It's a great feeling to know that, after five years of writing, polishing, promoting and performing my stand-up comedy routine, after five years of attempting all sorts of side projects that might make me more viable as an all-around entertainer, after five years of praying that my car won't break down and that medical problems won't force me back to full-time office work ...
Sorry for the general lack of updates the last few days. I've been busy with an elevated amount of side work, and between that and my crippling addiction to painkillers, I've hardly had time to brush my teeth, or shower. Really, they aren't advisable when you're on the painkillers. If you pass out in the bathroom, it's an easier cleanup, sure, but there are more solid surfaces to smack your head against.
I read about Congress at my other gig, and here's the money quote of the week (about 30 seconds in). Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, tells a Congressman that "to my knowledge, I did not personally meet with outside representatives while this budget was being discussed, but we can get a fuller answer ..."
You can read that quote lots of ways. I choose to read it as the White House budget director being a blackout drunk. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
After 10 straight years of uneventful motoring, in the last two weeks I've been in not one, but two car accidents. I blame the economy.
The first, a friend was driving me to the airport in Rhode Island; we hit a stretch of black ice on the highway, did a 180, and the passenger side of the car went into a guard rail. It was a low-speed impact, and beyond some body damage we both seemed to be OK. Five minutes later as we started driving away, a pickup truck behind us did a 180 and got obliterated on a guard rail, plus we passed about five other accidents, including one car that had flipped. News reports said a few people died on the highway in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, so all things considered, we were lucky. The strange thing: no panic during the accident. When the car was facing the wrong way on the highway and I was a few seconds from definitely having my side of the car hit the rail, it was like slow motion. I just braced myself and waited for it.
There are always silver linings: You hear pro athletes talking about the game "slowing down" in key moments. It turns out I'm pro athlete material! My peak physical years are gone; Spring Training has already started and hockey is winding down. But I think if I start training today, I could be ready for NFL mini-camps. I might even find Jesus and get a job crappier than stock boy. If things don't work out between the Eagles and Donovan McNabb, I might even get into the competition for the starting job on my hometown team. "He went from road-kill collector to Super Bowl MVP! Do you believe in improbabilities?" I'm marketable. "Invincible 2": Memorial Day 2011. Make a note of it.
The second, I was driving to my parents' house after a gig in Philly on Wednesday night. I was at a yield sign, and as I was busy yielding the car behind me rear-ended me pretty hard. From what we could tell, there was no damage, and outside of a sore neck I think I'm fine. If this were an episode of "House," when I get on stage tonight, I'd start speaking in tongues during my performance tonight, then blood would drip out of my nose and I'd collapse. When they found the brain damage, they'd tell me that the procedure to correct it would disable the humor center of the brain. Then I would have to make a Very Tough Choice. And House would tell me I'm a horrible comedian, and discover that the real problem is syphilis.
More fun drama that you've missed during my blog vacation:
A few weeks ago in my living room, there was a rapid beeping noise, like someone coding on a TV medical drama. No one in my living room was coding (we run a tight ship in my living room), so it was quickly determined that it was the old alarm system.
Apparently, when ADT alarm systems have problems, they beep. Rapidly. Non-stop. Until you hit something on the keypad. This lets you know that criminals and serial rapists will soon have free run of your house if you don't act quickly.
After replacing all the batteries on all the motion sensors, we were happy to discover that the system was beeping even more, and at seemingly random intervals! This keeps any criminal element in the house off guard, but the downside is that you have to wake up three times a night to hit a button downstairs.
At this point, you would probably ask, "why not cut all power to the alarm system?" Well, apparently, large switches that say "ALARM SYSTEM SHUT OFF" are a bit of a security risk. The alarm box in my basement looks like it was leftover from the Apollo space program. I did not want to anger the alarm system by pulling random wires, and since I was tired from sleeping no more than 90 minutes at a time, messing with electronics was really not a great idea. Meanwhile, With all the beeping, I started getting annoyed at anything that beeps, and I came within seconds of committing domestic violence against an innocent coffee machine.
The whole drama ended with the maintenance guy shooting the alarm with a silver bullet, but there has to be a better way: when your alarm system is malfunctioning, instead of beeping, it should play a recording of something you can ignore and sleep through. Like a lecture on string theory, or the soft rock hits of the 70s, or your girlfriend telling you about her day.
Posers
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue seems a bit old now that global warming spring is here, but we've reached the End of Posing.
The cover shows a 23-year-old Israeli about two inches away from conceding the Gaza Strip. Her Golan Heights also are up for grabs. Twenty years ago it was risque for Elle MacPherson to tug down on her one-piece; now they have lots of carefully angled naked people inside.
Short of becoming Hustler, there is nothing left for Sports Illustrated models to do. Swimsuit model poses are a renewable resource, but without innovation, where will the stars of tomorrow come from? From my NEW SEXY SWIMSUIT IDEAS!
X-Ray X-citement. Find out what it really means to have good bone structure as scantily-clad models seductively have their rib cages bombarded by radiation!
Slow burn. The model's swimsuit is sprayed in random locations with a highly corrosive agent. As holes burn through the suit, the sexy is gradually revealed!
Bottoms up. Instead of appearing to pull her bottoms DOWN, the model gets a double-handful of suit and pulls UP. Oh YEAH!
Grout. Body painting has been done to death, but imagine the tactile tastiness of buxom babes wearing grout bikinis. When grout gets played out, this can be switched to spackle, wallpaper or carpet samples. If Chris Ofili is available, he can cover models in suits made of collages of black celebrities, and dried elephant dung.
Safecracker. Instead of a bra-like clasp or string tie, a model's bikini top features a safe-style relocker device keyed to a sheet of glass. Sexy spreads include other models, wearing protective eye gear and holding industrial power drills, attempting to unlock the tops. What will break first? The sexual tension, or that sheet of glass?
Siamese So Horny. Photoshoping and custom-made suits indicate that certain models have become conjoined twins.
In two weeks, I'm back at the DC Improv with "I Take Requests 6." I'm going to have a new challenge in the show, plus a new finale and the usual other goodness. If you're in the DC area, come on and check it out. Only $10 -- you can't beat that price for two hours of entertainment. Trust me!
That's Saturday, March 28 at 8 p.m. -- see you there!
Last week I had the pleasure of performing at one of my favorite clubs, Philadelphia's Helium. It's in my hometown, and on top of that it's a really well-run club that attracts some pretty excellent crowds.
I was matched up this time with a headliner who I will not mention by name. I will tell you that he's a comedic legend and apparently a regular Greyhound patron. All week he had been arriving at the club after the start of the show, so my instructions on Saturday were to go to the stage, perform until I saw a flashing light in the back of the room, then do 5 more minutes and leave. The light would signal that the headliner was ready to go.
As I was walking off the stage following that sequence, emcee Lawrence whispered to me: "He's not here." I found the manager, who was waiting out front for the headliner, who had indicated about 10 minutes before that he was 5 minutes away. Hence the light. Now Lawrence was stuck stretching for a sold-out showroom that paid $25 a person to see the headliner. He did a truly fantastic job, but after about 10 minutes and with no headliner in the building, things were getting critical (the audience was still having a great time, but it's hard to stretch for an indefinite amount of time when you've intentionally crammed shortened versions of your best material into an emcee set -- you burned a lot of your favorite jokes already).
There weren't any other comics hanging out, so we figured I had to get back on stage to fill more time. The problems: a) this is simply not done at comedy shows; b) Lawrence was on stage, so how could we indicate this arrangement to him?
After Lawrence wrapped up a big joke, the manager told me "now or never." It wasn't elegant, but I walked along the wall up to the stage and started yelling, "Tag me in!" Then I stretched out my hand to the stage. Lawrence didn't miss a beat; he slapped my hand, and I hopped back in to the show. I explained to the audience that since I had done so well the first time, it was decided that I should come back; they all understood what was really happening, so they went with it. I think I did another 15 or so minutes, and then I got another light. I wrapped up, then introduced the headliner myself ... and he still didn't come on stage for about 15-20 seconds, during which time my eyes almost popped out of my head in disbelief. By the time he started performing the show had already gone on for about an hour. The amazing stuff:
1) The crowd didn't turn on us. Basically, if you paid $25 to see a star, you probably don't care about the rest of the show. After I walked on stage for the second time, I was expecting at least a few boos from general impatience. Instead, the audience just rolled with it and seemed to have a good time. Amazing.
2) A $25 ticket headliner takes the bus from New York on a regular basis. (Supposedly, his bus broke down earlier in the day, causing his lateness.) Huh. Also, he appeared to sell bootlegs of his own DVD for $25 after the show (you can get a legit copy on Amazon for $10). Double huh.
3) The headliner never thanked me or Lawrence for picking up the slack. His friend did, which was appreciated. But nothing from the headliner, who I'm pretty sure does not know my name.
Showbusiness! There's nothing like it. Big props to the staff at Helium and Lawrence for making a potential nightmare into a funny story.
In the days before Air Force One, or Cadillac One, or anything much above Ornery Mule Train One, presidents relied a bit more on the staycation. Lincoln, for example, would get away from the horrors of war by heading three miles north of the White House. To stay with a bunch of soldiers. Next door to a cemetery where more soldiers killed under his command were buried every day. Did I mention there were nice breezes?
The inaccurately named Lincoln Cottage (it was also the Buchanan Cottage, the Hayes Cottage and the Arthur Cottage, but they don't have Lincoln's raw sex appeal) was Abe's home away from his home away from home for something like a quarter of his presidency. Since downtown Washington was a) a military parade ground and b) a malarial swamp, it was nice to escape. The Soldiers Home was rural, cooler, and about a 40 minute commute from the White House; since it had a really big empty house AND an open invitation to the commander in chief, it was as close to perfect as Lincoln could hope for, since the Wright Brothers hadn't yet invented the puddlejumper to Martha's Vineyard. When summer rolled around, he'd pack up 1 wagon of flatware and 12 wagons Mary Todd's pill regimen and head uphill:
Pretty quaint! Except for the 50 funerals a day visible from the front porch, that is. I took the tour a week and a half ago with friends, and it's not bad. The house itself (it just opened to the public in the last year) is in great shape, though it's sadly furniture-free; you don't really get too much of a feel for what it would have been like with Lincoln in residence. The tour guides do have a very well-produced program (audio clips, video presentations, puppets ... well, no puppets) that focuses in large part on Emancipation, since Lincoln would have done some of his most involved thinking on the subject while kickin' it at the cottage. There's also some nice attention to Lincoln's relationships with the soldiers all around him at the home (he had a genuine affection for the troops, and was constantly reminded of their sacrifice by the constant funerals on the grounds), and how badly he would have needed to relax given the stress of his 9-to-5 gig. There's a nice little museum display to get you amped before the tour, plus a pre-tour Mount Saint Helens-esque window-shade reveal of the cottage, which would be more impressive if it was a smoking ruin. You need the contrast for that to work.
As a committed presidential dork, I would have liked a less generic tour -- even mild history buffs won't need the tour's Civil War/Emancipation primer, plus it was pretty obvious that the guide had a thousand Lincoln stories with a more personal flair. At any tour of a home, they should lean toward the details you can't get from a Wikipedia page. Also, I would have liked it if everyone taking the tour was allowed to wear a stovepipe hat and fake beard. That would have been excellent.
FUN LINCOLN COTTAGE FACTS!
Lincoln rode to work on horseback when staying at the cottage, and during one of his commutes an attacker put a bullet hole through his hat. Historians are divided on whether this was an assassination attempt or an early documented case of Washington-area road rage.
Young Tad Lincoln was a mascot of sorts for the soldiers on the grounds; they dubbed him a "3rd lieutenant," and willingly served as infantry in Tad's eight-month seige of his governess' boyfriend's home.
The months when Mary would visit family in the north, Lincoln would stay in the cottage alone. He called these "the most pantsless times of my life."
Hidden somewhere under the floorboards of the cottage is a secret draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in which Lincoln emapncipates the nation's minds, in the fervent hope that their asses might follow.
By freeing him from the social functions and favor-seeking guests of the White House, the cottage let Lincoln relax and enjoy his true passion: looking tired.
Frank Lloyd Wright's son invented Lincoln Logs, so don't feel bad about how much you disappoint your dad.
Editing and proofreading seldom qualify as "fun," but if you spend a week reading stuff, things pop up:
1) Jesse L. Jackson Jr. rides a Segway around D.C.
2) We call white people "Caucasian," but according to Webster's, that word specifically refers to individuals ACTUALLY from the Caucasus region. If you're talking about the mistaken belief that a whole global race originated from that one region, well, those people are ...
Caucasoids.
In this instance, I think we owe it to the world to kick common usage to the curb. Obviously.
I interviewed Fip, a comedic hypnotist, back in July 2008 for the Improv. That interview was a lot of fun, and it's been one of the most popular downloads off the DC Improv site.
He's back for one of three visits to the club in 2009, and he was nice enough to sit down with us again. It ended up being a really long interview, so it's broken into two different files for your listening pleasure. The first is mostly Flip talking about his lifelong crusade against the elderly, and the second gets a few tales of hypnosis gone wrong.
Download both parts over at the Podcast page, or if you subscribe via iTunes, you already have 'em.
Buck Howard isn't exactly a failure, but he is a dried-up husk; once a
popular mentalist, now he's stuck playing half-full rooms in smaller
towns. He's old and, to the people who decide what's cool, irrelevant.
Work in showbusiness long enough, and you know that most people don't take
the transition gracefully; instead, there's a perpetual air of frustration
and bewilderment around such performers. They didn't stop being good at
their jobs, but they never evolved, and so the culture left them behind.
Considering that's me in about three years, I had a particular interest in
"The Great Buck Howard." It's good, if underwhelming: told from the
perspective of Buck's new road manager (a law school dropout trying to get
in touch with his inner artistic whiny white person), it follows Buck
through the acceptance of what he already knows, then some surprising
developments after that. John Malkovich is pretty amusing, but hardly
over-the-top; it's a PG movie so there aren't any profanity-laced green
room tirades spicing things up. He's not really having a career meltdown
as much as a fizzle, and he's not eating dog food to save money, so
there's not quite enough tension to make you really sit up and pay
attention.
It's almost a fuzzier version of "The Wrestler," which also had an aging
artist realizing that he can really only relate to the universe by
performing. "Buck Howard" has significantly less footage of men being hit
with fluorescent lights, though.
Still, despite being a little too demonstrative with the life lessons (it's the director's autobiography, sort of), it's at least entertaining, if not satirical or hilarious or bombastic. John Malkovich is good and Colin Hanks is slightly more engaging that a replacement mannequin.
I've been reading politics for the last two days solid, so here's a brain dump:
One of the 500,000 things that Congress is trying to swallow right now is an expansion of "national service" programs; per Obama's request, they want to triple the size of AmeriCorps and significantly increase the incentives to volunteer. Volunteering is great and wonderful and good and yay AmeriCorps, but at what point do you get paid so much that it's no longer volunteering? I don't know exactly how many hours a week you have to kick in to get $5,000 a year in tuition, but there are some crappy part-time jobs that would pay that amount, right? If you have to keep sweetening the deal to get people to sign up, then it's not really the spirit of volunteerism that's driving people. In any major city you can volunteer about a bajillion places for no pay if that's your thing. Getting people to "volunteer" for the great and glorious good of the nation is vaguely 1960s China. Just sayin'.
Republicans' best chance of recapturing the hearts of Americans would be picking leaders with good hair. Eric Cantor, John Boehner ... hairmets. Mitch McConnell has standard old-guy hair: not bad, but underwhelming. We need a middle-aged dude who doesn't appear to be in a glee club. Have some photos on my desk by tomorrow.
Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., rapped in high school under the stage name "Juggernaut."
Here's my favorite paragraph I've read in the last month: "Sage Eastman has joined the minority staff of the House Ways and Means Committee as a senior adviser for media and public affairs. Eastman will also continue to hold his current position as communications director for the committee's ranking Republican, Dave Camp of Michigan. He previously was communications director for Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, for the gubernatorial campaign of former Michigan Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus and for the Michigan Republican Party."
Some new blood made it to the top this month. Hot Amoeba Action scored a 27 out of a possible 43, then took the dramatic tiebreaker over the Neo Fights (which had a few past champs among the ranks) to take home the crown. By "dramatic tiebreaker," I mean they sang their verse of a karaoke song ("My Girl") with a bit more pizzaz, and then in the ensuing dance break, they brought some serious heat. No disrespect to the Neo Fights, though ... representatives from both teams were starting to disrobe and throw garments in the quest for First Place. It was a fine display of sportsmanship all around. Red Beaver returned to the podium once again, scoring a 26 and then taking out Splinter Group in their 3rd-place tiebreaker (naming Shakespearean tragedies).
It was a bit of a slog this month ... questions were a bit harder than I was calculating. "Out Like a Lamb" was a really tough opening round. Teams made a nice recovery with "Say What," which had them identifying the originators of some truly horrible quotations. Our video round had clips from / questions inspired by "Casablanca" (also very tough), but we did cruise down the stretch with another round of 50/50, in which teams have two choices and have to circle the correct one.
Here are your winners, in order of finish. The fourth picture is "Chucktown's Finest," the team that has the distinction of "longest ever commute to Happy Hour Trivia." They're from Charleston, S.C., and even with a score of 10 out of 43, they seemed to have a pretty damn good time. That's how you play the game, folks ... thanks for making the trip, and safe travels home!
Trivia: Say What?
What the hey ... you can play along at home. Here's "Say What" in its entirety. For answers, you can click right here.
Here are 13 awful or strange quotations. For each quotation, identify the person being quoted.
1) I want to be reincarnated as your tampon.
2) Imagine having to take the 7 Train ... looking like you're riding through Beiruit
next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing ...
3) All of a sudden, you're like the Bin Laden of America. Osama Bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through.
4) I'm not anorexic, I'm from Texas. Are there people from Texas who are anorexic?
5) I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad Gita)
6) If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?
7) The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way. ... This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner, the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.
8) F**king Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?
9) Aw, how could he lose the ball in the sun? He's from Mexico!
10) Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.
11) Let's get one thing straight, crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack.
12) I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.
13) I'm pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
"I Take Requests 6" is in the books, and I'm officially calling it a smashing success. Since I'm not famous enough for anyone to bother contradicting me, you'll have to take my word for it.
In the meantime, here's the 20th "Chris White Challenge." The topic is "token white guys," and the challenger is Monty Cox, a regular at Happy Hour Trivia. This was recorded at Happy Hour Trivia on March 25, in the main showroom at the DC Improv.
And yes, I know the 19th challenge, "blue," is not online. I'll amend that before too long."
New Podcast: Harland Williams
He's already done his run at the Improv, but you'll still probably get a kick out of my podcast interview with Harland Williams. It's really, really weird, in a sort of endearing way. He answer a few questions with total oddity and then just sticks with it well beyond the point most people would stop. It's definitely unlike any of the other interviews I've done to date.
Special thanks to everyone who came to I Take Requests 6 on Saturday night. That includes the table of five girls who bought the tickets expecting to sneak into Harland Williams, then left five minutes into my show when it became clear their plan had failed. In these troubling times, I'll take a sellout any way I can get it.
This show saw the addition of "token white guys" material (see yesterday's entry), plus some new ads I cut for Miller High Life, and a new grand finale (online tomorrow, I promise). I really do enjoy putting on these show, and I'm glad that the audiences seem to enjoy them too ... it's a lot of work to get ready for each program, and it's always rewarding to hear laughter from a live audience after all that effort. For all the crappy parts of the comedy business, nights like Saturday make it a lot of fun.
I'm working on setting up a venue for the next show -- hopefully I'll be headed somewhere in New England in the summer. I'll keep you posted!
Hot stuff
"Ambitious energy agenda": something I read at my part-time editing gig, or great band name?
I say BOTH.
Super Late Movie Review: Knocked Up
I know this movie was released in 2007, but my girlfriend and I saw it for the first time Sunday night. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I needed to be high, but we didn't laugh aloud once.
Not bad, not unwatchable, but ... nowhere near awesome. What am I missing?
Here you have it, part of the grand finale to "I Take Requests 6." Thanks to my friend Don Marcogliese, the founder of D'Apostrophe. I apologize if I've spelled the name wrong ... and as always I apologize for my singing.
Legal Stuff: If you have questions about this Web site, why? You should spend your time questioning the moral nature of any god who would let Chris White exist. But anyhow ... copyright 2009, Chris White Sucks Inc.
In two weeks, I'm back at the DC Improv with 
August 2009: Jefferson.
Fall 2009: comic interviews on the podcast. 
