The Apocalypse is Coming AND No One Likes Me!

Performed at the Eastville Comedy Club last night, and well, it didn't go so well. I kind of bombed.

Now bombing isn't fun but it would have been okay if I hadn't have gone home and read the news.

Let me tell you, there is no faster way to feel that society is doomed than if you go on CNN.com and read all of the hateful ignorant shit that people post on the comment sections of virtually any article. Any article, it can be something like "Man saves basket of kittens from fire" and people will post shit like, "He should've let those kittens burn, along with the Jews" and then it will have twenty "I like this comment" checked off! Crazy, crazy, crazies out there.

And of course, yesterday was an extra special day for all those crazies out there because that nut-ball decided he was sick of the government stealing all his money and he flew his private plane into an office building.

And so now, all of this guy's tea bagging buddies are all over the inter-webs celebrating what he did!

Crazy people banding together, making it easy for the FBI to get them all on the watch list

So that sort of pushed me over the edge into a miserable depression. So the world is going to end and no one like me because I suck at stand-up, that's just great!

These Tea Baggers are unbelievable to me. Its funny how they think they know what is best for America when they hate most of the other people who live here.


Many people don't really understand just what it is to be a stand-up comic.

There's no worse feeling in the world than being on stage and you know things aren't going well and you can just feel the awkwardness in the room. You can see the look on everyone's face. But that reason is the same reason why everyone does this.

People who don't do stand up and some people who do think "oh its so selfless, spreading joy and laughter around the world." What a load of bullshit. We do this because when you do it right, it feels awesome. It's completely selfish. Its great that everyone's laughing and all, but you know what's really great? Me! Because I'm the reason they're laughing. I'm so clever and funny that this guy over here had the worst day of his life and he's still laughing! I am a God on this stage! That's the real reason to do stand up comedy.

______________________________

I just performed at the Comedy Corner in the village tonight. Much better show. I'm on top of the world once again baby!

Hey It's the Winter Olymp...ah I Already Don't Care.

So it's the Olympics, hold on don't faint from excitement just yet, it's the Winter Olympics!

That time of year when we all gather 'round the hearth and debate what best describes curling. Is it horse shoes meets shuffle board? Bocce with some lawn darts mixed in? Or maybe the combination of bocce-lawn darts-and marbles? Tough call.

In a related story: I had no idea Rascal Flatts was a group made up of a bunch of fat middle aged guys. I always just assumed because all of their fans were women and gay men and because they're music sucked that they were young good looking guys. Well, you know what they say about people who make assumptions...

Also, and completely unrelated, Rage Against the Machine is playing on my computer right now. I definitely like some of their songs, but I don't know if I would go as far to say they are a "good" band. They have a pretty strong case of the AC/DC "All our songs sound exactly the same" Disease and I find most of the "political" statements in their songs to be mostly devoid of constructive solutions and bordering on anarchism (which I tend to not support). But then they have some very rocking songs, specifically most of the songs on their first album.

So I pose the questions: Are a few very solid songs enough to raise a band above the rest of their musical mediocrity? And also, what is curling to you? Besides the #1 reason no one is watching the USA network this week.

Oh wait, the one guy wears his hair like The Situation, I see the appeal now.

What Am I Gonna Do with My Life?

So now entering day number 182 of unemployment. Starting to really where the hell I'm going to be able to actually find some work.

Very good chance I'll be a barista by the end of the month, if anything at all. But I was just given the suggestion of trying my hand as a tutor for some of the wealthier children in the city. Now, ostensibly this idea doesn't seem that crazy. I have several friends who have or currently work as substitute teachers and that's a lot like tutoring...right? But when I think about it, the problems pile up hard and fast:

1. While Providence College has a decent reputation in the academic world (I could talk for seconds about all the job offers I've gotten for calling myself a PC alum) I'm not entirely sure I have the credentials to get all these Richie Rich parents lining up around the block for my services.

2. I am pretty sure I could be a great teacher IF I could make up the curriculum. I'm not so sure I would be the best proofreader in the world for a high school paper in which grammar is more important than the actual content (Hello, Mrs. Cole!); although, I do know how to properly use a semicolon.

2a. I really don't know what areas of study I could be of real significant use. I would probably do well with creative classes: writing, poetry, short stories, anything with theater (except costume design) but how often do you really see middle and high schoolers taking these kind of courses for credit (much less getting tutored for them)? I could probably do alright with basic piano and guitar, maybe even some music theory but my ability to translate sheet music to guitar and piano is pretty rusty.

I'd like to take a moment to congratulate anyone who is still reading this at this point. You made it!

On a completely different note: I'm going to try and step up the comedy performances this week, with two-three open mics and a show at Bar 4 on Sunday. I've had the nasty habit of flaking out on open-mics in the past, we'll see if I can man up this time.

Who knows, maybe if I'm lucky one day I can be like this guy:

A Little Late: Grammy Thoughts

August and Everything After was a huge album for the band Counting Crows from way back in 1993. If featured several songs that you'd still hear on the radio today. It was nominated for zero Grammys.

So the Grammys were two weeks ago. I have one question? When did winning a Grammy become talent optional? It seems more and more award shows these days are throwing all of their credibility to the wayside just to try and make a few extra bucks for the industries they recognize (I’m talking to you Oscars, 10 best picture noms?).

Taylor Swift is cute and all, and she’s not devoid of all musical talent but album of the year? She has a less than fantastic voice and as for her songwriting; since when did cutesy pop become the forefront of quality music?

I was never a fan of the of the Backstreet Boys or N*sync but those guys were at actually talented as far as being able to sing and they never won a single Grammy between them (Not that they should have, that's the point).

I can’t think of a single thing the Jonas Brothers do that warrants a Grammy nom (unless “Band most capable of making tweens scream hysterically” is a new category I’m unaware of).

I don’t know, maybe I’m just showing my age (all of twenty-three years!), maybe I didn’t notice before and the Grammys have always pandered to the listening preferences of middle schools across the country. But now that I do notice I certainly don’t like it.

I refuse to believe that these are the best and brightest of music today. I hope this doesn’t discourage all of those people out there who are actually trying to use music to create something new and exciting that people can hear and say “wow”. Of course, those people aren’t doing it for the awards anyway.

Still, some recognition would be nice, and deserved. Shove it Grammy.


This is from M. Ward's album "Hold Time" released last year. Zero nominations

Facebook Doppelganger Week: An Interesting Social Experiment in Vanity

Interesting week it was on Facebook. The first ever Doppelganger week where people replace their profile pics with pictures of celebrities that they look like, or rather, wish they looked like.

Doppelganger week showcased a level of mass delusional behavior that would make Snookie say, “Aw, shit no bitch!”

It was really interesting, and useful in a way, to see what my facebook friends (and even a few of my actual friends) see when they gaze into the looking glass. Some were insightful, some clever, some hideous, and some I simply cannot go without acknowledging here. (names are altered to shelter these sensitive souls)

Sorry, Rosalita, you don’t look like Kim Kardashian. Keep dreaming though! John, you don’t look anything like a young William Shatner or James T. Kirk, but thanks for ruining Star Trek for me! Pocahontas? WTF?

There were a few pics that I did find well done, however. One was my friend Matt, who seamlessly superimposed his head on the body of an astronaut and claimed it was his doppelganger “World Famous Astronaut Curtis Hansel” (who I’m 88% sure doesn’t exist). And, also, I guess I should say that one person who did compare themselves to a ridiculously hot person and got it right was my friend, Allie. Yes, you do have long blond hair, you’re thin, are tall for a girl, have big boobs, and are generally pretty hot, so yeah, I guess you do look kind of like Jessica Simpson.

Stand-Up Show recap

So last night my friend Eli and I went and performed a little stand-up at a bar near where we live called Shea's. It was quite possibly the most confusing emotional experience of my life. Allow me to explain.

When you do stand-up (or at least I do) the adrenaline really kicks in. For about 2 hours afterwards you are really wired, and depending on if you killed or got killed you are either really high or very low.

So last night I performed and I did a really great job, I thought. But the rest of the night before then had been such a massive disappointment that it ruined the night for me. I killed and I felt like crap afterwards.

First off the MC was a dick to me the whole night for no reason. I showed up an hour before the thing started and even though I was the first comic there the MC seemed to arbitrarily pick the order of who went (even though he clearly wanted to get some people up in the first hour) and I ended up going 2nd to last over two hours after the show started.

But that wouldn't have been so bad, if virtually everyone before me didn't completely suck.

Of the 14 or so acts before me there were basically two types of bad: People who thought they were funny and people who didn't know what being funny was.

The audience was alright. Not great but it was a very big room and you have to expect that a room that size not everyone is going to pay attention to you. There were probably about 50 people actively listening at the start of it.

But nearly every guy who went up there complained about the crappy, disinterested crowd (and interestingly, not about how they were completely unfunny comics).

My buddy Eli (one of the better acts) who had no idea what he was doing had this attitude like "Please bare with me, I have no idea what I'm doing" and he had good energy so even if you didn't think he was being very funny he was at least endearing.

Most everyone else was somewhere in the spectrum of Awkward-Annoying-Boring.

Out of everyone I could have maybe seen 2 or 3 of them being funnier to the point where you thought they were pretty good if they had a better venue.

Sex jokes were the soup du jour and no matter how many one comic told, the next one would make twice as many like none had been told all night.

The MC (other than being a jerk) was terrible. He did about 5 minutes of borderline funny material when he first got up there (what an MC is supposed to do). Then standard procedure is the MC gets up between each act tells a joke and then the next guy goes.

But not this MC.

He got up there and went for 5 minutes of his own after almost every guy. Even long after he had run out of material he went up there and just talked and insulted the audience for a few minutes.

But the worst guy of the night was without question the guy who went on right before me.

Imagine the most boring, awkward, loser ever. And then sit and watch him talk for 15 minutes at 11PM in a dark room after you've had 5 beers. Asleep yet? The guy got up there and basically told completely unamusing stories to his girlfriend about the Twilight movies and food. At least his girlfriend was laughing, no one else was.

So then I went up there, performed to the 10 people that were still there at that point, and did a pretty good job, a great job if you consider what was up there before me. But because everyone else had sucked so bad leading up to then I didn't even get to enjoy it. Bummer of a night.

A video of the act may be coming soon.