I went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum with my better half yesterday.  It was very interesting.  If you have never heard of it, what it is is they have real actual human bodies with out skin on them displayed and so you can actually see how the body works and looks.  Like they have a guy with no skin or organs on him in a pose as if he was dribbling a basketball.  All you can see is his skeleton with the muscles attached.  I don’t know what its called, but they somehow plasterize the parts of the body so they don’t dry up, stink, or rot away.  They even have the actual eyeballs in the bodies which I found sort of discomforting.  I kept imagining their line of sight shifting from looking up to focusing right on me, and thinking about how I would totally shit in my pants if that happened. It’s a good think they didn’t.

We bumped into the dumbest person on the planet while at the exhibit.  We were looking at a body displaying the muscles and tendons and skeleton only.  And then we heard the girl behind of us say, “Ughh, that guy is ugly.”  How do you react to that?  I wanted to turn around and say, “Which guys ugly??  Are you talking about the guy that took our tickets?  I agree, he was ugly,”  just to see if she would correct me and say, “No, I was talking about the dead guy without a face.”  And then I could reply, “Really?  Did you SEE the guy taking tickets!  Ughh!”  What a dumb idiot.  Was she going to Body Worlds to try to scope out hot guys on display???  Did she think she was at a singles bar or something?  I just thought that was hilarious.  I wish I was by her when we went by the display of the real skeleton just to see if she said, “Gross, that guy needs to eat something!  He is WAY too skinny.”

Well, today has been another annoying day in the career forwarding department.  It seems like at the end of 2007, I got so much work on my 2008 calender and I was all proud and excited.  Now that 2008 is here, as each week passes, more and more of my scheduled work is just falling off.  It is really frustrating.  I think I had 1, maybe 2 gigs fall out on me while I was still working at the dildo factory dayjob.  Now that I have made the leap and committed to a life of stand up, this is when gigs just get cancelled and moved around like it’s nothing.  That is the business and I better get used to it, but I will tell you, it’s tough.  It’s hard to stay positive.  You always hear about all these tragedies with comedians and you wonder, “Why?  How could someone with a career of making people laugh and smile be so miserable?”  Well, it’s very clear.  I am not saying I am miserable.  I love doing comedy, my eyes are just slowly being opened to the barrage of stress that is this lifestyle.  So next time you see a comedy show, after the show, go give the comic a hug and tell him or her, “You made my night.  Thank you for doing what you do.”  And then give them $500 in cash.  If you don’t do that last part, you are just rubbing it in their face that you can afford to spend your money on things that aren’t ramen noodles and gatorade.  It’s a sad day when you contemplate becoming a waiter because you are sick of not having any money.  That’s not a rip on waiters.  The world can agree that waiters are grossly underpaid.  I am making a statement about the tragedy of how comics are paid.  Comedians’ pay hasn’t changed in 10 years.  But I guess its that way because people know we will do what we love because we love it, not because of the pay.  I am going to stop complaining now and go find a hooker.

I really think car commercials are getting a little out of hand. Who is gaining valuable information from the insanely ridiculous situations they are putting these cars in?? I speak particularly about the truck ads. Last time I went car shopping, never once did the thought, “I wonder if this car can pull a commercial air liner,” cross my mind. I’ve never said to a salesman, “Yeah, this is a cool car, but if I were driving directly toward a huge I beam swinging toward me on a giant pendulum, could this car stop on a pre-marked safety mark?” or, “I like it, let me ask you this: How does this car handle driving up a 45 degree metal ramp that has thousands of little tiny silver marbles being released from the top of the ramp?”
If you want to sell Johnny Beehner a car, here is what your ad should be: A guy pulls into a parking spot outside of a hotel and gets out of the car and says, “Wow, that was a shitty 15 hour drive. At least I was comfortable and didn’t have any car trouble.” And then he checks into the hotel, takes a huge dump in the bathroom and then falls asleep.

I just saw a  commercial for back to back episodes of a reality show called “Parking Wars.”  Remember that Geico commercial where you think its a commercial for a show about tall people living in a small house?  I would rather watch that than a show about a meter maid.  That’s all I had to say.  I added a couple of shows to the shows page.  Hope to see you out there.

    Well, today is Wednesday.  Yesterday was my good buddy and fellow gentleman, Mike KAuth’s birthday.  I have to be honest when I say that I sat down at the computer a few minutes ago with nothing on my mind at all and that is still the case.  What do you guys want to read about?  … Well, I don’t really know a lot about horse-shoes so instead I will write about what’s on tv.

    Well, I will tell you one thing, I am VERY sick of all this reality tv crap.  I don’t know if I am have already written about this, but it is very obvious to everyone (and this writers strike isn’t helping any) that reality tv is taking over and we are all letting it.  Hell’s Kitchen, Bridezilla, The Girls Next Door, America’s Top Model, it’s all crap.  Yes, kudos to them for succeeding and somehow making it so that a lot of people watch it, but I really feel it is polluting the airwaves.  There is a show on tv, I don’t know what it is called, but it is the equivalent to American Idol, but it is for people that want to be marketers!  Are we serious!??  What the Hell is next, America’s Top Bellboy?  I don’t watch tv anymore.  Sure, every once in a while I will watch the Office if its new, but I haven’t watched tv on purpose in a long time.  I watch 24, Lost, and Heroes.  That’s pretty much it.  I will watch something else if my girlfriend and I are on the couch and she is not letting me molest her.  I have had this discussion with my lady a million times.  You ask anyone in the world and they will agree with you and then totally contradict themselves immediately.  And I mean everyone!  “Oh, I totally know what you mean, I hate reality tv.  It is all garbage… well, except for Survivor/ or Real World/ or Rock of Love/ or blah blah blah.”  It’s all shit.  I don’t know why I even wrote about this.  Who cares.

    Call me a hypocrite, but I have an idea for a show.  I think it’s going to be huge.  We take 6 hidden cameras, we put them in public toilets pointed up…

    Welcome to the twentieth century, everyone!!  We made it.  Alright, well, I am sitting here in my bathrobe next to my girlfriend’s cats’ litterbox.  I know I am clean, but this whole room smells like I did before I got in the shower.  Well, I shouldn’t say that;  I didn’t exactly smell like cat-shit.  Regardless, life is good.  I am still plugging away trying to make this whole stand up comedy career happen.  I am having a blast.  If there is one thing that has been on my mind in recent months, its this:  I love doing comedy and I feel very blessed that my life path has led me to the point where I am making a living doing it.  However, if there is one thing that rains on my parade, and luckily it is VERY rare in my experience, it is being complained to by the other comic.  I don’t mean to complain about complainers, but if I am headlining a gig and it doesn’t pay well (first of all, if you got into comedy for the money, you are retarded) I sure as HELL am not going to bitch about it to the feature who is making, at most, half of what I am making.  I’m just sick of it.   Okay, that was not a good note so start off on.  I apologize.

    I forgot to make a new years resolution so I will do what I do every year when I remember a week late to make a resolution and I will try to think of something that I haven’t already done in the last week…  Wow, not a lot left…. I guess 2008 will be the year I give up farming.

    I am happy to report that the Gentlemen’s Hour is still kicking ass.  This has been an exciting start of the year for us.  Just yesterday, we performed at the nation’s largest sketch festival, the Chicago Sketchfest!  It went great.  We had a blast.  It was very exciting and everyone involved was awesome.  My Second City instructor, Brian Posen, is the director of the whole thing so it was good to see him again after probably almost 6 years. 

    So we all drove out to Chicago together with our main sound and lights man, Matt Tremle.  That was fun.  Then we raced back to Milwaukee for our first of many, many shows to come at the new Alchemist Theatre in Milwaukee.  I guess it’s technically in the Bayview area or something.  That was very fun.  We did an hour of all improv and it went over pretty well.  We will be having those shows every other Sunday.  Usually, it won’t be all improv, but we were very excited to do some live improv as we haven’t done that in a long time in front of a crowd.  Those shows are going to mainly be used to workshop sketch ideas, do stand-up, show new videos, show old video favorites, and of course perform improv.

    Tomorrow I am off on a string of one-nighters for stand up.  I am excited about it.  I do miss my lady when I am out on the road, but aside from that, I really like being on the road.  Yeah, I get bored during the day, but that is sort of good, because it forces me to be productive.  For example, just last week, I was in Davenport, IA.  I was really bored, I hadn’t done anything all day, so at 3:30pm I put on some clothes and went to KFC.  I’m on my way to becoming a great comedian!

    I don’t have a lot more to say.  I just wanted to update the old girl as I can’t really do that much on the road.  I need to use my girlfriend’s computer to update my web-site.  I can update my myspace on the road, but not this site.  Well, I hope everyone is have a great year so far and sticking to your dumb resolutions.  I’m gonna put some pants on and go farm.

    ps.  I miss my hair.