Bad Combinations

Dry, itchy skin + deep sleeper + sharp toenails = ouch!

One of the things I hate about wintertime is that my skin dries out. Especially my legs. Now, I’m sure this happens to thousands and thousands of people. Of those thousands, I’m sure that at least half of them are also very deep sleepers. Of those, I think it is probably reasonable to suspect that at least a handful have toenails that get a little sharp. So why is it that I think I’m the only person on the face of the planet that maims himself while he sleeps? I woke up this past Friday morning with the biggest, nastiest, most painful scrape on the inside of my right calf. It itched and it stung. I really have no idea where it came from but suspect that, while sleeping, I scratched my leg with the toenail on my left big toe. And now I’m running around with a band-aid on my calf. Does this kind of thing happen to anybody else, or am I truly a freak of nature?

Too much coffee + too much beer + smallish bladder = very poor night’s sleep!

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that I am addicted to my morning (and early afternoon) coffee. I know I drink too much, but if I don’t get at least a cup in me by 10am then I have the worst headache imaginable come lunchtime. Being a creature of habit, I almost always also get a cup of coffee before any rehearsal. Just as a little pick-me-up to help get the blood flowing before taking the stage. Now, I am not really all that much of a beer drinker, simply because beer fills me up. Every time I drink a couple of beers I feel bloated and I am never at my charming best when bloated (are you?) so I tend to stay away from my old friend Budweiser. Now, when the excess of coffee combines with the excess of Budweiser, something of a strain is put on my poor, unsuspecting bladder. And, even though I am a heavy sleeper (see above) there are some things one just doesn’t sleep through. Granted, repeated trips to the bathroom seem to have prevented me from mangling my leg any further with my sharp toes.

Overly rushed make-up person + actor with family history of hemophilia + crepe hair beard being pasted to said actor = blood!

So, at the next-to-final dress rehearsal for The Passion Play I’m sitting in the make-up chair while the poor guy applying my beard is trying to rush because they’ve just called 15 minutes and he still has another actor to do. The fake hair is on my face and he’s just trying to trim it up so that I don’t look like Bigfoot when I walk on stage when his scissors take a turn for the worse. Snip! There goes the center of my upper lip. “Did I get you?” he asks at the very moment I taste blood. “Yup, you got me.” He then begins to apply the end of a Q-Tip to my lip, not realizing that when I’m cut there’s no cotton swab on the planet that’s gonna rectify the situation. Meanwhile, the spirit gum (used to hold the beard on) oozes into the cut causing … well, let’s just say a level of discomfort. That night’s performance was all about “I’m really distracted and pissed because my face hurts” and not much of anything else. Needless to say, I had notes at the end of the night.

Person who agrees to meet you for a drink even though they really have no intention of showing up + unsuspecting “take a person at his/her word” me = one bored guy sitting at a bar among a bunch of complete strangers feeling like a stooge!

What is it with people these days? This is a trend I’m seeing more and more. People will tell you they’re gonna do one thing and then never bother to do it … even though you are expecting them to. Hey, picking up the phone, giving me a ring and saying, “King, I’m not gonna be able to make it out tonight” is completely understandable. Or, just for giggles, telling me upfront that you’re not all that interested in having a drink with me would be cool. But we’re becoming a society of folks who stand one another up. No wonder I’m hearing more and more stories about brides or grooms being left at the altar. We’ve become a society of people who promise to do one thing and then do another.

Not eating dinner until one o’clock in the morning + not having anything in the house to eat but Spam and bread = somebody who’s going to call in sick in the morning.

Okay, so I should’ve known better. Rehearsal went terribly late and I didn’t walk in the house until well after midnight. As is my remarkably unhealthy custom, I hadn’t eaten all day. As is also my remarkably unhealthy custom, I hadn’t been to the grocery store in weeks. I’m starving and everything in the neighborhood is closed. So, I dig around in the cupboards and find that my choices are chili or Spam. “Hey, I still have some bread. I’ll just fry up some Spam and have a couple of sandwiches,” I think to myself. Aw, I should have just gone to bed hungry. Two hours later I’m hovering above the toilet propelling everything inside of me that’s not tied down out. Three hours later, I’m still there. I pride myself on hardly ever taking sick days … but pride went out the window that morning.

How To’s and Why For’s

Advice Column? Do We Have To?

I never had any intention of this blog becoming an advice column or anything of the sort but supply and demand has dictated that advice gets given here. Why? I don’t know ... it’s not like I’m loaded with wisdom. But I am loaded with a history of mistakes made and wrong paths chosen. So, here’s some free advice:

How to Survive a Carjacking

The Bureau of Justice estimates that there are 34,000 instances of carjacking each and every year in the USA. Seventy-four percent of those carjackings take place with a weapon involved – 45% of which take place with a fire arm, 29% with a knife or other weapon. So there is a good chance, if you are driver (particularly in an urban area), you may be faced with a carjacking attempt. So, how can you insure your safety?

Step A. Keep your fuel tank filled. If a carjacker attempts to steal your car and it is completely out of gas, there is a very good chance that they are not going to be successful. Unless their weapon of choice is a gallon or so of gasoline, then it’s just not gonna pay off for them. But the point here is that you want them to be successful. Give up the car, man. Unless it’s a really, really nice ride there’s no need for you to lose your life over a car. Granted, I once owned a really sharp ‘60 El Camino with a 350 two-barrel that was sweet ... luckily that wasn’t the car I was driving when I was carjacked, otherwise I may not have learned this valuable lesson. So keep the tank filled ... that way they will just hop in and take off.

If a carjacker yanks you out of the car and isn’t able to get the thing started ... well, it might just piss him off. Now that he’s good and pissed off he may choose to change professions from a carjacker to a full-fledged assault specialist. If he decides to then thrust a lock-back bladed knife into your back then you really are at a loss. Not only are you losing blood, but you can’t even drive yourself to the emergency room. There will be nothing left to do but lay there and bleed. And trust me, that sucks.

Step B. Have your car serviced regularly. Again, you want to make sure that a potential carjacker has the chance to actually make his getaway. If your car malfunctions shortly after being stolen, then again the perpetrator may get royally pissed, come find you by the side of the road and cause you harm. So change that oil every 15,000 miles and check the air pressure in your tires regularly.

Step C. Run like the little bitch that you are. Yup ... that’s pretty self-explanatory. Give ‘em the car and get the hell out of Dodge.

How to Survive Peer Pressure

Everybody deals with peer pressure in life. Certainly more so when we are adolescents, but even full grown, tax paying, slightly balding grown-ups can succumb to peer pressure with disastrous results. So, how do you deal with it?

Step A. Remember, most of your friends are idiots. We often overlook this common piece of knowledge. After all, how many of your friends have committed indiscretions, taken substances that were harmful to their health, gotten themselves fired from high-paying jobs, slept with someone who they just met, slept with someone who they knew in advance wouldn’t remember their name by the end of the week or gotten themselves carjacked just as their vehicle ran out of gas? Probably several. No matter how much you love them, to be safe you need to always remember that your friends are complete and utter morons.

Step B. Get some freaking self-esteem. Let’s face it. You’re obviously superior to all those idiot friends of yours. That alone should fill you with at least some level of self-esteem. It may also be helpful to remember that there is nobody else on the planet quite like you. You are unique and special and deserve to be treated as such. Associate with people who recognize you for what you are, not for what they want you to be.

Step C. Do what you want to do. Even if influenced by a woman with a strong personality, don’t do anything you didn’t want to before that woman began to use her strong personality for nefarious purposes. And hey, don’t blame her just because she encouraged you ... you can’t overcome your weaknesses until you confront them head on. (No, I have no idea who the guy in the picture is!)

Step D. If you’re feeling in need of more attention than you’re getting (and who doesn’t?) don’t go looking in shady places for people to fill that need. For crying out loud, go meet some people with at least some level of morality and respectability ... you’ll feel better about it in the morning.

Little close to home yet?

How to be Funny While On Stage

Step A. Get some material that is at least amusing. If nobody is writing any, then write your own. In lieu of that, bastardize the writing of somebody else. If it’s funny, who really gives a crap who wrote it? Don’t worry about offending the writer ... they don’t really have feelings. They’re kinda like plants. They have chloroform running through their veins. They don’t have eternal souls. They don’t go to Heaven ... they go to Writer Heaven, which is just down the street from Animal Heaven.

Step B. Lift upstage arm.

Step C. Yell out the word, "Comedy!" That way the audience will know that what you’ve just said or done was supposed to be funny.

Step D. If the audience doesn’t laugh ... well, screw ‘em. Laugh at yourself. Hey, if you can’t amuse yourself, you’re just not trying hard enough.

How to Write an Amusing Blog Entry

Uhm ... I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Yellin' at Jesus

CB Handles

My first years in school were smack dab in the middle of the CB radio fad. You remember the CB radio, right? Breaker, breaker, one-nine … you got a smokey on your tail. So, my folks, who always tried to keep up with the times, installed a CB radio in each of their cars. In a day and age before the cell phone, it was pretty handy. Mom was in nursing school and didn’t leave until 7 or 8 in the evening. She could get in the car and tell Dad she was on her way.

Of course, this meant that everybody in the family had to have a CB handle. The name that would be used on the CB. Dad doled them out, we didn’t get to pick our own. My brother got "Bone Rack." He was always pretty scrawny, so the name fit and he kinda liked it. What did I get? "Fat Man." As in, "Na na na na na na na na Fat Man!" I was not a fat kid, a little chunky maybe, but I was not fat! This is just the name you get stuck with when your brother is too damn thin.

Dad liked to give us nicknames. It was something he did out of love. Y’know, the kind of love that degrades and demeans. That kind of love.

I was twelve and a half years old when my baby sister was born. Yeah, little gap there. Guess you could say she was a surprise to everyone. And from the time she was very little, I was her favorite. She loved her big brother. Loved me!

Around the time she was starting to walk pretty well, she took to calling me, "Hassle." Hassle? For weeks and weeks, I couldn’t figure it out. She would come up to me, arms outstretched, wanting to be picked up, and say, "Hassle, hassle." I had no idea where it came from. Until one Sunday afternoon …

Dad and I were watching a ball game on TV while my sister was playing with one of her puzzles on the floor. After a while, Dad turned to me. "When are you gonna take out that trash, asshole?" "Hassle, hassle!" Ah … I get it. My lovely baby sister calls her favorite big brother … asshole. Thanks Dad!

After a while, we broke her of the habit. She took to calling me "Kingie" or "Bo bo." Much better than "Asshole." She didn’t take to calling me "asshole" again for about fifteen years. She still does ...

Dad had other names for me. Shithead, SFB … which stood for "shit for brains," numbnuts. Good solid nicknames. Names that stick with you for years and years.

Passion

Well, I promised that I would keep folks up-to-date on what was going on with me in terms of this so-called-career, so here goes. I am in rehearsals for The Passion Play in Union City. I first did the show in 2003 and was invited back. Seeing as how the theatre is only ten blocks from the house, I figured this would be convienent.

I'm rotating between the roles of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, which means each night I find myself yelling at Jesus. I highly recommend against yelling at Jesus. Granted, I've yelled at God several times in my life, but I had never called out Jesus until this play. We open in less than two weeks ... you can get tickets and stuff here: http://www.parkpac.org/pp_pas.html.

If you come to a Caiaphas performance, you may or may not recognize me. I'll be the one buried beneath a wig, fake beard and make-up. If you make it out to a Pilate performance, it'll just be me with my hair combed down. Neither are a pretty site, but come on out anyway.

One-Man Show

Yes, so the rumors are true. I'm knee deep in preparations for my own one man show. Turns out this blog has been kind of helpful, in that it forces me to write. Some of the stuff that appears in this blog will probably find it's way into the show ... it'll be funnier in the show ... at least that's the stance I'm taking. Am working with a couple of experienced comedy writers to help clean things up and get the material in the voice I want.

I came up with this ridiculous, yet almost brilliant idea, of working some of the material in front of audiences by performing it as stand-up. After all, what is stand-up if not a one-man show? Granted, I'm keeping all the really depressing stuff out of the comedy clubs ... turns out comedy club managers get pissed off if you jump on stage and start acting out some heavy tragedy.

It's really weird writing material for the stage that is autobiographical because there are three voices trying to find their way out. The first is my voice, the voice of the guy that all this crap happened to. Next is the actor voice, the voice of the guy who knows he's the one that's gonna be saying this crap on the stage. Finally is the writer voice, who's trying to find a way to give all this crap structure. The interesting thing is that the voice I trust the most is not my own, but rather the actor voice. He's the one with the most experience ... which tells you something about how shallow I am personally.

Working on stand-up while playing in The Passion Play has created a unique and horribly inappropriate rehearsal process for me. I keep finding myself adlibbing stuff as Pontius Pilate while giving the order to crucify Jesus and punching things that shouldn't be jokes.

"Jesus laughed." Just not necessarily at me.

Mitch Hedberg

It's been almost a year since comedian Mitch Hedberg died at the age of 37. Major thanks go out to Mel for turning me on to this guy's material:

"Some songs have a special meaning for a man in regards to a special woman. But this can backfire, because maybe the song had a deeper meaning to begin with and now it has been cheapened. 'We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a better life, so let's keep on giving.' Remeber that song, baby? The night I f*cked you in the pet cemetery? That's our song."

You are remembered, Mitch.

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Luck

No one can be successful without a touch of luck. You could have the mind of Einstein, the talent of Olivier and the wisdom of Thoreau ... but without Lady Luck riding shotgun, you may as well pre-heat the gas oven, because that's where you're gonna stick your head at the end of the day. (Note: don't forget to kill the pilot light ... suicide by char-broil is not nearly as romantic as it sounds.)

That may sound depressing, but the fact is that most of us, at sometime or another, run into a string of good luck. It has probably happened to you more often than I (and that's why I hate you!), but we all are fortunate from time to time. I know it's hard to believe that, especially on an early Monday morning, but luck comes a-calling every so often for all of us. You've just got to try and remain confident that it'll come soon. And be able to recognize it when it arrives ... especially if it's trying to knock down your door.

Unfortunately, some folks out there have trouble recognizing a good thing when it's standing right in front of them. Perhaps they've been burned by "false luck" or they're so selfish they think they have to make their own luck and can't accept that luck could come in the form of another person. Sometimes it's hard to embrace the good because we're so used to having our arms filled with the bad. I am constantly saddened to see people turn their back on what could be, if they accepted it, a life changing stroke of good luck.

In addition to luck, one must also have talent to succeed. If you have both luck and talent, well then kid, you've got it made! Shakespeare said it best, "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." Another, more recognizable quote is, "You've got to be at the right place at the right time."

And isn't that what we're all looking for? The right place? And if so, will you recognize it when you're finally there?

Flaky Freakin' Actors!

Just started rehearsals for my latest gig and I've been reminded about how much I really do hate actors. Now, I know what you're thinking, how can you hate actors when you are one? It's like a carpenter who hates carpenters, right? Or an accountant who hates accountants? Well, not really. Carpenters don't have to deal with the numerous flakes, fakes and mentally deficient folks that an actor deals with day to day. Accountants might, but that's their problem.

Now let me clarify, once again, that this doesn't apply to all actors. Many of the people who I cherish and hold dear are indeed actors. Actors, as a whole, aren't evil or anything. Well, not to the best of my knowledge. They're just frequently selfish. There are many great people out there who act ... I love them ... and then there are the "actors." It's an important difference ... people who act vs. actors. The folks I'm working with now are all great, personable and interesting people. Several of them I've already developed an admiration and appreciation for. Problem is, with only a few exceptions, you can bet that in six months time they won't give me the time of day on the street.

Here's an example of one of the things I hate about actors: You'll spend weeks and weeks working with these people. You'll talk to them more than you do to your own family. You'll develop close, deep, personal relationships with them. You'll open yourself emotionally and, on some occasions, physically with them ... more so than you would with other people you deal with day-to-day. In a matter of weeks, perhaps months, you'll form a bond with them that, at least on the surface, appears to be extremely deep. These people will honestly become precious to you.

And then the run of the show ends. Two weeks later, these people who you've loved and shared so much with won't be able to pick you out of a police line-up. Relationships you've developed just come to a sudden and abrupt end. They've moved on to their next gig and are establishing relationships with a whole new group of people. You've been cast aside and you can't help but wonder if these people have real genuine emotions. Are they capable of developing real, genuine friendships? And there's not even a "break-up" period, where you can be angry at them and start to emotionally detach yourself.

They've just simply forgotten that you exist.

More Random Responses

And now, more responses to your comments and emails:

"Hey, when is the next meeting of F.O.D.A.?" -- Chase Garland, NYC

That's a good question, Chase. Unfortunately we've been missing the D.A., so it's just been F.O. lately. Of course, I'm very fond of F.O., so I won't complain too much.

"I hear you've been yelling at Jesus a lot lately. Is that true?" -- Rev. Balki, Queens, New York

Well, Reverend, the answer is yes. I've returned to play Pontius Pilate for the 90th Anniversary of The Passion Play at the Park Performance Center in Union City, NJ. I first did the show three years ago and was honored to be asked to return this year. So, yes, I have been yelling at Jesus, so-to-speak lately. Check out the website soon for information on performance dates and times.

"What exactly is Weasel Erotica?" -- Mse. Rittenrotten, Long Island

You'll find out in August. But, between you and me, it's pretty much what you think it is.