Nature Abhors An App Date

I'm not sure this blog is creative, but I'm exercising my right to type on this $15 Logitech keyboard. That's what rewrites are for.  I used to GAF so much.  I just don't anymore.  (This is a big problem).

I sleep till noon and wake up, make coffee, and sit up in bed and read or look at my phone with the coffee (still in bed).  I feel like the Gods are punishing me by keeping men away from me.  (it's probably self-inflicted but God(s) is/are so easy to blame.

Other people get up on their day off and crush the gym.  They probably also do things with beings that have evacuated their subterranean private parts, and possibly go shopping. I don't know what people do.  I'm glad nothing ever fell out of my octopus and then ran around (and asked me for things).

Even if I got a book deal right now, I wouldn't care.  Who cares ?  What does it all mean ?  Is this all happening because my body creates less estrogen now ?

I will hopefully be going on an app-date soon.  But most of the guys seem like they suffer from mental illness.  One guy who asked me on a date looks like a gay tennis player from the 70s.  It's so ridiculous.  And then he proceeded to be abusive by text.  I blocked him.  The trying dating thing is just a hapless effort to avoid the stark reality that we all die alone. I re-joined three dating apps that I had previously deleted then uploaded, then deleted again from my phone. (or is it downloaded?)  If you were born under a rock or are just lucky in life and never saw a dating app, what happens is, divorce and a lackluster attitude compel you into some kind of action. You get to the point where you are completely demoralized by the whole universe, you throw your hands in the air and join one of these ludicrous matchmaking asylum "apps" and swipe through the inmates.

You swipe this way and that, and eventually you match with people whose craniums are of whopping proportion, and then you send texts back and forth like you're in middle school.  Some are serious questioners.  Everything is a question.  I don't write much in the profile, such as the fact that I'm an artist, because inevitably, it will provoke yet ANOTHER question, "what kind of art do you do ?" (insert gunshot noise).

I know it's hard to come up with something to talk about, when in fact, you're not talking, you're typing electronically with a stranger.  Young people don't even realize how odd this is because they've been texting since they were in utero. 

I don't particularly enjoy being interrogated by a complete stranger.  I grew up in the third layer from the sun and my art is about your mother's asshole.  Why the immediacy ?  If I tell you what kind of job I have, will that make the world any less likely to incinerate within the next decade by a meteor or an unhinged oligarch ?  Will starving mothers and children in third world countries suddenly be fed ? I don't think so Riddler.  Even if I answer all of your questions, you will still be lame (and probably bald).  We may all be charred embers existing in another dimension after the earth implodes, but by all means.. as we're floating out there in the atmosphere approaching Saturn, please, gift me with another one of your dire, acrimonious motherfucking inquests.

Too many questions is tacky, like a poof with a thin mustache. (reference to previous blog you can get here ).

Atlas/Mustache/Nature Abhors a Twink

If you've never heard Teddy Atlas talk boxing, you should.  He's trained some of the best.  And he's passionate.

I love him.  He is so riveting.  He has the vernacular of an every man, with the wisdom of a sage and the eye of an artist for the fight game. He is to boxing commentary what Liebling was to writing about boxing.

I envy that because I feel so out of touch with what used to light me up.  Too many disappointments either make you work harder or they shut you down.  I did both, in that order.

I complain a lot.  I'm tired.  I resent the fact that my office job wears me down and drives me to drink.  You need time to nurture a creative career.  And as I get older, I don’t have the energy, even if I do have the time.  The problem also, is that I don't have a manager, and I haven't had a boyfriend in a decade. (it's longer than that but who's counting).  I think I need anti-depressants.

I know I am a creative soul and I know I have a lot to say/express.  But all of the disappointments have compounded and made my outlook sour.  After my divorce, I found what felt like a soul mate, but it was stopped in its tracks.  He had a heart attack at forty-four.  And then two years later, my father died.  All this while I’m trying to uphold a circuitous comedy career.

I do attend the pity party often because I just do.  This thin-mustached gay felt compelled and had the lack of taste to point it out to me one evening at a friend's cocktail party in Manhattan.  Everyone was swaying around the piano taking turns singing showtunes.  Someone had asked me why I don’t sing.... I felt a pang of resentment about the size of the Grand Canyon.  I responded, “just what I need, another endeavor that doesn’t go anywhere,” and without missing a beat, moustache blurted out, “bitter party of one.”  OK Mr. lanky twink with your ballsy retort.  First of all, you didn’t sing either, so GFY.  Second, you admonished me and a friend for catching up in the kitchen (he said, “um, the party’s out here”) like a strict housemaster in a reformatory school.  Um, who deputized you to be the kitchen traffic-controller. Third, go back to the South.  But then I thought, he’s probably talking about himself.  Most people are harboring self-loathing, unproductive thoughts, while others don’t even try to follow their passion outside of the 9-5.

Maybe his snark covers up the fact that he’s always a side piece and never the main dish.  He looks like a muppet with his glasses and big nose.  That, and he probably hasn't ever landed an audition.  I digress.  I am bitter, but I don’t need a bisexual lamp post to tell me in front of a whole room full of people.

It Ruins the Cocktail Party

There were some audience members at my show tonight that had been at an open mike earlier in the evening.  My advice to them was to quit now.  The audience laughed at the abruptness, thinking I was being coy, but I meant it. 

I assume people think it is glamorous to do standup.  The first thing I always get asked is, "how do you get up there?"  They get it wrong.  We love to perform.  We're broken people.  That might be the first indication of why we get up there.

The hard part is literally everything else. Trying to win over bookers, trying to make enough money, driving to Rochester for $200, for example, and then it gets deeper the longer you are in.  You begin to feel a psychic tear in the fabric of the universe if you are not on a sitcom.  Only a select few get the silver chalice and the rest of us hate those few.  We smile while the resentment poisons our soul.  THAT is the beginning of why it's hard.  And a sitcom isn’t the holy grail necessarily, but it kind of is.

It is probably not widely known that Phyllis Diller was a concert pianist.  She had given a show for the queen of England that was comprised of a 20- minute set of standup and a 20-minute set of playing a piano concerto.  When asked which was the more difficult of the two, she stated that it was the standup because when people watch the piano performance, they think, "wow, I could never do that." 

Somehow people secretly think that they would make a good comedian.  Generally some people deem themselves as pretty clever.  Comedy does not come from wit, it comes from pain.  These dabblers in writing and performing standup probably got a taste for the rush of performing, but may not be aware of just how slanted the business is, or how nobody calls you back.  Nor are they aware of how judgy it all is.  Which brings me to gender.

Women in comedy is a whole other issue.  The things I've heard many comics (male) state about female comics would surprise you.  The Golden Girls are funny because they are no longer viewed as sexual objects.  This paradox has got to be God's sense of humor.  Or it represents the small mindedness of people.

I insist that my friends never tell anyone that I do standup if we are among other people, because it, as I explain to said friends, ruins the cocktail party.  What happens is that people can't stop asking you questions once they hear that this is your career.  Any working comedian on the planet will concur that what follows is the Spanish Inquisition, and it's always the same questions.  Almost in the same order. 

how do you get up there (and) what got you started? (compete for first place)

where do you perform?

do you have an agent?

what's your comedy about?

do you have writers?

I'm all, "woh, man.  I'm just trying to have a glass of wine at this New Jersey backyard shindig."  (you’re killing my buzz bruh).

Then they get defensive, "oh well, ya, I mean, I'm just so curious.  I have a curious mind is all.  So ..."  (and then that is followed by more questions).

The need at this point for a sedative is powerful.  You want to talk about show business?  I can't think of anything that I would like to do less.  People who are so fascinated don't know about the history of having an act.  Sometimes after a show, comics will share amazingly funny stories.  Numerous late evenings I have hung out in an empty showroom well after the show had finished, listening to older comics telling the funniest stories.  Woody Allen depicted this tableau in his masterpiece Broadway Danny Rose. The average person is not aware specifically of vaudeville or the history of the solo performer.   A magician isn't performing supernatural metaphysical procedures.  It's called misdirection.  It could be said that these question-riddled curious people have no manners, or at best are uncultured.  There is no other creative endeavor that creates such an annoying response.

What got you started in the mandolin?" 

"Do you have an agent for your gardening?"

"Where do you do your glass-blowing?"

"Do you write your oboe pieces?"

I suppose the fascination with standup is that people's biggest fear is being embarrassed, hence that thing about public speaking.  They're so terrified of that notion that you could be on stage and people aren't laughing, I guess.  They can't believe we take the risk.  Maybe that's it.  I guess they think we bomb regularly not realizing we are artists.  We're performers, this is what we love to do, now leave us alone.

You also, incidentally, can't tell people you're vegetarian

Wood Paneling

I ate at an upscale place tonight, but I would have preferred the place with wood paneling and an old bar that looks like it came out of the movie Goodfellas.

I love writing I just decided.  It can definitely be tedious, but I'm not married, and nobody fell out of my octopus, so I really have nothing better to do other than obsess about the trivialities of life that peck at my soul, particularly the drive to murder people who are boundary-less and the absurdity of life.  Might as well take that and put it in writing. Actually, that's probably a really bad idea, but here we are.

I'd rather be compulsive with writing than with murder, although murder would be more satisfying.  At least I can turn the aggravation of the pot-smoking housemate and the loud mouths on the block into possibly something funny or I could murder them, and it would be funny to me (only).  If I'm gonna be weird and on the fringe of regular people, I might as well write.  Some people are compelled to do a lot of things like have sex or shop too much.  Since coronavirus there are even more douchebags making YouTube videos.  I'm sure the list of compulsions goes beyond some simple indulgence at the mall.  There's a whole virtual world stimuli to get all wound up about.  But I don't particularly like being on the laptop and I don't care to participate in consumerism. 

I often think of taking everybody out.  My blogs have been about icing various landlords and other people who truly have it coming to them.  Think Kill Bill, Astoria New York.  My new thing is I make iMovies about killing other people’s ex-husbands.  A friend asked “are you ok?”  Idiot.

 

It seems like it’s not worth it to be in New York if you’re not coupled off.  The cost of living in NYC is too high.  The nature of roommates is hell.  Landlords are pieces of shit.  I need a husband.  Those women with soccer mom bowl hairdos have husbands.  I wonder if the prerequisite of Gen-X nuptials is weird hair.  This also is true for North Jersey.  I also wonder if the prerequisite to live in North Jersey requires one to have a wardrobe of garments that look like you raided Ru Paul's anal cavity.

No one reads this blog so I can write whatever I want. 

I'm obsessed with retro.

I’ve read that people who ruminate over the past have a deep inability to accept the present.  I've always had it; 50’s doo wop music, antiques; shoes from the 40s.  It's a compulsion all by itself.  I own three different kinds of percolators.  All of my furniture is vintage.  I have a 1920's men's dresser that I love.  It's beautiful.  I might need a trauma therapist. I love thrift shops.  My ovaries sing Oh Danny Boy as I let my hand sift through the polyester and faux fur 1940s hats at the local vintage shop.  My new thing is I scroll through eBay on the hunt for a mid-century sideboard, because obviously that will solve all my problems. I also search for china cabinets because my mother had mental illness and left when I was six and subsequently never owned one.  I have a collection of vintage martini glasses from the 50s.  After previewing my collection that I methodically unwrapped when moving into my brownstone, my gay Haitian housemate said with open eyes "okay."  When we became acquainted and he learned I hadn't had a boyfriend in a very VERY long time, he exclaimed, "Now I get the cocktail glasses."  The gays concur that it may not be mental illness as much as a deep need within the soul to buy stock in eBay, or perhaps have a sexual experience with a board member.  Can vintage shops serve as self-medication?  Why did that question make me think of Carrie Bradshaw?  I’ve never lived in the village in a brownstone, so Carrie Bradshaw I am not. My miliue is not current.  I should write about Tiger King to seem relevant but ah, no.