TRYING TO WRITE A REVIEW

I hate everything.  That’s my new mantra.  I think I need a therapist but when I get a little extra money I’m ecstatic so I’m not sure about the therapist thing.  Money is not the root of all evil and money does motherfucking buy happiness.  You know when I’m happy?  When I have money.  You know who gets a lot of money?  Therapists.  I’m over it.  I’m so frustrated with the universe right now.  Fuck.  My buddy emails me his wife needs reviews written for her book and since I’m a huge fan of her work, first reading her articles in New York Magazine (you can find her articles here: Mandys Articles) and I've read her book (UnWifeable) AND I also love supporting fellow artists,writers etc., I’m committed to doing this. 

I’m having one of those fucked up days, however, that began with me getting overwhelmed from the jump.  I awoke to the “Ripples” alarm sound from my iphone at 10:45AM and hit snooze twice.  The alarm was set in order to attend to my car moving duties, which are militant regimens of egregious alternate side parking assigned to the Brooklyn neighborhoods to generate revenue for the city (Assholes).

Boy, if you can’t get up for 11:00AM.  That’s what I was thinking this morning when I was groggy and dragging myself in my Adidas track pants and flip flops passed Nostrand Avenue down a few blocks by the late night liquor store over to my parked 03 Camry.  But you know the real me hates anybody who conforms to capitalism (aka gets up early) and particularly when said capitalists look down on night people such as the aging senile dick of an attorney that I work for.   When you go to ask a question about work, he responds with snarky sarcastic questions, “what do you think you’re supposed to respond with…” and I’m thinking I'm asking YOU for fukks sake, and also you don’t pay me enough to think and frankly I don’t give a shit. He can actually be okay, I just work really hard and burn out quick.  I digress.  Part of my frustration with today is I have some big items that I have to take care of.  Rather than just start doing one of the things, I end up shutting down with a paralysis that causes me to do nothing.  So I’m excited to write my friend’s wife’s book review because writing leads to more writing and will at least get me started on something.  Any writer will tell you there will be a million obstacles in your way before you actually sit down to write like the bathroom needs to be painted or the cat needs to be scrubbed in a Lawrence Welk bubble-bath or you need more hazelnut in your coffee cake or whatever.  Hours of this can go on before you actually start, if at all. 

In my elation of landing this assignment, I go to get the book which I do remember seeing despite the fact that I recently moved and I don’t know where a lot of things are, except I can’t find it.  I actually go back out to my car (which is now conveniently parked across the street) because there are random boxes still in the car from the move and I could quite possibly have randomly put a book I had in my apartment, back in the car in a box.  I rifle through the boxes.  No book.  I go back to my apartment and start looking in weird places like the refrigerator and closets and in cabinets in the kitchen.  I can’t find the flipping thing and I know I saw it.  Now my mood begins to plummet because this one task was going to be a catalyst into other productive things!  This was going to rescue me from the pit of despair!  I can’t seem to focus lately and I’m not sure if I have ADD or ADHD or just have pure hate for things.  It could very likely be from lack of sex and over-working myself.  Yep.  Working for the man and no sex'll kill ya.  Not enough creative work and a lackluster work situation could drive anybody nuts.  Actually, it's a vampire blood-sucking, soul crushing day job.  It's only part-time, but still.  Then I go from those thoughts (which are true and quite rational) to:

Why can’t I ever make enough money?  Why can’t I get work in the arts?  Any time I’ve tried to work at a gallery it seems they either want an unpaid intern or a director.  There is nothing in between.  It’s as if there never was an assistant director position on the face of the earth, or any galaxy, ever in the universe.  The few listings I have seen require a Master’s degree which is plain bullshit.  Why is everything so frustrating?  and I want a Master's degree for fukkkkk.....sssss.... sake.

All these thoughts barrage me in lieu of the missing book.  I enter the pit of despair, but Billy Crystal and Carol Kane are not there cheer-leading my mis-adventurous tirade of storming the castle.  Then I have a meltdown.  A full-on, punch something, yell and then cry meltdown-to-immediate-depression.  My friend texts that it’s easy to get depressed.  It’s a depressing world and seems there are more douchebags than nice people and that he wants to adopt a dog and move into the woods.  This cheers me up some or at least validates the shittiness of it all.   Finally it dawns on me to ask my roommate.  I might have actually lent it to him.  Yep.  He has it.  Somewhere between the meltdown and the realization about the roommate, I stop to write this.

CRASHING: INTERVIEW WITH GENO BISCONTE

I’ve been recording a podcast with a friend of mine.  For weeks we hadn't launched it because we’re comics.  What that means is we’re not organized.  It took a while but now we have it here.  The podcast is called Comic’ly Unstable.  This week we interviewed Geno Bisconte, who is a great, funny comedian and best friend of the host, Tommy A.  Geno has his own show on the Cumia Network and you can go check it out here:  www.compoundmedia.com/show/in-hot-water/   We all go way back and the connection is comedy and Brooklyn.  Those two lived together at one point and although it was a great interview, the bromance between them was practically filling the room like a big, thick cloud.
   

Comedy careers have ups and downs and are completely unpredictable.  My experience is sometimes you’re in Vegas making serious money and sometimes you’re in rural Pennsylvania telling jokes to a drunk bridal party for $100 bucks questioning all of your life decisions up until that point.    After talking with Geno it became evident that his timeline has been no less dramatic.  Recent highlights for him are appearing in HBO’s Crashing a new sitcom starring Pete Holmes about standup comics in New York.  He was invited to roast Gary Busey at the Friar’s club which is a New York staple for show business.  It was founded by Milton Berle and the current abbot is Jerry Lewis.  All that said, the interview was more about hard times and how to endure them, and coming out the other side.

He told us at one point, he was living in his car.  The lease ended at his apartment and his then roommate was going to LA and rather than deal with getting a new apartment right away, he decided to wing it.  He slept in Jersey at his aunts at times, and much like Pete Holmes character in the aforementioned show Crashing, he slept on friends’ couches. 

What I came away with after listening to him is that it might get impossibly hard, but it will be worth it to stick it out.  New York and living for your art is pretty challenging.  Particularly, (especially) if you’ve chosen either New York or LA.  You have ups and downs and take risks that would cripple other people.  I suspect most people would never wager such a bet because it definitely blows up in your face at times.  You do shows, you get work, you get fired, you get rejected.  You do shitty gigs, and you probably develop a drinking problem, but here’s a side note, if your life is in the toilet but you are grateful for those gigs, you might be headed in the right direction.  I’d rather enjoy myself at a dump in New Jersey and have a good time than be sitting in the back of the room rolling my eyes and lamenting at how shitty it all is.  But we’ve all been on either side of that fence.

The business is tough.  You have to have conviction.  I suspect that the wake that is created by trying to be true to yourself will be made up of the good, the bad and the ugly.  <---- but how amazing is that?  You have to deal with the shit, but you ultimately will revel in the glory.  I think this is what he was getting at.

My take after doing standup 14 years, and the point of a lot of what Mr. Bisconte was getting at, is the fallout that sticking to your guns creates is, at times unbearable, albeit fucked up.  You lose relationships, apartments, jobs, cars.  There is no safety net and it’s terrifying, but you have to stick it out. <--- (this is exactly what I’m currently going through with comedy + life).  But isn’t it strange i.e. the universe’s timing of this interview and my own crisis?  <--- (maybe not.  Most comics are having crises).

If you are gifted the freedom of a catastrophe, but then get to the point where you’re not ruined by it, I bet it’s the best feeling in the world.  I’m still going through it, so I’m suffering somewhat, but Geno seemed content.  I must state this again because none of the comics I know feel this way ---> he seemed happy ! 

We’re all sort of waiting for the reward, but I’m sensing that it’s already here.  <--- the trick is to feel that way regardless of circumstances.  Artists live life on their own terms, which isn’t always great, but I think it’s the conviction of saying “I can do this” that is so empowering.  You can come out the other side and say you didn’t die.  You’re still here as Elaine Stritch epitomized.  At present, I have a part-time office job, roommates from hell & my car got totaled so I’m not 100% feeling this, I’m sort of mad at the universe, but you know who isn’t?  Geno Bisconte.  Twitter: https://twitter.com/genobisconte