, asshole" where you convinced me that maybe it wasn't my interests you had in mind.

Here's the thing - initiatives to encourage people to wear helmets are great. So are local bike shop and charity drives for helmets. There are a bunch of cafes and stores who even offer discounts to people with helmets. That's great. It isn't the law, though. There are laws about lights. I was informed of them by a Boston police officer on the Southwest Corridor in Jamaica Plain. The officer also explicitly said "we also recommend you wear bright colors and a helmet. Now that's not the law. Just something we recommend." Thanks, police officer. I will take that into account. That conversation made me think "maybe I should go pick up a helmet when I buy that front light." It was then that a piece of the collective "you" whizzed by me going the other direction yelling "get a helmet, asshole."

Well done, you. You've succeeded in your objective. This is only if your objective is veiled, as I suspect it is. You want people to hate bicycle riders. You want people to think folks on two wheels are all priggish, snotty know-it-alls who make life choice suggestions not because they're actually concerned with people, but because they want people to know how much better they are at stuff. "Nice '96 Ford truck! Now get a Prius!" "I see you're eating a hamburger. I hope you know you're murdering both cows and the future." "Your head is exposed. Luckily, I'm not as stupid as you, so mine is covered." Yep. Well done, you. You made a perfectly reasonable position sound like a real life animation of the worst Fox News caricature of what people from the northeast are like. You're totally better than me, and you're totally right. You might be sainted if you didn't know in your heart that organized religion is a misogynistic hierarchy meant to mislead the masses into a false sense of security about themselves. Because we all know who's on top.

What I've been up to.

2011-02-28T20:21:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I've written anything here. I hope to remedy that, but no promises.

To bring you up to speed, I decided to stop doing comedy to focus on graduate school applications and then graduate school. Comedy was great, but I don't much miss it. I do miss a lot of the people, but they're around.

Improv Asylum gave me a really nice and classy send off. I got to host my team's show, my team was incredibly supportive on stage and was fun to play with, and then I was asked to play lottery at the end of the show. I have nothing but nice things to say about that theater and the people in it. I particularly would thank Jeremy Brothers, Kiley Fitzgerald, the cast of Ghost Factory and the cast of my other former team, Old Shep. They're all really great people and funny to boot.

My last IB show was not as fun, but I appreciate what people did for me there. My team, Don't Tell Mimi, was genuinely my favorite team to play with ever. They're all so funny and positive and fun to hang out with. We weren't always the cool kids, but we did great stuff. DTM are people who I walked away feeling like were actual genuine friends.

So now I'm studying. GRE reviews, French crash courses, history rebuffing. Soon I'll start serious work on a writing sample. I'm ready to go full force into academia. It's where I've always felt most comfortable and it's the area I've always been best at. I'm excited about my prospects, and I have little worry that I'll get into a very good, if not top tier, school.

I feel a lot more appreciative lately than I have in the past few years about what is going on in my life. The past three or so years have been really amazing. Sometimes a major life crisis throws you into a fire that really is great, and you don't notice it until it's over. Improv was definitely one of those fires. I was fucked up when I got there, and it got me through it. I loved it, and I learned a lot while I was there. I was lucky to work with some really talented people, and looking back, I can't help but feel honored that I got to be on stage with them.

Now I'm going a different way. I'm really excited to share life's stage with big guns in a field I'm more at home in. Like in improv, I hope I can hold up. In comedy, I was a slave to the approval of others. In a lot of ways, I think it made me a weaker player. The farther I moved up, the less confident I got. I'm pleased to know that that is not the case in history. There, I can go out both guns blazing and understand the landscape better right out of the gate.

2010-08-18T12:48:00.002-04:00

This footage was shot today just outside my office in Chinatown. You can clearly see the officer talking on a cell phone in the street, totally ignoring his surroundings, and arguably making the situation more dangerous by almost walking into a vehicle.

This is just another example of how police insistence that they be assigned details instead of far cheaper "flaggers" is just scare tactics. Deval Patrick is right. These guys should be taken off these double-time assignments ASAP. Stop exploiting tax payers and get back to serving and protecting!

Meanwhile, I can't get a cop to call me back about investigating my bike getting totalled by a truck while it was locked up on THE SAME CORNER, despite my telling them where the security cameras in the area are.

Well this is fabulous.

2010-08-06T09:38:00.002-04:00

I left my bicycle locked up to a pole outside my work overnight. Probably not the best move, but it was just too hot to ride.

This morning, I got to work, and my bike was still there. Unfortunately, it was wrapped around the pole it was locked up to.

So I called the police. They didn't seem to care. Eventually, I was told someone would come down so I could file a report. Because they're all really busy picketing for raises and not stopping scam artists and drug dealers at Boston Common and Downtown Crossing.

There is a security camera directly across the street. Hopefully, it got the accident on tape.

My main problem here is that I'm pretty sure I know what happened. There is a bus line that parks on that corner and regularly hits poles and has, in the past, hit a parked bike. I don't know why it's okay for that bus company to park there and drop off/pick up, and I don't know why they don't seem to get in any trouble with the city for doing so, or for destroying city and private property.

So now I'm on the hook for hundreds of dollars for parking a "vehicle," and that company will continue to run a shitty operation and have no problems for it. It makes me wonder what good the insane regulations we have in Boston are if they are selectively enforced. If Fung Wah has to do their drop-offs at South Station, why do these clowns get to go wherever they want?

Now I have no transportation and have to buy a new bike, despite my being broker than I've ever been.

Please kill me dead.

I did an improv seminar! Let me tell you about it!

2010-07-20T13:29:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I took part in an improv seminar at Improv Asylum with Brian Gallivan called "Choose Love," in which we were encouraged to choose love in scenes, as opposed to conflict.

All in all, a worthwhile endeavor. It was fun to work with Gallivan, and some of the other improvisers in the class were people I respect and have yet to play with before. So that was rad.

A valuable note I received was that I apparently talk entirely too much. Who knew? In slowing down, I did a lot better and enjoyed myself a lot more. I also knotted myself around a scene partner and probably sweat on him.

So now I get to play a quick round of "let's see if this translates into actual performances." I'll be doing a good amount of slowing my speaking down, committing to characters, and listening more to what people are saying to me before responding. Or maybe I'll keep talking over people.

What an awesome kid

2010-05-17T12:43:00.004-04:00

I stumbled across this kid's flickr today. She's just some kid with a camera, 15 years old. Her work is inconsistent but unarguably good, particularly for her age.

What I like most about it, though, is that she's posting a picture every day. And it's not like she's just taking a shot of anything and posting it. Clearly, she thinks about what she shoots. Some of them are redundant, many of them are absolutely beautiful.

And it got me to thinking, what is it I do every day? What am I showing the world? A few nights a week I do improv shows. Some of them are good, some meh, all ephemeral. My attempts at keeping up at something have consistently been for nothing (see also: this blog).

But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to do something we're proud of every day. And hey, maybe we'll actually be proud of it a few times a year. I think I sometimes lose sight of how a lot of artists I admire operate. We see the finished products - the really brilliant stuff. The stuff that makes print, the stuff in museums, the stuff on the main stage, polished, brilliant, professional, innovative. But there's a lot of mediocrity along the way. There's a lot of garbage. And I've read a million times over variations of Woody Allen's "eighty percent of success is showing up." But I've not really thought about how that 80% of showing up doesn't mean 80% of success rate. More of the time, it's producing at such a rate that diamonds show up in the rough of your mind that you record in whatever medium you record in.

More often than not, ideas come into my head and then are lost. Or worse, they're recorded and not expanded on - left to die in sentence fragments in notebooks I'll never look at again. The above flickr account is an excellent example of showing me and everybody what a little perseverance can do for your output. Discipline, as much or more than talent, makes us what we want to be.

I don't know what I want to be. I struggle between comedian, academic-type, writer. I can be all of those things, but wanting to be any of them is worthless if I don't do any of them full throttle. So here we go again. Thanks, Rachael the 15-year-old photographer. You've motivated a person.

Paying for a better America

2010-02-21T08:20:00.003-05:00

$12.411 trillion is a lot of dollars. And that is how many dollars The United States owes in national debt. It is reflective of a longstanding overspending trend in this country which has been capped off in the 2010 budget - a $3.55 trillion list that exceeds government receipts for the year by over 59% and is nearly 3 times the added deficit of the 2008 budget.

This is clearly not a party-based problem. In the past 9 years, presidents and congresses led by both parties have overspent at an alarming rate, and even when Bill Clinton balanced the budget, he still didn't erase national debt. Surprisingly, the National Debt actually increased from $4.167 trillion in January, 1993 to $5.716 trillion when Clinton left office in 2001. This, of course, does not account for things like inflation or how much GDP increases, and as such, the good people at zfacts.com have produced a graph to show national debt in relation to GDP with inflation.

Clearly this kind of debt is unsustainable, as most conservatives will be happy to point out. But what they don't seem to want to discuss is how to fix it. Meanwhile, liberals have been quick to point out that they aren't the only ones who did it, and anyway, running at a deficit is not out of the ordinary.

While running at a deficit is absolutely normal, what is abnormal is attempting to live like it's not happening. As shown in the graph, the only period in our economic history where discretionary spending was on an incline comparable to now was the Great Depression, in which time, contrary to the Tea Party activists claims, we ran the most severe deficit in American history. During this time of social and economic unrest, the government asked the people of the United States to do something. It told them that things weren't going well, and that the government would do everything in it's power to right the ship, but that it needed the help of the American people. This help came in many forms, from buying locally to help the economy to enlisting in the military to help us win the war in which we were so deeply entrenched. But one of the most significant requests made was that of money.

Taxable income over $200,000 was taxed between 80-94% during the World War II years, and remained as high as 91% as late as 1964. This period could hardly be considered solidly bad times in America, but rather we were being ambitious, and to be so ambitious, we needed the help of our richest people. Even lower tax brackets went up from 4% to 19%, an increase that has greatly been sustained and even increased, while the richest do not pay their notably absorbent rates while still benefitting the most from the same system. It is also notable that this kind of tax code sustained itself through both Eisenhower administrations and stayed as high as 50% through most of the Reagan administration. The 2009 rate for people making over $372,950 is 35%. So much for oppressive taxes the likes of which we've never seen before.

Another major revenue winner during WWII was U.S. Treasury Bonds. "War bonds," as they were often called, raised $185.7 billion during the war effort. When you consider that federal spending in 1945 was $106 billion, having all that bond money was probably a good source of borrowed revenue.

The bond, (which is in a different, really inferior form today in the EE bond), pays an interest rate that is frankly not as good as other places you can put your money. The stock market will serve you better in many cases. But the bond isn't really about that. It's about lending the government money they need. Because if they don't borrow it from us at a low interest, they will borrow it from China at a much higher interest, and we'll be paying it back no matter what.

It is only logical that the government start spelling out clear sacrifices that the American people need to make, including investing in the future of the nation, making cutbacks in various social programs, expanding other social programs (i.e. health care and education), and cutting back on wasteful spending in the Pentagon and on private mercenary groups (the Obama administration has notably taken a step in the right direction on the last of these by refusing to renew the federal contract with Xe Services/Blackwater Worldwide). More than anything, though, the government has to be willing to tell it's people that you get what you pay for. If we as a people are unwilling to pay for things we believe we need, we can't have them. You can't have the biggest military in the world if you want to pay the lowest taxes in the world. You can't have a health program that actually helps people if you're not willing to pay for them, and you can't sustain the spending of a nation ad nauseum unless the people themselves are willing to do their part.

So here's what I want to hear the president say: "Things are bad. They're going to get worse. To solve it, I don't want you to go shopping and spend money you don't have on things you don't need that send American dollars overseas. What I want you to do is invest in the future of your country. I want you to accept higher taxes so your grandchildren don't have to pay for programs that benefit you. I want you to put some of your savings in federal bonds so that we can get out of this crisis while borrowing the minimum amount of our deficit from foreign nations that would use that leverage against us in the future, and I ask you to support local businesses in your own community, as they are the ones that revitalize a flailing economy. I also ask you to send your sons and daughters, and yourselves, into national service, either in the military or, if you are not in favor of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, or any array of private organizations across the country that do meaningful work to better the lives of those who need it."

That is what I believe to be responsible, and anything short of that is not good enough. I don't care what party you're in.

(note: the budgetary statistics used in this post are from TreasuryDirect.gov)

Totally forgot to post this - Prostitravel!

2010-02-07T15:54:00.004-05:00

This is a sketch I did with some friends a few weeks back. More will be coming. Give us the ole' funny vote!

Need a vacation? - watch more funny videos

Last night I had a dream, and you were in it, and I was in it with you

2010-02-07T10:16:00.002-05:00

I had a dream last night that I was at a house I recognized as my Mother's house from years ago, even though in retrospect it wasn't. It felt like the late 1990s or early 2000s. When I set my bike to the side of the house and went upstairs, I asked my mom what the date was, and she told me it was March 3rd. I then asked the year. "2007."

I insisted that she give me her phone so I could make a call, because in my head, I was sure that my phone was from the future, and it wouldn't work. We had to plug hers in to charge it, and then I called my sister.

"Amanda."

"Hey, Matt."

"Listen. Listen real carefully, okay."

"Okay..."

"On December 10 of this year, you are going to die."

Silence.

"Listen. Something is going to happen. You're going to feel kind of bad in the days beforehand. You have to go the hospital when that happens, okay."

"Okay."

"And Amanda, make me talk to you more from now on. Don't let me blow you off, okay."

"Okay."

"Things will go so crazy when you die. Don will turn out to be a jerk."

"Really?"

"Really."

Wake up.

Looking around, in the same place I fell asleep in. Ring is still on my finger. That, I deduced, may not have happened had Amanda not died, as I probably wouldn't have reevaluated the importance of good things in my life.

I went to my computer after a while. Her facebook page still had farewells and regrets on it. My time travel experience failed to yield any real results.

At least I remember what she sounds like again. I guess it was just hiding in my head.

Hell Gig evidence

2009-08-13T17:30:00.000-04:00

Here's the video along with some commentary.

Know Your Audience - watch more funny videos

The health care discussion, "death panels," and why people need to stop tolerating the crazies

2009-08-13T17:26:00.005-04:00

Yes, I get it. More people oppose the Obama health care plan than support it. The most recent Gallup poll has people at 49% against and 43% for, which while in the margin of error, and suggests that the majority, 51%, is either in support or impartial, is nonetheless a less than convincing endorsement.

Now, here's the part where I explain why I don't care about what "the people" think on this particular issue.

It starts with the simple point about democracy. How we don't live in one, how we've never lived in one, and how we've never intended to live in one. We live in a republic. In said governmental structure, we elect people to make decisions for us so we don't have to worry about them. The hope is that they'll be better informed on the issues. We will not always agree with their decisions, but we elect and ultimately, if things go well, reelect them if they work in our best interests and do what we believe they think is right.

Doesn't that feel good.

Okay, now here's the part where I accept that that isn't how politicians work. They're greedy and often bought by big business. This is no exception. It seems logical then that the people would rise up and take on their government in a wide scale demand to protect them from the health care lobby.

The thing is, that's not what's happening. For the first time in history, it appears that we are on the cusp of getting something from the government that we need without unequivocally destroying the private industry that currently does what needs doing. The Democrats could propose a nationalized, universal health care plan that covers everybody. They didn't in large part because they don't have the votes to pass it, but also because many of them represent votes against it. Instead, they are offering a government option - one that doesn't unseat your private care, but gives an option to those who can't have it. In addition, to encourage private coverage, they have included language in the bill penalizing companies for failing to offer health insurance to employees, thus encouraging many companies who don't offer care but could if they weren't so motivated by profit.

The idea that a government option will kill competition and put the private insurers out of business (which is something I actually support) is unfounded. There is nothing in the bill that suggests that that is the goal, and even in Western countries that do have totally nationalized health care (see: England, France, Canada, etc.) private health care still exists and is profitable. What is being done is establishing a baseline.

Which leads me to "death panels." The senate, is was reported today, has removed the "end of life" provision in the bill which has been labeled a "death panel" by such experts as trained journalist and 20+ month governor Sarah Palin, failed sportscaster and abuser of pharmaceuticals Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, a man who, when not hosting his "news" program, is doing stand-up comedy tours. Seriously. He actually is a comedian. Meanwhile, rational Republicans in the House and Senate, as well as rational and educated conservatives (see: David Brooks) have pretty much unanimously declared the "death panel" accusation insane. Why? Because it's insane. It is clearly a misreading of a provision that families and their doctors should discuss options regarding terminal illness. It's not a negotiation. It's not a "what are you worth to society" question. It is a "do you want to keep fighting" or "do you want to suffer the painful treatments to prolong your life" discussion. It's one that I've had with my mother already, and she's only 49.

But it's been removed. Because the Democrats are cowards and are happy with watered-down versions of their objectives. Presumably, they'll call it compromise. But a compromise entails getting support you wouldn't have otherwise gotten, and my guess is that Michele Bachmann is voting no no matter what.

The reality is that there are a lot of people who have no idea what they're mad about. They're riled up by people like Limbaugh and O'Reilly Palin and Bachmann and friends, and they're out for blood. They are the Michael Moores and Keith Olbermanns of the right, but unlike them in two distinct ways. The first is that while Moore and Olbermann sometimes make distortions and omissions to drive home their point, this bunch is outright lying. There is no truth to death panels. There is no comparison to Nazi Germany. It's just not there. And for all the people on the right saying "the left called Bush a Nazi," you're right. And that was also dishonest and disgusting. But just because your opponents do something distasteful doesn't mean you should.

The other difference is that, unlike the liberal masses that unquestioningly follow the words of their leaders, the right's sheep have weapons. And it has become abundantly clear that they have no problem using them. Since the Obama election, gun and ammo sales have gone through the roof, Democratic congressmen have received death threats, and to date one conservative nut walked into the holocaust museum and opened fire, killing a security guard, and another walked into a church and killed an abortion doctor. I would love someone to provide me with an example of a politically motivated killing of a conservative in recent history. But you won't find one, because even the 9/11 is an inside job nuts (who are often called leftist, but happily blame Obama for the conspiracy theory they tout just as vehemently as they did Bush) don't shoot at the architects and engineers that disprove their nonsense.

These lunatics will continue spouting nonsense everywhere while the supposed "liberal media" tries to rationally explain the realities and intricacies, which no one has the time or interest to listen to. Why? Because it's not they're job. Meanwhile, 49% of America is holding up necessary legislation on health care, and of that 49%, around none of them are waiting to get insurance so they can finally see a doctor while the rest of us pile into free clinics and pay out of pocket the overinflated prices of big PHarma. Or worse, we don't go and don't get at all. But it's Obama that's talking about rationing. Right.

My own private hell gig

2009-05-30T00:53:00.003-04:00

Great Scott, the show I do every Friday, had been empty, and I wasn't really in the mood for comedy.

But I had a show at IB's nightcap and so I went and did it.

I did the exact same set I had done previously to a very good response at the Studio on Wednesday. But this crowd was different. There were only about 9 of them, and I managed to say something that offended each and every one of them in 7 or so minutes.

I opened with a bit about St. Louis, where I pick on it a bit. The woman sitting directly in front of me is from there.

I add a jab about Blue Collar Comedy in which I take a dig at the south. They are also represented in the crowd.

Finally, I do a bit about wheelchairs on the subway. Somehow, I miss that the other woman sitting right in front of me is in a wheelchair. You know what sucks the air out of a room? Insulting a woman in a wheelchair.

I learned a lesson here, of course. You should pay more attention to your audience. I do want to stress how aware I am that this is on me.

My graduate show - "The Person I Don't Like Isn't Here Right Now"

2009-05-19T22:40:00.002-04:00

Last night was really special for me.

I performed in a graduate show for the Improv Asylum Training Center, a production culminating almost a year and a half of training. And we killed. It was a great show. The sketches hit, the improv was on the money, the audience was in it. I've never felt better that I did taking that last bow at the end of the night.

The highlights of the show for me were all involving the same terrible audience member. A drunk meathead who was trying desperately to be funny and an asshole, while failing at the former, was selected for the interview structure, where he was to tell Jonah who it was that he didn't like and why. He said his name was Chris and that the person he didn't like was named Jay. The reason? "He was still breathing." He was trying not to be helpful and the crowd pretty quickly turned against him. This is comedy gold. My castmates and I proceeded to hammer on Chris for a solid 7 or 8 minutes. So fun.

At the end, he kept talking during our outro, allowing for a cutting remark from me to close the show that got huge laughs. I felt great.

Afterward, a lot of audience members came up to let me know what they thought of the show, and I was really happy to hear it was all positive. It was particularly gratifying to have improvisers I know and respect giving us all positive notes on the show.

Now I just want to do more of it. I want to be on stage all the time. And I want that kind of audience. A full room makes such a difference. The night before our grad show, Don't Tell Mimi did a show at the Burren which, while not nearly as well attended, still had a full audience, and it also felt really great. It just feels like that's where I'm supposed to be all the time.

I'm really excited about this summer. I have a lot of improv, sketch, and stand-up stuff coming up, and I'd honestly rather do that than sleep.

Springtime! Stuff I'm doing!

2009-05-02T18:20:00.004-04:00

It's springtime again. The air smells nice, the trees are blossoming, the beers are getting lighter.

As such, I have again hit my annual "time to do natural things" binge. Let's see if I can maintain it this year.

For starters, I got a garden plot at the Clark Cooper Gardens in Mattapan. The people there seem like lovely folks, and I found immediately how bad I am at manual labor and planning. I went to till on Thursday morning, and suddenly realized that a potting shovel wasn't going to be quite enough. I borrowed a spade from the compost pile, and after about 20 minutes and about six of my four hundred square feet, I was done.

To aide my efforts for tomorrow, I have purchased a hoe, shovel, and metal rake. I intend to put a solid hour or two in before going to work so on Monday I can plant a lovely garden of lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, basil, summer squash, and green beans.

I also finally opened the bread maker my grandparents gave me for Christmas. It's making a loaf right now. Watching dough rise is sort of awesome.

It's also time to start beer brewing again. I haven't really done it since October, so I ordered ingredients for an American ale from Northern Brewer today, and am looking forward to results. This coincided with the drinking of the last homebrew I had left. Totally a coincidence.

That's what I'm up to. Pictures will come as things start to happen.

President Obama addresses credit cards

2009-04-23T16:01:00.003-04:00

I recommend watching this brief press conference with the president, who is addressing a huge part of the credit crisis that directly effects most Americans: that of the credit card companies.

As is, credit card companies can change your interest rates with virtually no notice. I myself just had my interest rate increased from 14.99% to 19.99% even though I've always paid on time. It's nice to see Obama sticking up for the little guy here, as I feel like we've seen enough of the government going to bat for the mortgage lenders and "to-big-to-fail" crowd.

Personal experience and universal health care

2009-04-07T19:58:00.003-04:00

My mother had a stroke yesterday. It wasn't too severe. I think she'll be fine.

The problem is in the meantime, she's out of work. Since she was laid off not too long ago, and has yet to find any replacement job full time, she's at a part-time job that doesn't pay for sick leave. She also lost her health insurance when she was laid off. She could have bought COBRA, but she couldn't afford it. It was hard enough just to keep up with her rapidly inflating mortgage.

While it is not a reality yet, it is highly probable that this incident, should she survive it, will equal economic ruin for my mother. She will most likely lose her house and may end up in bankruptcy due to the piling thousands of dollars in medical bills, provided the Rhode Island state government doesn't step in.

This, in combination with my late sister's struggles with the health care system, which among other things attempted to tell her she was no longer suffering from the incurable and terminal illness that ultimately killed her and thus cut care due to a clerical error, has led me to wonder how it's possible that we as a people still accept the idea that health care is a commodity.

I am not going to go through the economic breakdowns about how universal, nationalized health care is cheaper in the long run for businesses and individuals. I'm not going to go through how we can spend enough on the military to blow up twenty earths a year but we can't maintain the well-being of a continent. Nor will I entertain those ridiculous reactionaries who claim that the Canadians, French, and British have to wait for months for treatments and how they all hate their system. I know this not to be true. I've spoken to numerous individuals in each country, and it is notable that removing health care is not in the platforms of any of those nations' leading conservative parties. I'm talking morals.

The United States prides itself (often appropriately) as the leading moral beacon of the earth. We've had a few bumps along the way, but the values of this nation are fundamentally stable at first glance. They are also primarily Christian. I am not a Christian. I am an atheist. That said, I have a rather developed moral compass developed from years of exposure in the Protestant church I grew up attending and my Catholic grandparents. I got the gist. To my understanding, Christians are supposed to look after their fellow man. So how is it that in a country that incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than even China and has a military budget exceeding every other country that has ever existed, how is it that we can't pay for health care because it's "too expensive?"

Of course it's expensive. It's a scientific system jammed with technology with the sole purpose of keeping people who are not healthy or alive healthy and alive. If we value life so much, why can we not revert those nickels and grands that are so feverishly spent on nuclear arms and anti-abortion organizations to pay for the well-being of our neighbors? Why is a fetus' life more valuable than my mom's?

Generally bright liberal mouthpiece makes painfully right-wing mistake

2009-04-01T14:59:00.003-04:00

I'm a fan of Keith Olbermann. I've been watching him since SportsCenter. I even suffered through a few episodes of The Big Show. I appreciate his ability to inject even a shred of intellectual criticism and even the most slightly literate tone to the sea of ill-educated punditry we, the people of the cable news watching republic are submitted to regularly.

It is with this in mind that makes me so angry about something Olbermann said last night on Countdown. While discussing Rush Limbaugh's (and maybe Bill O'Reilly's) support of the death penalty for drug possession in Singapore, Olbermann refers to the practice of hanging drug traffickers in the country as "dictatorial" and "socialistic." The former word is apt. The latter is not.

Let's review what "socialism" actually means, shall we?

According to Dictionary.com:

so⋅cial⋅ism [soh-shuh-liz-uhm]
–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

The only of those three definitions that may even suggest that hanging would be sanctioned under socialism is the third, and that's only if we believe that "communism" is the same as "Communism." As we all recognize that a movement that uses a name isn't the same as the lowercase words they use (examples: Republican vs. republican, Democrat vs. democrat, National Socialism, or Nazism, vs. nationalism and socialism), using Stalin as an example to back up that socialism supports the hanging of drug dealers is similar to suggesting that FDR's New Deal made America a Communist country.

This is a buzzword. It is a word with positive meaning that conservatives have been beating up for a century.

Let us review further:

Public schools are a socialist program.
Federal loans for college, also socialist.
Social Security. It's in the name, for Christ's sake.
Public roads? Totally socialist. If we were a truly capitalist nation, they'd all be private roads.

But they're not, because some things should be socialized, nationalized, collective, available to everyone. Among them is education, health care, and transportation. In almost every civilized society, they are. Most are here.

The point, then, is that Olbermann, by using the word "socialistic" in a negative manner, as he did, lent credibility to the conservative position that "socialism" is "bad." He's feeding the same monster that has eaten words like "liberalism," "progressive," "Left," "intellectual," "educated," and "ivy league," and turned them all into so much waste.

A man so aware of the power of language should not make this kind of mistake, and while I'm certainly being nitpicky, I won't accept my side to make this mistake. The illiterate masses, the dittoheads, and the intellectually bankrupt accept this kind of nonsense. We're better than that. It often leaves us in the minority, but it also makes us right, which is always better than Right.

Today I drowned in arbitrary bureaucracy

2009-04-01T14:47:00.004-04:00

On Saturday, I ordered a new phone from AT&T. The phone was not cheap. I also paid for 2 day shipping. It is now Wednesday. I still do not have said expensive phone.

Let me explain.

Apparently, AT&T does not ship on Saturdays. Their literature does not make this clear, but I'll accept that it is not a business day, even though UPS, their preferred freight company, does work that day.

So I thought it was going to get here yesterday. It didn't. So I called UPS.

"Can I have my package delivered to my office tomorrow instead of my house. I know I won't be there tomorrow for a few hours."

No. Apparently, UPS needs to fail to deliver at least once before shipping it somewhere else. A stupid rule for sure, but fine.

"Do you know when in the day it will be delivered, because I'll be out for a few hours midday."

Yes. It would be delivered some time between 9am and 7pm. So realistically, the answer was no.

I was gone today from 10:40 am to 1:25 pm. The delivery attempt occurred at 12:16. Of course it did.

So I called again.

"Hey. I was told yesterday that if you failed to deliver this package today, you could ship it somewhere else tomorrow."

Untrue. Whoever told me that was wrong. AT&T doesn't allow customers to change addresses. They have to do it.

So I called AT&T.

They can't change the address until UPS fails to deliver 3 times and then sends it back to AT&T. Nevermind that all someone at AT&T has to do, according to UPS, is call UPS. They don't do that. They "can't."

So ultimately, because of this totally ridiculous policy, I have to take tomorrow off work if I want to get a phone before the end of next week. This is particularly awesome because tomorrow I'd have made a lot of money, whereas today, had UPS told me they wouldn't be able to help me today either, I'd have taken today off, when I made no money and knew that would be the case.

Also, I can't go pick it up at UPS, because their closest pick-up location is in Norwood, which is 2 or 3 cities away from me. Totally logical that they don't have a pick-up location in Boston. I mean, we're only the largest city north of New York. Totally logical there.

When my contract expires, I'm switching to whatever company uses the United States Postal Service.

GE CEO forced to resign, Republicans throw a hissy-fit

2009-03-31T16:36:00.003-04:00

You've no doubt heard that GM CEO Rick Wagoner has, as part of the government aide package to General Motors, been forced out the door for failing to make his company profitable.

The Obama administration, who has not only given unprecedented financial support to the dying giant, but also assured consumers that future warranties will actually be guaranteed by the federal government, has made a decision that Wall St. should have made years ago and McDonald's has known for years - if somebody is failing at his job, he should go get another one.

Who has a problem with this logic? Republicans. Of course. They have a problem with everything. Talking points have all been pretty uniform, a rarity lately, considering they have no identifiable leader. If McCain and Co. are to be believed, this removal of a CEO from a private company is sending the message to all companies in the country that if Barack doesn't like your boss, he has the power to fire them. This, of course, will make companies reluctant to do business here, and will lead to a siphon of American jobs.

Problem is, that isn't what the move says at all. It says that a CEO could be subjected to removal by government order if said company takes large quantities of taxpayer money. These bailouts are the government equivalent of an incredibly friendly corporate takeover, where the majority of management gets to stay on board, but the instance of complete failure compels the new owner (that's the government, and by proxy, us) to remove the speed bump and speed up production.

The reality is that GM didn't have to take the money from the government. They could have gone out of business. While that obviously wouldn't have been beneficial for GM's workers or America at large, it was and is the real option for failing business.

The government just handing money over and not using any oversight has already proven disastrous. The banks, with billions in tax dollars, have hardly loosened up in their lending practices, and we don't even have to discuss AIG et al. What the government is doing to GM is what they should have been doing the whole time, acting like they own the majority of the company.

Why should they act like that? Because they own the majority of the company. You want some reassurance? Ask Alan Mulally. He's the CEO of Ford. I bet he's not worrying about Barack removing him. He is probably still worried about the board, though.

And here I am again

2009-03-23T14:18:00.002-04:00

After incessant requests from my mother to continue, here I am back in the blogosphere. Apparently I am a major source of interest among family members with internet connections at work, who cannot bare a world without my snide remarks and bullshit opinions. Thank god, eh?

So what's been happening? Word on the street is that I am now part owner of one of the largest insurance firms in the world, and am generous enough to give its chief architects of failure excessively large bonuses. I guess it's just the kind of employer I am. I treat my people good, even if I have to suffer a bit to make it a reality.

President Obama-wan Kenobi has infuriated everyone in the country because he either is a socialist who is trying to take over everything or he's too moderate and not controlling enough. Meanwhile, in the first 60 days at my last new job, I'm pretty sure I produced a special section on jewelry that nobody read. Guess who's in the lead?

I owe a ton of money in taxes and comedy is pretty much the same. I'm not famous and should probably start getting my graduate school applications together as to ensure that I don't totally obliterate my future in this wasteland of quasi-humor that I've been calling home for the past two years.

Has anyone else lost faith entirely in Barney Frank? I'd adore it if he stopped talking.

Arnold, meanwhile doesn't sound so crazy anymore. Him and Bloomberg were on Meet The Press with Ed Randell, and I'll be damned if that guy is a Republican. He spent a good 3 minutes talking about investing in infrastructure to promote job creation. Reagan would be spinning in his grave if I had the faith that he'd listen to anyone, but as he didn't even take a meeting with Jimmy Carter during the hostage crisis right before his inauguration, I'm not really worried about it. I'm sure he's sleeping soundly.

One up to the past year, in a sort of schadenfreude way, is that while I may be dressing up like a colonial clown and yelling at midwesterners for a "living," I can't help but get a chuckle about all those douchebags I went to high school and college with that I've run into in the past few years that have been working at investment and banking jobs, who criticized my choices and now are in the unemployment line. Vindictiveness is HILARIOUS to me!

New computer, new post

2008-12-27T13:03:00.003-05:00

It's been a bit since my last post.

There is a reason for this.

That reason is the untimely death of my computer.

At a comedy show I was performing at with my comedy group earlier in the month, a beer was spilled on my laptop, totally destroying all the hardware. It sucked, but I got a new one now, and I'm good to go.

In the meantime, I performed at the Greater Boston Alternative Comedy Festival. We performed an instant Christmas classic, entitled "I'm Not Wearing Pants for Christmas." I felt like it was well received, and anyway, we got a lot of free beer and a check at the end of the night, which made it the most worthwhile show I've ever done.

Christmas was quick, cheap, and pleasant. My dad got me the best coffee I've ever had in my life.

I'm moving on the 1st to a new apartment, with no roommates except Erin. Horray!

This year, I will do my damnedest to write for an hour every day.

Thanksgiving and beyond!

2008-12-02T16:12:00.003-05:00

The holidays have arrived once more, and the stories are already collecting.

My fiance's family stayed with us from last Tuesday until today. While my house was rather cramped, the experience was altogether pleasant. They were very nice, and they cooked a lot of food and were quite tidy.

Wednesday night, the evening before Thanksgiving, I went to Rhode Island to see my mom. My arrival at South Station, where I was to connect for a commuter train, was hazy and odd. I was extremely tired and disoriented to begin with. While waiting for my train, I grabbed some gross french fries from McDonald's. Standing next to their booth waiting, a man I know through work, who I do rather like, came up to me out of nowhere. I tried to talk to him, but couldn't focus on the words he was saying, and am afraid I came off a bit disinterested and abrasive. My fries came up, and he found an excuse to leave after commenting on how quite perfect the portion of fried potatoes I ordered was.

I tried reading for a bit, but really was not dedicated to the material. My train was announced. It seemed as if the entire station was waiting for the Providence 3:45. They flocked together toward platform seven with all the enthusiasm of attending a culling for which they were marked. "People do this every day," I thought as I added myself to their number for the impending slaughter of time.

As I threw myself toward the purple/silver transporter, I heard my name through the chaos. A friend from my childhood was also on his way back to the suburban hell which our youths shared and his adulthood still occupied. We grabbed a seat together, along with a rather rotund Indian woman, and proceeded to loudly and impolitely reminisce about this or that ridiculous thing we'd been involved in years before our lives got more "proper."

We said goodbye at the Attleboro stop, and I attempted to read more. Still not interested. I opted instead to search the train for my mother's husband, whom I was meeting anyway. I found him a few cars down, and apparently my semi-formal dress was amusing to him (which would become a theme for the evening). I can't recall the exact wording of his comments, but they involved me looking something like a depression-era news man. Regardless, pleasantries were exchanged in what would become a rather long night where more than pleasantries were forced and/or resisted. We'll get there.

The train barreled past a series of strip clubs, which according to my mother's husband, denotated our arrival into Rhode Island. As you can imagine, it's a classy joint.

My mother was parked around the corner from the station in Providence. We piled into her elder Saab and were whisked away to West Warwick, where we were greeted by two rather obese dogs and a light-up palm tree. While the tree had been there for some time, at this particular visit it immediately reminded me of the strip clubs of towns past.

Guests were slow to arrive. The majority of those I wanted to see didn't come at all. I spent most of the night going into rooms that other people didn't occupy. Probably not the most polite move, but what I felt obliged to.

My sister's pictures were everywhere and her remains held behind glass were a rather clear reminder of her untimely absence. I felt rather alone - my snotty retorts to this or that went unappreciated.

A neighbor of my mom's, who was apparently a friend of her husband, was in attendance. He started off polite enough, if sort of meatheaded. He spoke quite a bit of bar fights and bedding and impregnating women of apparently ill repute, solidifying his position in my mind as a man of high society. At one point, when he started talking about music, I asked him what band he was talking about. To this, he responded, "you wouldn't know, you're a nerd." I suppose it was the combination of tie-and-black-rim-glasses. Might have also been my ability to string together multiple sentences into coherent thoughts. I'm sure there were plenty of factors.

Through all of this, my mother's husband, a long-since fallen friend of mine, persisted in private exclamations of his familial love for me. It was a conversation I wasn't interested in having, and so I said, "I don't want to have this conversation." Perhaps a bit out of line, so I apologized. I still didn't have the conversation.

Eventually, a friend arrived. We holed up in the kitchen and chatted about nothing in particular. Eventually, he volunteered his girlfriend, who he had arrived with, to give me a ride to the train.

Goodbyes were soon after said, and away I went back toward Providence. It became evident rather quickly that I was going to miss my train, and so the friend's girlfriend was nice enough to offer to drive me back to Boston. While the ride was bumpy and she was rather prying and argumentative, the ride was appreciated, and I ultimately made it back to my home, where I happily passed out on an air mattress in my living room.

When Thanksgiving arrived, it arrived early. Everyone was up and going by seven or eight, and the day consisted, as most good holidays do, of way too much food and television. Throughout it, I did my best to be polite, but felt overwhelmed and at one point insisted on taking a walk to get away for a few minutes. The air was pleasant, the silence more so.

The weekend consisted of hit-or-miss tours at work and a rather lightly attended comedy show. I wish to report how well rested I got, but it was not to be.

All in all, the holiday turned out alright. The lady's family is pleasant enough, and while I don't necessarily appreciate the company that my own keeps all of the time, my mother seems to enjoy them, and I enjoy her. I wish tolerance wasn't such a requisite to every meeting, but sometimes we have to swallow some madness in order to sit down at the table at all.

Crunch time

2008-11-21T16:31:00.002-05:00

Money is getting tight.

Tourist season is over, and as a tour guide, that sort of stings. I also was informed of my impending eviction not to long ago, and my girlfriend was laid off this morning. So things could be better.

I feel like it will be okay, though. I'm uncommonly optimistic. It seems to me that there are a whole lot of life lessons coming up right now. Handling money is a primary one. I can't throw money around anymore. I've been adapting in recent weeks to the change, and it's not so bad. Instead of buying new books, I'm reading the ones I have. Instead of buying coffee and sitting in a shop, I go to the library. The chairs are more comfortable, but I can't say I love the homeless yellers. The quiet ones are fine, and the crazies don't really bother me, either. It's the meat-head tough-guy types that seem to me people who could work but aren't. They walk through the reading rooms at full volume and talk about nothing.

Comedy has to give a bit. I need to make some more money, so I've withdrawn from Anderson until further notice. I also won't be making any more stand-up dates. I'm going to focus on improv classes and teams, which I enjoy the most, anyway.

I tried to write a bit today, but I didn't get anywhere. Maybe I'm stressed, but I feel so overwhelmed when I write these days. I want to do things with historic or fantastical influences right now, but I feel like there's so much to read that I get distracted.

The bus drives through

2008-11-19T17:05:00.002-05:00

The future, as always, looks bright and shiny.

Last week, I got a call from my landlord. Turns out they don't really want to honor an agreement that I have in writing with them that before my rent is increased, they need to fix some things. In addition, they would love for the rent increase to be retroactive. Should I not comply, which I informed them I wouldn't, I will be getting evicted.

The conversation lasted an hour, and included a number of fallacies, including a claim that I am obstructing progress, because they allegedly wanted to fix some things but I wouldn't let them in. Oddly, no one ever called me. Maybe if they had the keys to the apartment that they own, it would be easier for them, as I gave them permission to come here and work, given they give me 24 hours notice. But alas, I am probably moving.

I missed my last Improv Asylum show because of the call, which came about an hour before I intended to leave. I wish I hadn't missed it. I have another tonight, for which I'm pretty geared up.

Work is slowing down significantly at the Freedom Trail. Tours are going off with just 2 or 3 people. I'm worried about money for the winter. I guess I just have to hope for some nice days in the frigid darkness.

Erin's family is coming here for the holidays. The circumstances aren't exactly ideal, but they're being really reasonable and helpful, so I imagine their visit for Thanksgiving will end up pleasant. At worst I can work on my impression of her dad. He's got a great voice which would be gold on stage.

All in all, though, I feel pretty good. I'm feeling rather academic again, and have been reading more history books and arguing with my printed nemeses, much to by bed partner's chagrin. I just finished a book called "American Revolutionaries in the Making." The author, a southern historian from Duke, was essentially arguing that Virginia provided the foundation of the Revolutionary generation, and that that revolutionary generation changed virtually not at all from the colonial infrastructure.

In addition to not being terribly revolutionary, it's a pretty benign telling of the country's founding, and in the great southern tradition, gives altogether too much credit to southern aristocracy in establishing the American Republic.

He also uses "democracy" wrong. That's a big pet peeve of mine.

What a difference a day makes

2008-11-06T14:37:00.004-05:00

On November 4, I went to bed and things were business as usual. I woke up the next morning and a black guy was president, weed was legal, and gay people were no longer welcome in California. Welcome to bizarro world. While the last of those is unfortunate, it will hopefully be overturned in the future, and two out of three ain't bad. We'll certainly remember the 5th of November.

Yesterday was an interesting day for me in comedy, too. I had a show at the Comedy Studio at 8 and Improv Asylum at 10. I didn't feel prepared for either, and as in improv, you just make shit up on the spot, that's saying something.

At the studio show, I didn't offer much in the area of new material. The stuff I used was mostly tried and true, but was delivered shakily because I didn't prepare and was somewhat out of practice. People laughed, but I didn't feel terribly good about it.

I flew out of there after another comic or two, and got the the Asylum. There was some chumming around before the teams started warm-ups, and I couldn't help but notice that, as usual, the other teams' warm-ups seemed to be more lively than ours. Our energy worried me, as we were going on first.

The performance went pretty well - certainly better than last week. My teammates did well and gave great offers. I was a little shaky, and I think I sounded nervous. That bothered me because I wasn't nervous. I didn't have a very strong character in any scene, and I was living off of offers from others and not heightening things much.

The second half of the show, I was selected in the Lottery to play with a few members of the mainstage and house teams. I was the weakest and most inexperienced player, and it showed. I did a lot of sidelining and watching, as the others were so funny, and when I entered, I usually played second cop.

I was the center of the final scene, and while it did go well, I made a choice regarding the "mayor's" scandals and history that had been given to me which I immediately regretted. I was a nervous guy in a chair, and a political handler was thanking me for saving a bunch of kittens and an old lady. My character was then informed that I was to meet the mayor. When that occurred, I was not to mention his past "scandals and indiscretions." Obviously, then, that was what my character was supposed to do. It was an excellent offer that I immediately knew to take.

My response was predictable and subpar. I mentioned cocaine, then tract marks. I closed it by saying, "I think you're daughter is very attractive, Mr. Mayor, and I understand why you did what you did." I did heighten and build, but I felt like the scandals were too predictable. Since I created them, it was on me.

The lesson from the evening is that I'm not trying very hard. My head isn't in it all of the time. I need to constantly be working to make better stuff, and I need to constantly produce to get good stuff out of it. Quantity is important.

This morning, I sat down and watched Saturday's episode of SNL. Instead of watching leisurely, I took notes on all of the sketches, isolating what was funny, what the joke was, and how it was supported. It was a helpful exercise in seeing what works (and a few times, what doesn't). Then I took a train to work with my headphones off to listen to people for character traits. It wasn't terribly productive, but was instructive of what I should be doing generally. I am not the audience, and I need to stop acting like it. Making comedy is a lot of work, and I haven't been pulling my weight. Otherwise, I'll be luke warm forever.

I voted for the black guy

2008-11-04T09:17:00.003-05:00

At 8:19 this morning, I cast my ballot for Barack Obama and Joe Biden for President and Vice President, John Kerry for U.S. Senator, and Sonia Chang-Diaz for State Senator. On question 1, which would eliminate the state income tax, I voted no. On question 2, which would decriminalize marijuana, I voted yes. On question 3, which would ban dog racing in MA, I voted yes.

This election was exciting for me in a lot of ways - the first of which being that I got to vote for a candidate that might actually win. But more than that, I was struck by the weight of getting to vote for a black candidate.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother when I was somewhere around 12 years old. At the time, we lived in an extremely white, blue collar, middle class town - a spot of red in an otherwise blue state. My parents generally sided with Democrats back then, but were still a bit more conservative than they are today.

I don't know what had brought it up. Maybe I was covering presidents in school or something, but my mom and I got to talking about the chances of seeing a woman president or a black president. She maintained, first and foremost, that we'd see a black president first. Her logic was that black people always got things before women did. I scoffed at her logic, although I have to admit now that it is historically correct in most cases. But after talking for a while, we agreed that I would probably see one if not both of these events in my lifetime, and so might she. We guessed, after rigorous consideration of our expert knowledge, that it would be likely we'd see a black president when I was about 40 years old.

Now, here we are on election day. I'm 26. I've seen the world change. In my short life, I've seen landlines give way to cell phones, postcards die at the hands of e-mail, newspapers shrink as the internet exploded, and the middle class disintegrate into a much larger pool of poverty. I've also seen my own generation come of age. I've seen us disregarded as an unreliable voter bloc (remember the Dean campaign!), and I've seen us confront race head on, without violence for maybe the first time ever in this country.

Displaced from the confines and fear of the civil rights movement, my generation was able to be curious. We were able to ask black people questions about race, and question ourselves about why we felt the way did. Long past were the initially heady days of desegregation programs when I went to school. Black kids had been bussed to my school, but it was commonplace by then. Some of them became my friends, but most of them simply served as an example that black kids from Dorchester aren't terribly different from white kids from Foxboro.

So today, more than a decade ahead of schedule, I am excited to see these changes turn into something tangible. After decades of Democrats and Republicans tearing down the legacy of the New Deal, a historic candidate has come to deliver us from the madness of pure form capitalism.

As Reagan once said, "it's morning in America."

I'm a terrible blogger

2008-11-02T20:12:00.003-05:00

Things have been rather busy. My apologies, you 3 readers.

My friend and old roommate, Janell has been in town for the past week. That has led to a reasonable amount of drinking and bro-ing down.

Comedy shows have been hit or miss lately, although I feel like improv is going well, my last show to the contrary.

2 days until the election. My head is exploding in anticipation.

I'll be back soon. Promise.

Amanda Wilding is still the best person I've ever met.

Recapping a long week

2008-10-18T20:56:00.002-04:00

We'll start with Sunday, and work our way through.

Sunday was, as usual, a work day. Two tours downtown - one from Boston Common to Faneuil Hall, another of the North End. I finished up and got changed, and had to fly over to the theater for rehearsal. I felt pretty shaky at the rehearsal, which was bad, because our opening show was coming up on Wednesday.

Monday night, improv class was cancelled due to the holiday, so I co-hosted with Rob at the Milky Way. The turnout was really quite bad, but I had a really excellent time. The poor turnout combined with my comfort performing with Rob really allowed him and me to take some risks on stage, and were able to make some funny stuff happen. Afterward, we went to Food Wall with a few other comics and got really terrible chinese food before Rob and I went and caught last call at another bar closer to our houses.

Tuesday was the Rob Crean Show. As per usual, things were disorganized and felt absolutely terrible before the show started. Once it did start, though, it was great. We had a lot of guests on the bill, and a really good band. The turnout was not capacity, but it was certainly good. I also delivered Wilding Wilding World better than I think I ever had before.

It was another late night though.

Wednesday was my first performance at Improv Asylum in house teams. It was sort of sloppy, but all in all, I thought we did really well. I like my teammates a lot and have a lot of faith in our ability to get a good show together through this run. The audience was light that night (presidential debate), but the people there were great.

Post-show included more drinking and staying up too late.

Thursday began with a call from my mom, who reported that tickets to game 5 of the ALCS were reasonably priced, and that I might consider buying some. I did. While most of the park left during the 7th inning stretch, I stuck around to see one of the best comebacks in baseball history. I got home at about 1am, and couldn't sleep because I was so excited about it.

Friday was another installment of The Gas at Great Scott. It was also poorly attended, but again Rob and I had a pretty good time. Afterward, I went to Improv Asylum to catch the mainstage show at 10pm. I met Britany, one of my teammates, there. The mainstage brought their A game, and Brit and I opted to stick around for the midnight show, which was a competition between college teams from Salem State and Suffolk. Suffolk won. They were excellent.

At about 1:30 or 2, we got out of there and Brit caught a cab. I had my bike, but was hungry and went for a slice of pizza. There I met a group of folks who were pretty drunk but fun enough. I palled around with them (much like Obama does with terrorists, I hear), until about 2:30 before heading home.

Today, I did nothing. Erin went to Portland to see some friends, and I woke up late, had breakfast at noon, and went for a walk to the Arboretum, where I read about 1/3 of a book I will complain about in great detail here once I'm finished.

Tomorrow, the packed schedule starts again. For now though, I'm going to watch the Red Sox.

I know, I know. You've missed me terribly.

2008-10-06T23:16:00.002-04:00

I've been busy. Stuff is happening.

A lot of shows going on: most of them could be better attended. But something is better than nothing.

I've also gone back and forth with some rather melodramatic fits of depression lately, because that's just the kind of guy I am.

House Team rehearsals started on Sunday. I couldn't have felt less good. Or at least I thought I couldn't. Then I went to improv class tonight. Now that was some bad performing on my part.

I really would love to write a sketch, but I've got nothing right now. Maybe it's writer's block. Or maybe it's that I don't actually have creative ideas at all.

All of my new bits are bad. They get polite giggles at best.

I think this is the part where a lot of people give up.

I can't say I don't think about it on the nightly...

It's hard to keep going when you feel terrible at something. Part of me thinks I keep trying to write and perform things so that I'll have an excuse for being a financial failure. "He's a creative-type" seems to get a lot of people off the hook for being otherwise useless.

I miss being young and excited about everything. Things feel very redundant right about now. Watching teen flicks doesn't help.

Rough night, rough day

2008-09-26T16:04:00.004-04:00

I hadn't been feeling too well through most of the afternoon. Upon returning home, I sent out the necessary emails to cancel a meeting and a stand-up appearance I'd had scheduled. I felt a bit achy and flu-like, and didn't want to make it any worse. Erin got home and we didn't have any food in the house, so I accompanied her to the tavern down the road. She got a veggie burger, while I tried in vein to soldier through a pint of Wachusett Octoberfest.

When I got home, I moved my new desk into my room and proceeded to watch TV for a few hours before retiring to bed. Lying there, Erin and I got to talking about a lot of things. It turned to the subject of my sister, and I started thinking and talking a lot about the possibility of being the last member of my family alive.

Erin nodded off. She had to work early. I didn't. I lay there for about an hour before slipping out, grabbing my shoes and jeans, and walking out the front door. I made a phone call to see when the same tavern's last call was. 12:45. It was 11:03. Plenty of time. Grab a drink. Starting to get hungry. Maybe they still have some food, too.

I was sitting at the one hundred year old bar in minutes. "Wachusett October" I said to the bartender I'd seen a million times from a distance at a nearby table but rarely looked at face to face at the bar. "Kitchen still open?" I asked him.

"We still have pizza."

"I'll have a small cheese."

"You got it."

He put down two coasters in front of me as he got my drink. I picked one up and put it back, which he thanked me for. I sat there staring at my pint glass filled with seasonal. It was a Coors Light glass. Funny I always get shitty beer company glasses when I go out. I'd never drink the stuff.

My fingers touched the top of the glass when I wasn't holding it. I realized I wanted someone to ask what was wrong, but no one did. Not their problem. For the best. Wouldn't want'm to think I'm nuts or something.

I ate five small pieces of pizza along with another pint. The sixth went to the middle-aged guy sitting next to me. He'd declined initially, but relented and devoured accordingly.

I left thirty dollars on the bar and walked out.

Walking toward Boston English, I decided to call a friend. He answered, assuming that my calling at midnight meant it was important. We talked for a few minutes about my anxieties. He was patient and reasonable. Didn't solve the problem. Nobody ever does. I wasn't as frantic though. I let him go to bed.

My dad was getting out of work about then. I gave him a ring.

"Hey - what's up," he answered.

"I think I'm cracking up a little bit."

We talked for about an hour. About Amanda. About loss. Raw deals and shitty hands. He explained that nobody will ever get it - a variation of an already known conclusion. Anyway, it was good to hear someone else struggle with the same things.

He got me laughing after a bit. We talked baseball and ill-informed voters.

I went back upstairs. Slipped back into bed.

Today I woke up a little better. Work was wet and miserable. Cold rain soaked through my colonial coat and right into my chest. At the end of my shift, I went into a Yankee Candle and bought a few candle stands and candles. I stopped to buy some fresh bread near my house, and the bag of candles broke. They went everywhere, but nothing broke.

When I got home, I poured a glass of wine, filled the tub, lit the candles cut some bread and cheese, grabbed the snooty french novel I am reading, and turned Mozart up.

Lying there, I felt relaxed for the first time in a while. Totally comfortable. Totally serene.

My body is warn right now. Cold and depression rattled it a bit. I need to sleep right now. I also need to write. I fight with myself about the order - assume I'll reverse it. My bottle is almost empty.

New video I'm in

2008-09-18T18:11:00.000-04:00

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Make sure to vote!

Made Improv Asylum's house teams

2008-09-12T16:34:00.002-04:00

To my surprise, I received an email from the Improv Asylum Training Center today informing me that I have been picked as a member of this term's house teams. I will thus be taking part in an eight-week run on Wednesday nights from 10-12 at the Asylum's North End Theater.

I can't say I'm not surprised, nor can I deny that I'm thrilled about this. While it's not a paid position, it is a step in the right direction performance-wise, and gives me an opportunity to get stage time and experience in improv theater. Hopefully I'll develop into a better performer than I was at my audition through it. I must say that I feel I lucked out. There weren't a lot of people at the audition, and if the turnout was better, I don't imagine I'd have made the cut. That said, a shot is a shot.

Tonight, I'm co-hosting a new comedy show at Great Scott, called The Gas, with Rob.

Fort Ticonderoga and improv audition

2008-09-11T07:49:00.002-04:00

This past weekend I ventured out to upstate New York with some co-workers and enjoyed a day at Fort Ticonderoga. It was my second visit there, and I watched a rather long battle reenactment on the park's green, followed by an hour or two of getting lost in the fort itself. It was an excellent "museum," with all kinds of artifacts from the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. The setup of the museum was great for putting everything in context as far as timelines are concerned, and the armory had a replica musket which visitors could pick up to give an impression of how heavy the things soldiers had to carry were.

I think my favorite part was the small exhibit on the Black Watch. Black Watch is a Scottish military unit known for its bravery, kind of like American Rangers or Green Berets. There's a story about them in the museum in the French and Indian war, where they get shot up pretty badly, but continue to press on as long as their bagpipe player keeps playing. He continues to play even after his leg is blown off. Pretty epic.

After Fort Ti, we went back to my boss' farm, where I spent the next few days swimming in a swimming hole, reading, and editing video for The Rob Crean Show on Tuesday. The videos included a video introduction for the band, Earth People, who played that night, and three fake ads for Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, who now sponsor the show. They all came out alright but not great, and the show totally sold out. We had a few norms in the crowd, too. They came up to us afterwards and told us how much they enjoyed it. It was nice to win over some older folks.

Monday night, after returning from Fort Ti, I had an audition at Improv Asylum for House Teams. While it wasn't the strongest audition I could have done, it was certainly better than last time. My one regret was not mixing up my character work more. The characters were different, but they didn't have a ton of range. We find out today whether we made it. As per usual, I am not holding my breath.

This Friday, Anderson starts our new stand-up comedy show, The Gas, which is before the Pill at Great Scott in Allston. We met with the guy who manages Great Scott the other day, and he seemed pretty enthusiastic about the show. Hope it goes okay.

Last night's Laugh Track

2008-09-03T10:22:00.003-04:00

Laugh Track, the comedy show that I host, started up again last night. Moving about a block downtown from The Point to Durty Nelly's we now have a smaller room and, I have to say, a more accommodating staff.

I was worried upon arrival, as the bartender downstairs told me there was no event scheduled that day, and I noticed my flyers (which I'm pretty sure I gave the same bartender) never made it to the windows. I had to name drop the managers' names before he'd even check for me. When I was let upstairs, I set up pretty easily and went back out to flyer.

Before the show started, I met the guy who runs the bar. He was very helpful, and put out a sandwich board outside to promote the show. That got some more folks in the doors. Our bartender was also a really nice guy.

I handed out a few hundred handbills over the course of the day. All of them amounted to nobody showing up, although some of the flyers on the polls led to some new faces. There was also a reasonable amount of acquaintances at the show who brought friends, and everybody seemed to have a good time.

We definitely lost some money. That said, it's the first show at a new venue. It's going to take some time to build it up. I feel good about next month.

Tonight we have a special laugh track at the Milky Way in Jamaica Plain. Last month's was pretty good - JP folks tend to come to events in their community. Time to go to work now.

Amy Goodman arrested

2008-09-02T08:37:00.002-04:00

This is not some hack activist, this is Amy Goodman, a world renowned journalist, being arrested at the RNC in MN. What the hell is wrong with these people?

I really wish I was skinnier

2008-08-25T16:13:00.002-04:00

And now I fall into trivial body image garbage.

People in my family are built like barrels. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's actually a pretty good thing. We're stocky, rough looking people. The problem is that, in addition to that, we also tend to be overweight.

I'm the first to laugh when fat people say things like "I'm big boned." I am big boned. I've also been skinny. I'm still wider than other people when I'm skinny, but there's a difference between being big boned and being overweight. I am currently both of those things.

Being overweight makes me really self-conscious. I can't fit into most of my shirts right now, and at this point, I've already lost 10 lbs. from my maximum weight. the problem is that I still have about 25 to drop, and disciplining myself is incredibly difficult. It's not that I don't exercise. I ride a bike 10 miles a day and walk at least 2 for work alone - not to mention the extra few miles I walk just because I like to and the occasional push-up/crunch sessions I do. It's just that I have kind of a slow metabolism (everyone in my family does, my sister even had hypothyroid) and I eat a pretty good amount. I eat a lot of garbage and have trouble saying no when food is in front of me. I also drink a decent amount of beer.

I'm working on cutting down. It's not like I'm obese mind you. I'm just a little on the large size. And I liked being smaller. I was more agile and more confident.

I guess I should go watch Oprah or something.

Street theatre and performance

2008-08-24T21:11:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I watched an old French film called "Children of Paradise." The plot followed a woman called Garance and her indecisive loves for four men, including Baptiste, an exquisite pantomime actor.

Baptiste made me realize something I'd never realized before. I realized that mime isn't bad, it's just that I've been subjected to nothing but bad mimes. This coupled with my general thinking about street theater and performance, which I've been thinking a lot about lately.

The reality is that most street theater is pretty bad, as are most street performers. Boston is full of bearded clowns making balloon animals to pay for meth, and with few exceptions (such as the Breeze Team breakdancing troupe and Faneuil Hall's excellent Australian ensemble), there is little to write home about. This has been the case in many places I've visited, and I think it's terribly unfortunate for American society that we have to settle for bucket drummers playing the same beats continuously and the same balloon-puppy hats.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but it's something that's on my mind.

What we're willing to do

2008-08-20T17:56:00.002-04:00

Since as long as I've been genuinely politically aware, I've been disappointed in my government and disenchanted with my society. I've watched, in my few years on earth, companies and politicians stomp out the little guy and at the same time witnessed just enough fuck-ups take advantage of the little good in society that it becomes difficult to blame the more fortunate for thinking the rest of us are lazy.

Through it all, I've dabbled in this side or that - vaguely sympathetic to the right in my teens and aggressively and argumentatively leftist in my twenties. In the meantime, I've watched the whole nation continue to shift right, all the while allowing the right (Republicans, Fox) manipulate their fears for their laundry list of benefits while the "left" (best called moderates or centrists. I see no genuine "left" in America. Even the Democrats seem with few exceptions to the right of center) flops around like a dying fish on dock. I don't agree with any of these people.

Living this, I've noted that we're willing to do nothing to stop it. For all of the windbag "anarchists" I've met, all the utopian socialists, and all of the fellow travelers, I've seen nobody try to implement real change - revolutionary change. They talk a lot about it in their news letters, but they do nothing.

I know what you're thinking. You've seen the protests, the die-ins, the occasional crust punk getting clubbed by a cop in DC. This is doing nothing. Nonviolence and working within the system is doing nothing. It doesn't work.

MLK gets all the credit for the Civil Rights movement, but everyone forgets that he looked reasonable only because Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, and the Black Panthers made him look reasonable. Everyone is so afraid of government-made and media-propagated straw men that nobody is reminding us of what we should be scared of here.

Let's talk about liberalism really quick

2008-08-16T23:58:00.004-04:00

Tonight I went to a "party": A celebration and fundraiser for South End Press, from whom I've purchased many books. I even bought one tonight. I am a fan of the publisher's works generally, and I figured I'd have a pretty good time at the event.

What I found party-wise is not terribly relevant. What I saw politically got me thinking.

In the second floor of the building the party was in, cleverly called "Leftist Lounge," I grabbed a beer and danced like an idiot to pop music with some friends. While doing so, I paid attention to videos that were projected on the wall behind the DJs. One segment, showing footage of the WTO riots in Seattle, got me to talking with a friend about what liberal/progressive values and people are about.

I am a leftist at heart. I believe in a regulated socialist democracy where business is allowed to function, but not to oppress the people working in it. It seemed strange to me that I tended to dislike those with similar political views. The WTO riots articulated why that is. They have become a rallying point for the real American left. I should clarify too, that when I say "left," I'm not talking about Democrats, but actual leftists, who believe in things like socialism, communism, anarchism, etc.

The WTO riots were a little victory - an incident that barely stalled the gears of the system almost 10 years ago, and the nonviolent liberals of the American left are still rallying around it as the moment of defiance against globalized oppression and American Empire. It's all they have, and most who cheer it weren't even there.

I am not detracting from the victories of the Battle of Seattle, so much as I'm attacking how it's romanticized. The notes taken on the event by Naomi Klein, a prominent and excellent leftist writer, show in her book Fences and Windows what it really is - an important but minimal victory that will never again be repeated.

This video was accompanied today by a flyer I saw about a socialist meeting in my neighborhood. I can't remember what the exact header was on the flyer, but it was something about ending poverty and war - like becoming socialist would do that. Socialism is an excellent system, but it's not a cure-all. It will not lead to a utopia. It is a step. To sell it as a cure-all is misleading and detrimental to the idea itself. It is a common problem within the left that needs to stop.

A friend who was with me tonight stated it well tonight: "change comes within the system, and if you intend to work out of the system, your intention had better be to destroy the system." I agree with the sentiment, and would add to it that if you're not working in the system, you're not being terribly pragmatic. If that is your objective, then fine, but you'd better have a gun. Talking about liberation won't do much.

Very busy, kind of funny

2008-08-16T09:50:00.003-04:00

So, to recap the past nine or so days:

I have finished level 3 of improv classes at Improv Asylum. I feel pretty good about that, and have a break lasting about a month until next semester starts. I'm thankful for that, as I was feeling a bit of burnout.

The Rob Crean Show was last Tuesday. It went off pretty well, even if the turnout left a little something to be desired. The comics were excellent, and a video segment that I spent a lot of time on with Luke and Katie was really well received. Next month our musical guest is Earth People Orchestra, who I think are the most interesting band in Boston right now.

Wednesday night, Rob locked up a deal with Great Scott in Allston to book shows there every Friday from 7:30-9:30, which is really great for us. The door deal we got will enable us to pay the comedians pretty well.

Thursday I did a sold out show at the Comedy Studio. I don't feel like it was my best performance, but it went well, and a lot of friends came out, including some from St. Louis.

Last night I set up for the British Encampment of Boston Common for the Freedom Trail Foundation's fiftieth anniversary. It looks to be a pretty cool event, and will include a skirmish later today.

I also finished a short story, which I'll be submitting soon.

Return to writing

2008-08-07T09:26:00.002-04:00

I haven't written anything but blogs and jokes since I left the newspaper back in February.

No articles, no stories, no essays. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. I kept starting things, but I'd get through a paragraph or two before just giving up.

That finally changed this week. I wrote a draft of a short story in three days. It's about 3000 words, and needs to be expanded and cleaned up a bit, but it's not bad, and it's certainly a start.

I'm trying to give myself at least an hour a day to write. It's not much, but if I can pound about about 5000 words a week doing it, it will certainly be better than what I've done with the bulk of 2008. My focus right now is definitely on fiction, but I do have some non-fiction article subjects that I'd like to explore.

I think the key is abandoning the dedication to trying to write something "marketable." The paper, as well as trying to freelance write for a living beforehand, taught me in not-so-vague terms that when you're writing to eat, you're going to have to write a lot of garbage that you don't care about. Sometimes even stuff that makes you hate yourself.

I don't want to do that anymore. I suppose I'm more drawn to writing as a vocation than as a career. My interests today include making enough money to live, and otherwise spending my time leisurely: writing, reading, traveling, sitting on beaches, making people laugh. I want to divest myself from rat-racing. I don't care about houses or cars or collections. It's a sweet, sweet life.

I noticed in the new story that the basis of it (that of a dead relative, and what the family discovers about him) is rather dark and depressing. Most of the stories I write are depressing. I write that way because that's the kind of world that lives in my head. Oddly, I'm not depressed. I'm happy. I have a great life. Sadly, I make my life great in part by narrating the tragedies of the players of my imaginary universe.

They serve as varied views of morality for me. My characters tend to be involved in rather low activities, whether it be selling drugs, killing their children, or making cracks about the recently deceased. Through them though, I am trying to find their good. My interest is to find how they're right. Because they are all right for themselves. They do what they think is best. And even if what they do is horrible, they think it's right. If they catch themselves, they try to correct. Often, it makes them worse, but I ultimately want to explore the rightness of people - that we all make decisions for a reason.

All night barbeque and a relaxing Saturday

2008-08-02T20:25:00.000-04:00

Erin and I had some folks over last night for an all vegetarian cookout. The turnout was good, comprising almost entirely of people I really wanted to see, the conversation was good (although at times heated), the food was excellent, and festivities lasted until four in the morning.

Among the most pleasant features of the evening was the arrival of Aaron, who brought with him my friend Dickie, who'd been living in Hawaii up until a few days ago, and has since moved back for graduate school.

My comic friend PJ came by as well, and gave me some spirited argument on a wide range of issues - some trivial and others pressing. That kind of thing doesn't happen enough, and I enjoyed the clash quite a bit.

Erin had a pretty hilarious dance party with the ladies and our friend Shakir. There was a bit too much Madonna for my taste.

All in all, the food is gone, and so are a few cases of locally brewed beer. All is right in the world.

I woke up close to noon today to a delicious egg and pepper jack sandwich, and then Erin and Jay accompanied me for coffee and pastries.

For the balance of the day, Erin and I read and lounged, watching a pretty spectacular thunderstorm, which rudely interrupted our initial plans of seeing a "field trip show," where a number of friends and acquaintances, equipped with musical instruments, were intending to play music in different locations of Franklin Park. Another day, perhaps.

I'm happiest to say that I wrote about 1200 words of a short story today, based on some experiences I had with my dad and our sneaking suspicions about my late grandfather. I am gunning for 5000-6000 words total for it, and think I'll be able to finish up a first draft by the end of the week. I'll have to keep my discipline up, though.

As for now, it's more Hemingway and a glass of cabernet.

Why doesn't America ask for help from Americans?

2008-07-28T16:28:00.001-04:00

Through both world wars, the United States government asked its people to give a little. It raised taxes, asked that we not eat certain things that the boys overseas needed, that we reuse certain things, that we buy war bonds. Our government expected that the people would invest in their country.

And we didn't disappoint. Across the nation, victory gardens sprung up, people conserved wheat and meat while dining on corn products, scrap metal was saved and recycled, and missing a week of war bond purchases was socially as faux pas as conspicuous consumption.

We don't do stuff like that anymore.

The reason isn't that Americans aren't willing to sacrifice. History shoots holes through that theory. While it's true that we're consuming at a rate previously unheard of, it is also true that we haven't been asked not to by any genuine authority. This country was already spiraling into an international war when the vast majority of SUVs were sold, and while it has been understood and vocalized by the government since at least the Carter administration that oil will run out eventually, we as a nation decided that building and buying vehicles that consumed more, not less, was the way to go.

It is the responsibility of the government to step in in situations like this. It was obvious that SUVs would contribute greatly to oil depletion and would increase oil demand, and yet politicians encouraged American car manufacturers to make such vehicles. Now, it is not the government but the market that is forcing the hand of car companies and American people to conserve. We had to hit a crisis - a crisis that could have been avoided had the government done the logical thing and asked Americans to cut down oil consumption years ago.

But they didn't. What's more troubling is that they still haven't. Politicians on both sides of the isle have been going ballistic all year about the continuously rising cost of oil. They've talked to foreign oil producers, attempted to introduce bills to suspend gas taxes and encourage drilling in protected areas, and they've insisted on testing new methods for creating energy. All of this does little or nothing in the short term, and through it, they have failed to ask for our help. It would be simple for the President of the United States to address the nation tonight and ask us to conserve gasoline. Government encouragement to carpool, use public transportation, and make your next car purchase fuel efficient seem to me no-brainers. But they don't.

War bonds are another logical move. Federal savings bonds, just like the ones my grandparents bought when I was born, are available at most major banks and online. Their yield is low, but a bit higher than the interest rate of my savings account. If everyone in America bought Federal savings bonds, the reserve wouldn't have to borrow nearly as much money from China, and as a result, they wouldn't need to pay as high an interest rate back, nor would they have to ship those interest rates overseas.

The above points, coupled with the export of production jobs in military contracts being overseas, leads to an obvious deficit, and a detachment of the American people from the defining events of our time. But they're happy to be detached, because the government told them that everything would be okay if they'd just go shopping.

A nice weekend

2008-07-28T16:24:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of my friend and co-worker Elissa, I had the privilege of spending the weekend in a beautiful waterfront house on Nantucket Sound. It was lovely out for the majority of the time, and I got a good amount of swimming, canoeing on Bumps River, walking on the beach, and acquiring sunburns done.

My father joined Erin and me there on Sunday, and I got to spend the day with him. He seems well, and is dropping many pounds even as he gains many years. Good for him.

While it was an incredibly relaxing weekend, I have nothing to report about it, as relaxing was pretty much all I did.

Sometimes I love this neighborhood

2008-07-20T14:14:00.000-04:00

I was sitting at my kitchenette table with Erin just now, drinking a Cape Codder and talking about something trivial when a sound came through our window. It was a neighbor playing their piano.

This isn't the first time that this happened. We hear the faceless neighbor play unfamiliar, lovely songs every few days. It is equally pleasant every time - it adds to the "ambiance" of the surroundings. The old house, the green space, the trees brushing our windows, the other neighbors talking on their porches and yelling across the street to other neighbors, the police pulling up next to drivers not to issue them a ticket but instead just to say hello.

I walk to Canto 6 most mornings. It is a bread shop a block from my apartment. The staff is friendly and local, the coffee is fair trade, and the pastries are still warm. The customers are equally so, greeting you on entrance and commenting on this cake or that pastry you should try.

I don't know most of my neighbors names, but I know almost all of their faces. The other inhabitants of my building and I have a good (I'd say "neighborly") relationship. There's a crabby old lady next door that everyone knows is crabby. There's an insurgent Democratic candidate down the road who is going toe-to-toe with a multidecade incumbent.

The park is steps from my door. A horticultural gem filled with trees, little league fields, ethnic festivals, and dog walkers.

A few blocks away are a few dozen restaurants. I try some of them every once and again, but it's hard to abandon old favorites.

And through it all is the most worn-down of subway lines; the one that many neighboring communities still fear due to decades-old infractions, but one that the locals know is the fastest trip to downtown that this city's public transportation has to offer. On the nice days, there's a bike path that runs next to it for the duration.

Sometimes, doing nothing for the day in wonderful.

Rich people in poor neighborhoods: an in depth analysis

2008-07-20T13:06:00.000-04:00

By Matt Wilding, who is totally qualified

You were most likely in your twenties, but you've probably seen this before: You've just stumbled out of your condemnable, overpriced apartment in one of a leading American city's "up and coming neighborhoods," sifting through your pants and coat pockets for enough money to buy a cup of coffee that is also increasing rapidly in cost. You walk into your local coffee shop to find one or two people in front of you in line, and so hey, no problem. You'll get your cup of joe and still have enough time to read a few articles in the free paper before you have to clock in to your job. That should be the case anyway, but unfortunately, the person standing in front of you is part of the upper-middle class "liberal" batshit intelligencia fold that is quickly overflowing every last scrape of affordable urban neighborhoods, and subsequently making each and every one of us working stiffs blood boil so hot that our coffee seems iced.

Statistics vary, but the gentrification timeline seems to go as follows: reports start to circulate among young people that are new to the city that X neighborhood is still kind of slummy, but it's not as dangerous as people say. I have a theory that real estate developers plant the rumor in college campuses using an intricate network of school newspapers and off-campus housing councillors, but to be fair, I cannot provide hard data to substantiate the claim, so I won't elaborate. At any case, the myth is submitted into the under 30 ethos, and suddenly X neighborhood is inundated with college kids and gay people. This role used to be filled by Jewish immigrants, but they don't do that kind of thing anymore.

And then they wait.

This is when Dr. Evil and Co. sit back and watch the show. Over the course of five or so years, a covert study is conducted, and at the end of a seemingly arbitrary but nonetheless premeditated timeframe, the number crunching begins. Crimes such as rape, murder, robbery and recycling bin theft are assigned numerical values, and those values are multiplied by the volume of occurrences and then added together using the standard order of operations. If the resulting number is less than 273, it is within an acceptable threshold of crime to begin further development and condo-ization.

It is then that a neighborhood is redefined.

It could go in any number of ways. For instance, in the city that I live in, one formerly prominent poor immigrant neighborhood has been transformed into an urban Mecca for wealthy white couples with a hankering for mediocre cannoli, while the city's oldest industrial area has become a posh development for high end gay men and out of work actors with trust funds (often the same people).

My neighborhood, which being part of the collegiate guard of the previous half of the decade, I am partially responsible for, has gone from a tossed salad of rivaling minority groups to one populated almost entirely by white, upper-middle class single women that drive Toyota Prius' with "Bush's Last Day" stickers on the back.

I hate these women for so many reasons. I hate their bipolar tendency to romanticize Che Guevara while railing against war for any reason. I hate that the adore living in such a "cultural neighborhood," yet they call the police if the Dominican Parade doesn't end immediately at 10 PM on a Saturday in August. I hate how they immediately diminish their opinion's validity when they criticize Dopey-in-Chief because of their insistence to compare him with Hitler, when the latter was responsible for the deaths of millions of people via gas chambers and the former is guilty of little more than electrocuting a few pairs of undeserving Arab testicles. What gets me the most, though? What really gets my goad is their relentless dedication to pronounce French words with a French accent.

This leads me back to the beginning of my story. Standing behind a woman in a coffee shop that was carrying her baby in a hemp sack in front of her, I was initially appalled by her indecisiveness. Even if she didn't care about my time of the coffee attendant's sanity, surely this woman had somewhere else to be that would require her to order her caffeinated drink and breakfast pastries at a reasonable pace. But alas, she stood there, as glassy faced as an animatronic doll in the "Welcome to Our World" ride, slowly and methodically ordering her goods. "I'd like... well... let's see. I'll have a chocolate latté, aaaaaaannnnnnnnndddddd... cranberry oat bar. Keep me regular. And... could I have a croissant?"

There it was. "Croissant." A foreign word, much like taco, that has been adopted into the American-English language, where it has been beaten into our pronunciation standard in order to assure that we don't sound like jackasses when we order our food. And yet here is this thoroughly American woman that speaks about as much French as is required to finish up at Wellesley, totally breaking her usual inflection for the sole purpose of paying homage to a culture that hasn't been revered by any society since the 18th century.

These people not roll the "r" sound in "burrito." There is no extra Deutsch in their vernacular when they order their sausage of choice. So why do they insist on talking like they fell out of the Renaissance every morning at nine?

Results are inconclusive, but quite frankly, I don't have it in me to complete the research.

Laugh Track ad! Be there!

2008-07-20T13:04:00.000-04:00

See you at the show

Movies, comedy, stuff

2008-07-19T13:01:00.000-04:00

I will open by saying that I saw The Dark Knight last night. It was excellent. Ledger's Joker was spectacular, and confirms my long-held belief that the Joker is one of the best villains ever to come out of American literature.

I also saw Hellboy II. Not mind blowing, but worth watching once. Some of the monsters definitely looked like they were leftovers from Pan's Labyrinth.

I did the Rob Crean Show on Tuesday. It could have gone better. We were a bit disjointed, and the crowd just wasn't there. On Wednesday I did the comedy studio. I feel like I went over really well, but as I broke my DVD copy of my set on the way home, I won't know for sure until I get back and get another copy.

Yesterday I listened to a podcast by conservative pundit Jay Severin. I used to listen to him here and again a few years ago, and was always enthralled by his pseudo-libertarian positions on things, and while I never agreed with him, I appreciated his thinking. Apparently not so anymore. He really came off as incredibly racist. Speaking on Barack Obama and the New Yorker cover depicting him as a Moslem, Severin said that the claims that Obama is a "secret" Moslem have never been disproven, and his insistence of denying the claims is suspicious. Really? Denying widely spread rumors that have never had an inkling of evidence to support them beyond a man's race and uncommon name are grounds to suspect a secret religious preference that flies in the face of a man's actual practice? That's like saying of Jay Severin, "I know he's a womanizer and talks about teenaged girls like their animals, but I'm pretty sure that he's a closet homosexual." If I say it into the expanse of the internet, it doesn't really matter and doesn't even merit a response, but if it gets forwarded to everyone who might listen to Jay Severin (many of them homophobic) and the media picks up on it and starts talking about it, it would make sense to respond clearly.

It should also be noted that Obama has only addressed the false accusations of his "secret Moslem" status when asked, which doesn't seem unreasonable.

In addition, Severin followed his commentary on statistics that allegedly "showed the difference between black and white Americans." He noted that when asked if there was any preferential treatment between blacks and whites in America, a vast majority of whites responded that races were on an generally equal playing field, while a majority of blacks responded that whites have an advantage in getting ahead. His response: "which one is right?" He suggested that it was obviously white people, and implied a defeatist attitude in the black community. While a defeatist attitude may be present in the black community (on this point, Severin is ironically in line with Barack Obama), to suggest that the people that economically are on top (it's hard to dispute that whites in America are generally paid more than blacks. There are a million studies to back this up) is outright silly. Of course the people on top aren't going to see their advantages. That's the nature of advantage. But that a vast majority of a minority group that is statistically proven to be getting paid less, arrested more, and in higher risk situations from birth, is perhaps a beacon that America would do well to pay attention to.

He closed this out with a stat that was kind of baffling. 37% of white Americans have a "negative image" of Barack Obama. I noticed he failed to mention the percentage of those with a positive image of him, which I'd guess by the previous number to be somewhere in the area of half. He called this voter bloc the only hope for America - those who are willing to question this maybe-secret-Moslem's intentions and instead elect John McCain.

That only 37% of white Americans have a negative view of the first ever major minority candidate in the shadow of a heated primary and in the midst of an already ugly general election is amazing. It's amazing that the whole country doesn't hate him. The Moslem fear card alone certainly accounts for some of that percentage, not to mention the racism in many parts of the country that Severin apparently doesn't know exists anymore. I'd also like to know (Severin didn't mention it) what John McCain's unfavorable rating among white voters is. I'd bet it's similar.

Alright, done being angry about this. Got it out. Hope Americans come to their senses.

Cook-out time!

I've been busy, I'm sure you missed me.

2008-07-10T16:35:00.000-04:00

4th of July weekend was quite fun. I went to Maine with some friends and camped at a place called Vacationland in a little town called Harrison. The owner of the grounds was an insufferable bitch and you couldn't fish from the dock, but we had fun in spite of her.

It struck me that the lakes region of Maine is almost entirely privately owned. It seems unfair to me that the lake shores are all in the hands of wealthy people, lumber companies, and camp grounds and vacation homes, as it seems rather exclusionary of the population of generally poor Mainers in the area. Even the national park on one of the lakes that we went to and swam in cost $4.50 a person. While that isn't a lot of money, it surely adds up - especially when you're paying current oil prices and making close to minimum wage as so many people in the lakes region of Maine do.

We also saw one of the worst fireworks in the history of July 4th celebrations. It was about 10 minutes long in total, and consisted of nine-and-a-half minutes of one explosion at a time, followed by about 20 seconds of "finale," followed by a brief pause, and ending with one other firework that the people responsible seemed to have forgotten about. On the plus side, we did enjoy an excellent view of the lake the works were over thanks to our total disregard for a wealthy mansion owner's property boundaries.

Erin and I stopped in Portland, ME on the way home. I do like that town quite a bit. it's got really nice views of the ocean and all kinds of old New England architecture that I love. Add to it a glut of independent businesses and quite a few quality breweries, and you have a town that resembles ideal. That said, the job market there isn't great, and it's not near anything. Otherwise, I'd move there in a second.

This week has been mostly full of working and reading. I'm still trying to get through "The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson," which is interesting but for the most part very dry. I also took a reading break for comics, finally getting through the X-Men "Messiah CompleX" storyline and Walking Dead vol. 8. The latter was a really great chapter in what must be the best horror comic run ever, while Messiah CompleX was certainly better than I expected.

I also caught some movies this week. While in Maine, we went to a drive-in and saw Hancock and Zohan. Hancock was a pretty solid superhero movie. Will Smith and Jason Bateman were both spot-on, and the film had a decent amount of twists and turns - all of which Erin totally called... As usual.

Zohan I have almost nothing good to say about. The premise, that of an Israeli special forces guy that wants to come to America and leave the struggle with Palestine, only to find it continuing between the two ethnic groups in New York City. This concept could probably have been supported in a three-to-five minute comedy sketch. It did not work well in a two-hour movie, and honestly felt pretty racist about half the time.

On Tuesday night, Erin and I saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I honestly expected this to be a lot better than it was. It wasn't bad, but between Hellboy being a consistently awesome comic and del Toro being a consistently awesome director, I suppose I assumed the movie would be better than the first. I was mistaken. It's pretty much on par.

This weekend, I'm going to upstate New York with some coworkers to hang out on a farm, drink too much, and hopefully write something. Good luck, me.

I hung my head, I hung my head.

2008-07-02T19:15:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I just lose it. I just cry. I cry and cry and cry.

Sometimes it's a song; other times it's a passage in a book, or a movie, or just the way somebody says something.

I'm always alone when I crack. It's dignity or pride or something less that keeps me from other people. Sometimes I stare at her picture and let it get fuzzy through the tears and snot. Other times, I take it off the wall and cling to it, like if I squeeze the frame hard enough, she'll come out of it.

It grabs me out of nowhere a lot. Overwhelming grief. Loss. No connection left. We have nothing anymore. I lost some of me. I lost a lot.

I think I'm depressed. I don't think I've ever been depressed before. Not genuinely; truly; fully; miserably.

A lot of problems that seemed titan historically are now incredibly trivial. They're all still real, just less relevant in the big picture. This is big. This is loss. Loss lingers.

I like to think she's watching me sometimes. My mother thinks so. I don't buy it when I'm thinking clearly, but sometimes I like to. I'd like to think she knows I'm here; knows I'm crying; knows I wanted to be a good brother. I could have been better at it. I was pretty good, though.

I always had the better presence. She was always the better one.

Conflicts are heavy

2008-06-30T17:42:00.000-04:00

I will preface this with a clear statement: I know I am saying nothing new.

There has been a quote kicking around for the past few years that has been riling people up.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-Ben Franklin

It is a go-to phrase in modern America. We repeat it again and again as we (and by "we," I mean the modern American Left) go on this tangent or that against the Patriot Act, the war, or the telecoms spying on us.

I've never been one for cliches, and this quote lived up to my disinterest. I empathized with the sentiment, but was generally disinterested in going to Franklin for help on the issue. I felt he'd actually assessed the situation of modern America perfectly in a different statement he'd made, where he suggested that the American republic would last about 200 years before we got complacent and gave in to tyranny.

With all of this comfortably living in my brain, I began reading Bernard Bailyn's The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, biographical account of Massachusetts Bay's controversial 18th century governor. The book is not a great read. It is written by a scholar and is for scholars. It has a perspective that is attached (as the author notes) to the era in which it's written (the 1960's). But one point caught my attention immediately - Hutchinson's consistent deference to government over rights of people. On more than one occasion in the book, it is pointed out that Hutchinson supported the idea of giving up what is considered natural rights to protect ourselves. And while what we are protecting ourselves from (tyranny, foreigners, anarchy, terrorism) is variable, the sentiment is well taken. The good of the whole is more important than the freedoms - or "rights" - of the individual.

I do not share this view. That said, the idea of natural rights has become compelling to me. The phraseology of it particularly. "Natural rights." Rights that are inherent. Ones that we're born with. It occurs to me that they don't exist. We are not born with natural rights. Rather, we are born with natural dispositions, and those dispositions lean toward tyranny, toward dominance, toward oppression. The annals of human history verify this point. There are limited moments in history where the people are properly protected as a whole. Even in America, minorities have been defended and protected on a limited basis and for a limited time. Women suffer equally in the American system. And to get there, we had to try, and try really hard. There was nothing natural about it.

The natural order of things then seems to be oppression and dominance. It seems to be tyranny. Looking at man in his most natural states, those of a long time ago, we see inequality. In fact, inequality is so inherent that we have to make rules and later legislation to prohibit it. It is not within our nature to share power, but to grab it.

It is this realization that has led me to a more staunch support for liberalism and socialism within societies. The "good" that we do, the equality that we strive for and the freedom we tote is a decided practice. We have made a choice to give people the right to choose who leads them, to give an education, to bare arms, to speak freely, etc.

It is thus our responsibility as thinking people to extend what is best for all people to all people. It is our responsibility to ensure free and available health care to everyone not just in America, but everywhere. It is also our responsibility to stand up to tyrants - in our homeland and abroad - and ensure that they do not turn back the clock on intellectual and liberal steps that favor the people. This does not always mean war, but it sometimes does.

This thread of thought challenges my opposition to the war in Iraq. It does not change it, but it challenges it. The bottom line is that we were lied to about why we went to Iraq. If the reason given was to liberate a people dominated by tyranny, and we immediately turned the society over to an elected government, only to supply support but not to infuse our interests with theirs, I'd be supportive (and in a different kind of minority than it's current supporters). That isn't how things went.

That said, What has been happening in Africa sounds the alarms. The sham election in Nigeria, the tragedies in Darfur (which mirror those of Rwanda), and the complacency of African leaders, even in the allegedly "democratic" regime in South Africa, causes pause. What are we doing? What do we stand for? What am I doing and what do I stand for?

I have no answers. All I have is a serious series of questions to consider and no fundamental philosophy to fall back on. As John Maynard Keynes once said, "when the facts change, I change my mind." While the facts haven't change, I've become aware of more of them. Ultimately there are two options on this international question: to be the world police (with or without the UN) or to be isolationist. Neither seems a good move, but at the same time picking and choosing seems inconsistent and opens up very realistic accusations of bias for this or that reason. What is a society to do? This is the garbage that keeps me up nights.

Vodka induced tangent.

2008-06-29T18:14:00.000-04:00

There are certain things that we lose in our lives. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's sadly the reality of being a person. Our losses vary. Some of us lose everything always. Some lose minimally - a dollar on a walk through the park or an hour on a layover flight.

We lose. Perpetually we lose. I have lost a lot. More than many and less than many.

I have lost my confidence most of the time. It was my strongest attribute, and I'm not sure what happened to it. My stubborn sureness that guided me through everything, even when I was wrong, which was often.

I've lost my assurances that living in America, I'd be alright. I feel like I've worked pretty hard, and I see no benefit from the work. It might have been the "useless" degree I pursued in lieu of math, science, or business. Maybe I don't work hard enough. Maybe I wrongly assume that my time is valuable when it's depreciating rapidly in the global market. Maybe I'm falling through the cracks. Maybe.

I've lost my belief in family. We as a unit are flawed and hateful. I am a central figure in this misfire of heritage. There is a rally cry for family in big moments - marriage, anniversary, holiday, death. We come together and we (I) put on our game faces. Look around the table. How many of these people do you really give a shit about? The answer is not all, thus the flaw is present. This is not to undersell their efforts. It is a recognition of human flaw. We fall on each other. Is this a great human virtue, or is it human fear and loneliness catching up with us? Who will be the last one standing? The lineage of my family ends right here - just follow the fingertips.

I've lost my sister. My partner. My teammate. The only surefire support system. If she says I'm wrong, the conversation is over. I am wrong. Nothing fills this. No marriage, no family, no volume of fragmented sentences. I'll be alone some day. I'll have nobody except maybe a wife and a haunting entourage.

As a book my mother made me read in middle school reminds me, I am the cheese.

Need I remind you, "the cheese stands alone."

Let's talk about me

2008-06-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

I haven't written much about myself in the past few weeks, so I figure it's about time I do that again.

I've been working a lot. The Freedom Trail has been busy, and I've honestly been having a blast. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed my work, and I'm happy to do it again. That said, I haven't written much lately, in either comedy or anything else. I hope to pick up on that a bit.

I had some comedy shows last week. I wasn't great at them, and they were all on nights that the NBA Championship games were going on, so nobody really saw me fail. Win - win.

I finished The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand last week. It was a really interesting history of 19th century American ideology and philosophy. I'm trying to stay on top of reading more lately, and am working on the framework for graduate school again. I'm planning to go back in September of 2009. I'm actually pretty excited about it. I miss the grind of having to think and being challenged by the ideas and interpretations of others, and I look forward to going toe to toe with some bright folks in the coming years.

Right now I'm reading What Happened by Scott McClellan, former White House Press Secretary. While revealing at times of the Bush Administration's unwillingness to admit mistakes, it also has a bit heavy a biographical component, which wasn't really what I signed up for. Regardless, it's current events and it's relevant to "the discussion," so I'll get through it. I'm almost done anyway.

I also started something of a porch garden. I've been prepping for it for a bit, but I really got into starting it today. The porch currently has potted on it a decorative tree that was left by a former roommate and is on the verge of death (we're hoping to save it), two different types of tomato plant, a pot with green bean seeds in it (hope they grow. We'll know in two weeks), and some geraniums. More will be coming.

I'd also like to speak briefly to the Scientology post I made a few weeks back. While it is my habit to not directly respond to comments on things I write (this dates back to my newspaper days), I will say that I did read all comments, and not one of them actually addressed my critique in any real or substantial way. I also enjoyed going to the messageboard conversations which threatened my person and hardware, and thank all involved for proving my point.

An extra special note. This blog enjoyed hundreds of visits following the post, whereas it had only had about 70 hits ever prior to the post. So thanks to all the lunatics for bumping me in the google searches. Any publicity is good publicity.

CNN: Michelle Obama looking at likely pundit attacks

2008-06-12T16:19:00.000-04:00

According to a CNN story, there is some discussion in the political arena that Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, may be something of a liability this election cycle, and is almost definitely to be targeted by McCain's allies as a weak link.

This stems mainly from her statement in February, where she suggested that she had not been proud of her country until now, when her husband is being embraced as a national leader. This statement, much like many of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "controversial" comments, seem to me more than a bit misunderstood. Context, I think, is paramount in understanding these people, and the context diffuses the criticism pretty quickly.

First, let's consider what was actually said by Mrs. Obama: "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." Michelle Obama is 44 years old, which means that she has been an adult since 1982. Since 1982, the United States has lived under Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush as presidents. The Reagan years were certainly less than proud and glorious for the majority of Americans who were on the wrong side of the income gap, and Michelle Obama, a black native of Chicago, IL certainly had a lot to be sickened by in a city which was then experiencing poverty at levels unknown to most Americans. She was also attending school in Princeton, NJ at the time, which outside of its campus walls is hardly a land of equal opportunity.

George H. W. Bush offered little to be proud about, although he can be credited with starting and not finishing what is now the great elephant in the room, the Iraqi conflict.

Bill Clinton's domestic policies offered a bit of hope, but his administration is stained by NAFTA and that whole impeachment thing.

The embarrassments of George Bush II are well documented and unnecessary to go into detail about.

The main point here is that there are plenty of reasons to be indifferent or openly hostile to America as an American, while still working to make it better instead of abandoning it. The idea that we need constant pride in our deeply flawed nation, whether it be blind or otherwise, seems like a children's game of "are you still my best friend." Like Michelle Obama, I love my country, but I'm not terribly proud of its decisions since 1982.

An open letter to Scientology protesters

2008-06-09T20:53:00.001-04:00

I was driving through Downtown Boston with my mother and grandparents this afternoon. while driving up Boylston Street, alongside the Boston Public Gardens, I caught site of something that gave me pause: The statue of Wendell Phillips, one of America's leading abolitionist leaders and arguably one of its greatest trailblazers for tolerance, adorned in a plastic V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask.

This incident led me to truly understand the miseducation and shortsightedness of this ridiculous anti-Scientology campaign.

I am no fan of Scientology. It appears to me that they're little more than a crazy cult propagated by overfunded zealots. Their belief system to me is no more stable than those who look at Star Trek or Lord of the Rings for spiritual guidance. They, like most religions, are deeply flawed self-congratulatory propagandists. But it is, quite simply, their right to be that misled.

The foundation of freedom of speech, and ultimately that of free thinking, is that basis that bad ideas will be weeded out under proper intellectual scrutiny. Questions, more than any banners or demonstrations, are the enemies of junk-thoughts. It is proper inquiry that so greatly discredits Holocaust deniers and religious zealots, while it is open hostility, violence, and mindless opposition that lends it the credibility it so obviously does not deserve.

It is the last of these, mindless opposition, that is the root of the anti-Scientology movement's problem. Invoking the symbol of Guy Fawkes is the initial folly. Guy Fawkes, for those who aren't familiar (who apparently include those who wear his face), was a pro-Catholic activist that, with a cabal of like-minded citizens, plotted to blow up England's Houses of Parliament in 1605 to protest the Anglican government's oppression of those who practiced an unpopular religion. To invoke the face of a man who died defending his faith (he was publicly hanged by the Empire) is an absolutely unforgivable oversight that quite frankly discredits the entire attempt to criticize your opponents.

Add to that oversight your defacement of Wendell Phillips in the park, and you produce an image of futile and childlike hostility that does nothing more than a school boy's protest that he shouldn't have to eat his greens simply because they don't taste good.

I am also no opponent of protest. I have been a part of protests against a wide range of subjects, from the war to various economic policies to the misbehavior of priests. Protesting is a healthy part of an open society. It, like questioning, should be fostered within a society as a necessary part of citizenship. But like questioning, it should be done in an educated way. Blindly lashing out against something, or using symbols for which you don't know the meaning, never leads to anything but oppression and can end in tyranny - by either a minority or a majority. The destruction of any and all ideological enemies comes not from hollow slogans or empty actions, but by informed opposition and expository inquiry. Anything less, and you're just as bad as them.

Happy Birthday Amanda!

2008-06-09T20:48:00.001-04:00

My late sister Amanda was born 28 years ago today.

I miss her terribly. My family donated toys collected at her funeral to Children's Hospital in Boston this morning. The staff was thrilled. Amanda spent many a rough patch at Children's, and the staff there always treated her and my family excellently. I encourage friends to give to the hospital. You can at: this address.

I didn't make House Teams

2008-06-05T14:49:00.000-04:00

I auditioned for House Teams at Improv Asylum on Tuesday, and have just been informed that I didn't make the cut. While I'm not terribly surprised, I am a bit disappointed. I was holding out hope that I might have edged in.

Three members of my class did make it, however, and I'm thrilled to have that many from my class on stage at such a great theatre. Hopefully they'll continue to develop on the team, and will bring that experience to classes.

As for me, I guess I'll just keep plugging away until next semester's auditions.

A day full of questions

2008-06-04T14:50:00.000-04:00

Last night was my first audition for anything in my life - I tried out for Improv Asylum's "House Teams," the lowest level available to get stage time at the theater. My audition was certainly not terrible, but I don't feel it really shined either. I expect I will be rejected, as I am at the lowest level possible to even audition in the training center, but I'll know for sure what the verdict is by tomorrow.

The experience was gratifying in a lot of ways. Others from my class also auditioned, and performed on par with other improvisers from higher levels. Witnessing this reinforced my already established belief that I am training with talented people. I assume at least one of our class will make teams this semester, and I look forward to seeing them on stage, either beside them or from the audience.

I have also been considering the constant question of my adult life - what am I doing with myself? I'm happy to pursue comedy and performance as I am, but am feeling a touch lazy intellectually, and am considering beginning preparations at long last to apply for graduate school. Although it is too late for September of 2008, I think fall of the following year is reasonable.

I am drawn, as usual, to pursuing a higher degree in history. My desire to teach at a college level is still festering around in my head, as are ideas for articles and even a book! All of these would benefit from a more developed education, while preliminary research for even one of them could serve me well as a writing sample.

Personally, I am also a bit at odds. My personality is historically hostile to others, and I generally assess things in a rather negative fashion. I find more and more that this does not serve me well socially or professionally, and I have decided that I need to stop. A genuine streak of competition colors my opinions on everything, and my immediate skepticism of the talent and points of view of those around me is ultimately a form of irrationally elite taste that not only makes me difficult to work with at times, but sheltered from what may be excellent work or groundbreaking artistry due to my initial reaction of "this is garbage."

I have resolved, then, to "turn over a new leaf." I feel that this is a time that, instead of finding shortcomings to criticize, it is about time that I looked for qualities to support. A more positive and respectful treatment of my peers, teachers, and admirers will not only benefit myself and my image, but I think will make my relationships with those same people a much more worthwhile endeavor for them.

My thoughts on the FL and MI delegates

2008-06-01T15:25:00.001-04:00

I watched quite a bit of the DNC meeting yesterday, and have heard the rattling from the Clinton campaign since the end of it. With that in mind, I feel like I need to say something to the staggering three people that actually read this blog about the disputed delegations of Michigan and Florida.

The Clinton campaign is apparently unhappy with the Michigan compromise, which awards her campaign with 69 delegates, and Obama with 59. While initially the Clinton campaign wanted all delegates seated, their main grievance is that she "should have," given the 50% penalty of the state for holding their primary early, been awarded 72 delegates to properly reflect the proportion that voted for her in that state. In addition, Obama they say, should be given no delegates, and those others that are not seated that are not for Clinton should be "undecided," given that they didn't vote for Obama.

There are so many flaws with this argument, the most prominent being that Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot in the state of Michigan. Add to that that Obama and Edwards were the only other candidates that would feasibly be awarded delegates, and that Edwards has since endorsed Obama, and the conversation seems moot. The fact of the matter is that people voted "uncommitted" on a ballot where only Hillary Clinton appeared, and thus in effect voted against Clinton.

But that isn't even really relevant. What is relevant is that the Clinton campaign, like all others, recognized that the Florida and Michigan primaries weren't going to count. As it was announced, the people of those states simply did not vote. They were told that their votes would be as relevant to the presidential contest as the results of American Idol, and thus many didn't come out. Clinton's campaign harps about the "disenfranchisement" of those who cast their votes in MI and FL, but what about the disenfranchisement of those who didn't because they were explicitly told that the primaries were irrelevant, only to have the rules changed after the fact.

The Clinton campaign also continues to discuss this as a voters' rights issue, as if this is an election. It's not. It's a primary. In many states, only registered Democrats are allowed to vote. In most, if nothing else, Republicans are not allowed to vote. It is a party contest. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that we are to treat this as an election - and the same scenario was true. If Florida and Michigan agreed to hold the general election on November 4, 2008 and opted instead to hold their election on October 15, 2008. Would we as a country suddenly be required to honor the election? And if that were so, what would stop other states from having elections whenever they pleased. What would stop us from having the 2012 election in 2009? While this proposal is obviously ludicrous, it is only that way because it is unthinkable to do what is proposed in it.

We are a country of laws, not people. Laws are fundamentally rules. If you break the rules, you can't expect to not be penalized for it.

It's been a while

2008-05-26T13:52:00.000-04:00

I've been busy, sorry.

So I posted my set from The Comedy Studio earlier this month, which I think went well all in all. The feedback I've gotten has been generally positive, with the exception of some complaints that I'm a touch too offensive. It did get me some more slots at the club, though, so I'd say I broke even.

I have a date in June, July, and August at the Studio now, as well as a few shows at McFadden's and the Middle East Corner, and am approaching being booked at least once a week.

In addition, I'm finishing up level 2 at Improv Asylum's training center tonight, which makes me elegible for their "House Teams" program, where I'd get to actually perform on stage on Wednesday nights. I don't think I'll make the cut, but I'm certainly going to audition, just to get a feel for what they're like.

I also went to NYC recently, which was nice in that I got out of Boston. I went to the GE Building, where SNL is filmed. I didn't get to go on the tour because it was sold out, but it was cool to see it anyway.

Work is going well. This weekend (memorial day) has been very profitable, and I'm sweating a little less about money. I still haven't paid my taxes though.

Also, I lost 10 lbs. since March. Hurray.

First show at a comedy club

2008-05-15T22:20:00.002-04:00

I was a bit nervous, but I feel like it went okay.

But see for yourself:

Lots of comedy

2008-05-11T09:14:00.000-04:00

This past week, I went to two really excellent comedy shows.

Thursday night I saw Lewis Black at the Opera House for the recording of "Let Them Eat Cake" on Comedy Central. The room was really incredible, with paintings framed by gold guilded fanciness on every ceiling and patterned cloth lining every wall. Lewis was pretty funny, although not the strongest material he's ever done. The audience was not great, though. A few knuckleheads kept yelling out, particularly in the first 10 minutes, which makes me wonder how they're going to run the special on TV. Without the beginning, it won't make much sense, but with it, the special comes out pretty weak.

I'm sure that someone else has already thought of how this can be handled properly.

Saturday night I went to AltCom, Boston's new alternative comedy festival. Hosted by Myq Kaplan and Micah Sherman, both of whom I've done shows with and totally love, AltCom featured Patton Oswalt, Jim Jeffries, Morgan Murphy and the Walsh Brothers.

The Walsh Brothers opened the show with a bit I've seen too many times to think I'd laugh at ever again. It was a segment about the Fung Wah bus being a disaster. Funny, but as I've said, they've done it a lot.

They added some stuff to it though, including a really funny hair metal song at the end of the set. They win, it was funny.

Morgan Murphy started off not so good, but as she went through her set got much funnier.

Jim Jeffries, an Australian comedian that is apparently huge in Europe, should also be huge here. There was not one thing that came out of his mouth that could ever be uttered in civilized conversation, but then pissing yourself while laughing is also not socially acceptable, but there we were.

Patton Oswalt headlined the show, and did about an hour of almost all new material. It literally hurt to laugh that long. He absolutely destroyed. Particularly funny was his closing bit, an extension to his old KFC Famous Bowls bit.

All in all, two worth while shows, although Black was a little costly for what it was.

As for me, I have two shows this week. Tuesday night, I'm doing the Rob Crean Show with musical guests Disappearer, who I like quite a bit and am looking forward to doing a show with. Wednesday night is my first time working at an actually comedy club. LOOK MA, I MADE IT! Not really, but it is exciting. I"m doing some time at the Comedy Studio in Cambridge.

Also, it's mother's day. Happy mother's day, mother.

Back in Boston

2008-05-03T14:46:00.001-04:00

I have returned from my trek to Florida.

I learned a lot during my trip - predominantly what I learned is this: I hate Florida. People there are incredibly rude, it's incredibly hot, and they somehow managed to make much of it look like Pawtucket with palm trees. That said, it was lovely seeing friends I knew and meeting those I didn't. I am extremely glad to be home.

Now that I'm back though, I am faced with a bunch of adult problems. Among them is that I still haven't filed my taxes. I will be doing so this week, but I don't have the money to pay it off. Add to that the debt I've amassed over the past few years, and I'm looking at about $13,000 in debt, not including student loans.

To remedy this, as well as Erin's impending return to school, I'm thinking I might need to pick up a night job. This makes comedy harder to do, though. Part of it is that I'm spreading myself a bit thin, trying to do stand-up, sketch, and improv classes. As a result of doing all three, I think I've failed to dedicate myself to any of it, and am instead half-assing all of it.

I've been really bad at writing generally lately. I don't commit myself to anything, and really need to get on the ball more. Even if I can produce a solid dose of garbage every day, I'd be happier if I accomplished something.

There's also rumor of my apartment building being foreclosed on, which is problematic for us, because rent is cheap and we really don't want to have to move. We definitely have a slum lord, though. It just sucks that we can't move our rent with us. Add to that a local bar in JP (that I don't really frequent, but certainly do like) being closed down due to an 85% rent increase, and I can't help but be amazed at the state of my city. Here we are in the middle of a massive housing crisis and recession, and yet Boston still manages to jack rents up all over. In addition, oil prices don't get any lower and my wages haven't budged a bit.

It's looking like I'm going to have to get a second job, which will certainly adversely affect doing comedy. But then, I could also stop living like I make $60K a year. That would probably be beneficial to my economic situation. Maybe Carnegie and Franklin had something there when they recommended thrift and savings.

Guess who needs to practice what he preaches and start walking the walk? That's right: This guy.

Bullshit legislation and awesome vacation

2008-04-23T18:22:00.000-04:00

Read this story

Alright, is your head spinning?

A bill has been introduced to the Massachusetts legislature that would prohibit "gang members" from congregating or even talking in public places, such as parks. While on surface, this sounds like an excellent way to cut down on gang activity, it is in reality an open invitation for law enforcement agencies to assault and arrest young minorities.

According to the article, groups which include people known to have connections with gangs will be targeted. But what is a "known affiliation with gang members"? It's pretty broad.

Further, I'm pretty sure that there's a legal document that says that groups of people are allowed to congregate and talk in America any time they want. Pretty sure as well that it's the foundation of our entire government.

Are we as a state serious about this? We're going to hand over to authorities the right to break up any group in public that is suspected of being in a gang? You might as well give them an open invitation to arrest every group of black kids they see.

I have already called my congresswoman and asked her to speak out against this bill, and I recommend everyone else in MA do the same.

On a happier note, I am leaving for vacation for a week tomorrow morning. I'll be in Tampa Bay with my girlfriend, visiting our old roommate and our favorite dog.

Boycotting China

2008-04-19T16:44:00.000-04:00

I've put a great deal of thought into this. I have decided to stop buying products from China entirely.

I have two primary reasons for this, and neither of them have anything to do with sweatshops.

First, the obvious one: China has a terrible human rights record both within their own country and Tibet, which they occupy. I'm not proud of what our country is doing abroad involving human rights, and I think it would be unethical to support governments that are worse than us.

Second, China owns a huge part of the American economy. As is widely understood, American jobs are being sent overseas in huge numbers. These manufacturing jobs are sent to places like China, and American dollars are then sent there in droves so that we can have cheap trinkets.

Not only am I opposed to sending American money out of the country generally and to an authoritarian country generally, but I believe that the US should pull out of NAFTA and all other free trade agreements, which have always been detrimental to the people of poor countries, and are rapidly hurting people here in the States.

So check your tags folks. Try to buy American, but if you can't, at least avoid China at all costs. Usually the cost is only a few bucks anyway.

And seriously, stop fucking shopping at Walmart.

Drunk on a Saturday

2008-04-12T20:48:00.000-04:00

It's only 9, and I've been drunk for hours.

Erin and I discovered a lovely Russian vodka, ironically called Hammer + Sickle, which makes for excellent Cape Codders.

Add to that the excellent spring weather and you have a drinking frenzy.

On top of that comes a bottle of sake, and you're treading on incapacitated.

And I'm still using words like "incapacitated."

Take that, people that say alcohol ruins our intellectual faculties.

I'm happy right now. I've been happy for a few days. I'm learning a lot about myself right now, and it inherently makes me more enthusiastic about life in general when I don't think that mine specifically is a total failure.

I'm also mad about a few things.

I'm pretty pissed off that my sister is dead still. I miss her a lot every day, and get pretty upset when I realize that she'll miss every cookout, every show, every everything. I'm sad that I can't tell her about sake, which she could drink because it's made of rice, and not that god forsaken wheat gluten that she couldn't eat.

I'm mad that people have moved on - just as much for her as for me. I can't even begin to move past how much better a person I was when she was in the room, and I have difficulty understanding how anyone else can, either.

I'm frustrated that I've written nary a word in the past month or so. I'm completely unproductive to the point of being embarrassed about it. That isn't good. I need to improve it.

That said, there's a lot to be happy about.

For how little I'm working at comedy, it's going pretty well. I feel like I'll only get better, particularly if I can focus better and learn how to use commas more sparingly.

I'm reading a lot right now, and that makes me feel a lot better about me. It makes my brain function more regularly, which puts me in a state of mind I'd almost forgotten about and am more comfortable in.

Erin and I are talking a lot. We've always been good, but lately have been great. She's reading more too, and is also much more motivated than usual. I have a lot of trouble with her sometimes because she gives up on things easily, which I have trouble rationalizing. I like to see her intellectually active. It makes me want to work harder too.

I am also waking up and exercising more. I'm kind of a fat kid right now, and I want to remedy that.

Today Erin and I walked to Allandale Farm in Brookline. It was nice to be around nature. We talked about growing stuff on our porch this year. I'm excited about it.

We also talked more about getting a dog. I miss having a dog in the house. I think once we get back from vacation, I'm going to check out the shelters. I like having a companion like that. Dogs make me a lot less lonely in the hours that no one else is around. I presume that that's an incredibly selfish reason to want an animal, but I would guess that they don't know the difference, so what the hell.

Getting older, better looking

2008-04-09T09:36:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I can't say that 25 was a terribly good year for me, so I'm not really sorry to see it go. That said, 26 didn't start off too well either.

I woke up early and went to Fenway to try to catch the home opener against the Tigers. Apparently six hours before the game starts isn't early enough, as I was unable to get tickets the old fashioned way of waiting in line. I tried some of the ticket agencies, and the best I could find was $250 for standing room. That's over 10 times face value! So ultimately I came home and watched what turned out to be an excellent start for Daisuke Matsuzaka.

While watching the game, I tried my red ale, which was done with final fermentation yesterday. It was good, although a little weak, and in the future, it would probably be best to filter a little bit.

In the evening, I was in the Rob Crean Show. It went pretty well all things considered, although there were some pretty big mistakes. Alvin David, as per usual, was hilarious, and was very encouraging.

Improv class also started again on Monday. My level 2 class has predominantly the same people as level 1, although we lost a few and gained two new people, both of whom seemed promising.

I'm getting to really not like birthdays and holidays. I think maybe I'm a late comer on this, but it appears that the older you get, the less fun is possible in traditional formats.

Joke's on me, I guess

2008-04-02T09:29:00.000-04:00

April Fool's Day show at Tuesday Night Laugh Track. I worked on it for months. I had the best line-up I've ever put together, had a ton of new jokes to use for hosting, and advertised like crazy for it.

Problem: The venue was closed.

Seriously? Seriously.

The owner called me midday and told me there might be a problem because they were renovating. I stopped by and found that the "problem" was a total construction project. I tried to get a hold of the owner, but to no avail.

I spent the rest of the day spreading the word through every medium I could think of that there was no show, although I'm sure I missed a decent amount of people, as I put up hundreds of flyers and handed quite a few out as well.

It was pretty embarrassing.

The show had been developing so well, and it was starting to look like it was starting to be looked at as semi-legit, and now this.

So that sucked.

My dad came up and hung out. That was cool. We had dinner and then he came back to my house and we listened to records, because apparently it's the 1970's. He gave me some old Red Sox pins and a really cool old book from the 1940s about the team. Can't wait to get to the chapter where they talk about how great a man Tom Yawkey is. It was very cool.

In other news, The New York Times' David Brooks sounds exactly like James Woods.

That is all.

Long nights, hard times, everything that makes you feel tired

2008-03-28T00:43:00.001-04:00

It's almost 1 am. I just got home. It's an early night.

I had comedy shows Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and last night I also went to a show at the Comedy Studio before going to an open mic at All Asia.

The good news is that I feel like the hard work paid off at refining some of my material. I also picked up a spot in May at the Studio from the club's owner, Rick Jenkins, who might also be one of the friendliest guys I've met in comedy yet.

As for now, though, I'm exhausted and I'm going to bed.

Shoot me in the face

2008-03-25T19:18:00.000-04:00

I am wiped the fuck out.

Last night was my triumphant return to the stage at McFadden's Vault downtown. I tried a whole lot of material. Most of it wasn't funny at all. The audience was attentive, but hard to win over and I failed miserably at that objective. I need to write more material. Even if I do a whole set's worth of new stuff and only one bit is salvageable, it's worth it, but I don't think I got any keepers last night.

I'm trying to work more regularly. I'm doing some time at the Middle East Corner tonight, I'm stopping into an open mic I've never done before at All Asia on Wednesday, after I go by the Comedy Studio to see about getting my first time slot at a legit club. Thursday I have an Anderson meeting, so no stand-up, Friday I'm spending with Erin to ensure that she doesn't kill me, and Saturday Rob and I are going to Worcester to do a show at 3G's Comedy Showcase.

Next week on Monday, I'm going to try to go over to Sally O'Brien's to get some time at Myq Kaplan's show, and then maybe snag a spot at the Green Dragon. Tuesday I'm hosting Laugh Track at the Point.

I've been having a lot of trouble with Amanda's death lately. I feel like most people are moving forward and I'm just starting to really deal with it, and that's really shitty. Easter was kind of a bummer for me, because hanging out with Amanda was what made holidays what they were - like we reverted back to being kids, stuck in a room full of adults and going back and forth with each other just to get through the awkwardness of family. Man... Every time I write about it I get upset.

I have a lot of self-doubt going on right now. I feel like I'm way out of my league sometimes. Everything seems really disjointed, and I have no idea where to go or what to do. I guess that's part of the package, though. Nobody signs up for this kind of life for the guaranteed money and stability.

Still, it's weird out here.

Exit: no stage

2008-03-17T16:28:00.000-04:00

My last improv class is tonight for level 1. I'm pretty excited to be through the first level, but at the same time disappointed that I'm done with this group. It appears a number of people from my class won't be returning, leading to suspicion that sections A and B will be merged. While that's fine, I'm pretty sad to see some of them go. I think we were all learning to work together well. I figure that it will be good to learn to work with others though, so I guess it's win/win.

I'm trying to catch up on like 10 months of comic book reading right now. There are literally piles of back issues of Spider-man, X-Men, and the Avengers around my bed. I've been better about staying on top of smaller comics, like DMZ and Fables, but I'm behind there, too.

I've been reading a lot of magazines, mostly news, to try to find more material for stand-up and the news segment of The Rob Crean Show. I was pleased to see that on last week's episode of Saturday Night Live, the Weekend Update topics were pretty much spot-on with the subjects we had used the Tuesday before in Wilding Wilding World. Unfortunately for us, I can't say the same about the actual jokes. Ours were quick laughs at best, and face down on the floor at worst, whereas Seth Myers and Amy Poehler were stellar with every punchline. They really nailed their points along with their jokes. But I am pretty new at this, and it is their job, so I guess it's not so bad.

Ever since I went back to my old job doing walking tours, I've been slacking a bit on comedy. I'd intended on working less hours and being a writing machine, but it hasn't really worked out that way. I think I'm still getting used to the free time transition, but it's been a few weeks now, so I really need to get on it. I am going to write a sketch today before class and try to write at least one new bit.

For now, though, Iron Man is calling, as is the Boston Globe.

A pretty happy hangover

2008-03-12T08:19:00.000-04:00

Magic: The Party Presents - The Rob Crean Show went very well last night. The turnout was alright, the show was alright, which for a first time in a new format is really all you can ask for.

Movers & Shakers played a very good set, and consisted of two guys I'd known since childhood and two guys I'd known from other bands when I was playing, so that was a nice surprise.

Now I'm up on 5 hours of sleep, contemplating why that is, if I'm working today, and if anything I'm typing is even vaguely readable.

Today is a brewing day. More on that later.

It's been a while

2008-03-10T17:21:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the absence, to all three or so of you that read this thing.

I knew it was time to post again, because my mom started complaining that she didn't know what I was up to.

So here's what I've been up to: Comedy and beer. Roughly in that order. Since the last post, I did a few shows, at both of which I went over pretty well. I did one set at Kennedy's Midtown, which had not one person in it that had ever seen me before, and I got some big laughs there. Some of my more touchy bits got some frowns, but eh. They're old people.

At Laugh Track, we had a near disaster. Terrible turnout, except that one comic, a new guy that I'm in an improv class with, drew like 30 people, so we had a decent crowd that tipped the bartender well and laughed a lot. It's been awesome doing sets in front of people I don't usually work. I can refine good bits instead of having to constantly write new sets.

I'm working a lot on which direction I want to go, style-wise. My friend, Don was telling me yesterday that it seems like I'm two people on stage. One of them is awkward and delivers easy laugh one-liners, while the other is a very angry social commentarian who oft offends, but gets some truth telling in with the laughs. I'm feeling more and more like I'm more inclined to work with the latter character. The former is a much easier persona, but it doesn't really accomplish anything, and between my improv classes, the books on the history of comedy and the comics I've always been attracted to, it seems to me that comedy should say something. This isn't a chuckle factory so much as it's a statement with laughs included. I hope it is, anyway. Maybe I'm just a clown. I don't really know.

I've also been working with Anderson, a sketch group I recently joined, on a live variety show called "Magic: The Party presents - The Rob Crean Show." I'm primarily doing a news segment, which is sort of cliche, but is also my element, and I'm happy to do it. Going to comedy meetings, much like going to improv classes, has been a really good experience for me development-wise. It's good to work with other people, and let ideas bounce around. It seems really obvious, but the actual practice of it is immensely beneficial to the creative process.

I'm also getting more and more into homebrewing. Don and I made a batch of brown ale that came out pretty well for a first try a few weeks ago. We finally got to drink it, and it resembled Newcastle quite a bit. A bit more flavor, and a lighter consistency. We started a Robust Porter kit yesterday, but it boiled over a bit, so I'm worried that it will lose some quality due to hop loss, but we shall see.

I'm also doing Freedom Trail tours again. They're going pretty well, and it's interesting to see how comedy stuff is seeping into it and what I'm taking away from it and into other performance work I do.

Coming up: Magic: The Party, an ale to be determined, comedy booking, registering for level 2 improv classes, and a vacation to Florida.

Freelancing for a living

2008-02-29T10:21:00.000-05:00

I left my steady job at a newspaper yesterday. Now it's 10:22 AM. I woke up not too long ago and stumbled into that kitchen in my bathrobe and attempted to make the remnants of a pound of coffee beans into a whole cup of actual coffee.

One egg over easy and 2 end pieces of toast later, and it's time for work. I'm a bit backlogged, but I've got all day.

I can't say I'm being terribly responsible right now, but I'm trying to feel out what works for me life-wise. I'm definitely stuck in Boston for at least two more years, so I figure I can continue working to develop an "I can work from anywhere" cache of contacts, so that way, when I finally can leave, I won't be totally dry.

In other news, I went to a stand-up show at the MFA last night. It was called "Tearing the Veil of Maya," and was hosted by Michael Showalter. The first comic, whose name was Greg-something, was not terribly memorable, but also not memorably terrible. The next guy was a character comic, and I didn't catch his name, but be played a cab driver from Somerville. He was amusing, but I felt that the act got tired by the end. Jon Benjamin was excellent, and there was some very funny banter between him and Michael Showalter about whether or not they were friends. He also made a short film about gay marriage where he went and interviewed people about it in inappropriate places, like during the opening credits of the newest Harry Potter movie. Pretty funny.

Eugene Mirman was definitely the highlight of the night. He did a bit over 30 minutes, I think, of mostly great bits that I hadn't heard before. He also made a short film where he was at the Oscars, which wasn't as strong.

I was pretty surprised about how poorly Michael Showalter performed. He wasn't like train wreck bad or anything, but he wasn't that good, either. He spent most of his time talking about terrible television that he loves.

Tonight I have a show at Kennedy's Midtown. I hope it goes well. I think a lot of my former co-workers are going.

Saturday I'm going to hang out with Don and make a new batch of beer, and then I'm shooting back to the city to see Louis CK's new CD recording show at Berkelee.

That's that. Work time.

M. Wilding, Busy Bee

2008-02-26T08:48:00.001-05:00

Oh Christ, I've been busy.

Finishing up at the job I'm leaving at the end of the week has been time consuming. I'm doing a daily section that is kind of big without much lead time, and so I'm putting in pretty long days.

Last night I had improv class again. The new teacher is definitely growing on me, and my class, although dwindling in size, is definitely becoming more like a unit. It's encouraging to play group mind games and have them actually work. At one point in class last night, I realized that I had completely forgotten about how stressed out I'd been at work because I was laughing so hard for so long.

Tonight, I am doing my first show as a part of Anderson Comedy Troupe. The show is at the middle east, called "Swayzeoke." In this little jam, you read lines from your favorite Patrick Swayze (sp?) movie off a screen, reenacting the great moments of Roadhouse and Ghost!

Wednesday, I had band practice, but unfortunately that was canceled, so now I'm back to what I was originally scheduled to do - this music/comedy show at Improv Asylum. It certainly sounds interesting. Thursday night I am going to see Michael Showalter with folks from Team Anderson, and on Saturday I have tix to see Louis CK with my friend Javier. Friday I have a stand-up show downtown.

Thursday is also my last day at work. It cannot come fast enough. I really have come to like my co-workers, but I really need to focus on writing and performing.

Time to go to work!

A day off.

2008-02-20T13:43:00.001-05:00

I took today off. I worked President's Day and had one day off in the can. As I'm leaving my job next week, figured I'd use it.

The plan was to wake up early and do some freelance writing. I've done some preliminary work, but haven't put much of a dent in it. I got out of bed at about 8:30. Made breakfast. Two eggs, over easy, and an english muffin. The coffee wasn't very good, so I made more in the french press. Apparently my first meal was destined to cover the majority of Western Europe in one course.

After that, I went online and read some news. Not as much as I'd have liked to, but enough to know that Hillary Clinton is a sad panda and Cubans that fled Cuba don't like Fidel Castro.

Read a little bit. Just started reading a book called "Comedy on the Edge," which is about the big changes in stand-up in the '70's. Peanut butter and crackers and a faux-turkey and cheese sandwich for lunch.

Talked to my folks. They're nice people. I miss them. I also miss my dogs; all of them. I miss my sister most, I think because I'll never see her again.

Went for a walk. Found a pair of boots that were my size. Took'm. Now I have boots. Score.

I really want to write right now, but I don't really feel it. I've got my bottle of Anchor Porter and half a pack of clove-cigarettes at my disposal, which compliment my just-quit-my-job status to solidify my deep intellectual writer/performer persona which has creeped into my image so seamlessly that even I didn't catch on to how full of shit I am. Meanwhile, I absorb endless hours of stand-up records, Broadway musical soundtracks and big band singers, taking it all in like the candy-scented smoke that barely touches my lungs with each inhale-exhale from the misleadingly evil black faux-cigarettes.

I tried to go out and people-watch. Fun fact: wind chill deters viewable people from going outside. I have no idea what I'm doing in this city still. I worry that it's not the place that's dull, but that I'm unwilling to find things of interest. I'm out all the time now and I'm still bored. I've been home before 10 pm only two or three times a week at most lately. Does finding "it" have to be so goddamn tiring? More and more I understand why people opt to work life-sucking jobs and then watch life-sucking television and make life-sucking kids. At least in that scenario there are some guarantees. American Idol will be on.

Unfortunately, I can't make myself like garbage.

Nothing feels new.

Fun week, party night

2008-02-16T19:12:00.000-05:00

Man did I fuck up at work this week. I have two special sections running this wednesday, and I just totally undershot them. Filling them is going to be interesting.

I'm really excited to be going back to freelancing at the end of the month. The fun I've been having this week has really reiterated how much I want to be responsibility free and able to commit to my interests.

I went to Improv Asylum twice this week, and enjoyed both shows. On Wednesday, I saw the Alumni Show, featuring the substitute teacher that I wasn't a huge fan of initially. Seeing him perform made me a lot more open to working with him, as he stood out as a genuine talent in the room. I also went last night and saw the mainstage show. It was really funny, and I'm pleased to be spending time with so many of my classmates. I wonder if students from the other class are coming on other nights, because we haven't seen many of them. It would be great to continue working with these people, and a lot of them are talking about continuing on through the whole program now.

Tonight there's a party at my house. There is quite a bit of wine, and numerous cupcakes.

I am pleased.

Pretty frustrated

2008-02-12T11:49:00.000-05:00

Last night I had improv class, which went pretty well generally. I had some decent (not great) scenes, and two of the guys in the class did a scene about suspenders that is to date the funniest bit I've seen in improv ever. I'm butting heads with one guy in the class a little, but all in all, the class is very supportive. It's a solid group.

Then, at the end of class, our instructor told us that he was not going to be able to continue teaching and that we'd have a new instructor next week. It is week three. Week two we had a substitute. Now week four we'll have a totally different teacher. Three teachers in an eight week program.

Now I understand that our current instructor got a big break (he's making a movie) and that we're the bottom of the improv barrel (level 1), but the class isn't cheap, and I spent a lot more at this place than I would have at the longer-standing but somewhat less recognized non-profit group in Cambridge because I figured that the quality of instructor would be better downtown. While these folks are professionals that are trained in places like Second City in Chicago, they're also much more in demand, which is bad for us as students.

I'm also really nervous about the new teacher. I liked the guy we had a lot, and didn't feel as comfortable with the substitute we had in week two. What if our new instructor doesn't work well with the group? I'm probably worried about nothing, but I really want to get through this whole program, and this is not the best way to start out.

I started a notebook to keep notes of classes and to write down sketch ideas as the come to me. I did find that helpful.

Hope this all goes okay.

I quit my job

2008-02-11T13:15:00.000-05:00

I quit my job today.

I have decided to redirect my energy into being a freelancer and tour guide again. The reasons for this are pretty abundant, but I'll try to give a rundown.

First and foremost, I've found that the office environment isn't for me. The place that I work seems like it must be ideal: the people are nice, the management is pretty lax, the dress is informal. But the idea of being somewhere eight hours a day every day is unappealing to me. I find myself with hours where I'm not working and I can't just work on something I want to work on or read a book I want to read. I feel like I'm wasting my time, and I don't like that.

There are also monetary concerns. I make about the same amount of money, and potentially more, working for myself and for less hours a day. Being freelance again allows me to be more available more of the time, and ultimately that leads to lack of production for anything I want to do to fall on my lap. Right now, I have something to blame. I'd like to write that story, shoot that sketch, work on that bit, etc., but I work semi-long hours, and when I get to the stuff I want to do, I'm tired.

Without that excuse, I find it a lot easier to make myself do things. Those things I want to do, the things I'm interested in become part of my livelihood. I have to do them just to not starve.

I've also joined a comedy troupe and, as mentioned below, started taking improv classes. Comedy is something that I've decided to pursue. I think the reason behind this, and the reason I like being a tour guide so much as well, is that I like writing and performing. Writing allows me to think critically - to play with words, which I enjoy. Performing lets me test what myself and others have written, and tells me whether or not I am executing it well. It's instant gratification. If they like what you're doing, their response will correspond with what you want. If it doesn't you screwed up. Either way, you know in seconds.

I'm taking the plunge. I don't think I'll ever have a "legitimate" job again. I don't think I can. It's just not who I am. My life is a vaudeville show.

Already tired this week

2008-02-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

I had improv class last night. I'd ridden my bike to work earlier in the day, which I hadn't done in almost two months. I'm clearly out of practice, as my legs hurt a lot.

Class was kind of weird. We had a substitute teacher who usually teaches upper levels, apparently, and I can't say I felt as comfortable with him as an instructor as I did with our regular guy. He wasn't unsupportive exactly, but had a really snippy sort of sense of humor. While I like listening to performers like that, it's very hard to learn things from them without being self-conscious.

That said, it was a pretty good class. At one point I was supposed to be a flasher, and I lifted my shirt up, which apparently you shouldn't do in improv. That made me feel kind of stupid. There's also a guy in the class that's really fighting for stage time more than he's trying to work with a group, which can be distracting. He also tells people that they're doing things wrong, which doesn't lend itself to improv learning very well. Hopefully next week I'll feel a bit better.

Tonight I have stand-up at my show. I'm hosting, and would have liked to have written more new material. I've been really bad about that. I'm really tired and stressed. I hope it goes well.

I'm also sort of stressing about work. My sections keep getting killed, and I don't feel terribly necessary here. Just something to think about. I'm also sort of strapped for cash from a build-up of Christmas, birthdays, bills and a roommate that's really behind on their rent.

On the upside, I got a request for a reasonably sized freelance contract for a website. I could definitely use the money, so it's good news.

Boston Magazine and city media

2008-02-02T15:43:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, I picked up an issue of Boston Magazine. It wasn't a magazine that I'd ever considered reading, as generally it appeared pretty vapid and starry-eyed. The issue in question sold me because it had a familiar name on the cover: Joe Keohane. This firebrand writer of Weekly Dig quasi-fame had arguably been the best alt-weekly editor in Boston's living memory, and definitely turned the Dig from a mediocre non-Phoenix tab to a hard-hitting and unique angst-ridden paper that could stand alone in its own right.

So I picked up the issue, and due to Keohane's monthly column, I subscribed. The Dig had been shaky, and I'd never been much of a Phoenix reader, so it appeared that I'd found my new local muckraking fix.

Since then, the teeth have really been baring in Boston Magazine, and the bites have been coming from other ex-Diggers. Former Dig writer Julia Reischel made an appearance last month, and the new issue has a piece by Paul McMorrow, who took up news editing duties following Keohane's departure.

Meanwhile, Weekly Dig seems to be tying up the loose ends of its rebuilding stage. While it's certainly readable again, it still seems to be finding itself. But here I am reading a magazine that I had understood to be entirely about expensive restaurants and awful clothes taking on Billy Bulger and the potential loss of the Boston Herald.

Maybe I'm just getting older, but it appears that Boston Magazine is on the straight road to kick-ass, while a lot of other Boston media is just trying to stay above water. Regardless, it's nice to have something solid to read once a month.

Class was a good experience

2008-01-29T10:56:00.000-05:00

Went to my first improv class last night. I was really self-conscious when I got there, and initially I didn't know who to talk to while I was waiting for class to start, but once things started to get going, it was a lot of fun.

I also met a few people that seem really nice. They were very enthusiastic and some of them intend to finish all six levels of the program, so I might be with them for a while. After class most of us went out for drinks at a bar around the corner. It was a bit cramped, but once everything got settled, it was a nice setting.

I didn't sleep very well last night. I had a lot of coughing fits, and I was honestly lying in bed thinking about improv all night. I really can't wait for the next class. It's nice to go to a class that has a main objective of having fun.

Tonight I'm going to the Anderson Comedy Show with Don. It's a really late show, and I'm really tired, so I don't know how long I'll last. We'll see.

Back to work with me.

Serious week coming

2008-01-28T12:58:00.001-05:00

This weekend was nice. I didn't do a lot, which I like doing more and more lately. Erin and I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art on Saturday, which was sort of anti-climactic. My sister had really liked the Momentum 9 exhibit, but I wasn't that impressed.

This week is fully loaded for me. Tonight I start improv classes at ImprovAsylum. I'm excited about it, but kind of nervous that I won't be any good at it. I guess that's pretty standard when you're trying something new in front of new people. It will certainly be a challenge.

Tomorrow night is the Anderson Show, which I'm going to with Don. Wednesday I have writer's group with some friends, and Thursday I'm going out with Don for his birthday. I don't know what's happening Friday, but I'm sure I have plans, and I will remember them day of or so.

That's it for now, but I imagine I'll write about class when I get home tonight. Wish me luck!

My job is a plague ship

2008-01-22T21:16:00.000-05:00

Half of my department was out at work today. Everyone had the flu. It was better than yesterday, though. Yesterday everyone had the flu and came in anyway. My boss had the idea that we should just put plastic around the entire editorial department like the scientists did in E.T.

Things are kind of stressful there right now, as there have been a lot of special sections in a row. I am also responsible for doing news stories once a week, and I've been really dry on the news front lately. It's kind of getting be down. I just haven't come up with anything lately. I think part of it is that I never see anything anymore, because I'm in an office all day, but obviously that's not a good excuse because there is a reporter staff that does a fine job with it. Hopefully my head will turn around.

I was supposed to do a comedy show last night, but it was cancelled. Nobody involved told me, which was aggravating, and Don came into town from Salem to go, so that wasn't too cool. We had fun anyway, though. He seems like he's starting to get a little better, although he still breaks up a little sometimes, and I noticed how sad he looked when he saw a picture of Amanda on my wall last night.

I think I'm going to go to bed early tonight. I wish I could just sit at home and read all day tomorrow.

Blah weekend

2008-01-19T12:44:00.001-05:00

So I was supposed to have yesterday off. We're not publishing on Monday due to the holiday, and so the business day before is an off day. I went in anyway, because I had to do an interview. I didn't work a full day, but I found it ironic that I was writing an article about how to deal with winter sicknesses and I was recommending things like avoiding stress and calling out of work, and here I was on an off-day, at work and stressed out.

I'm pure genius, really.

I'm doing a show at McFadden's tomorrow, which is a pretty cool club downtown. The show is free, and is held in an old bank vault in the basement, so it's pretty spectacular visually. I'm going to try to do all new stuff, so it will probably be pretty bad, but hey, you don't know unless you try.

This weekend I'm really going to try to rest up so I can get back on top of things. Between Amanda and getting sick, it's been really hard to get my life in order. It's crazy that it's only been a little over a month since she died, because it honestly feels like years ago at this point.

Rob and I are expanding our shows. Now we book/host the 1st Tuesday of the month at the Point Downtown (Laugh Track), the last Tuesday of the month at the Middle East Corner (Anderson Comedy Show), and starting in March, the 2nd Tuesday of the month at O'Briens will alternate every other month between The Rob Crean Show, which will be like a Letterman=style talk show, and SitComLive, which is exactly what it sounds like. We're working on doing a show on the 3rd Tuesday, probably in Jamaica Plain.

I also start my improv classes at ImprovAsylum next Monday. I'm really excited about that. Submersing myself in comedy will, I imagine, make me better at it quicker.

Reading Live From New York still. It's almost 600 pages, and I'm almost done. It's really kept me away from reading anything else for a few weeks, but it's really good, and has taught me a lot about how comedy has progressed in the past three decades. It's insane how many big shows have staff that came out of SNL. Writers went on to work with Letterman, Conan (himself an SNL alum), The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and every other good comedy that's happened in the past thirty years.

I did finish writing a sketch this week. It's about a blind kid that wants to play roller hockey. I have to wait until it dries and gets a bit warmer to shoot it, but I feel pretty good about it. I got another idea at work, too. Hopefully I'll be able to write a draft for it this week.

Also, side note. I know people are actually reading this thing, so thanks. It makes me really happy to know that people care enough about what I'm doing to read my ramblings every few days.

A long week

2008-01-17T08:44:00.001-05:00

Haven't written here in almost a week, so let's recap. Over the weekend, I didn't do a lot. Sunday night, I went to The Comedy Studio in Cambridge with Rob and hung out. I probably drank a little too much and acted a bit too ridiculous. Had a good time though.

Monday morning I woke up with what would apparently be cold/flu symptoms that I have since been dealing with on and off. Monday was the worst, and I ended up going home early. Unfortunate that I did so because I had a news story run the next day, and a picture ran with it that wasn't of the group I had written about. That caused a bit of trouble in the office, and I think my editor has a lot to deal with because of it. I know it's not my fault, but I still feel kind of bad. I also kind of sucked that the first time I got a front page was surrounded by so much controversy.

Yesterday, I had a special section go off without a hook, and then I went to Cambridge to meet up with Don. We ate burgers (veggie for me) at Charlie's Kitchen in Harvard Square, and then went to the Comedy Studio to see Rob Crean perform.

The show was pretty good all in all. There weren't any truly bad comics (no worse than me), and Shane Mauss stopped in to do a set. I like that guy, and he's real funny, so it's pretty much win-win.

Today my throat really hurts and I have crackly voice. I'm not really excited about going to work, but I have tomorrow off, so at least that will be good. I'm kind of behind in my work though, so if I can't really pull it together today, I might have to go in tomorrow anyway.

Feeling the funny

2008-01-11T15:46:00.000-05:00

I'm getting my computer back today, which is good because I'm pretty ready to write. I have a few sketch ideas that I want to play with, and I've been doing a lot of observing people in public doing what they do. It really makes the gears turn, and it's not something I've ever done a lot of. It seems really obvious as an exercise, but I just never did it.

Today was generally a busy day for me at work. I finished the most pressing project, so that's good. Now it's on to managing my time a little better around here. This probably isn't the best way to start.

I really want to be a freelancer again. I miss having control over my time and schedule like I used to. That said, I am certainly looking forward to the health insurance and I am learning a lot.

Last night I went out to dinner with some friends I hadn't seen in a while. It's nice to spend time with old friends and have a continuous dialogue that doesn't get awkward. It's a real sign of who your friends are.

This entry is totally disjointed.

I applied for an internship at a TV comedy job. I'm not terribly hopeful about it, but at least I'm trying to get out there.

As I mentioned in a past entry, I'm reading Live from New York right now. It's a history of Saturday Night Live. I'm having a lot of trouble putting it down, and I find myself getting annoyed when I have to go to sleep or work because I have to stop reading. I'm glad it's so long, because it's a revealing read. It's cool to find out how so many comedy greats got their start. The steps previous to SNL for a lot of them seem so feasible - so doable. Like if you just work hard and hustle, you could definitely break a little ground. That's a promising thing.

Don and I have been talking about publishing Amanda's writing. I think it's a really great idea, and Don found a publishing company that publishes on demand, so there's not any risk aside from the compiling time which isn't a risk at all because it gives me an opportunity to read more of her stuff. I really like most of it, and I'd read the book anyway.

It really sucks that she's not here. I know that sounds ridiculous because of how obvious the sentiment is, but it really bothers me that she'll never get to write the things she was working on and do the things we'd been talking about doing.

I also wish she was here for me - for my successes. It was part of the sibling competition, but it was important for a lot of reasons that she know about my successes, just like it was important for her to let me know about hers. There was nothing vindictive about it. It kept us working and motivated. Praise from Amanda meant a lot because I held her at such high esteem.

It's funny that my love for my sister, which is pretty substantial, is dwarfed in my mind by my respect for her as a thinker. That's what I miss most about her - the absolute confidence that I had an intellectual equal. That isn't to say that I think I'm smarter than everyone I know, so much as that I'm not necessarily sure about them. With Amanda, I knew. It was a level playing field. Our capacities were similar, even if our strengths weren't necessarily the same.

I would have liked for her to be at my stand-up show the other night. I feel like it was one of my stronger performances, and I know she was going to come. She'd actually read most of the set a few days before she died, as I'd emailed it to her. She had liked a lot of it, and there were some that she wanted to hear because she wasn't sure they'd be funny. Most of it worked. She would have been proud of me, I think. Other people's respect for and pride in me is much less fulfilling.

Broken computer

2008-01-08T13:38:00.000-05:00

So my computer crashed last night, and is now making a clicking noise and won't start. This leads me to believe that my hard drive has decided to fail. Spectacular.

I have it under Applecare warranty, but it's still really inconvenient. I have to bring it to the store, and they'll probably have to ship it out to get it fixed. And in the meantime, I can't write at home. After I just set everything up, this is really aggravating to me.

That's all for now. I'm just pissed.

Telling jokes tomorrow night

2008-01-07T20:25:00.000-05:00

Back to stand-up tomorrow night. I haven't told a joke in front of an audience since before Amanda died, and I'm a bit nervous. I had a new set that I was really excited about with a few new bits and some reworked stuff, but now I'm not as confident about it. It's going to be really hard getting up there and trying to make people laugh when I don't find much funny.

That said, I should say that I'm doing better. I get through whole hours without having to feel it, and that helps a lot.

Hope it goes well.

Moving stuff around

2008-01-06T22:35:00.000-05:00

I rearranged my room and some of my apartment today. The most significant part of the new arrangement is that I moved my desk and organized it. I have an extremely small workspace, about twice the width of my laptop, and I really needed to optimize it. I threw out my old, big, shitty speakers and bought some new low-level Bose ones. They sound a lot better. I also bought a USB splitter to connect a DVD burner and a 250 gig hard drive, thus freeing up space on my actual computer for new software. I also threw in a wireless mouse, because it's awesome and I like exploiting bluetooth capabilities whenever possible.

I got my sister's old reference books a few days ago, and combined them with my own reference books to make a reference super-library. It was too big for the minimal space that I had here, so I moved all the reference books to a dedicated shelf in the living room. If I expect I'll need a few for any given project, I can just grab them.

Right above my desk, I hung a picture of Amanda that my mom gave me from pretty recently. It might have even been from two days before she died, I'm not sure. Over it I put a multi-picture frame that she gave me that has pictures of our family and her, but mostly of me. She gave it to me for my 23rd birthday. I remember every picture of me, and it's cool that I specifically remember her at every event.

Most of the pictures are from shows we were both at. She took sick pictures, while I brought sick mosh. One ultimately was more timeless than the other. Another is of me creeping through high, dead grass. It was in Somerville or thereabout. He had gone to Target and then went for a walk on this walkway along a river. She took all kinds of pictures that day. Me running, jumping, all kinds of things. I was a lot skinnier then. The ones in the grass were always her favorites. People always say it looks like I'm duck hunting. The way I'm explaining it, it sounds like I'm a child in them, but I'm at least 22.

The one in the middle is really blurry. It's from when she was just getting into photography. I think she was 16 and I was 14, or maybe we're a year older. I'm pretty sure it's at a playground next to Mansfield high. We had just moved to Mansfield, and took a walk together to get a feel for the area. It was one of those "you and me against the world" days, where both of our parents were in new, unfamiliar relationships that neither of us were particularly big on at the time. We spent a lot of time together that year. It was right before her and Don started dating. She was my goddamn hero that year more than any other. I wanted to be just like her.

So now right over where I work, I have her and some of our really good times looking at me. I'm crying a little writing about it, but I'm really happy to think about it all, honestly. I really don't want to move on. I want it to go back to normal. I can't believe I have to have this hole in me for the rest of my life.

Iowa caucuses

2008-01-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

I made predictions yesterday morning on a message board. They were totally correct. I'm a political savant!

I watched the coverage last night for about five hours, and although I know a lot of people think that caucuses are silly, one thing that the Democratic caucus does that voting doesn't do is allow for second picks to be useful. You can initially back who you want in your gut, and if they don't work out, you can make your vote count afterwards. Run-off voting, which was unceremoniously killed in Massachusetts last year, remedy this problem in an even more democratic fashion.

In other news, I watched public access television for a little bit last night. A friend and I are considering producing a sketch comedy show on it. I think that would be hilarious, and would greatly increase my geek credentials, which are terribly important to me.

Finished my prelude

2008-01-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

The story I started a few weeks ago is at about 1700 words - the prelude of the book. I will start chapter one soon. I feel okay about it.

I felt really shitty today, and started crying on my way home. Writing does make me feel quite a bit better. It's like I'm keeping a record of my life, even when I'm writing about fictional characters that don't have anything to do with me. They're my characters - they live and die inside me.

I don't believe in God, but I wonder if he feels that way. If he thinks of us like a storyline, where he gets to see and feel every part of his characters.

I'm a writer who believes that the author doesn't get to make choices for his characters. I just find them in a world in my head, watch them, and write down what I see and hear. I wonder if that's how Amanda did it. I never got to ask her.

I'm crying a lot right now. I think the clubbing started today. I think I wrote this a while ago, but to me, mourning never gets easier, it just gets different. Initially, you're getting stabbed. For the rest of your life, you get clubbed. This newer, duller absence and hurt is getting to me. I miss my sister so much.

2008 - well, it can't get worse, right?

2008-01-02T12:57:00.001-05:00

New Year's was weird. On the eve, I hung out with Don, and avoided a party. The next day I made breakfast and saw a movie.

I don't like New Year's. It's a silly holiday. There are a lot of expectations about how it needs to be the best day of your year, and you need to party and drink as hard as you can. Well, I'm an adult. I can drink and party any time I want. I don't need a holiday.

Work is slow today. Plenty to do, nothing pressing though. It's really hot. For some reason, I feel incredibly overweight lately. I think I'm going to really start trying to lose all the weight I've gained. I don't fit into a lot of my clothes, and it's making me feel really bad about myself. Problem with that is, when I feel bad, I tend to eat. Apparently I'm a 15 year old girl. Who knew?

I have some reading and writing goals for the new year. I want to sit and read for at least an hour every day. Not much, but it's something. I got up early this morning so that I could. It was nice. I'd also like to write for an hour every day if I can. That's harder because I really need to be alone, and that doesn't happen so much. Bottom line, though. At least 3,000 words a week. Necessary. Good or bad, I need to write them down.

I shot some footage of myself in Franklin Park the other day. I'm working on making a self-portrait. It's artsy and stupid, but I don't care. It's a good way to learn the equipment without wasting anyone else's time filming.

Last year taught me about wasting time. There are a lot of things that I'm embarrassed that I want, so I never talk about them, let alone pursue them. I want to make movies. I want to film them, write them, act in them. I want to do sketch comedy. I want to work for Saturday Night Live some day. I want to be like the comedy legends I looked up to as a child. Most of that I've never said out loud. I thought that actors were annoying and whiny. Not going anywhere. I thought my dreams were stupid, if not unattainable. Now I don't really care if they're stupid, nor do I care if they're possible. I just figure that I should try.

I'm not in a mindset that I'm oh-so-talented. Much the opposite, actually. I'm pretty sure that I don't know shit about what I'm doing and that there's a steep learning curve, but what else am I doing?

Erin talks a lot about just traveling. Saying fuck it to our jobs and our debts. I like that idea, too. I like any idea that's not limiting right now.

Trying to be the person I want to be

2007-12-30T21:08:00.000-05:00

Today I bought a camcorder. It is a decent entry-level HD camera with a mic input for better sound.

I'm pretty pleased with this purchase, as it's one more step toward working producing some comedy sketches and pursuing that interest. I wish I'd bought it earlier because I imagine that at some time I would have taped my sister, and I would like to have some footage of her talking and moving. Can't win'm all, I guess.

Next stop is writing some new sketches. I have some in the can from a while ago, but I'd like to work on something a bit fresher. I think I'll give resolutions a shot this year and try to produce a new sketch or story every week. In addition to paying off my credit cards, I want that to be this year's goal.

I talked to Don again today, which was good. I feel like our conversations are becoming less jumbled and more human, which is encouraging. He seems like he's moving in the right direction, too. That's particularly encouraging because I know that Amanda would be upset that he was upset, and would want to see him getting back on his feet as soon as possible.

Some conversations lately have prompted me to think about Amanda's personal feelings at the time of her death. She said some things that suggested that she was giving up. I don't blame her, and under the duress of her predicament, I'm sure she blurted out things that, in the long run, probably weren't exactly what she felt.

I'm pretty sure that Amanda would have wanted to live. She loved her life. She just hated her sickness. It was us that made it bearable, and as I learn more about her fiance and their relationship, I am more and more sure that it was him that made it great. She was a happy person, and she had a lot to live for. I don't really buy the whole heaven thing, but if she's in some eternal paradise, I'm confident that there's nothing so great as to distract her from missing all of us, just like we're missing her.

There are a lot of things that I miss about Amanda, but there are also a lot of things that I didn't know that I appreciate and respect. I never thought I could idolize her more than I did when I was 15 years old, but here I am 10 years later, and I don't see a bigger hero in my life. I remember bits of our last conversations here and there, but one of the most prominent things I can recall was a feeling that I was talking too much. Now, I'm sure that's the case. I wish I'd let her talk all night. I wish she could've told me every little moment of her day.

Going through this has made me realize definitively that there has never been a person in my life that I was closer to than Amanda. We didn't spend as much time together in the past few years as either of us would have liked, but that should never be mistaken as having drifted apart. We didn't do that. We were always close. We're still close. She's still my most trusted adviser, and I will look back at her brilliance and interpret it the best I can as I go forward.

More than my life has changed these past few weeks. My being changed, too. I'm a completely different person now. I look at and feel things in a totally different way. I wish I could have gotten this kind of appreciation of things without losing the single greatest person I'd ever had the pleasure to deal with.