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 ).

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.

SHUT UP AND LOOK GOOD

I started comedy a while ago.   A long time ago.  I was married.  It was different.  I’m a comic in New York now, I’m single, and I am having a hard time.  Well, wait a day and ask me, and I will say it’s great.  A lot of my perspective hinges on where I got on last, how much money I made this month and if my new stuff worked somewhere.  But generally, and in particular, this week, things are shitty.

I’m not a new comic, but upon moving to New York I became new again in a way, having been unfamiliar with most of what goes on in the New York comedy scene.  It’s par for the course when moving to another city.

But when I ponder my situation a little deeper, what’s frustrating for me is my gender.  There comes a time when you realize, people don’t take you seriously if you are female.  People used to say “oh you do comedy that must be so hard.”  At the time I thought they were morons for saying so.  I used to think doing comedy was great.  You go to a club and work out ideas that you’ve been banging around i.e. funny thoughts, jaunts and stabs at people that irritate you.  It’s an activity that makes all the messed up stuff in your life have a shred of meaning and you make people feel better, including yourself.  It’s symbiotic and so creative.  But in time, I began to see what those annoying people meant.  Audiences are reluctant to like female comics.  And then there’s everybody else.   

When I first moved to New York a comic at Dangerfield’s said to me, “men in the Middle East have it right…women should be covered from head to toe in a berka and kept quiet.”  The same week another comedian gave me a spot at one of the clubs.  He was actually nice to me and happy to help me out, but the next night when I didn’t text him back right away, he texted, “Are you drunk or just a retard?”  Another time, in an effort to help me assimilate in New York, a friend of mine connected me with an established comic.  Long story short, the comic asked me to three-way with him and his girlfriend.

The problem starts when you actually want to make some kind of career out of it.  If you’re just doing your “sketches” at little dives here and there, it isn’t affecting anything.  You’re not challenging the status quo.  But when you have something to say, and when you want to be compensated for your work, now you are creating a wake.  In some cases, bookers don’t respect comics of the female gender, therefore, pay them less.  It is sort of known that back in the day, a now famous female comic was paid a lot less than all of the male headliners in Boston.  No wonder she left.    

In New York, it’s competitive.  Male comics will use their yang prowess to try and intimidate people they deem as inferior, I guess in an effort to stroke their own ego.  Either that or they’ll hit on you.  They’ll insult you.  At Times Square Arts Center, one of the comics said to me “I would never put two female comics on in a row…”  He really should just be embarrassed.  They also underestimate your  intelligence.  I don’t give a fuck what skinny, loser comics who are high have to say.  They are going for the easiest target which makes me question their intelligence and just screams insecurity.  They are trying to make me feel bad.  Look frightened little boy, it’s obvious you are steeped in self-hatred and exhaustion from having to suppress so many secret homosexual urges, that your shame only elicits intense insecurity, I’m here to tell ya, the rest of society takes care of my feeling bad about myself.  Women experience this constantly with sexist, objectifying images in advertising, in conversations and inappropriate glances.  Do you think your stupid comment is upsetting?  You’re just a buffoon, who’s clearly threatened by the possibility that a female comic will steal your shitty $25 dollar spot at a dump in the theatre district.  At the time I didn't respond.  

When frustrated with standup, I used to say “I should have been a dancer,” probably because society values women by their looks.  They really want us to just shut up and look good.  We are socialized to believe that women are second class citizens.  Female comics have to work hard despite this.  I think some women are confused about where their gender fits into performing.  They dress up too much.  They dress provocatively.  A lot of skin showing.  They look like a friggen peacock.  I like George Carlin.  He dressed in all black.  Like an artist should.  If you are a singer or a stripper, then by all means, wear the dress.  I just don’t see the connection with comedy.  You see minimalist theatre and they are in all black.  They’re not stuffed in a dress, in heels with their arms showing.    Everybody acts like I’m wrong because I want to be valued for my intelligence and talent and everything but my looks.  If I felt I was good looking, I wouldn’t be doing standup in the first place and female comics who use their looks are not into the craft and probably want to be an actress.  

This is a bigger issue than I thought.  Because a baby comes out of our person, we are somehow deemed as less than?   When you see a guy comic two years in, who automatically receives more credibility from the audience than your 14 years, it’s disheartening to say the least.  side note: I did read Gloria Steinem books when I was seventeen, followed by Camile Paglia, among others.  I blocked it out for a period of time.  I think for a while I chose to look the other way, for fear that I would be miserable if I was always thinking about this.  However, now that I do standup, and I’m a lot older, there is absolutely no escaping the staunch reality of sexism and inequality.  It only magnifies with time.

People have gone out of their way after a show to say “we don’t usually like female comics, but we really liked you.”  A booker of a big club in Boston said to me while we were backstage about a comic who was on stage, “she’s not that funny but she’s nice to look at.”   

Another time in Boston a booker told me right to my face that “all these paid comics are hacky…”  He was only referring to some of the funniest comedians ever on the planet.  He also mentioned my then husband.  Why would you say that to someone’s wife?  Was I supposed to be impressed by a guy who never paid comics upstairs from a Chinese restaurant?  Maybe people just think that my entire gender is dumb. 

[The word cunt doesn’t offend me at all.

Most of the time when I use it, I’m referring to a man]

-Tweet from me:  @stacykendro

Often society’s message is we’re just arm candy.  How quaint.  A large part of being female (and this is deep in the psyche of most women) is the need to ingratiate yourself to people.  That’s the hard part – being so dam agreeable.  We are socialized to make others feel comfortable, which means if you are a jerk to me, I will smile.  Sometimes, that is the thing for someone with manners to do.  However, don’t mistake my politeness for passivity.  Now I’m talking about New York.  In an effort to take the high road, or to make you believe you didn’t really get to me, I might not retaliate right away.  But just know that I’m Albanian.  I will be planning your demise.  Well, at least I will go home and write about you, but take heed because if you catch me on a bad day, who knows.  Even though “vendetta” is an Italian word, just ask people in the Bronx and they’ll tell you which nationality is scarier.

originally published 12/10/17

WHY DO I ALWAYS WANT TO MOVE BACK TO BOSTON?

I’m writing all this out because it helps me sort out the lunacy of being a creative person in New York.  I got weepy on the plane coming back from Florida which makes no sense (I don’t really do that).  I felt I wanted to move back to Boston.  I think that coming to New York because you’re a creative person is a great, yet terrible idea.  I think I take one step forward (just performed at the Friars Club), and three steps back (I drink more now than I ever did).

I still have this issue where I don’t want to emotionally commit to comedy. 

It’s hard to commit to anything, emotionally.  I think it’s funny (or not) that men have a hard time committing to women.  I resist committing to my career because that’s way scarier than giving someone half the house.  It’s a huge gamble.  A lot of people are doing it (in New York at any given time there is a free comedy show somewhere, several, even, on a single block). 

New York is a gamble and apparently I’m Ginger from Scorcese’s Casino cuz I’m rollin’ the dice baby.  Men don’t want to commit because it might ruin their life.  That’s the same reason I resist pushing with my career.  It’s fear.  Ah, that little bugger.  It also depends on what day you catch me on.  When I used to work Vegas twice a year, I was, in my mind, in show business for reals. 

Comedians are an interesting faction of show business, because we work the hardest and get the least respect.  We are like boxers.  We take all the risk.  We are the writer, producer, editor, performer, booking and marketing person.  So, No, your wife could not be a comedian.  No wonder I want to quit often.  But I’ve only felt that way since moving to New York so I blame the Yankees. 

We get the least respect because we are alone on stage so we get heckled sometimes, and the bookers are all frustrated performers with fickle personalities, who are just looking for an excuse not to book you.  I think I’m going to a Met game.

When I got booked in Vegas, I worked at the Riviera.  You got a pink hotel room overlooking the pool and comped dinners.  Let me tell you something, two shows a night for seven days, I woulda ate Chef Boy Ardee, I was so happy.  But the reality of a day job is enough to make you want to die by some epic, old school way like consumption or sticking your head in an oven.

This double life is what is getting to me.  (And I sort of get fired a lot).  I come back to the day job after Vegas, back to the meaninglessness and futility of it all, and it’s hard to take.  No wonder I drink too much.  It’s all garbage.  That is why I cried on the plane.  First of all, I am a New Englander.  Being in the 80 degree weather of Florida in December and then parting from it is reason enough, but as I find I am scrawling this out in an airport, I’m thinking there are other reasons as well.

Everybody who is in the arts, specifically in New York City has this feeling I suspect – even if you’re crying, wanting to quit, fearing failure and/or fearing success).  But there is something that we're getting as payoff.  I suspect that it is the satisfaction that we are forging our own way in a city that many don't have the balls to move to, never mind navigate the pot hole laden thoroughfares.  New York demands the best out of an artist.  That is a good thing.  It requires an amalgam into what we aspire to.  We have to grow into that person which requires shedding old parts of ourselves.  Ultimately it’s what we want.  We want to be changed.  We just didn’t know it was going to be this hard.

DEAD INSIDE/Rob the Mob

The only upside of getting sick is movie watching.  I seldom read when I’m ill.  Although I love reading, somehow when I have the flu or whatever, I afford myself the luxury of binge watching.  It is something I never do because my television isn’t hooked up and because I like to do creative things with my free time, oh ya and I’m weird.

At any rate, I watched this movie about a tough guy.  Tough guy is different than Bad boy.  I grew up in the 80’s where “bad boy” meant a metal or a rock guy with fucked up hair who drank & drugged.  Not my type.  I had rough boyfriends who always had weapons tucked away in various locations and had dubious ways of making money and dangerous friends, but never did I date a guy who listened to Metal.

In the movie, the guy gets out of prison.  His girlfriend picks him up.  They’re young-ish.  They get drunk, they have sex.  Next, he hashes out a heist.  They’re in love.  They’re in Queens.  They smoke a lot.  He gets a gun and they drive their giant Chevy Impala and act out their plan of holding up mafia social clubs in the neighborhood because he figures out that they have a lot of cash lying around these joints.

In act three, he looks at her and says “Florida is nice.  We should go there.  Marry me.”  This is the point of the movie where a girl tears up.  Me=nothing.  Nothing happened.  No moisture developed in either eye socket.  Doesn’t matter if you’re a broad from Boston or not.  There’s nothing like when a man softens enough to say that.  And these were great actors.  I mean they nailed this scene.  He is brutally handsome and the camera loves his face.  She is unconventionally pretty in a down to earth way.  She said yes.  I should have been balling.

But, nothing.  Am I dead inside ?

I had this marriage that ended badly.  I’ve learned over time, you can’t hold on to how you wish things could be.  (I used to have a line in my act, “I just want to go to my gay boyfriend’s house, listen to Peggy Lee and cry over what could have been.”  These days I'm less fag hag, more John Goodman.

Now that I’m older I see how you can’t long for the you that was lost in that time period, that elusive "you" that you can’t get back.  BUT, I’m also stuck.  I’m not dating.  It’s like I’m blocked.  Like a giant black box is covering my heart completely. 

I can’t help feeling there is something missing.  As if there is some seed within me that hasn’t been cooked yet that needs time before I am ready, really ready, to address the black box.  I sort of hate personal growth, gurus and motivational speakers.  I hate shrinks, I hate mediation and I hate the notion that we all need “fixing.”  Shrinks I hate because at the end of a session you feel awful and then you go, “here’s a hundred bucks.” 

Maybe it’s exactly what I need though.  Life is nothing if it isn’t paradox.  

I used to cry at episodes of Mad About You.  That was the young me.  It was a really well written sitcom about a married couple where they respectively resolved all the dilemmas that plagued their lives in under twenty minutes.  Not really sure why that did it for me, but it did.  I didn’t even cry at Casablanca (because boo hoo he’s gonna die). <--- that makes me seem shallow and vacuous, but I think romance like that plain doesn’t exist.   

Maybe I’m not dead inside but the old self in me is dying.  Am I headed for a re-birth?

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! 

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.   

Valentine's Day 2017

I am practicing extreme self care.  I went to the chiropractor which is $100 hard cash because I don’t have health insurance.  It’s like a drug deal.  I also went running and then took myself to a wine bar in Brooklyn Heights, one of my favorite neighborhoods to go write. The bar is cute.  It has a romantic setting with candles & swank (cuz valentine’s and all).  Here’s what I’m enjoying.  All of it.  Sinatra is playing.  Thank God !!!!  Lately, the hipster bars that I venture to play AWFUL neo-punk garbage.  After an hour I’m irritated.  I like jazz motherfuckers ok.  Straight on, 1950’s, big band, lush orchestrations with some horns and someone who can sing. <----(Wow that makes me sound old).  A lot of people don’t like Sinatra, but they never heard him sing It Might As Well Be Spring or The Night We Called It A Day, or any of those torch songs that he recorded with Capital.   Maybe I should stop writing.  Perhaps writing is just a series of thoughts that when put together it’s like sharing.  Ew.  Is that what writing is?  That’s what my writing is lately.  Would I rather write like Daschiell Hammett?  Yes.  But perhaps at this time, my writing is what needs to happen right now for my own personal growth.  I just cringed that I wrote that.  It’s as if I’m trying to evolve, but I’m in utter resistance to it all.  The tough guy/artist in me wants to go “fuck it man, drink some vodka and read Kerouac - don’t be so serious.”  This is true, but writing about exactly what is going on in my life, it turns out, is sort of therapeutic.  Who knew.

Personally, I think I need to read more about death.  I’m into gritty, post-war American characters that get involved with the underbelly of society and have a Smith & Wesson.   Happy Valentine’s day everyone.  

RANT TO A DEAD GUY

I don’t know why I’m feeling like this because you’re dead and you’ve been dead, but I’m still here on the planet and its sucks because something is wrong with me because I don’t want a boyfriend I question whether my sexuality is in flux and although women are far superior beings the bad news is I’m straight but I don’t like anyone even a little prob cuz everybody over forty is a catastrophe they say things like “cool beans” which was never hip and sometimes they have small beings that fell out of some other woman’s vatootle that hover around them who according to their Tinder profile are “their life” well your “life” smells like he soiled his trousers I can’t believe everything I’m writing to you so that you will read it from wherever you are (how strange) even though you were from the Bronx I’m very confident you went straight to heaven we met at Nicks in Boston my home club  I just thought you were so good on stage and you were covering for a comic who incidentally was in my wedding (WHAT) ya it’s weird and then you didn’t say you didn’t drink but after your set that’s what we all do in Boston, I did ask you if you’d go out with the gang and you said something that resembled a “naw” and your girlfriend walked up but it was really weird because we connected later anyway through Myspace (ridickballs)  Myspace? feels like centuries ago but you said hey next time you’re in New York, hit me up and I think you texted something about going to the Cellar I got really excited because my comedy career was in a holding pattern at best and New York was on my radar (to keep with the aviator themed analogy) I was just waiting to get enough money to move we hung out it was great I totes didn’t like you like you, I just thought it was cool to have a new comedy friend one time we went to the Strip.  After my divorce moving back to Boston was weird because the scene was younger douche-bro’s who started after me and not the guys that I knew from waitressing & from being around the clubs in the 90’s a New York friend was more than welcomed and I swear I didn’t like you beyond friends but you asked about my life and if I had kids and about my parents and what was I doing with comedy and then we went to get Thai food then we went to HA where we waited around forever and then I bombed in front of 4 people – I ate it so HARD we eventually went to the Cellar and I thought your shoes were weird.  I didn’t really see anybody else because you were all I could see and you had the symbols for Om Mani Padme Hum tattooed on your bicep J.C. on the your forearm and we talked about one man shows and how all comics need to explore other avenues of expression and I always thought I would write one and you did a Moth and I wanted to be with you and I couldn’t eat and I told you about my noir fascination.  You hugged Geraldo who was surprisingly humble and such a cool guy and you had to drive me back to Valley Cottage because my 82 year old aunt was worried and had made me promise I’d get back no later than midnight and although you both were puzzled at my indulging her request, the three of us went up FDR Drive and he was frantically arguing with some broad on the phone who kept hanging up on him which was making him furiously mad and we all couldn’t help but to laugh because it was crazy. Months would go by and we didn’t talk and more months and your career got big and you were travelling and I don’t recall when I took a shine to you because we lived in different states, maybe it’s cuz you were funny, then you let me crash at your place when you were away so I could look for a job and I brought your mother raw honey that I got from Amish people I’m not sure she liked it because it was the kind that’s hard in consistency because there are no chemicals so you have to put the jar in boiling water and she was nice and your dog barked a lot but then he warmed up to me and it’s weird that night you called from a tv contest show you were on and said you were losing to a dishwasher which despite it being a slam against his heritage was very funny only because you were incensed that you didn’t win.  At your bedside there was a book about Buddhism with a prologue about Asoka Maura who I had written a paper about in an ethics class in college and I knew it was a sign I asked you how you could even do a television show and you said you just have to relax more time passed and we didn’t talk and I grew bitter and eventually gave up on you. I was really hurt and disappointed because I guess its because you made my heart feel so good and I couldn’t even remember having something to look forward to you finally did call but I was away then you were going to Boston and expected me to drop everything which I did you kissed me finally after 2 years and it was amaze nostrils because it was soft and unexpected and you were a gentlemen because we held hands.  The very last text you sent me said “I can’t wait to see you.”  How cruel the world is that it took you so young.  I got that text a couple of days before you passed.  I cried for six months which I know you know because the psychic told me it’s really hard to write about you because it makes me sad I don’t cry any more but it makes all the blood go to my face and I get weird and some moisture happens around my eye area it’s like a silent intense cry, but I pretty much am dead unless I’m performing or writing I guess I could say thank you which is weird but for the writing part?  I was so mad at you for dying but it’s not like you had anything to do with leaving your body and I know you didn’t end like completely but I still have good days and some bad ones I don’t cope well with feelings any more so for now and to end this rant all I got is om mani padme hum.