Mister Comedy

Been hibernating a lot this week. I tend to plan my brooding–it’s not an organic thing that just comes over me. For instance, I normally buy one pack of cigarettes at a time, never a carton, because after all, if I buy a carton of cigarettes, then I would have to call myself a smoker, and I like to live in the delusion that any given pack might be my last. But a few days ago I bought three packs, because I intended to brood.

I’ve always romanticized tortured artists. The notion of abusing oneself as a path to brilliant creative work really grabbed me, as I imagined myself scrawling bits of genius on the back of an envelope or a napkin while surrounded by overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles while listening to Billie Holiday, or Karen Carpenter. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have the hang of it. First, I’m too anal-retentive to let that kind of righteous squalor accumulate. Also, I can only write at the computer–when I do scrawl notes, my penmanship is so godawful and the notes are so sparse that within an hour they become indecipherable to me (what did I mean by ‘elephant religion’?–I think that says ‘elephant’). And lastly, when I’m in hibernation mode, I just…tend to not feel like writing. I find that being in a funk takes up most of my time. So basically I become Charles Bukowski, but without the literary part, sitting in a very tidy apartment.

When I do commit to a couple of days of good old-fashioned angst, I watch a lot of tv, and since I no longer have cable, that means nine channels to choose between (compelling reason to learn Spanish–I’d have two more channels to watch). One classic moment this week was the much ballyhooed interview with the call girl from the Elliot Spitzer scandal. When she was asked whether she knew it was a governer she was ‘dating,’ she said she didn’t ‘conect the dots’ until she saw him on tv, and here’s the beauty part–Diane Sawyer says “You never knew who he was?…Hadn’t seen him in the paper?” Now maybe I’m making an unfair assumption here, but I just don’t see Kristin–sorry, Ashley–looking at her morning New York Times on a regular basis.

I never seem to brood for more than a couple of days–I eventually have to leave my apartment and interact with people, if only to buy more cigarettes. As I started to come out of my funk, I needed some tv that was mindless and upbeat, and that would be the exact description of “Don’t Forget The Lyrics,” hosted by Wayne Brady. Now, if it’s possible someone to have negative street cred, Wayne Brady would be one of those people. But I like to sing along with watered-down snippets of thirty-year-old songs as much as anyone, so I watched. And oddly enough, “Don’t Forget The Lyrics” brought me back. You see, when all you can see is your own shit, you need a little perspective. Well, the contestant on “Lyrics” said that she wanted to win so she could afford an operation because she was born with ONLY ONE EAR! It was then that I realized that not winning the Chicago Standup Comedy Showdown is pretty far down on the list of things about which to brood.