Where's Warhol When You Need Him?

Earth Day isn't until April 19, but you don't have to wait to show your love for Mother Earth because tonight it's Earth Hour! That's right, hippies, wherever you live on the planet, at 8:30 PM you are encouraged by the good folks at earthhour.org to turn off your lights for one hour. For the planet, ya know.

But don't turn your computers off because they want you to Twitter your lights-out event to the world. Oh, and take pictures. And videos. In the dark.

Really.

As if that weren't enough, they want entire towns to "observe" Earth Hour by shutting down street lights and other "non-essential" utilities. At 8:30 PM. On a Saturday night. You can probably do the economics on that yourself.

Conspiracy of Stupidity, Pt. 3: 2012: the movie (WARNING: SPOILERS)

I was already tired of seeing 2012 shit every time I turned around. Books, CD's, videos, and hundreds of websites are devoted to 2012 "prophecies" and predictions (it's either the end of the world or the beginning of a Utopia, depending on which huckster you ask). But when I saw that a big-budget 2012 film was hitting theaters this fall, I knew we hadn't seen anything yet. In the weeks leading up to the film's November release, everything 2012 is going to be all over the television as well - every talk show, every TV magazine, every "news" program will be jumping on the bandwagon and giving prime time air to every charlatan who's managed to turn the year 2012 into a cash cow. You heard it here first. And how could they resist? 2012 has all the doomsday bullshit of Y2K and all the New Age bullshit of "The Secret" in one shovel-ready loaf.

Every aspect of the 2012 mythology - from the Mayan calendar to Planet X to galactic alignment - currently being peddled in book stores and on Coast to Coast AM has been thoroughly explained, dis-proven, and debunked a thousand times over. But that won't matter this fall when every network starts scaring the credulous masses for ratings. If you're into the whole 2012 thing and are looking forward to a Hollywood movie to validate your paranoid beliefs, stop reading now because here comes the SPOILER: You're dumb.

Comedy So Far...

It was four years ago last month that I got on a comedy stage for the first time. At the end of year one I decided that, as long as each year was better and busier than the last, and I was still enjoying it, I'd keep going. So far, that's been the case, though 2009 is slow to take shape as I had planned (see Schedule). I thought that by the end of March I would have made more inroads with bookers and clubs outside of my usual haunts and that my schedule would reflect that. To a small degree, this has happened: In January I did my first gig for a booker I had not worked for before, one of my April shows came about as a result of visiting a different open-mike and doing some good old-fashioned networking, and in July I'll be performing with two comics I admire in a town I've never been to. Still, there's a lot of free calendar space where I had hoped there would at least be a run at a Comedy Zone or a string of one-nighters for a different booker or two. Hell, I booked more shows myself last summer.

But I'm not complaining. What! Not complaining! Are you sure you're a comic? I know, this is the point in the blog where you'd expect a diatribe about the injustice of the comedy business, the short-sightedness of bookers and club owners, and a scathing indictment of the whole American population for its horrible taste in entertainment. But I truly have nothing to complain about. I have a job that pays the bills and gives me four months a year and most weekends off to do with as I please. Would I rather be out doing shows than painting my bathroom? Sure I would. And the moment I can make as much money doing comedy as I do at my current job, I'll be all over it. But for the moment anyway I'm happy that I can eat regardless of my comedy schedule.

Comedy is chock full of people who feel entitled to a career. They've been in the trenches, they've paid their dues, they've never done anything else. Comedy blogs and message boards are spilling over with this sense of entitlement. My favorite line is, "I don't do comedy because I want to, I do it because I have to."

Please.

I'm all for passion and dedication, especially in the arts, but come on, very few people are entitled to a career in anything, least of all show business. If you pay your bills doing comedy, consider yourself lucky and spare everyone this sanctimonious bullshit.

Do I think I deserve more stage time than I currently have scheduled? Yeah, I do. I've got a solid feature set and then some. Do I think anyone else owes it to me? No, I don't. I didn't even think about stand-up until I was 35, and I live in the middle of nowhere, comedy-wise. Despite that, I've shared the stage with the likes of Robert Schimmel, Drew Hastings, and Larry Reeb among others - people I'd never thought I'd meet much less get paid to hang out with for a weekend telling jokes. So, yeah, nothing to complain about.

Except that one guy. He's an asshole.

Who's In Charge?

The nerve of these bums, asking me to give them the hard-earned money my parents send to me every week. --Bill Hicks

When I moved to Baltimore in 1988 to attend my fourth institution of higher learning in two years, there was a panhandler who regularly worked my neighborhood around the 1100 block of Calvert St. No crouching over steam grates, no sign, no cup. This guy worked on foot. He was clean and well-dressed and even wore a sharp cap that matched his outfit. He was soft-spoken and polite. His whole angle was that he needed to visit his mother at the nursing home and didn't have bus fare. He had a horrible memory because he hit me up nearly every time he saw me, despite the fact that I would berate him as loudly and viciously as possible before heading to my third-floor walk-up to eat a sub and watch Letterman. One day my roommate and I were walking back from our table-waiting jobs at the Inner Harbor and saw the guy - driving. And it wasn't a beater. And there was no Miss Daisy in the back. At the time we probably cursed his "lazy ass," but in hindsight it's hard not to feel at least a little respect for him - he had found a way around the system and "worked" a lot of long nights in a questionable neighborhood, enduring the righteousness of a mouthy white boy who thought he had the world sussed out and that his future was secure.

Now, twenty years later, we have a different kind of bum. The Wall Street bum. The AIG bum. The Goldman-Sachs bum. The Lehmann Brothers bum. No crouching over steam grates, no sign, no cup. This bum is clean and well-dressed. Soft-spoken and polite. But this bum didn't find a way around the system, this bum is the system.

I don't care about the AIG bonus money itself. Yes, a few hundred million dollars is more money than most people will ever see in ten lifetimes, but it's a tiny fraction of the total bailout. It's the principle of the thing. It's the fact that companies who produce nothing - not necessities, not products you can hold in your hand, not art - will shamelessly ask for hundreds of billions of dollars in tax-payer money and just give any of it away to the same people who contributed to our current problem.

"Financial products" are not products. They're not cars or washing machines or books. They're smoke and mirrors. A lot of people have been saying for a long time that we live in a corporate-ocracy (i.e. a fascist state) where business rules and elected officials are puppets. If we don't live in a corporate-ocracy but rather in an actual free market democracy, and our elected officials are worth a goddamn, then AIG and other financial institutions don't deserve a dime from anyone. They fucked up, end of story, right? If we do live in a corporate-ocracy then AIG and other financial institutions are guilty of treason, right?

Right?

BMF Fest

Saturday April 25, 2009, Top of the Roc, Charleston, IL:

Tribute Show for the late great Graham Lewis, aka Ounce Clark, featuring The Whiskey Daredevils, The Porn Again Christians, Mugwump Specific, and yours truly as host and emcee.

Whether you knew Ounce or not, come. I don't know what the cover will be, but The Whiskey Daredevils alone are worth the price of admission.

Hm.

Caption This

Dear Girls Next Door:

A few months ago the news was that you were leaving. Then that you had packed your bags. Now the news is you're gone. But you're not gone. You're on TV, all over the internet, and in the recent issue of Playboy (again).

Move already.

It's not personal, of course. We've never met. We've never had movie night together or baby-oil-slathered group sex followed by a round of warm milks and a bedtime story. But you've done your part for the Playboy Empire.

I'm sure Hef will always remember your relationship(s) as a very special one(s), filled with love, friendship, and respect. I'm also sure he understands that everyone, at some point, has to move on in order to grow - professionally, personally, spiritually. Best of luck to each of you, and don't let the revolving door hit your asses on the way out.