UNREQUITED LOVE + DEATH DON’T MAKE GOOD BED FELLOWS

When you get to the point where you feel you were meant to be with someone, particularly after the devastation of divorce and they feel that way too, and then that doesn’t work out either, you find yourself fluctuating between despondency and being really angry.  Anger is safer than hurt.  It’s easier to feel.  The energy wants to get up and out of you.  It helps if you are a kick boxer.  Sadness is harder to feel.  It threatens to drown you and make you want to leave the earth.  It has been difficult for me on the planet.  I have had so many challenges and I hate that freaking word.  The only way to use anger wisely is to kick something, otherwise you get mad at things like words.

The person I fell for died.  First, you cry for six months.  Your life is suspended in the air while you have to grapple with an event so heavy such as death.  The other thing that happens when the person you love dies, is you have the luxury of pining over what could have been.  That will haunt you for a couple of years.  It’s also that splendid place in your mind where you can idealize how it would be for the two of you, now.  You will never know.  You also never got to see the person at 2AM sick with the flu or completely lose their temper.  You never see them grow listless from too much or too little responsibility, or say, forget the gym altogether or give up on their dreams.  As a result, you can immortalize their persona of how perfect they were as if frozen in time.  But of course, no one is perfect.  Perhaps this is why trying to get with someone post-divorce in your 40’s is difficult.  You have an unrealistic idea of what the perfect man is, to begin with.  It’s warped by time, by how it was when you were young.  Also the gene pool narrows and the only men that age well are gay and there is a statute of limitations for them too. 

Maybe you have a type.  Tall and stalky or tough or athletic.  The kind of guy who has a lot of knowledge about obscure shit with a motorcycle or a Republican who likes to scuba dive or the guy who has a trike who’s into art.  <--- actually I don’t think those last two go together.  You come up with a lot of qualifications that if the person lacks become deal breakers.  “Well, he asks weird questions like how was your weekend? and I won’t live like that,” you think to yourself.  The staggering disappointment of losing something that seemed completely impossible to get in the first place sets you back.  I’ve developed permanent armor as a result.

Friends are not helpful.  They say “well you just really need to get laid.” 

So then you take personal inventory.  I don’t want to be toiling away at my career any more is part of my latest thinking.  I should be in the Hamptons yelling at the help.  “Everyone knows living room curtains go to the floor.”  (idiot).  I want an oblivious workaholic husband who’s never home but has five cars.  I want the house to be so big that I busy myself decorating and preparing for house guests.  I’ll design menus in my fabulous Cole Haan bathing suit, poolside sipping bubbly rose out of crystal flutes with the most gorgeous gay men in New York.  This kind of fantasizing is exquisite if you don’t want to feel.

I was so burned by the real one in the past and not just my marriage.  I mean when your heart is sensitive and shit just goes wrong, you’re left to deal with the fallout.  Growing up there was a suicide attempt, a divorce, a remarriage, moving to an awful suburb with an alcoholic step monster.  But the now is re-traumatizing me.  My parents have passed and I’m divorced.   I’m left on my own with a 49-year-old sibling who is developmentally disabled.  I’m talking death, disease, divorce and disability.  This is going to be the name of my one man show.  Or should I call it the one man show with tits.  Naw, that's too crude.  I'll think a somethin'.

                                                                             

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.

QUEENS AND OTHER DEPRAVITIES

I’m drinking wine.  I just started though, so this won’t read like shitfaced Hemingway.  This may go off in several directions.  Should I start with Dunkin Donuts?  Can I get a “HELLO” for Dunks?  It’s a Boston thing (well, drinking really would take first place, but Dunkin Donuts is magic).  The first Dunkin Donuts was what pretentious Brooklyn pseudo dive bars try to emulate: authentic old school 1950’s formica laminate countertops with metal edging (for example) and stools that are screwed into the floor.  Just writing this is making me wicked happy.  I love retro anything.  I digress.  This line of thought leads to what I am doing in New York.  I mean, there are a ton of places to perform and duh, everything is here.  But it’s getting expensive and I’m getting tired.

I have this cyclical love/hate with my lifestyle choices.  I do standup and I paint and write.  As an artist, I had to come to New York… I sometimes do up to six shows a week and with that, I struggle to find time to paint while working a dumb part-time office job to pay my rent in Queens (crazy, right?) (and I have roommates so now it’s just like, I need to get some shit together).  This blog helps and thankfully it’s cheaper than therapy and less painful for my back than zazen.

I’m from New England, so it’s not as if New York is alien to me.  I’ve been coming here since I was an infant.  My mother was from New York state, and my father was from Philly.  I came back and forth to visit family growing up, and then to go see the theatre and hang with my gay boyfriends in my 20’s & 30’s.  Coming back and forth from Boston isn‘t that big of a departure, although we (us humans) have to do that provincial thing where we’re like you’re from Boston, or you’re from Philly… it’s not the same, and it’s not – BUT, it’s not like I just fell off the turnip wagon, because there are people from Wisconsin that live in Brooklyn for fukks sake. 

All of that said, I miss Boston and I wonder what the hell I’m doing.  On a good week, I performed (and got paid) at Dangerfields and the Friars Club (whose abbot is Jerry Lewis), and I did a show in a big theatre upstate and made a lot of money.  I even landed the Tropicana where you work nine shows for the week and stay in a condo on the boardwalk facing the water!  And I’ve shown my paintings in Brooklyn more than once.  On a bad week I’m thinking what am I doing?  I don’t have an agent and I currently don’t have a job except comedy.  I worry about my sister, my car is on the fritz, I really need to move, I’m exhausted and my parents are dead. 

This older gentlemen at my former job liked to comment about everything.  One day he said “you look tired.”  I wanted to reply, “you look like you died three weeks ago.”  People don’t understand the struggle.

Well, that’s it for now.  The wine is kicking in.  I wore myself out already.  My Queens aberrations rant will have to continue on another day.  The message is: stay gold.

UFC v. Old Guy

Let’s talk about men.  Yes the security guy at the front desk is cute, he does some kind of mixed martial arts, but he’s young.  Gay boyfriend was puzzled about how that could be a problem.  My thinking is this:  that guy can’t take me to the Essex House where I can comfortably sink into a fancy leather seat to drink top shelf martinis while taking in the wondrous aroma of whiskey and cigar smoke and talk about the latest Paul Krugman piece and possibly about art (whereas, an older gentleman can).  He probably shaves his pubes off.  And he wrestles with other men.  Gay boyfriend was still puzzled.  So in an effort to elaborate, I will do a compare and contrast argument with older v. younger, and I will entitle the latter “UFC”.  UFC definitely doesn’t have a beach house where I could drop the day job and go write my memoirs.  Even if that translates into squandering the time drinking too much and getting nothing done, where my ultimate and inevitable return would produce little writing and one big hangover, at least the opportunity to attempt a first draft would be there.  And I’d be tan.  UFC guy wouldn’t take me to fancy places like the Hamptons or Cape May.  His regular watering hole is probably in Bayonne.  Although, he most likely wouldn’t drink in lieu of fight preparation, so I imagine spending time with him could entail moseying around Prospect Park drinking energy drinks and green tea.  Maybe he’s not from Brooklyn but it doesn’t matter.  I don’t like parks.  I like the ocean and I like men who want to go boating.  UFC guy would grow completely weary from my intellectual rantings regarding the mastery of Peter Bogdonavich and how I need to go to San Francisco to remember the artist within that I feel I somehow left there.  Even though he’s handsome, he smells like cabbage.  He’s got that trimmed beard with a crew cut thing going on that’s wicked hot, but I’m at least ten years older than he is.  If in conversation he didn’t know of Mr. Roper (or some other important cultural icon), I would be mortified.

My father was forty-two when I was born.  His heyday was the fifties.  He used to prowl the Wildwood boardwalk with his drinking buddies and go listen to jazz.  I’ve taken just about all of my musical influence from him, from Harry James to John Coltrane.  And then there’s comedy.  That generation loved Johnny Carson.  He explained to me who Jack Parr was.  Growing up he used to play old Spike Jones records for me and do imitations of Peter Lory.  UFC guy has never even seen The Pink Panther.  Maybe what I’m saying is I have retro sensibilities, but more importantly, I think I'm saying I’m an old soul.  My friends all say i look young so I should go for it, but the truth is, that is not who I am on the inside.    

An older gentlemen would have a beach house.  He would think it was cute that I like vodka for dinner and he would always be concerned that I was alright.  He would call a lot and ask where I was.  The old school man wants to keep tabs on you because that's how they roll.  "Where are you?" is a common text and they get mad when you don't respond.  

Old guy wouldn’t think anything of coming to get me, wherever I was.  In New York, you’re lucky if you get a guy to leave his borough.  Another thing, it doesn’t have to always happen, but it's nice when a man scampers ahead to get the door, which seems somehow like a lost art. 

UFC guy has had so much pussy waving around, he doesn’t understand how to make a princess feel like a queen.  Old guy does.  Old guy also gets the whole jewelry thing too.  UFC guy has tattoos which is kind of cool but the first time I caught him looking at himself in the mirror, I think it’d be over.  Also he’s had more than one threesome and I’m just too old for that shit.

And further, New York guys don’t think they need to do anything.  They take you to a wine bar once and then expect sex.  It’s absolutely unacceptable.  Old guy would go so far out of his way to please his future bride and he would have the couth and intuition to wait until the time was right.  He would buy stuff and go for long weekend trips.  UFC picks up women from bars who dress sparingly and look like they’re twelve.  An older gentleman knows how to feed the Cinderella complex.  The only complex UFC is familiar with is Napolean.  I think I’ve made my point.  It is something I had to write out, because having several cougar friends, I just wanted to get my side heard.  But cheers to both types because God knows what we would do without contrast! 

Unofficial Bridesmaid

I have a roommate who I call No Tits because she broke my balls from the jump when she first moved in (having fits over tablecloths, not having boundaries, criticizing my belongings and just generally being a rude entitled frizzy haired wench).  Surprisingly, someone moved in after her who was worse.  The new roommate who moved in, I refer to as the premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder-riddled-Jihadist-Macedonian-with-borderline (Jihad for short) has become extremely difficult to live with, thus has rendered No Tits and I, buddies.  (Jihad actually replaced the former roommate who was an obsessive-compulsive-anorexic-vegan-germaphobic-violinist-singer).  At any rate, the other day, the Jihadist and I had it out.  It was a short burst of an argument that escalated very quickly, ending with me calling her a twat.  I haven’t been that proud of moment in a while.  As a result, No Tits and I have a new found almost friendship, and subsequently I was subjected to a long-winded story about the pre-matrimonial celebration of some other bird, whom I imagine is also from Queens.  (how revolting).

No Tits informed me that she would be partaking in her best friend’s wedding as an “unofficial bridesmaid.”  It is not clear why she was given the less than desirable title of an un-thing.  I suspect that the bride had too many candidates to choose from and did not want to create a hierarchy or pit members of the would-be bridal party against each other.  It’s as if she is saying, “the matching dress thing I can do without, but I still need someone to do all the pre-wedding party stuff, so we’ll have to call her something pretty close to bridesmaid.”  So, No Tits doesn’t get a real title.  She does all the work without the glory. 

Bridesmaids usually are kind of strange looking with their weird taffeta dresses and goofy up-do’s.  I often wonder what happens to them, because you know what they say; once a bridesmaid . . . . she’ll probably get an abortion and move to Reno . . .(and I imagine she goes on to live a sad, loveless life as an alcoholic residing in some small town with an old powder blue Chevy Malibu on blocks in the front yard, sad and forgotten about, like the love she'd always wished she were pretty enough to know). 

No Tits planned the engagement party, the bridal shower and the bachelorette party.  Lack of being blessed well endowed aside, she is doing a service to her friend out of love and she informed me that the other bitches are chiming in, because they don’t like her having a position of power (however unofficial it may be).  They drop comments.  They dis her planning.  They walked out of one event because it wasn’t open bar, leaving No Tits with a $300 alcohol tab, which she paid.  Proper etiquette dictates that the family of the bride should host the shower.  According to Emily Post, “it is not within the responsibilities of the bridal shower to do so, although they can if they want.”   Also, I’m pretty sure the maid of honor shouldn’t be doing all three events i.e. everything. 

Because of the mother’s absence, the other fraulines should have stepped up.  Instead they criticized the almost bridesmaid who is handling all three events.  Poor No Tits.  I can’t believe I am feeling compassion for someone who caused me much grief in the beginning of our relationship.  She is grinning and bearing it for her friend.  No Tits is a bigger person than me, because I wouldn’t have lasted through the first half of the not open bar engagement party as an unofficial bridesmaid.  I’da been all “I don’t think so sluts.”  Not because of lack of booze, but because these people have no class.     

The problem with this unofficial bridal party is that every female should be working together to pick up the slack to make the celebration happen, where the mother clearly has dropped the ball.  But instead, they are being outright rude and entitled.  Maybe they’re pissed they weren’t bridesmaids. 

I got all this information in the kitchen, which is where N.T. and I usually converse.  At the end of her story, she divulged that she will be wearing a very low cut dress for the bachelorette party, but that it didn’t matter because she has no tits.  Life does take strange twists and turns, but I honestly found my way around from really not getting along with this roommate, whom admittedly, I gave a terrible nickname, to cheering her on in her battle over the senseless gaggle of nit-picking hens.

reference:  emilypost.com/book/emily-posts-wedding-etiquette/

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

WE WON'T GET SWOOPED AGAIN

This is my blog.  It’s sometimes about being an artist.  A lot of times it’s about people that aggravate me.  This one is about the heart.  

Here we go--->It instantly turns you into an emotional catastrophe when you care.  When you don’t care, you have total control.  Nobody can get to you (it’s pretty awesome).  The only downfall is oddly, in time, you find yourself having a strange hankering to play lacrosse. 

The cute ones get to ya.  I hate that.  It’s not fair.  I am not self-absorbed and I am not full of myself, BUT lately a lot of persons of the male persuasion have been barking up this tree.  My gay boyfriend Eddie says “throw one of them a bone.”  None of them are even in the right galaxy.  I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but everyone is out of my league… except…  hence, where the trouble lies… the fucking good looking one.  That makes me sound superficial……… and I’m not.  I’m talking about the guy that makes you stop eating, hit the gym, shave your legs, do your toenails and do your hair.  Let me tell you something: I have not had a boyfriend in ten years.  So, if I actually shave something or get my feet done, it’s fucking real.  My writing is suddenly taking on an epic Maury Pauvich-like quality.  I’m not meaning to be dramatic  <--- RIGHT THERE !!!  I’m being dramatic !!!  OH fuck.  This is not good.  For several years, I’ve been dressing and acting like a gym teacher.  I don’t want to characterize, generalize or sound like there is anything particularly wrong with saying gym teacher instead of lesbian, but I do want to stress that morphing into a basketball coach is just a defense mechanism I use to protect myself from getting hurt.  I’m no genius, believe me, but I suspect if someone makes you stop wanting to organize an indoor gymnasium kickball game, it is serious business. 

But when you really like someone, they ruin your life.  You begin to obsess about how you will get to see them.  You scheme.  You ask your friends.  You follow his stupid Instagram.  If he doesn't like stuff on your Twitter, you’re crushed.  That’s just weird and stupid.  And, when you don’t see him it hurts.  This is love my friends.  It doesn’t strike often.  The risk is you might have a fiery romance that can potentially end abruptly, and then you are left crying on the kitchen floor.  Funny, I’m already jumping to the breakup.  Another absurd symptom that you’ve fallen hard; oscillating between bliss and plummeting into despair, and disaster-izing about a relationship that doesn’t even exist.  Holy smoking ovaries Robin, I’m bat-shit!!!!  The stupid thing is I want this.  Love swoops in.  You can’t control it, you certainly can’t change it.  You can’t do anything about it.  You’re fucked.  

What I find completely recalcitrant is the other kind of swoop.  Love is never portrayed accurately in tinsel town.  At least not now.  Why is the leading man ugly can I just put that out there?  Has anyone seen Rock Hudson?  That is a leading man.  In modern movies, when the girl character gets her heart broken, the ugly guy makes his move.  I’m sorry but, first of all, gross.  Second of all, this happens in Under The Tuscan Sun.  This got under my skin so bad that in an effort to assuage the ickiness that that particularly ridiculous Hollywood ending creates in my brain, I’ve coined the phrase the “ugly guy swoop.”  After the handsome guy doesn’t work out, she’s given up and begun decorating her Etruscan villa, the tall, goofy, big-nose, curly-haired doofus shows up and gets her when she’s vulnerable.  Um, Diane Lane is gorgeous.  She’d never fall for an ugly guy swoop, even if he is a writer.  It just wouldn’t happen.  Disbelief not suspended. 

THIS IS A TOUGH ONE

The short version=I got a divorce and I haven’t dated. 

The longer version=

My tough girl shell is thick.  Recently I heard something on the radio that was describing men as distant and unemotional.  I grew up with my dad so I have taken on many male characteristics like drinking and watching boxing, and what they mentioned.

Writing about what is happening right now is really intimidating because you gotta be honest and junk.  It’s not that I want to remain a mystery (I suspect that is exactly what I want), but I will go as far as to say that I don’t like people knowing more about me than I want them to.  This is all me just prefacing.

I haven’t even gotten to my career and my situation.  I’m still prefacing.  (Is that a verb?)  I am aware that I am guarded.  The most incredible human (this guy Michael who passed) told me so.  I don’t like anyone.  It’s kind of a problem.  So I’m writing this to figure out what is going on, so that I can get some insight and then maybe get passed it.  I have a feeling that the act of writing is going to assist me. (insert gunshot noise)

I love to go around the world with my ideas before I get into what is true, the core stuff, which is the meat of it all.  I should always be trying to go for that, because I am an artist.  Growing up with a sick mother who left, and a dad that was working and drank and then married an alcoholic monster, I learned to pretend everything is ok to such an exquisite perfection that half of the time, I don’t even know what I’m feeling.  I’m getting better at sorting it all out.  I’m figuring out that the stuff that is buried is where the gold is.    

I do stand-up comedy.  Kinda weird.  It sets me apart from the ordinary human inasmuch as I am a being, who writes and then performs what I write, and then people give me money for it.  Simply put, this is not a traditionally female thing to do (not my opinion and/or not me being sexist, it’s more of an observation of society and I’m trying to get to a hypothesis as to why I’m still single).  On stage, alone, on the proverbial soapbox, saying my plea to the masses is sort of what it is.  In old times vernacular they called it an orator.  It is not something that is yin energy.  It is yang/male energy.  Because I’ve been around comedy a while, I’m here to tell you that when a male person is doing the aforementioned type of performance, it is extremely attractive to women.  Not quite rockstar status, but in the same way.  Because, I guess, the person is taking control, they are performing, it’s creative and thus, a turn-on.  But when a woman is on stage, it does not have the same effect on men.

All of that is true, which is convenient if you are trying to sort of hide from your own sexuality.  (I wear men’s Adidas pants only, and lately I sexually identify as a janitor).  I don’t want to give my failed marriage the dignity of writing about it.  I want Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for that chapter of my life.  That was that movie where you could go to a place and they would erase all your memories from a relationship. 

It’s just that my divorce was so Shakespearean.  People used to ask me about it and I didn’t even know how to respond.  I was so traumatized by it.  If we had parted ways maybe two years sooner, it still would have sucked, but it wouldn’t have been so epically tragic.  (I kind of want to write this whole thing over again). 

Why is this so hard?  I feel like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City, except I’m having no sex and my articles aren’t published.  Although ironically, I recently met Chris Noth.  His friend was hitting on my girlfriend Laura hard at Mimi’s on Second Avenue.  At any rate, Noth is still hot, albeit gray, but he’s Greek (they’re the worst) and married.   

If you truly love someone, like for reals, with all your heart and soul, and you love spending time with them, you go before God and all, I’m here to tell you: it still might not work.  What the hell kinda fucked up shit is that?

Now the article has started.  This right here is where I’m stuck.  I never got my answer.  I decided it was God’s fault (since we got married in church in Southie, with the candles and the procession and everything).    

This is a tough one because I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to write about it.  I want to be like Woody Allen.  His screenplays are so honest and are nothing short of brilliant.  In Manhattan, Woody Allen’s character tries to run over his ex-wife’s new lesbian lover.  The ex-wife is publishing a tell-all.  He is so specific in characterizing neurosis.  Instead of furiously posting to my zero followers on blogspot, maybe I should write a play.  Or try to run someone over.

Well let’s close out this debacle of a blog so I can write a play about a vindictive Albanian princess who plots the untimely demise of people who have wronged her and Chaz Palmeinteri will play the sleazy villan.   

February Inspirational

Today was interesting.  You ever have one of those days? 

I was coming back from Boston – something us comics have to do.  Travel.  It’s cool because you make money but it gets rough.  For example, today I ate a hard boiled egg, chex mix and a donut.  I was coming back to New York to do a show with the same format as the Dating Game.  I was late so I’m booking it through the Bronx.  I get to the club and it’s just a regular show.  Shit.  I went to the wrong location.  Since I won’t make it to the Dating Game, I figured I’d hang.  I ended up chatting with a comic I knew and fairly quick into the conversation he was saying he’d reached a point where he figured out that you have to own what we do.  You have to let go of stress, in particular from a day job.  Most humans have to deal with some sort of similar job-type thing, but for us creators it is so useless and soul sucking.  It doesn’t serve us.  It was funny because we got right to it.  He said that weeks after leaving his job, he was still stressed out and holding on to the anxiety that this job produced within him. 

If you’re an artist you have to just make art.  If you’re a writer you have to just write.  May seem simple, but our brains do this thing where we second guess it all.  That was another part of the conversation too.  We can’t do our thing when we’re all frazzled.  He continued, “New York wants to kill you.”  The city will definitely take it outta ya.  It is not pleasant.  It’s noisy, you’ll be tortured by awful roommates, you’ll definitely be broke and you will experience a lot of rudeness.  All of that, along with your own self-doubt, will unite as a giant force trying to get you to question the whole thing.  This blog has been a place where I sort out all of the nonsense.  It needs to be done because these forces build momentum.  You have to talk to other artists and be like “dude, WTF.”  It helps.  It’s like being in the trenches together.  That’s how your crew is formed.  You kavetch, have coffee, hang out, drink wine. It validates why you’re doing this.  Every time I get on stage I remember, but I find myself still needing to be reminded.  That’s because everything off stage unites to offensively throw you off your game to the point where you have to have to talk to another comic, and when you do, it becomes this incredibly enlightening thing.  On the other hand, you can easily complain, but that doesn’t usually get you anywhere and becomes like all of the other forces that bring you down. 

We talked about trusting the universe that the money will come and that we are taken care of.  Deep stuff.  Lately I have had a lot of money and I can’t explain it because I don’t have two jobs any more.  Just stand-up.  I walked into the club that night, and we had that very specific conversation.  The universe cares about you.  It will provide for you but you have to believe it.  

We all could use a patron.  But when you can’t find one, you figure it out.  Do your art and remember that we all have something unique and special to share with the world, and no amount of intense urine smell or lame roommates is going to change that.  You have to believe in yourself.