(no subject)
Merry Roshashana everyone! I'm sure you all had a happy Hebrew new year and celebrated in same fashion I did, completely forgetting until Joe reminded you because he thinks it's funny that I'm Jewish.
I checked my Salisbury email today for the first time in what feels like a hundred years and found something of great interest to me, or should have been at the very least. SU for the first time in four years is doing another stand-up comedy open mic night; a so called "Salisbury Last Comic Standing." It really sucks I found this out today because apparently auditions are tomorrow, not exactly enough time to take off work, let alone write anything. Major bummer.
I got to do this once before when I was a freshman. I saw a flier when I was coming back from a late class and came up with some material on the way there. Despite my lack of preparation and my overt nervousness I did really well. I got third place out of eight people and I won a Best of Chris Farley from SNL DVD. I hardly ever watch the thing, but the picture of the happy fat-bastard on the cover always makes me happy too.
Getting in front of all those people and making them laugh still ranks as the most fun I've had in my entire life. The next things on the list aren't even close, them being winning a Smash Bros tournament and playing with boobies (and unless I find a way to do both at once, its probably going to stay that way).
Thinking about getting on stage got me waning nostalgic, and it reminded me I typed up a transcript of what I said for my forum that next day. So, presented for the viewing public of my seven and a half friends is an unabridged transcript of what I thought was funny when I was 17:
*****
"Hey everybody. I'm not that funny but I enjoy looking like an ass, so I figure that'll be good enough.
You guys ever sit down for too long and get that weird pins and needles feeling? You know, in your balls?... Yeah, I got that the other day. It was really weird. I was just sitting there at the computer at just started kinda (I start shifting my hips uncomfortably) you know, and my roommate turns his head to look at me, "What the hell are you doing?" "My thing went numb!" "Well walk on it." "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND? Do you have any idea how much that would hurt! Jesus, I can't even get my foot that way..."
I probably should have explained to him later why I was gyrating my desk. I don't know, I kinda like being weird. I blame the fact I came from a weird family. Just to give you a quick rundown, my father's 52 with a 29 year old wife. Yeah, and they have a two year old son. And my mother's a born again Christian with a drinking problem. She dips into the sacramental wine a little too heavy or something I guess. Anyway, and my brother apparently never got the memo he's 120 pound Jewish guy, so he probably shouldn't blast 50 cent at the highest possible level on his stereo. That kind of environment fucks you up a tad.
Though, I am lucky to have found friends as fucked up as I am. I'll give you an example, the other day my friend Judy calls me to tell me she might have herpes.
Yeah.
So I say to her, "Uh, Judy, you can't have herpes, you're a virgin." "That's what I said!" You see, apparently she went to the doctor because she was having problems... peeing... or something. I don't know, I try to avoid asking those kind of questions. Anyway. She goes to the doctor and he says to her, "Miss, you might have herpes." "I can't have herpes, I've never had sex!" "Well, you have a urinary tract infection." "That's a little freaking different!" "You know what causes urinary tract infections? Herpes."
So we were trying to think of any way she could have contracted it. "Well, uh, did you get drunk recently and maybe do something stupid?" "No." "Did you sit on any really gross toilet seats?" "No." Did you borrow your mom's underpants- I was trying to cover every possible situation... Anyway, the only logical conclusion we came to was she somehow contracted the immaculate herpes of Christ. Heh, and I thought catholic alter boys had it bad enough as it was.
I'm out of jokes."
(This is where I walked off stage)
*****
It's really weird. I haven't read this since I wrote it, and I don't think it sounds much like me anymore. It reeks pretty hard of trying to be funny, especially considering its not that funny. I'm still proud of it though. Kinda like how after you use the powder-room and you're disgusted it smells like death, but at the same time you think its hilarious that it came out of you.
It's also funny I never specified that my friend Judy, whose name I didn't even bother to change because I thought, "What are the odds one of my friend's from home could possibly ever meet any of these people? That would be just silly!" in fact did not have herpes and the whole bit stemmed from a hypothetical conversation we had over the phone. My bad.
I remember way back in first grade as an assignment they had us write what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote I wanted to be an 'Actor,' as at that age I didn't know the word for comedian yet, but I went on to describe the people who went on TV and told jokes. According to my mother, she still has a huge stash of my old joke books from grade school. And I don't mean the ridiculous collection of joke books from Book Fairs and Hanukkahs of years past I have in my room because it was all I read as a kid, I mean books of jokes and comics that I wrote when I was seven through ten. I don't think I could bear to look through them. Why not?
Figure 1: That's why.
Besides the embarrassment that I used to be a kid and kids are pretty dumb, it's a reminder of how far I've fallen from the idealist future of my childhood. I've come to the melancholy realization that I've reached the age where "when I grow up" has already happened, and ultimately some of my dreams will go unfulfilled. I'm never going to be a comedian. Sucks. On the bright side, at least I completed my life goal of performing stand-up. Incidentally, I'm also never going to fulfill my dream of being an astronaut either, but my odds of completing my life goal of convincing someone I'm an astronaut improve every year.
Much like the list of 'most fun things I've done in my life' I mentioned earlier, in middle school I made a list of things I wanted to do before I died. From that time I really haven't changed or added anything, aside from the astronaut thing.
I figure I'm not doing too bad, a quarter of my life over with a third of my list completed, especially since the first few years were spent mostly shoving things up my nose and wondering why they don't get stuck there like when everyone else did it. And nothing on the list is too far gone to get to eventually, except for the astronaut thing, but that was kinda shooting for the moon anyways.
I guess what I'm getting at, besides that I close four days a week at my shitty retail job so I wake up at 2 p.m. and stay up until god only knows talking to myself, is that it's important to be cognizant of your goals to have any hope of achieving them. If I ever seriously wanted to be a professional funnyman I could have put forth the effort, but obviously I didn't, so I won't. Whatever. My real goals, I'm optimistic. I figure I met a girl once, I can probably pull that off again. Eventually. Even in the face of repeated catastrophic failures I'm bound to eventually stumble on a catastrophic error, just you watch. Hell, I did win the shit out of that Smash Bros tournament--and I have the wii-mote condoms to prove it. The moral, as far as I can figure, is to always keep your eyes open for opportunity, and if that fails force opportunity to look you in the eyes.
Joe and Stephanie, who have been gracious enough to let me stay with them for the last four and a half months, are leaving for New Jersey this week to finish their transition into being full-fledged grown-ups. I'll miss them dearly, but I'm very happy for them that they're starting to do what they have to in order to scratch the life goals off their list, whatever they may be. I wish them the best of luck (and double secret good luck to Joe on trying to get himself burned with lava).
Thanks for reading folks, have a nice day.
~ prego skippy emcee bieg bobo David
I checked my Salisbury email today for the first time in what feels like a hundred years and found something of great interest to me, or should have been at the very least. SU for the first time in four years is doing another stand-up comedy open mic night; a so called "Salisbury Last Comic Standing." It really sucks I found this out today because apparently auditions are tomorrow, not exactly enough time to take off work, let alone write anything. Major bummer.
I got to do this once before when I was a freshman. I saw a flier when I was coming back from a late class and came up with some material on the way there. Despite my lack of preparation and my overt nervousness I did really well. I got third place out of eight people and I won a Best of Chris Farley from SNL DVD. I hardly ever watch the thing, but the picture of the happy fat-bastard on the cover always makes me happy too.
Getting in front of all those people and making them laugh still ranks as the most fun I've had in my entire life. The next things on the list aren't even close, them being winning a Smash Bros tournament and playing with boobies (and unless I find a way to do both at once, its probably going to stay that way).
Thinking about getting on stage got me waning nostalgic, and it reminded me I typed up a transcript of what I said for my forum that next day. So, presented for the viewing public of my seven and a half friends is an unabridged transcript of what I thought was funny when I was 17:
*****
"Hey everybody. I'm not that funny but I enjoy looking like an ass, so I figure that'll be good enough.
You guys ever sit down for too long and get that weird pins and needles feeling? You know, in your balls?... Yeah, I got that the other day. It was really weird. I was just sitting there at the computer at just started kinda (I start shifting my hips uncomfortably) you know, and my roommate turns his head to look at me, "What the hell are you doing?" "My thing went numb!" "Well walk on it." "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND? Do you have any idea how much that would hurt! Jesus, I can't even get my foot that way..."
I probably should have explained to him later why I was gyrating my desk. I don't know, I kinda like being weird. I blame the fact I came from a weird family. Just to give you a quick rundown, my father's 52 with a 29 year old wife. Yeah, and they have a two year old son. And my mother's a born again Christian with a drinking problem. She dips into the sacramental wine a little too heavy or something I guess. Anyway, and my brother apparently never got the memo he's 120 pound Jewish guy, so he probably shouldn't blast 50 cent at the highest possible level on his stereo. That kind of environment fucks you up a tad.
Though, I am lucky to have found friends as fucked up as I am. I'll give you an example, the other day my friend Judy calls me to tell me she might have herpes.
Yeah.
So I say to her, "Uh, Judy, you can't have herpes, you're a virgin." "That's what I said!" You see, apparently she went to the doctor because she was having problems... peeing... or something. I don't know, I try to avoid asking those kind of questions. Anyway. She goes to the doctor and he says to her, "Miss, you might have herpes." "I can't have herpes, I've never had sex!" "Well, you have a urinary tract infection." "That's a little freaking different!" "You know what causes urinary tract infections? Herpes."
So we were trying to think of any way she could have contracted it. "Well, uh, did you get drunk recently and maybe do something stupid?" "No." "Did you sit on any really gross toilet seats?" "No." Did you borrow your mom's underpants- I was trying to cover every possible situation... Anyway, the only logical conclusion we came to was she somehow contracted the immaculate herpes of Christ. Heh, and I thought catholic alter boys had it bad enough as it was.
I'm out of jokes."
(This is where I walked off stage)
*****
It's really weird. I haven't read this since I wrote it, and I don't think it sounds much like me anymore. It reeks pretty hard of trying to be funny, especially considering its not that funny. I'm still proud of it though. Kinda like how after you use the powder-room and you're disgusted it smells like death, but at the same time you think its hilarious that it came out of you.
It's also funny I never specified that my friend Judy, whose name I didn't even bother to change because I thought, "What are the odds one of my friend's from home could possibly ever meet any of these people? That would be just silly!" in fact did not have herpes and the whole bit stemmed from a hypothetical conversation we had over the phone. My bad.
I remember way back in first grade as an assignment they had us write what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote I wanted to be an 'Actor,' as at that age I didn't know the word for comedian yet, but I went on to describe the people who went on TV and told jokes. According to my mother, she still has a huge stash of my old joke books from grade school. And I don't mean the ridiculous collection of joke books from Book Fairs and Hanukkahs of years past I have in my room because it was all I read as a kid, I mean books of jokes and comics that I wrote when I was seven through ten. I don't think I could bear to look through them. Why not?
Figure 1: That's why.
Besides the embarrassment that I used to be a kid and kids are pretty dumb, it's a reminder of how far I've fallen from the idealist future of my childhood. I've come to the melancholy realization that I've reached the age where "when I grow up" has already happened, and ultimately some of my dreams will go unfulfilled. I'm never going to be a comedian. Sucks. On the bright side, at least I completed my life goal of performing stand-up. Incidentally, I'm also never going to fulfill my dream of being an astronaut either, but my odds of completing my life goal of convincing someone I'm an astronaut improve every year.
Much like the list of 'most fun things I've done in my life' I mentioned earlier, in middle school I made a list of things I wanted to do before I died. From that time I really haven't changed or added anything, aside from the astronaut thing.
- Do stand-up comedy
- Become financially independent
- Own a house
- Make friends
- Lose Virginity
- Fall in love
- Get married
- Win a trophy
- Make milk shoot out of someone's nose
- Save someone's life
- Punch someone in the face
- Invent something
- Hug a bear
- [redacted]
- Convince someone I'm an astronaut
List of things to do before I die
By David Lapkoff
I figure I'm not doing too bad, a quarter of my life over with a third of my list completed, especially since the first few years were spent mostly shoving things up my nose and wondering why they don't get stuck there like when everyone else did it. And nothing on the list is too far gone to get to eventually, except for the astronaut thing, but that was kinda shooting for the moon anyways.
I guess what I'm getting at, besides that I close four days a week at my shitty retail job so I wake up at 2 p.m. and stay up until god only knows talking to myself, is that it's important to be cognizant of your goals to have any hope of achieving them. If I ever seriously wanted to be a professional funnyman I could have put forth the effort, but obviously I didn't, so I won't. Whatever. My real goals, I'm optimistic. I figure I met a girl once, I can probably pull that off again. Eventually. Even in the face of repeated catastrophic failures I'm bound to eventually stumble on a catastrophic error, just you watch. Hell, I did win the shit out of that Smash Bros tournament--and I have the wii-mote condoms to prove it. The moral, as far as I can figure, is to always keep your eyes open for opportunity, and if that fails force opportunity to look you in the eyes.
Joe and Stephanie, who have been gracious enough to let me stay with them for the last four and a half months, are leaving for New Jersey this week to finish their transition into being full-fledged grown-ups. I'll miss them dearly, but I'm very happy for them that they're starting to do what they have to in order to scratch the life goals off their list, whatever they may be. I wish them the best of luck (and double secret good luck to Joe on trying to get himself burned with lava).
Thanks for reading folks, have a nice day.
~ prego skippy emcee bieg bobo David