Internet Stand-Up | Relationships

Comparatively functional, I'd say.

I apologize in advance to any and all of my friends who'll tell me after this that they're in a healthy relationship.

I have never seen a healthy romantic relationship.

I'm sure I've past one on the street, maybe sat next to one on a bus…. Alright, you've never sat next to a healthy anything on a bus, but maybe somewhere I met one without realizing it. Maybe.

Couple people will be quick to jump in, but someone's always churning out a stomach tumor in a relationship. Somebody settled, somebody's doubtful it was them, somebody's worried they have enough of a drinking problem to be a bad parent but not enough of one to get into a program. Maybe one of them's just an asshole. Maybe one of them secretly doesn't want kids

As an aside, it's worth mentioning that anal sex is a nearly fool-proof method of birth control; no one ever got pregnant fucking an asshole, unless you ask my mother.

When you tweet that last one, add the hashtag "haiyo."

And also "HappyFathersDay."

On Inspiration

You know, one day soon I'm going to have to find a new source of inspiration for my humor, because the schtick of being jobless, penniless, sick and starving, and living with your mom is going to dry up.

I feel like those new days that come after start Monday when I register for benefits. Did you know companies will pay you for being sick? That's incredible.

On the up-side, I'm still going to be living with my mom, so I've got that going for me.

Alright, yeah, I've got red bedsheets, swords, lightsabers, toys, a lava lamp,
and comics, but the lava lamp is in my closet and I would never bring
a girl over without hiding my ABC logo.

On A Certain Point of View

Obi-Wan said it best; it's all dependent on your point of view.

Driving around last night I wound up behind a truck with little blue letters made out of tape stuck along it's rear.

To one side,
"JUST,"

To the other,

"DIVORCED."
We all honked and cheered for this man. At least somebody can laugh at himself.

The photo was shit. I've highlighted the relevant portions for you.

On Death and W.C. Fields

We held my grandfather's funeral today. It was all very tasteful, small, but one glaring irregularity struck me.

The rabbi on hand sounded exactly like Jay Leno doing his W.C. Fields impersonation.

At first I couldn't place it, likely due to the fact that he was speaking Hebrew, but in my own defense I couldn't understand anything he said by rote in English immediately after. So it took a while. When I tried to place the sound-alike I got this:

That would be Mayor Manx from Swat Kats, a show about renegade fighter pilots being deputized into law enforcement for their heroic efforts in building a fighter jet and flying it through the city without clearance shooting at mystical, biological, and technological monstrosities. Oh, also, they're all anthropomorphic cats.

It wasn't exactly smooth sailing trying to Google search who Manx's voice was based on while driving in a funeral procession. Eventually Fields' name popped up in some creative Googling and I forewent the traditional Facepalm of Obviousness for not crashing my car into the hearse or anyone else in front of me.

This rabbi, though? Not nearly as interesting as W.C. Fields. You know what Field's own tombstone reads?

"All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

In the Spirit of Mitch Hedberg

This is actually the worst of Hedberg's three comedy albums. Recorded live, it had a lot of material that was being tested for Hedberg's upcoming HBO special. His other CDs, Strategic Grill Locations and Mitch Altogether are much more polished.


The last week or two have been pretty noteworthy. Instead of Jack Handy, it seems I was channeling the late master of paraprosdokians, Mitch Hedberg.

• Two things I never learned in college were how to properly take Adderall and the Greek alphabet.
  
  
• I thought someone parked a motorcycle in the little crosswalk between some handicapped parking spaces, but it turned out it was just a guy in a wheelchair. I felt bad and hoped he didn't see me staring, but then I realized he was a quadriplegic and couldn't turn his head. I still felt bad, but at least now I knew he couldn't see me staring.
  
  
• Sometimes I like to stick a blueberry or a raisin inside a raspberry and pretend like I'm eating some new kinda fruit. Then I usually ask why I paid so much for some crappy fruit that tastes like two fruits I already had. What the fuck was I thinking?
  
  
• I want to make a line of t-shirts exclusively for wolves. They'll all be black with pictures of my face straining and howling at a full moon.
  
  
• My friend's car broke down today and started leaking some kinda green liquid on the ground. It was the first time I got to say, "Augh! I'm stepping in tranny fluid!" and it wasn't weird. That's a lie. It was completely weird. Just not as weird as the other times I have to say that.
  

On Black Comedy

This will be another of those rants where my point will seem entirely invalid simply because I was unfortunate to enjoy a white-middle-class upbringing. Well screw that. As Binghamton alum Dustin Glick so concisely explained, this is an ad hominem attack of crappy logic.


My point is this:

I hate black comedy that relies on the audience being black to be funny.

To a lesser extent I also hate George Lopez and the few Hispanic comedians who awkwardly try to force diversity into their acts. And anyone from the Blue Collar tours.

But sadly for the black man, who as already suffered so much, he is forced to endure the likes of Martin Lawrence, Tracey Morgan and the train wreck that is the Wayans brothers, forever stigmatizing the differences between the ways white people and black people walk, drive and eventually have unsatisfying sex.

The problem is this: if you take anything that's moderately amusing and change a character's race, it doesn't make it funnier. Dumb people seem to think this is the case, though. Buddy Cop films were great when Danny Glover was just starting to get to old for that shit, because suddenly the black guy was the rational one and the white guy was insane. That was fine. For a couple movies. Like eight later? Not so much. There certainly wasn't a need for three Rush Hour movies. Even one 90-minute session of Chris Tucker is a bit much.

I should differentiate this kind of travesty from worthwhile race-based comedy. Certainly there's something to be said for the hilarity in awkward social interactions. Certainly there are funny aspects unique to African-American culture, and these should be explored. The problem is relying on shared ethnicity for the entirety of a bit's comedic content is dangerous, both as a stereotyping precedent and in gambling your whole stake on only one, low-brow form of joke.

Here's my argument in proof:

Death at a Funeral (2007) was a terrific "black comedy" in the original respect: it is funny but also serious, morbid and thought-provoking. However it was British, so most Americans never saw it and only about 80% of the ones that did understood the sounds coming out of the actors' mouths.

Now, Death at a Funeral (2010) is the exact same movie, except now it was made in America and everyone is black. And when I say it's "the exact same movie" I mean it's the same premise, same dialogue at points, and they even use the exact same dwarf actor in the exact same role. The only difference is that now every character is black and there's a whole bunch of lame nods to them being black. It is not incidental to the plot, it seriously changes much of the story as the cast is comprised of Zooey Saldana (the black "It Girl" since Avatar came out), Martin Lawrence (the skeevy, unscrupulous brother), Tracey Morgan (the possibly retarded black stereotype), Danny Glover (the ornery, old black uncle), and apparently Luke Wilson and James Marsden as the unobtrusive, pasty white characters.

The only saving grace I can see is Chris Rock, a staple of serious but also humorous racial discourse, portraying the protagonist, a more normal character appalled by the hideous behavior of everyone he's related to. Hopefully, this attitude will be reflected and anyone who sees this film will understand this is supposed to carry over into a critique of their behavior in general. (Hint: it will not.)

I can only hope that the zeitgeist forgets this Death at a Funeral as fast as it did the last one, then everyone can go back to listen to Chris Rock talking about the difference between black people and [a word I can't cay but they watch a lot of UPN which incidentally airs reruns of Chris Rock's show which is basically The Black Wonder Years but we won't blame him for that].

Of Stand-Up Routines You Will Never See Me Perform

Surprisingly, the popularity of Knock-Knock jokes has not been adversely affected by the advent of the doorbell.
Knock-knock.
"Who's there?"
"Doorbell repair man!"
"Doorbell repair man who??"
"Really???"

If I were Jesus I'd run the Rapture like a big game of Simon Says. "Come on, everybody get into heaven, now. Let's go.…HOLD UP! Haha, alright, all'a you fuckers gotta go to Hell now. Okay, Pete! Got enough room for the Jews, now. Let 'em on in!"

I just drove in from New York and boy are my arms tired! … Seriously, I think we stopped at every glory hole along the way.…Gas is expensive.

I actually came out here in part to visit a friend of mine. She's here tonight, so if everyone could just turn around and embarrass her right now we call all assure that I'll have absolutely zero chance of scoring with her tonight.

No, actually I have a girlfriend back home who I'm faithful to. She's really pretty … kind of an airhead but she's a real doll.…and by that I mean she's made out of polyvinyl acetate.

I love the look that comes over her face right before I do.

It's always so … surprised…. :O

Do you think cows go people tipping? I don't, but look at bullfights. So maybe.

Sometimes I think that I'm not depressed enough to be emo, and that makes me sad.

So I bought myself some horn-rimmed glasses and a woman's plaid shirt. They say, "I want to write you bad poetry," and "I think Streetlight Manifesto is totally not gay."

Now I'm so cool my pillow flips over to get to the other side of me.… I'm not even sure how that works.

Speaking of being asleep I used to hope that one day I could walk through my own apartment at night and not have to worry about zombies or ninja assassins. Nowadays I just figure if I'm about to be killed Austrian robots from the future will appear and save me. No, I'm not getting too much of an ego.

The zombies I don't worry about much anymore, but it's getting to the point where in my dreams I'm bored with the idea and just start taunting my subconscious. "Oh, a zombie dream? Alright. You never let your guard down? Well how about I zombify your friends and loved ones. Also, you have no guns. Oh, you need a knife? How about tiny Russian throwing knives? And you don't know how to throw those. Well just stab around blindly until you wake up. Then I'll make you dream you're naked in high school again. Fuck you, Dave."

One of my old roommates used to have a life-sized cardboard cutout of Xena he'd place randomly about the house to scare us. I knew her thin, pliable body said, "No," but her screen-printed eyes said, "I know you furiously masturbated to me in the nineties … and that makes me hot."

So yes, I like to fashion myself something of a sex-pert. I'm not accredited or anything; I'm self-taught.

They say most guys look for girls who remind them of their mothers. I'm looking for a short, twisted, argumentative and emotionally distant egotist. I'm looking for a girl like my father.

The last girl I dated was actually a semi-delusional insomniac, which makes me either imaginary or a rapist. I'm not sure which'd actually be worse.

My father once told me, after his third glass of whiskey, "Son, sexual attraction, in any relationship–even a brief one–is directly proportionate to emotional commitment…

… except in this case."

I said, "Wow, Dad! This is the best bar-mitzvah ever!"

"But could you please stop trying to set me up with my cousins? That's just gross."

"I mean they're from New Jersey…."

I like to be the smart one in a relationship, but I'd prefer not to be the pretty one.

I like tiny girls. I'm not that tall a guy, so I like to feel big around women. Having a huge dick just doesn't come up in conversation as often as you'd think.

Beyond that I'm really just looking for a girl who's not afraid to say, "I love you," or "Let's try it up the ass tonight.…Now bend over."

I've dated a big girl, who was very good with her mouth, probably because she was hungry. I've also dated a bulimic girl. She didn't have a gag reflex. I've dated a blond, a brunette and a redhead, a straight girl, a girl who said she was bi in order to attract men's attentions and a girl who really was bi because she was a complete whore with daddy issues. What I'm really saying is I just want to try all 31 Flavors.

Except tuna fish.

I'm actually a little worried about going to the doctor now. He's going to ask me if I'm sexually active and all I can say is, "Well, that depends on how long you take with my prostate exam."

And then I'll cough.

They say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away," but I find letter bombs are just as effective.

For the less extreme of you, the next time he asks you to drop your pants, just start talking dirty to him. If he doesn't immediately ask for a follow-up you're golden.

HAPPY ONE-YEARIVERSARY!

Haha woo! It's been a great run! Regular dick jokes resume tomorrow, but for today, let me indulge my autobio bug.

This blog started as an on-going assignment for a comedy writing class I took, just something to get everyone writing every day. I was the only one to do this. In fact I can guarantee that no more than six or seven of the thirty people in that class ever bothered to even start a blog. Certainly I was the only person to update consistently. Hell, even the illustrious Professor Ryan Vaughan, D.F.A. quit his bloggetries after a few months.

What I'm trying to say is I am way more awesome than the rest of the people I know. One of the few things Vaughan said has stuck with me. It was this:

"When you walk into a room, you have to truly believe you are the funniest person in that room. And it's going to be true. I mean unless you're in a room with me, because I'm obviously funnier than you."

It's that little bit of doublethink, that mind-over-matter that allows people like Dane Cook and from an acting/not-funny parallel Matthew McConaughey to exist and gain success.

Well I find it hard to reconcile this fact of life with my own, skeptic views, especially since self-deprecation is so damned funny, and in my case easy.

I'm funny. I'm probably funnier than all of you. However you can probably beat me up, so you've got that going for you. I'm assuredly funnier than most of the people in the English speaking world, on the sheer basis that I'm smarter than most people but less empathetic. I think there are absolutely some people so stupid that they should have been picked off by lions as the weakest members of the herd were we all special and unique zebras. Natural selection favors the strong, the smart, the quick. Granted, I'd probably fail to ever procreate anyway, thus damning my genetic line of brilliant, snarky omega-male genes. But still, I'm willing to lift weights and get some fitted shirts if it means fewer people marrying humanity's evolutionary potholes.

But I'm getting off point. The problem is I can't prove this. I can't refute the possibility that one of you reading this is funnier than me. Maybe Jason Segel reads this and is just really really shy about contacting me. (Jason, it's okay. I'm here for you if you need anything.) I mean he's probably not, but I just can't prove it.

But what I can prove is that I am funnier in more places than any of you pissants.

The following is a list of the only U.S. states my blog has not been viewed from since I started tracking that in late October:

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Idaho
• New Mexico
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
  
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Wyoming

Now, I'm discounting Alaska because it's mostly empty space, like the inside of an atom or the volume of a spinning propeller. Or your mother's cavernous reproductive organs.

In fact that could be said of all those locations. Except for Rhode Island, which considering its size and the number of hits I have from surrounding states should be discounted anyway, there really aren't any people or things of note in these locations. There's oil we refuse to tap, a big sculpture, potatoes and new Mexicans. These are actually the states Americans joke about as being backwoods hick locales, and the places Frenchmen assume are indicative of all the other places. Boo that, I say.


But I can do better. Here is a list of some more exotic countries that think I am hilarious:

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada (go ahead and discount it, even though somebody there loves me)
  
• Ethiopia
• Finland
• Germany
• India
• Israel
• Japan
• Laos
• Malaysia
• Malta
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Pakistan
• Portugal
• Singapore
• Sri Lanka
• Ukraine
• The United. Arab. Emirates.

That's not even counting the British or the French. The French think anything is funny, from what I can tell. But guys! I have the Jews, the Arabs and the Germans. In fact I seem to be most popular

A) In my home county
B) In Canada/Socialist Europe
C) In Third World nations, mostly Southeast Asia

So hell yeah, me! Go ! Woo! I'm an internationally known blogger!

And somehow I've actually managed to get some real writing done too. Who'd figure?

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed all my ramblings as much as I've enjoyed screaming them into the ether with the brief, futile hope that someone is hearing them and drawing up a multi-book contract at their publishing house.


That all said, I hope you love me. More if you are attractive. And female. Or female-looking; I'm very accepting.

To further this, I have spent many hours deciphering Blogger's machine code and photoshopping images, so now the page will appear all cool and widescreen. Plus, you may have noticed the cool Doggy motif up in the header. Well if you didn't notice it now and then maybe walk your eyes over to the right and check out the super-cool award I've given myself.

You know, for being so funny.

On Barroom Humor

A few nights ago I had the privilege of watching the Yankees win there eight-billionth word series from the comfort of our new favorite dive bar. Quite frankly, we are coopting a bar that has stood for 80-some-odd years and served the likes of Prohibition era boozers and Babe Ruth in his Sunday best. It closed, reopened, and even now that they have a liquor license again there are few customers beyond friends of the owner and bartenders. We are the young people talking the cool old hangout and free drinks away from old alcoholics and brawlers who have grown too old and saggy to properly defend against our youth and indiscriminate indiscrimination.

So allow me to give a brief description of the bar's patrons this particular evening.

There was me. Real threatening, I know. There was Anthony and Dean. There was the bartender, let's call him Tony because I can't remember his name and he was definitively an Italian New Yorker.

Then there was the trifecta of failed comedians. Yes, I spent a night hanging out with doppelgangers of Maria Bamford, a skinny Artie Lange and a slightly whiter Carlos Mencia. Maria had the same demeanor and propensity for self-deprecating wit, minus the cute pink hair she sported recently. Artie was just as obnoxious but less funny than those around him, while his raucous, repetitive laugh went on far longer than it takes you to come to the belief it is mocking and devoid of human empathy, even though he's probably just stalling until the conversation can come back to him through awkward silence. Oh, and then there was Italian-Dominican-Puerto Rican George Lopez, who basically was older and sadder and drunker sitting in the corner not being funny.

It was uncanny, no?

That said, the night was actually quite entertaining, if nothing else heightened by the fact that I've always kind of wanted to bang Maria Bamford, despite her lack of either make-up or self-assurance.

These were the jokes we told that I can remember:

Q: "Where's the one place in New York you can never find a cold beer in October?"
A: Shea Stadium.


So this guy walks into a bar and he hears music but he can't seem to find any speakers. He walks up to the bar and orders a drink and when the bartender brings it over her says the guy, "Hey," he points up, "I can hear music but I don't see speakers anywhere."

The bartender says, "Oh, yeah, I've got a foot-tall midget behind the counter." The guy looks at the bartender and doesn't believe him, but the bartender says, "No, look," and as the guy looks over the bar he sees a tiny man playing a children's piano.

"That's amazing!" the guy says. "Where'd you ever find him?" and the bartender says, "Oh, I got a magic lamp." The guy looks at him like he's crazy but the bartender immediately jumps on it. "Hey," he says, "Did I lie about the midget?" So they guy believes him and asks to see the lamp.

The bartender goes off and is gone for a really long time, but when he comes back he has this little lamp in his hands. The guy takes the lamp and says "I wish for a million bucks!"

He turns around and sees the bar now filled with a bunch of ducks. "What gives?" he says to the barman. "This thing can't hear for crap!"

"I know," says the bartender, "You really think I asked for a twelve-inch pianist?"

wah wah waaaahhh….


Much later I was asked why all the girls love Jesus and was informed it's because he's hung like this (and Horatio spread his arms as wide as if he were being crucified.)

Badum chhh.

Since I was tired of Artie thinking he was funny and being fairly certain he was going to bang Maria that night, I offered up an on-the-spot retort I am now keeping forever:

Q: "Why do all the girls hate Jesus?"
A: "Because it takes him three days to come again."

FUCK YEAH ME. YOU SHOW ARTIE LANGE. WHO CAN'T BE FUNNY WITHOUT NORM MACDONALD NOW? HUH?

On Things That Are Completely Not True

So my girlfriend is kind of an aspiring actress.

She recently did a commercial for a herpes medication. I was a little weirded out by it, but she reminded me that they don't exclusively search for attractive actors who have herpes. Apparently it's just a lot easier to find hot actresses and then give them herpes.

Yeah, I laughed at that too.

I stopped giggling right around the time my girlfriend told me she requested to be paid in free samples.

On Pie

I seriously tried "Pie," "meringue pie" and God help me even "cream pie" before I remember that every hilarious pie is banana cream and then BAM! there was this picture of the perfect pie. (I still would have liked to try the lemon meringue though.)



So I just watched a dude get hit in the face with a cream pie for no reason on television and I'm actually surprised at how badly I feel this voice inside me shouting, "Pie the fuck out of some dude."

"Don't think about who," he whispers, "Don't think about the consequences. Just go out and buy a pie. It's cool. It'll sit. Just take it with you and when you hear some telling a story that's really uninteresting, just do it. It's okay. They won't know what to do. Just fucking pie a bitch in the face and run. Yeah, that's right, you don't even stick around to see what happens. This isn't about that. This is about you and your desperate need to plant a pie in a man's face with all the might residing in you."

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to listen to that voice, but he's been there for such a long time I hadn't even noticed. One day soon I will simple wake up to the voice like it were my own, and every thought will culminate in the burning question 'How can I pie someone in the face with this?'

A few days later I'll probably cruise by a bakery just to look.

Then one day after I'll buy a cupcake. Maybe I'll huck it at a deer near the edge of the woods from my car and speed off.

Then I'll begin plotting the perfect pie. Custard. With just a hint of vanilla to set off the flavors of the filling and the flaky crust. I will bake for days, weeks, finding the perfect touch at every turn.

After that it's only a matter of finding the perfect prey. She will be weak at first. I will plan it meticulously. She will go unnoticed when she goes to the laundromat twice in one week.

I will escalate. There will be more victims. Each will call out to me for different reasons. Sometime I will be called without warning. I will be forced to improvise. A wedding cake with witnesses, yodels at a picnic in the park, a fatty with HoHos. However it goes I will be soppy. Evidence may be left.

Then it is only a matter of time before they find me. I will have to disappear. Curb my lust for pies. Perhaps I will build a soundproof bunker in my basement, stainless steal decor belying the most sophisticated cookware known to man.

I DON'T WANT TO DO IT VOICE NO NOT HER OKAY FINE HER BUT ONLY COCONUT OKAY FINE LEMON MERINGUE CRAP OKAY YOU ARE THE WORST MURDEROUS VOICE EVER.