Mister Comedy

As political theater, the first presidential debate was about what you would expect. These affairs are never about policy, because it’s impossible to elucidate policy in two minute chunks. But as entertainment, it was a huge disappointment, and that’s what I’d like to address. I haven’t felt such a combination of boredom and irritation since I watched ‘Gigli.’ Face it, with a little over a month left before W and his clan get outsourced to Crawford, Texas, anyone who wants to know where the two main candidates stand has all the information they need (maybe the debate should have been between the candidates who don’t have a chance–I think it might be cool to watch Ralph Nader and Ron Paul go at it, like watching cranky relatives get into an argument at a wake). So, since we’re not watching for some political revalation or new insight, the bottom line is this–we watch debates for the same reason we watch auto racing–because we want to see someone crash.

A few format changes would go a long way toward making the debates more fun. First, get rid of the podiums–this isn’t a Toastmasters meeting. Instead, place each candidate in a harness above a dunk tank. Then attach electrodes to their nipples, and every time either of them repeats a catch phrase or says something deliberately misleading, give ‘em a little jolt. “Senator Obama doesn’t underst–OWW!” (now that I think of it, that might be an unfair advantage to McCain).

We should also get rid of the moderator. Jim Lehrer did a fine job in that avuncular way of his, but he ended up just looking frustrated. My favorite moment was when he told Obama to talk directly to Mccain–”Say it to him” like he became a family therapist. “Use your words, Barack.” As much as I appreciate Lehrer, if we’re gonna look at it as a competition (almost every analyst spoke in terms of points in a prizefight), lets have judges. In fact, let’s have the ‘American Idol’ judges.

Randy: Yo yo yo McCain–you my dawg! I ain’t mad at ya, dawg!

Paula: Barack, I just thought you looked wonderful–you’ve shown nothing but class and love through this entire competition.

Simon: It was like watching a dreadful high-school debate in a gymnasium at an underfunded school.

For ninety-six minutes, I kept hoping Jeff Probst would come out and convene some sort of ad hoc tribal council–’Survivor: Ole Miss.” Give a candidate immunity if he can describe his economic plan without mentioning ‘Main Street.’ The only classic gaffe, the kind of ‘oh no he didn’t’ moment that could turn an election was when McCain tried to attack Obama for saying that he would take military action in Pakistan if we could get Bin Laden there. McCain said (and I’m adding the emphasis here) “You don’t say that OUT LOUD. If you have to do things, you have to do things…” Huh??? So his problem isn’t the idea of unilateral military action against an ‘ally,’ but the fact that Obama is telling people? I also was a little worried John wouldn’t have the chance to remind us that he was in a Viet Cong prison, but thankfully he worked that into his closing statement. McCain was criticized at one point for not knowing the name of the new Pakistani president, but isn’t that a little unfair? If McCain were president and he…i don’t know, drew a blank in some high-level meeting, wouldn’t he be able to simply turn to his well-read, foreignpolicy savvy vice-president to bail him out? Wouldn’t he?

As a poitical junkie, I also watched a lot of the ‘post-game’ analysis, and I have a couple of questions question for MSNBC. Why is Pat Buchanan still giving his opinion on ANYTHING? Buchanan wasn’t relevant when he was RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT! And the stupidest, most inconsequential comment–one of the reporters at the debate suggested that Obama might want to lean forward a bit more. Yeah, I may not agree with his stands on the issues, but at least he leaned forward. He gets my vote.

Ultimately, as much as I pride myself on tracking the issues, I gotta admit that the real reason I can’t vote for John McCain is that he SO reminds me of the old pissed-off guy in the neighborhood whose house I didn’t want to ride my bike past when I was eight years old. I’d love to see a snapshot poll on that.

I don’t sleep too well these days. I think it’s because I’m a news junkie. I am addicted to news. I have bookmarked thirty-five online newspapers (current favorites include the North Korean News Agency and the Moose Jaw Times-Herald ) and on cable I’m usually flipping between Headline News and MSNBC. I’m also pretty sure that my news addiction is to blame for my astounding lack of productivity–yeah, I may not have updated my blog in four days, but I have a good understanding of the forces underlying the global market collapse.

There’s really too much to process. I swear CNN Headline News should be called ADD–on the screen is the guy telling the story, a caption underneath the guy telling you what the guy is telling you, the weather for forty-seven cities, basketball scores, and I’m pretty sure I saw someone in a small box doing an interpretive dance about the story. The worst thing about network news is the teaser ads. Like, “Coming up at ten, we’ll tell you about a common household substance that can kill”…NO, TELL US NOW! There’s people dying in their kitchens and your sitting on a story! And reporters on the scene aren’t any more Pulitzer-worthy. The other night, a reporter at the scene of an accident said “details are sketchy.” THEN THEY’RE NOT…DETAILS!!! The most ludicrous news cliche is “police are baffled.” Really? ‘Baffled’ seems a bit strong, don’t ya think? I’ve never seen a bunch of cops walking around a crime scene shrugging their shoulders-”Jeez, I got nothin’ here–not a clue. I better call someone, because I am thoroughly confused.”

I lived in L.A. during the Rodney King nightmare, and it led me to this conclusion. The next time L.A. burns (because it will happen again), I hope the first buildings torched are tv news studios, for being the accelerant. I would love to see video of some smug, self-righteous anchor sitting at his desk reading off the teleprompter “We’ve got reports of a fire at–MY DESK! MY DESK IS ON FIRE!”

Seems like there are two extremes in broadcast journalism. There are talking heads that yell a lot and interrupt each other, and there’s Charlie Rose. I think Charlie is great. He never seems fazed by a subject–frankly, he never seems all that interested, either. Every time he puts his chin in his hand and leans forward, I expect him to either nod off, or start quietly chuckling as if to a joke he heard once. But I’ll take his disinterest over the yelling any day. I half-expect the host of one of these roundtable discussions to just start screaming “Shut up! Shut up all of you! I will turn this studio around if you people don’t shut up!”

As if it’s not bad enough that stories on tv news are all too short to be useful (Now I understand fundamentalist Islam, thanks to that sixty second feature) , time that could be used for thoughtful analysis is given instead to entertainment news. Now I’m as grateful as anyone to learn that Clay Aiken is actually gay (Whew! I won my office pool!), it’s not news!!! When you only have thirty minutes to give a rundown of the news of the day, maybe you should prioritize. I’m guessing the day Clay came out, there were at least one or two things that could have been mentioned about Darfur, or AIDS, or, oh, I don’t know, the election that will determine the future of the country.

So I think for an entire day, I’m going to avoid the news media. If a crisis happens somewhere in the world for the next twenty-four hours, it’ll still be a crisis tomorrow.

I love movies, but I don’t get to many of them. Too much money for marginal product–spending ten bucks for a comedy movie with ten laughs is like spending fifteen bucks for a cd with four good songs. The reason people illegally download music is because buying music is too freaking expensive! In fact, if studios want to stop piracy, they should make movies cheaper. I think you should pay when you leave the theater, whatever percentage of the ticket price you think the movie was worth. You think the studios would keep turning out crap if their average take per person was eighty-three cents?

Major studios are relics. I actually think the days of the Zanucks and the Goldwyns, as much as they may have squelched some visionary work, were better for the movie industry–for the fans. I don’t if any of you remember the Lily Tomlin-John Travolta vehicle (a poor word choice, since it implies it went somewhere) ‘Moment By Moment,’ which featured a horrifying hot tub encounter between the two leads. In the days of the big, mean studios, a guy in a suit would have taken the writers to lunch at the Brown Derby, and said “Interesting idea–but Lily does comedies, not romance.” The movie would have never happened.

Part of the problem is the deadening of the American film palate.  Some of the greatest films in history would never be greenlighted (greenlit?) today–too ‘talky’…too ‘complicated’…not ‘high-concept’ enough. Basically, the male American movie-going public likes two things in their movies–breasts, and explosions. I suppose that’s three things, because I’m not sure how well a movie featuring only one breast would do. But two breasts and some explosions–that’s box-office gold. If someone could made a movie about breasts that explode, it would be more popular than ‘Star Wars.’

I personally think that if a movie isn’t deep, it oughta be fun. If it isn’t deep or fun, then it’s just fifty million dollars that could have gone to Habitat for Humanity.  And if I’m watching at home, I usually give a movie the twenty minute test. If a movie hasn’t captured my attention in twenty minutes, I turn it off. I have seen five to fifteen minutes of more movies than I can count. Which is why I love surfthechannel.com.

Apparently Sweden has comparatively liberal copyright laws, because a site there called SurfTheChannel has every movie and tv show ever filmed available for free. Okay, maybe not every, but oh my god do they have a lot. I’m not sure I should even be telling those not ‘in the know,’ but it’s THE GREATEST WEBSITE IN THE UNIVERSE. Missed a movie that came out last month? It’s probably here. Now some of them were recorded by a dude with a cell phone in the front row, but it’s free! Just know that if you see a new movie has been added, watch it right away or you will see the dreaded phrase ‘removed for infringement.’ And before you start saying ‘Hey–you’re a creative artist…aren’t these people just stealing? Shouldn’t the people who did the movie be paid?”, let me just point out that for the VAST majority of movies being ’stolen,’ the people involved have already been paid. A couple of times. And there’s stuff you can’t buy, even if you wanted–I’d love to have a dvd of the first season of the second remake of ‘Twilight Zone,’ but I haven’t seen that at Blockbuster yet. And if I want to have a few friends over for a marathon of “Lou Grant,” I don’t think Ed Asner will have trouble paying his mortgage.

Since I discovered surfthechannel.com, I haven’t been sleeping a lot lately. It’s been sensory overload–like an epileptic on Red Bull in Vegas. And I’ve been having strange dreams. Here’s the weirdness: I’ve had more than one dream which featured a celebrity–IN A CAMEO! Famous actors appear in my dreams, but they don’t have speaking roles. I’m in some surreal library/delicatessan/army recruiting office, and there’s Corbin Bernson! Understand–he’s not part of the ‘plot’ to my dream, he’s just…there. A couple nights ago, the thing I remember is that Christopher Meloni was in my dream–for no apparent reason. He wasn’t a part of the story–he just showed up in some of the scenes. Any amateur shink wanna take a shot at that?

The Chris Meloni dream is not the strangest dream I’ve had lately. When I was still working the day job, one night, in my dream, I woke up to my alarm, took the train to work, sat at my desk, took the train home, and got ready for bed. I had a dream in which nothing happened. In a world of infinite possibility, my mind created a dreamscape identical to my actual life! Now that’s wasted time. I felt almost cheated when I actually woke up.

my favorite film genre–movies where entire cities are destroyed, by aliens, some space virus, or some combination of cataclysmic natural disaster. Not sure why, but I get a real kick out of seeing places I’ve been to slapped around, and I find myself strangely inspired when all of society’s hopes rest on the shoulders of a b-level movie star, like Tom Skerrit, or one of the Quaids.

‘Volcano’ was great, simply because a volcanic eruption is one of the only horrible things that hasn’t actually happened to Los Angeles. And ‘Earthquake In New York’–if cars blowing up are cool to watch, it’s exponentially cooler to see the Guggenheim Museum crumble, or the Statue of Liberty slowly topple into the bay. Unfortunately, that movie screwed up by wasting the first hour giving us the personal back stories of the people who would ultimately be buried in the rubble. Just get to the destruction–let’s see some iconic landmarks collapse already! The best of the bunch is, for my money, ‘The Day After Tomorrow,’ which manages to include multiple natural disasters, a cautionary tale about global warming, AND Randy Quaid! Tell me it wasn’t great to watch a tornado turn the Capitol Records building into a bunch of building-sized frisbees.

I’m also a sucker for old-school monster movies, but I’ve always been curious. Before CGI, when aliens were actually hard-working, unappreciated working actors in green costumes, one thing was a given. It was always “Attack of the Fifty-Foot” something. What I want to know is how was it decided that fifty feet was the height at which a genetically-mutated, nuclear-fallout-created anything becomes threatening to mankind? Did studios say “Well, a seventy-five foot tall broccoli stalk is just silly–nobody’s gonna buy that. Make it fifty feet tall and you’ve got yourself a movie.” I mean, wouldn’t a twenty or thirty foot tall thing that’s not supposed to be twenty or thirty feet tall be just as scary?

As summer winds down and the nights get a little chilly, I start to think of winter…and the mouse. I love all of God’s creatures. In theory. I don’t however, want to live with any of them, particularly tiny animals that  scurry or skitter or crawl. A large animal, if it somehow got into my apartment, would, at most, scare the hell out of you the first time you saw it. If I came home one day and there were an elk standing by the fridge, I’d freak for a minute, but then we would reach one of those uneasy ‘Wild Kingdom’ truces as I calmly walk around him and make a sandwich. Each of us keeping an eye on the other, but as long as I don’t startle the elk, we could, I suppose, coexist until I lured the elk outside.

Which brings me to the mouse. They’re cute, mice. But they scare the shit out of me. Irrational, bone-shaking terror. First of all, after they scare you the first time, they run away and can scare you again. Anywhere, anytime.  Just because I saw him under the sink doesn’t mean I’m safe at my desk. Said mouse can simply scurry along the wall and show up at my feet as I’m writing this. And I know they’re really small, and I know they don’t attack people. I think all it will take is one rogue mouse to leap from the floorboards to my throat and I’m a goner. All the other mice will see this from a crack in the plaster or under the microwave or inside an envelope (because they can freakishly shrink in size!) and then–it’s on. Forensics teams will spend days trying to match hundreds of tiny bite marks.

Now don’t give me that ‘they’re more afraid of you than you are of them’ crap, because in the animal kindgdom, they fight through the fear. Mr. Lion might be initially startled by Mr. Gazelle, but he finds a way to push past the fear and eat the gazelle. ‘They just came in to get out of the cold’. Great, nice to know I’m running a mission for rodents.

So one morning last winter, I dragged my ass to the bathroom for my morning ablutions, and as I’m peeing (a detail probably not necessary to the story), I glance in the direction of the shower and notice there’s something in the tub. And it moved. Now when I first wake up, I’m not very coherent, so I actually did that cartoon double-take where I literally shake my head and look again. When it moved again, this time trying to crawl up the side of the tub. Quickly flipping through my recollections of biology class and the Discovery Channel, I realized it was too big to be a roach, and too small to be a raccoon. Waking up a bit more now, I know that between roach and raccoon therei’s a lot of possibilites (is it a lemur?). When I finally realize t’s a mouse, I also realize I have no idea what to do with that information.

Do I make myself look really small or really big–no, that’s for bears. Do I try to kill it–get all alpha on its rodentine ass? Because then I have a dead mouse to deal with, and the ick factor goes up exponentially. Chase it around my studio for a while? Here’s what I decided, folks. I stepped back from the tub, and as I backed up, trying to look as little like…cheese as possible, I grabbed a towel and my toothbrush, and backed out of the bathroom. And then I shut the door. Understand what happened here. I made the conscious decision to CEDE an entire room to the mouse. I was apparently playing some inter-species game of Risk, and was trying to isolate the attacking mouse army, Not my proudest moment as a man.

A friend came by to toss the mouse outside, but that night I was still a little rattled. Thought about leaving a light on, but couldn’t remember if mice were maybe attracted to lights. But in the dark, I heard the skittering. Little evil mouse feet. I was sure I would wake up and see them lining the perimeter of my bed, all along the headboard like some outtake from ‘Willard.’ I grabbbed my cane and put it by my bed, apparently thinking that somehow I would be able to swat the oncoming horde and they would then worship me as their king. But my crowning touch came into play when I realized that there was no actual door separating the…mouse area from my ‘bedroom’, just a door frame. I fixed this by placing a pile of clothes from the hamper on the floor in the at the boundary between the ‘kitchen’ and the ‘bedroom’. I guess I thought, ‘Well, mice can come through the cracks in a wall, but they’ll never get past my inpenetrable barrier of fabric.

I haven’t seen any other mice since then, frankly because they understand who’s in charge here. This is my house. In our next installment of “An Urban Fairy Tale,” I’ll tell you a little something about raccoons.

Sometimes I think I might want a roommate–to split the bills, watch a movie, remind me to look for a job–but there are definitely moments when living alone rocks.  Every time I drink milk from the carton, or decide to listen to all my Carpenters cds, or just have one of those days when I don’t see any reason to get dressed (I know– I lead a rich, full life), I realize that life could be worse. I could have a psycho roommate.

Now in my experience, psycho roommates don’t usually seem psycho when you first meet them, but then you see that one quirky behavior that used to be just goofy but now seems to be proof of profound mental illness. I’m gonna tell you about two roommates, but (here it comes..wait for it…wait for it…) there’s a catch! Only one of them was really a roommate of mine and you have to guess which one!

Greg smoked a lot of weed, which was one of the reasons I thought he’d be a cool roommate. I figured there would always be pot in the house, and we’d laugh a lot. What I didn’t realize is that if you’re not stoned, stoned people aren’t nearly as interesting. Now if Greg were a typical pothead, he would eventually get really quiet, nodding off while watching a ‘Becker’ marathon . But Greg liked to talk when he got stoned. Constantly. About nothing. “Dude…I made up a new word! This doctor was talking about the knee reflex, and I was thinking you should call that a kneeflex!” “Dude–they should make a cologne that smells like a new car so that women think you’re rich!” Then I got to witness that perfect storm where stupidity, laziness and THC meet. I come home one day, he’s got a bag of pretzels on his right, a bag of mini-chocolate on his left, and he’s nodding. Then he takes a handful of pretzels and a few of the candy bars and shoves them all into his mouth at the same time. He chews and nods, all the while gesturing to me in that way that says “No–hang on–I got somethin’ here”. Finally he announces that what he’s got is the “greatest snack food idea ever”. Chocolate-covered pretzels. After I explained to him that they…had already been invented, he called me an asshole, went into his room and slammed the door. I had never seen a stoner get that upset about anything, and from then on things between us were always a little tense.

Jim was my roommate during freshman year at UCLA. He was a computer genius who had designed some important software when he was 17. What he hadn’t done is learn how to interact with other humans. He didn’t speak for the first three weeks we lived together, and while quiet can be good when you’re studying, this was creepy-brooding-antisocial-No Country For Old Men quiet. He spent his time hacking into the university mainframe to play this early role-playing game. This guy was such a freak that he gets access to every student’s personal file AND DOES NOTHING WITH IT! He was also such an oblivious slob that when I had company, I threw a large blanket over his half of the room, forming a hideous blob-like sculpture, which even at that was less likely to scare a date than the piles of fast-food wrappers, beer bottles and underwear beneath the blanket. I didn’t have to kick Jim out, though. Fortunately, the university did that, and when they did, he put on mountain-climbing gear and proceeded to rapel down the side of our eight story dorm building.

So, who did I really live with? Who’s fictional? Why am I asking so many rhetorical questions? Just knowing that there are Gregs and Jims out there who are just a Craigslist ad away from masturbating in the room next to me makes me appreciate my little studio, despite the occasional mouse and the one cockroach I’ve spotted in my kitchen, who I’m convinced is some sort of scout. And now, I’m gonna cook something. Naked. Because I can.

An old canard about the middle east crisis (slightly amended) says that ‘the Palestinians and Israelis never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity’. I think that applies to the Democratic Party as well. No matter the lock they might seem to have in an election year, they seem to actively find ways not to win. There is no way the last two elections should have been close enough for Ohio shenanigans and hanging chads to have even mattered. In 2004, Ralph Nader did not cost Al Gore the election–Al Gore cost Al Gore the election. When a sitting vice-president can’t win his home state, there’s a fundamental problem.

And now it looks like, despite a president who’s less popular than brussel sprouts, an wildly unpopular war and a housing market that looks more like a flea market, the race is essentially–even? What??? I feel like I’m in one of those Twilight Zone episodes, where I’ve just woken up to realize no one sees the monster except me (cut to me running through the streets grabbing strangers and shaking them screaming “DON’T YOU GET IT?!”).

Part of the problem is that this country hates smart people. We hate the kid in class who messes up the curve for everyone else. This country has made a one-joke comic a tv star by asking if we’re ’smarter than a fifth-grader.’ Game shows have devolved from ‘Jeopardy’ to ‘Deal or No Deal,’ in which the skill that’s rewarded is GUESSING A NUMBER!

The most impressive thing about hearing John McCain speak is that you can barely see Karl Rove’s lips move. When you think about it, McCain is an agent of change, in that the Repugnicans have changed the empty vessel into which they pour the usual GOP nonsense. Where the Democrats go wrong is with their smug assumption that it’s enough to be right. In American politics today (and yesterday, and four years ago, and…) being right is not enough. It would be lovely is both sides could simply distribute by email a PDF document listing their positions and let the informed, rational electorate decide, but that just ain’t how it works. When your opponent gains ground, you have to do…something. More to the point, when they lie, you have to say they’re lying! In a bar fight, there comes a point where you stop saying “dude, let’s just talk it out” and you start throwing things.

Look, I’m all for taking the high road, but if that road is closed for a few miles, you don’t stop driving. You get down on the low road, your car gets a little dirty, and you get where you want to go. Once you’re there, you repair the high road so that everyone can drive on it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m exhausted from mixing all these metaphors.

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of the biggest ‘what-the-fuck’ moment in my lifetime. Combine that with the ratcheted up hostilities between Israel and Iran (Israeli minister says Israel might kidnap Ahmadinejad), China back to its repressive, pre-Olympics mindset and Russia seemingly nostalgic for a Cold War redux, my mind starts to wax apocalyptic. And when things get real scary, I think about how easy it would be to start my own cult. I’ve obviously got the leadership thing down, having been captain of my high-school debate team. If you’re not inclined to join my cult, maybe you’ll want to start your own, and in the that spirit, I’ve put together some tips to make your cult as successful as possible.

• Pick a date for the end of the world. Avoid the beginning of any century–be creative. Who’s to say the world won’t end on March 30th, 2012? Or tie your personal vision to an astronomic event–comets have been done to death, but what about the next asteroid shower?
• Get as many people to agree with you as possible–ideally, you should have at least twenty followers–otherwise it’s really more of a club than a cult.
• Choose a spiritual name for your followers to call you. You will have more luck drawing adherents if you avoid really American-sounding names like ‘Greg.’ Also avoid names which are difficult for your followers to pronounce, like Azhgtilsksh.
• When the ‘end times’ come, remember–you don’t have to kill yourself just because your followers do.
• If you have a regular job, quit. In addition to the long hours involved with starting a cult, you lose some credibility if you have to miss a vigil or a sacrifice because you’re ’stuck at work for another hour.’
• Convince your followers to have sex with you in exchange for their salvation. If they are not convinced, threaten to shoot them.
• Good places to build your compound: the desert, the mountains, or anywhere in Idaho. Bad places: the banquet room of a Holiday Inn and your apartment.
• Avoid telling potential converts about the killing themselves part. Wait until you get all their worldly possessions, then start dropping hints about ‘the next world.’
• Be sure to tell your followers that when they kill themselves (see above) they will be going to a better place. Nobody will give you all their worldly possessions if you tell them you’re ‘just not sure what will happen when this all shakes out.’
• Don’t tell people you’re God. Acceptable substitutes–Vessel of God, Messenger of Truth, Most Eminent Visionary. Bad choices–Smart Guy, Man Who Is Better Than Others, Guy Who Tells People To Kill Themselves.
• Find corporate sponsorship. With more cult startups expected than ever before, competition for lost souls will be intense. If you could be known as The Nike Cult of The Impending End Times, you’ll have a better shot at getting new members.

I watch a lot of tv, and I have fond memories of fall. Every fall as a kid I remember the TV Guide Fall Preview Issue, when times were simpler and there was a hell of a lot less to watch. You kinda felt like if a new show was gonna make it, it was your responsibility to watch. Shows like ‘Cheers’ started with low ratings, but because there weren’t 200 channels and internet shows and shows on your cell phone–well, networks were willing to let an audience grow.

I realize the big three networks are dinosaurs, but why are so many new network shows so incredibly, jaw-droppingly LAME? It can’t be lack of originality, because any studio or network head would tell you that they’re constantly looking for cutting-edge ideas and fresh faces. So all I can figure is , maybe the life of a TV executive is so busy, they don’t have time to…think up new shit. So, for all you harried industry players out there, here’s a few show ideas (with casting suggestions) you can have for free.

“Hey, Stop That! ”
A guy (maybe Chris Walken, if he’ll do episodic) goes around L.A. yelling at street people.
In the pilot, he yells at that guy who wears a trashcan lid as a hat.

“You Bet Your Ass!”
Game show where losers are forced into prostitution. Maybe have Saget host.

“Acquaintances”
A bunch of twenty-something slackers hang out in a coffeehouse. Since the show is filmed in a real coffeehouse, the characters are too self-absorbed to talk to each other. No dialogue should keep production costs down.

“One-Hour Martinizing”
The gritty reality of the dry-cleaning business. In the opener, guest star Joan Collins gives a terrific performance as a woman with a suspicious stain on her dress. Gandolfini would play the owner of the shop–maybe give him a mob background to lure ‘Sopranos’ fans.

“Don’t Try This At Home!”
Science show where host teaches kids about loose wires, oily rags and light sockets.

“That’s My Chick”
Lovable guy gets drunk and starts a bar fight every Friday. Tony Danza is probably available.

“America’s Next Great Surgeon”

Reality show in which 12 people with different backgrounds (auto mechanic, barista, carny) learn surgery over 12 weeks, leading to a finale in which the final two each perform a heart-lung transplant.

“CSI: Law And Order”

Merging of casts of 3 CSI series and 3 L&O series creates first network ’super-show’  In the pilot, the thirty-seven stars just get in each other’s way as they try to solve the case of a genius mathematician (and former cop) who is also a sexual predator and serial arsonist wanted for cases in Las Vegas, Miami and New York.

“First Draft”

At the end of each episode, an actual television writer commits suicide.

The title of this post makes it look like my show in Buffalo didn’t go well, and that’s not really true. I got as much out of a Rotary Cub as any comedian could have. But MY GOD WAS IT A LOT OF WORK! First, to get to Buffalo, you drive west from Minneapolis (which is an actual city) about 45 minutes, past the suburbs, past all signs of civilization, until you see the lights of a town. That town isn’t Buffalo. You keep driving.

Interestingly enough, for the 20 or so miles before you get to Buffalo, there are no signs along the freeway saying ‘Buffalo–20 miles” or “Buffalo–next exit” or…anything. The only signs you see tell you to watch your speed, because you certainly wouldn’t want to get to Buffalo too quickly. Also on that stretch of freeway, they’ve painted white dots in the middle of the road, with signs saying “2 dots equals 3 seconds.” So you keep driving and counting dots until you see the Menard’s, take a right, and there it is–the Buffalo Civic Center. However, whereas ‘civic center’ implies a rather grand structure, where…big events might happen, this place looks like an aircraft hangar built on top of a high-school gymnasium. An old gymnasium with god-awful fake ‘turf’ duct-taped to the floor. Guess my ‘comeback’ had to start somewhere.

This was the Buffalo Rotary Club’s yearly fundraiser, during which they raffle off a new car. Now one of the fundamental rules of comedy, along with “Always Be Nice To The Guy Paying You” and “Don’t Make Fun Of The Girlfriend Of The Guy Paying You” is ‘Never Follow A Raffle.” See, everyone is there trying to win something, and when you go on, they realize you’re not giving away any prizes. You never want you introduction to start with the phrase ‘and don’t forget we still have a comedian.’

The three hundred or so people who didn’t win a new car dejectedly head for their own car (I mean it was almost ten o’clock in Minnesota after all) and I’m left with fifty or so people, who thanks a prime rib dinner and an open bar are either drunk or napping. The head guy of the Rotary Club then spends five minutes trying to get the drunk people quiet enough to hear my show, and to get them really pumped, gives me this introduction:

“Alright, so we’ve got a guy here from Chicago to entertain you. Here’s Michael Dane.”

The ‘audience’ is seated at gigantic round tables, thereby making sure that two-thirds of them aren’t actually facing the ’stage’, which is not really a stage but a three-inch high riser made of unfinished plywood. I start off playing with the crowd a little, and I had been given some notes on a few of the notables in the group to riff on. Unfortunately, none of the people for whom I had notes were still there. So I play with some people at the front tables, and I see a woman with big frizzy hair, and suggest that she was “the victim of a tragic home-perm accident.” Not brilliant, but the kind of line that loosens up the crowd before I get into my material. Well this crowd wasn’t too clear on the notion that comics…make shit up. No real grasp of sarcasm. So, a woman next to the frizzy-haired woman felt compelled to yell in the middle of my next joke “that’s natural–that’s her real hair!” I clearly had entered some sort of bizarre Literal Land, so I decided to just get to the act.

Although a core group in the crowd was clearly digging my routine, I spent much of my contractually-obligated hour essentially babysitting. Apropos of nothing I would be talking about, someone would announce loudly “I’m getting a drink–anyone need anything?” or “I gotta take a piss.” If I turned to the right, the people on the left would start talking. If I turned to the left, a canasta game would break out on the right.  On every other joke, if I didn’t yell the punchline, they seemed unable to tell that it was the end of a joke, and their cue to laugh. And, since it was an room full of Minnesotans, when they did laugh, wasn’t able to tell. The innate Lutheran-ness of Minnesotans doesn’t exactly lead to boisterous response.

It was also the whitest group of people assembled outside of the Republican National Convention.  The only person of color in the auditorium was the black security guard. Not even sure why he was there–Rotary Club events don’t tend to draw your rabble-rousers and troublemakers, even when they have an open bar.

I pushed through, though, eventually got to most of my actual jokes, and at the end, quite a few people said the had a great time (again, not that I could tell they had fun). Did my political stuff, did my pot stuff, even did my bisexual stuff (now I know why the security guard was there). Afterwards, I went to the open bar, had a gin and tonic in a plastic cup, got my money in cash, and headed out of Buffalo. Showbiz, baby!

As I write this post, I’m on a bus headed to Minnesota. On Saturday night I begin my return to standup comedy, with a performance for the Rotary Club of Buffalo, Minnesota. On the surface, none of that exactly screams ‘show business’-not Rotary Club, not Buffalo, not Minnesota. But, it is a gig. I feel a bit like Michael Corleone in The Godfather–no matter how many times I try to leave standup, “it keeps pulling me back in.”I’m not even sure how I feel about getting back in the game. Excited, sure. And, in a weird way, a little resigned. So now I’m playing catch-up with all the hipster, alternative and most importantly, young comedians working today. And here I am, the Grandpa Moses of comedy.

First thing I have to do is throw out a chunk of my material, because I used to do topical jokes, and a lot of those are past their freshness date. Back in the day, I used to have bits about an out-of touch, incompetent president risking American lives in wrong-headed military action motivated by oil, while the economy stagnated and inner-city violence soared. Well, maybe I don’t have to rewrite that much material.

I also need to figure out how to market myself . Used to be if I wanted work as a comic, I’d send a VHS tape of a show to the club owner. Now I need to have a website, a clip on YouTube, I probably should have a MySpace page and I’m sure there’s some way to implant a microchip in the heads of prospective audience members so they’re forced to watch my show in an endless loop. Well, at least I’ve got the website and the clip, which you can view here.

I realize I’m sounding like an old vaudevillian here (‘why, if radio hadn’t come along I’d still be somebody”), but it’s a little scary getting back on the horse. I was lucky enough to get into standup when it was booming, in the eighties, when every town with a sewer system had ‘comedy night’ at the local bar. If you had twenty minutes of material and a car, you could make a decent living. Then comedy got devalued when the market was flooded with 18,000 mediocre twenty-something comics who realized it was easy money and you got to work in bars and occasionally get laid because for forty-five minutes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa you were a star. Yeah, I’m a little bitter. But it’s good to be back. I’ll post again after I rock the Rotarians.