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 ).

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'.

                                                                             

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.   

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.

DREAMS DIE (posting anyway)

I was listening to NPR where a singer was getting interviewed.  When asked where she got inspiration for her music, she said “people leave and dreams die.”

How starkly candid.  It got me thinking.  Sometimes you spend more time trying to just get on, despite it all.  It might be something to actually slow down and look at the fallout.  People sometimes, in fact, leave and not always in the most affable of ways.  Dreams die, people disappoint you.  Avoidance is my M.O.  Alternatively, to look at and try to process it, so it’s not dictating your life under the surface, might be a thing.  <----wow that was honest.  Having a failed marriage under my belt seems to haunt me.  

I’m a romantic but I hide it really well.  I’m so unnerved about exposing myself in my writing, that I'm fighting to not make this particular post anonymous.  I’ve swayed so far away from anything “romantic” at this point in my life, I sexually identify as a golfer.

I will try to illustrate this next part without gushing, because I love Marc Maron so much I might not be able to pull it off.  He was interviewing Springsteen.  What is better than an informed, intelligent performer interviewing the Boss for fucks sake?  At one point Bruce was talking about the fire we all have inside.  He said, “. . . you get the burn, you aim it towards the right thing.”

I’m actually doing this process, (maybe) but it doesn’t feel like it, because I’m not painting.  I’m furiously writing about my frustrations with writing and living and performing in New York.  I’m trying to work on myself and not kill anyone (like roommates).  I keep writing about the art thing though, which means it’s trying to get my attention.  I mean, I write, and I average about 5 shows a week.  Depending on what else is going on, sometimes it’s less.  I’m writing, I’m performing.  But I’m the most honest when I paint.  What Bruce was referring to is life.  It comes at you and you have a choice.  Sometimes you definitely get overwhelmed by the dark stuff.  He’s saying do something with it.  

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.  

TOUGH GIRLS ALWAYS RING TWICE

Here’s the thing, I’ve had wine.  Pinot to be specific.  I’m not typically a fan of pinot (noir), but I find Malbec to have a very scary finish.  I’m a wine snob which is code word for ‘”too old to admit you’ve turned into one of those broads that really likes wine.”  It’s my little thing I do to cajole myself to write.  It works.  I hate being this honest. It’s not in my nature.  Plus I hate people.  Those two things alone are reason enough to own a gun.  I also have a fascination with guns.  Not in a Yosemite Sam, yahoo-nutbar way.  It’s more of a fascination with all things retro.  For instance, I like revolvers.  In particular, how they look and I like gangsters.  Not bullshit fake celebrity ones like Snoop.  I like old school noir characters.  I love black and white gangster stories but Boardwalk Empire might be the best neo noir ever.  I’m getting off topic (I have to reel in tangents sometimes – it’s the wine).  Actually if we’re going to get into it – in addition to film, I like gangster characters that early to mid-century novelists like Raymond Chandler or Daschiell Hammett created.  My favorite is The Big Heat by William P. McGivern, who tends to write about cops… either side of the law, I like the tough guys.  They can be unscrupulous but still are coming from the right place.  They’re loners because they have integrity and they are not afraid of what comes at them.  They drink whiskey like water, and I imagine they don’t lose any sleep.

My fascination with these characters might be the appeal of a man’s man who’s tough but has valor and truthfulness.  There’s something about people who have braved a lot but haven’t been corrupted by it.  Real gangsters are people who have been through the ringer but still remain noble.  Real gangsters work temp jobs.