As I make Braicole to bring over my friends' house tomorrow for our Thanksgiving dinner, I've got A Charlie Brown Christmas playing on the iPod (gotta love the Vince Guaraldi Trio) and I'm in a thankful mood. For what, you ask? Why I'll be happy to tell you:
** My friends. They are truly amazing. Take my word for it, they are.
** The fact that it's Thanksgiving and it was 78 degrees outside today.
** My family, who never once ask me "so when are you going to get a real job?"
** Amber. She's supports me and keeps me going even when I don't think I can.
** God/The Universe/The Light/The One/I AM: You know...just 'cuz. No matter what you call Him/Her/It I'm pretty thankful for all the gifts I've been given. Even when I bitch and moan and things don't seem so great...they're still pretty damn good.
Sorry for the sentimentality...Charlie Brown Christmas will do that to a fella. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and I promise to be a lot more cynical and snarky in the coming weeks (heh).
I was making small talk with the woman who cuts my hair the other day and I found out that she emigrated from Iran about 15 years ago. She was there when it all went down with the Shah and the hostage crisis. I asked her what that was like and she just replied, "probably different than what you might think. You just kind of accept what's going on where you live."
I had another friend who grew up in Russia during the Cold War and she would show me pictures of her home and it looked remarkably like something you would see in any American town. Beautiful, tree lined streets. Gorgeous architecture. A bright, sunny day. During the times before Glastnost, all depictions of Russian life on TV were shown during intense blizzards with people waiting in line 5 hours to buy a roll of toilet paper. Everything was bathed in shades of gray. Not surprisingly, she said it wasn't like that at all.
We get fed a lot of depictions of the lifestyles of "our enemies" and barely any of it is true. Kind of like the line that states 9/11 happened because "they hated our freedom". Right. Had nothing to do with our foreign policy, they just hated the fact that we have Tivo.
As the conversation continued she said one of the most interesting comments I've heard regarding life in the United States. A comment that could only be made by someone that wasn't so close to the forest and had a clear view of the trees.
"When I was growing up, all you would hear is how America was this free country. All of the freedoms you have there. It's not really a free country. Everyone knows your business here. Everything about you. Your social security number, your credit reports. Other places in the world are much more free, you can do what you want. Here I always feel watched."
This, from someone who grew up in Iran.
She's right. We're not really free. You can't even go online and play a few hands of poker anymore. You're constantly watched and reported on. You can't even bring a bottle of shampoo on a plane. Sure we have the illusion of freedom. The right things are said and we're given just enough to think "sure, we can do anything we want."
This is a great country and there is a lot of good here. It's certainly not perfect and I think it's time people take a good look at that. The time for "love it or leave it" has passed. Things need to improve. Need to change.
I awoke on Monday morning as I do anyday. Nothing special about the day although I did notice that there was a red bump on the second toe (the index toe, if you will) on my left foot. As the day went on, the foot started hurting and only continued to get worse and worse until finally, I took my shoe off to see that my toe had turned a deep maroon and my entire foot was swollen.
It appears I was bitten by some spider or bug and the toe got really infected. I'm on antibiotics now and it seems to be getting better. Still hurts like the proverbial mo-fo and I'm limping, but the pain is starting to dull.
Of course my mind went right to "oh man, how the hell am I going to continue my acting career if they have to amputate my foot". My overactive imagination went immediately to losing my foot, as if I lived in the Medieval Ages and, other than leeching, that was the only option available to me. That's one of my curses though...an overreactive imagination coupled by a hypochondriac's flair for the dramatic. I had a bump on my arm and right away...it's cancer. Oh man, just my luck... I have arm cancer. I don't even think arm cancer exists but if it does, I'm sure I have it. Cancer of the arm...what an awful way to go.
People seemed to really dig my walk down memory lane with some older jokes I wrote. So I decided to present here, in it's entirety, the first bit I ever wrote and performed. Parts of it actually made their way into a few jokes I do now.
I was a huge Bill Cosby fan, as well as a Jake Johansen fan, and I wanted to do more storytelling. This bit ended up being about 3 minutes long (I'll try to reprint as much of it as I can from memory)...more than half of my 5 minute set. Great if it's cooking but not so much when it's not. Then, you're committed. Back then I didn't have the stage presence or confidence to just abandon a bit when it wasn't working, making a joke about it and moving on. Plus, what the hell else was I going to do? I had no other material.
I did well (or what I perceived as "well" back then) with it more times than I ate it. Those times I did eat it, though...oh good lord did I eat it hard.
Now, may I present, that longstanding classic...."Buying My Girlfriend Lingerie"
******************************************* I had to buy my girlfriend a present for Valentine's Day. I hate Valentine's Day. It's such an exclusive holiday. If you don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend on Valentine's Day, it's like being a Jew on Christmas. There are no presents.
I asked my friend what to get my girlfriend for a gift and he said, "Girlfriend? I always thought you were gay?" I get that a lot. People say "you look gay". I don't think anyone can really "look gay". It's a stereotype and wrong. The only way you could say someone looks gay is if they are giving naked piggyback rides to their friend. Then you can say, "hmmm, that looks gay. That's a very gay look for him."
Then he suggested that I buy her lingerie. So I thought to myself, "Ullysses..."
(because that's what I like to call myself, sometimes).
"...that's not a bad idea." Really it's as much a gift for me as it is for her. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
I get to the mall and all of a sudden I realize that I'm too embarassed to go into the store to actually buy it. At least if it was condoms or tampons, I could conveniently mix it in with other items. With lingerie, there's no way to hide it. Everyone knows exactly what you're going in that store for.
So I end up making laps around the mall trying to get my courage up, as if I was some younger version of the geriatric mallwalkers. I made so many laps that people started coming out of stores holding cups of water that I grabbed and drank as I passed by.
I finally got the courage up and go in and buy something. I didn't even check the size. Just pointed and said "that'll do".
I got home, all proud of myself, and give her the gift. She looks at it for a few seconds and says, "this is unexpected...I always thought you were gay."
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I'm a little foggy on the ending but it was something like that. I know it ended with that callback as I thought I was extremely clever for doing so. Again, great if it works. If not...ouchie.
