Nothing motivates me personally to write more than a shitty, shitty day. Today is exactly that. As a comedian on the road, you are destined to have car problems. Well, I had a nice profitless weekend lined up working some rooms down south and showcasing a room in Kentucky hoping to get in with a new booker. I got up at 5:30am this morning and hit the road. At about 9, in the middle of construction, my car putters out and dies on the side of the road. 2 hours later, my tow truck shows up. (I was very weary of this guy upon first seeing his “Git R Done” camouflage baseball hat, but he ended up being really nice. He even ended up giving me a deal on the tow… as far as I know. Hell, he could’ve taken one look at me, realized he’s dealing with a moron and doubled his price telling me he’s giving me a deal. And here I am blogging about how nice of a guy he is. I’m dumb.) He tows me to a place he recommended that was closer than the place AAA suggested. I’m constantly getting on the phone with the booker explaining my situation. He was really cool about it, thank God. I am calculating if this happens by this time, and if I go this speed, can I make it to the gig, blah blah blah. Well, the mechanic comes out and tells me that isn’t going to happen. So Joel, the booker, finds a replacement for tonight’s show. This obviously means, I lose my lodging. So now I have no lodging for tonight or tomorrow night. Luckily, comics are generally very cool people and look out for each other, so I ended up getting a place to crash at for tonight. Tomorrow may be a WalMart parking lot in Louisville. Won’t be the 1st, and definitely won’t be the last. Showbiz sure is glamorous… I guess Fergie was right! Wow, I don’t think I have ever spent as much time in a Panera as I have just now. Anyway, my new fuel pump ended up setting me back $450. That’s totally cool, though, because I am making $150 this weekend. I think the only way life could get better is if gas prices skyrocket soon.
Life sure can kick you in the balls. I am actually 100 times calmer than I was when my car first puttered out on me, and so I do realize that things could be a lot worse. But you know what? Things can ALWAYS be worse, so I think that phrase is a comfortless load of shit. Yeah, it could be worse, it could have cost me $1000. But if it DID cost $1000, what, then am I supposed to find comfort that it didn’t cost $2000??? Things can ALWAYS be worse. Things can ALWAYS be better, too. Anyway, my childhood temper that I had thought died when I moved away from Omaha crept its ugly head back into my life as I waited for Git R Done to show up. Luckily, I didn’t do any of the things that were running through my head, but I wanted to. I wanted to get out and kick the shit out of my car, punch the windows in and throw rocks at all the douche-bags’ cars that shouted something out their window at me as they passed me. Luckily, all I did was punch my dashboard until my knuckles hurt… then felt stupid. I was so mad, though. If my car just didn’t shit out on me, everything would have been just fiiiine.
Okay, I feel I have done enough bitching. I hate complaining, (unless I’m at my dayjob. Any one of my coworkers can tell you I have NO problem complaining. Ironically enough, that may not be an issue much longer, but I am not going to go into that here) but sometimes its due. I wish I had the patience of a saint. My heroes all seem to have limitless patience. My dad had more patience than anyone I have ever met. Yeah, he ran out of patience here and there, but when you raise 7 retards, you’re gonna run out of patience. I don’t mean to say my brothers and sisters are retarded, but growing up in the Beehner house, you pretty much are a moron up to a certain age. Shit, everyone’s a moron growing up! My brother, Luke, I love him to pieces and I feel bad using him as an example, but this particular memory just jumped in my head: Family vacation, driving across the country, driving over some bridge over a huge river, the Mississippi, I think. All of the sudden Luke starts crying. My dad asks whats wrong. Through the tears, he mutters that he threw his new watch out the window. The obvious next question was asked, “Why?” His response silenced the entire van. “I wanted to see if I could drop it and then catch it real quick.” Hell, I’ve got stories of myself being an idiot. One day my mom said she wanted my dad to start a fire in the fireplace. Little Johnny starts crying this time. They ask me what’s wrong. Still crying, I say, “There’s a football helmet in the chimney.” I was crying because I was scared he would start up the fireplace and the Beehner house would explode. I was asked why there was a football helmet in the chimney and still sobbing mumbled, “I put it in there cause I wanted to see if it would go down to the bottom.” What’s even dumber is that I had dropped the helmet down the chimney from the roof of the house months prior, and had been living in constant agonizing fear that the house would blow up whenever my mom was next in the mood for a fire. Man, I was dumb. I just remembered, that when I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was play “spy” by myself on the roof of the house. I bet you are wondering how you play “spy.” Well, its actually quite easy. First, you make sure you have no friends. Then you run around on a roof and hide behind chimneys and window shutters from nobody. The point of that rant is that my dad had a LOT of patience.
I don’t know, I look at people I admire like Brian Regan and if you know who he is, you know that he comes across as a guy that wouldn’t hurt a fly. He doesn’t blog about how he got shit on or throw such PC terms as “retards” around like I have. I am not that guy. I admire that. I guess I am still trying to find my voice. As far as my act, I am pretty clean. I don’t cuss really in my act. I have my share of poop jokes, and if I know it will be welcome, I will spill out some sexually lewd (but hilarious) jokes. I try to be clean. I do believe if somethings funny, its funny. But I also am aware that clean will get you further… more easily anyway.
What the Hell am I talking about. I don’t know what I started talking about, but somehow I got sidetracked. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I am currently reading “Happy Endings, Tales of a meaty breasted zilch” by Jim Norton. It’s a fantastic book I recommend. It is in the format of a bunch of unrelated journal entries and I think that style got in my head. Okay, well, have a great day everyone. Thanks for reading if you got this far. Shit, this is so long, I don’t think I will ever re-read this.