“Hey, remember when…” NOPE!

I have a TERRIBLE memory.  I’m not sure if it’s a defense mechanism because I was felt up at summer camp (I don’t even remember if I went to summer camp) or if I have a brain tumor that doesn’t allow me to remember things for more than a month at a time.  But I definitely have a swiss cheese style recollection center.  Maybe, like Sherlock Holmes feared, I have filled my head up with too much useless information and now there’s no room left for anything else.  Why must we only use 5% of our brain power?  What is the other 95% for?!?

Two years ago I started keeping a journal.  And more recently, I quit drinking to try and help increase my powers of remembering shit!  But because of my severe lack of memory, I take pictures of EVERYTHING.  If you know me, you know this is not an exaggeration - to the point where it annoys some (most…OK likely ALL) people.  If we have met more than once, then I probably had at least 1 photo of you.

Last night my memory took a HUGE hit.  I lost ALL of the photos on my computer.  About 20,000 photos.  FUCK ME!  I know what you’re thinking:  didn’t you back them up?  Of course I did.  On CDs.  About 3 years ago.  So now I’ll just have a HUGE gap. 

A few months ago my work computer crashed causing me to lose my journal from 2011 & 2012.  I was super bummed, but then an I.T. fella did some I.T. magic and was able to salvage them for me.  I now back the journal up about once a month to a flash drive.

I was so scared by this, that I bought an external hard drive to back up ALL of my photos and writing.  I gave the drive to Joel about a month ago to put all of our shorts & web series episodes on it, with the intention of uploading them to our new Penalty Box Productions website.  I should have it back this Wednesday…so of course I accidentally delete the photos 3 days before.

I can’t put into words how sick this made me last night.  Let’s just say, I didn’t cry myself to sleep.  I cried.  Stopped.  Then went to sleep.  See, that’s different!

I bought my camera in 2005 and have upgraded twice since.  The Nikon I have now is FREAKING awesome!  So I have photos of pretty much every event in the past 7 years.

You know the saying, “A picture is worth a 1000 words?”  Well that translates to approximately 3 memories for each photo.  That means I was holding on too about 60,000 of memories on my MAC.  Gone.  I guess the joke is, I won’t even remember losing the photos in about 6 months.  Which is kind of true.  But man I had some great fucking photos!

Lost was every wedding I have been to in the past 7 years.  Luckily we have ours because Julie keeps them in a different folder – which will be backed up this week.  In the time Julie and I have been together we have been to over 50 weddings…so that’s a LOT of memories.

Lost is the photo album I wanted to make for my nephew Mason when he turns 18.  Most of the photos would have been of him crying. 

Lost are ALL of the cats Julie & I have rescued over the years.  Yes we have more than a couple, but we have rescued and housed even more than the ones we’ve kept.  I know Julie has many of these on her facebook - can you tell who the responsible one is?

Lost are:

Seven New Years Parties. 

Six Kerryoke Parties. 

Five Halloween Parties. 

Four “Dirty” Cookie Parties (that one hurts the most! Suzanne - “COCKtivity is on Facebook”). 

Three Web Series. 

Two Canoe Outings. 

And a video of me making an impossible shot with a piece of cheese into the shirt of The 2012 Renaissance Faire Queen, Jess Eppler.   

I guess there’s something to be said about starting over.  But DAMMIT!  I had hair in some of those photos!

Blog Entry #45

Autumn begins in six days.  That gives me little more than a mere season to do all the things I had set out to do for 2012.  Which basically means, it ain’t gonna happen!

There were many things that I hadn’t anticipated doing that I accomplished this year:

1. Stage Manage and Assistant Direct Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson for City Theater
2. Join the Board for ComedySportz Philadelphia
3. Temporarily Quit drinking

That last one is CRAZY! 

One of the things I had wanted to do was to blog 50 times this year.  So really this entry is just to help pad my numbers.

Now, who will teach me to play Auld Lang Syne on a guitar before New Year’s?

Victor Hugo gets his period

How about a period you son of a bitch!

Though it's NOT the longest sentence ever published in a novel (many claim it is), Les Miserables does contain a sentence with 823 words.  No wonder the fucker is like 1400 pages!

"The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that
father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune,
of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year; sober, serene,
peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with
the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become
useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is
more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the “middle class,” but
outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which
he had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring
himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene
Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not
proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered,
but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and
his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always
governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on
mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter
dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that
imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks; making France fear Europe and Europe France!
Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more authority
than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of
ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from
violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive,
sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona,
obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with
conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring
generosity, to Utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a
general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling; brave as a grenadier,
courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great
political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in order that he
might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very
attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good
sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of
resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper names, ignorant of
tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of
souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but
little in accord with France lower down; extricating himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own
first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling
a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and
chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short,
a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and
power in spite of the jealousy of Europe, — Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and
would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the
sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful."

Please note facebookers, at no point does he refer to what he ate for lunch.

I think I’ve come up with a joke to offend EVERYONE. Here goes:

“The North Tower of the World Trade Center is raping the retarded South Tower of the World Trade Center in it’s gay black ass. The retarded South Tower turns around and yells, ‘Come on!’ So The North Tower asks, ‘Which floor?’

…also AIDS!”

“There are some things you don’t joke about!” Or, more appropriately, “There are some things YOU don’t joke about.”

During a stand up set over the weekend at Los Angeles’ Laugh Factory, comedian Daniel Tosh, the famously provaocative host of Comedy Central’s Tosh.0, told a rape joke that sparked a huge controversy.

In the audience at the Laugh Factory that night was a female who writes a blog called “Cookies For Breakfast.” A search of her Tumblr page doesn’t list her name or any other pertinent information. The blog itself however, reveals the fact that she didn’t know who Daniel Tosh was going into the show.

“I thought he was just some yahoo who somehow got a gig going on after (Dane) Cook,” writes the cookie monster.

During the set Tosh made light of rape. The blog quotes him as saying, “How can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc.” I’m not certain he actually said “etc,” however that’s what the quote says. The Keebler Elf goes on to say, “I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have.”

And there you fucking have it!

“I DON’T.” Good. Great. And you are under NO obligation to. AND, what’s more, you have EVERY right to tell Daniel Tosh so…but NOT during his goddamn set!

Cookie Puss yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” It was then that Tosh turned on her and struck. “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now?” I’ll assume he didn’t mean Five Guys, the hamburger franchise (though a building raping could be funny - see joke at the beginning of this blog).

He continued, “Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” This prompted the soon to be famous blogger to “hightail it out of there.” She was given free passes (not her money back) and an apology by the club. Daniel Tosh has also since apologized over Twitter, where he has over 6 million followers.

You can probably find a lot of people who will tell you some things should not be joked about. Rape. Racism. Sexual Orientation. 9/11. AIDS. The list becomes endless once you put one thing on it because comedy is so subjective.

So what are we reduced to?

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.”
Nope. I’m a vegetarian. Why a chicken? Why not a head of lettuce instead?

Most of the reporting I have read has referred to Tosh’s “joke about rape.” Honestly, I don’t see a joke about rape here. He talked about the idea that rape can be funny, but was cut off before he ever got to a punchline. Then his verbal attack of a heckler wasn’t a joke but just a verbal attack. If you interrupt a comedian, who is holding a microphone in his hand, you better expect some sort of verbal attack.

Mrs. Fields’ assessment of the post-DANE COOK show, “I honestly thought he was an amateur because he didn’t seem that comfortable on stage and seemed to have a really awkward presence.” It’s possible he’s working through new material when he was interrupted. As one of the 6 million followers, I even tweeted Tosh to ask him…he didn’t answer.

You could make the argument, work your shit out at an Open Mic not as a headliner on a Friday night. But hasn’t a star of this caliber earned the right to work out material in front of his audience? I once saw George Carlin, arguably the greatest comedian of all time (I saw him 3 times fuckers!) work out material for an upcoming HBO show. He was a bit scattered. It was awesome to see this giant work his craft in front of all of us. Oh, and he told a rape joke.
Can a rape joke be funny?

“Did you hear about the blind skunk who tried to rape a fart?”
Did you laugh? It makes fun of rape, blindness, deformed animals and a bodily function…so yes, I laughed.

I’m not even defending Tosh for saying what he said. Personally it doesn’t offend me, but this is meant to be a defense fo him, but rather an admonishment to the blogger for interrupting his set.

Look, I admit there are a couple of comedians I have stopped listening to because I can no longer take the way their humor affect me. I’m not going to list them here, because that’s not my point. But it’s my right to stop listening.

I would likely never do this, but if what a comedian were saying during a set greatly affected you negatively on a personal level, it’s our right to say something to them after the show. Almost every comedian in the world is approachable when they’ve finished their set.

Or, like the Fortune Cookie, it’s your right to blog about the incident (oh, I am doing that).

Hell, it’s your right to become a comedian and use your set to rail against joking about certain subjects! Just make sure you don’t joke about the subject later, since everything seems to be on the internet these days.

In the end, comedy will always have the potential to offend. It’s one of the things that makes it so damn funny.

Daniel Toss’s latest tweet:
The point I was making before I was heckled is there are awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them. #deadbabies

Great…now I want to eat cookies.

I Vote for Cookies!

http://lickrosco.blogspot.com/2008/06/cookie-monster-america.html

Will it be "4 more cookies!" or "A New Cook in the Kitchen" in November.

Here's a blog I wrote 4 years ago about cookies & the Election.

Police - STING!

Is there nothing Sting can’t do? 

Nobody is going to be trafficking Roxanne for sex…except Roxanne herself…(get it?  She’s a whore!)

I wanted to write a blog about my vacation to Aruba…but I don’t want to make you jealous…and more importantly, I don’t have access to my photos at the moment (to help NOT make you jealous).

I also wanted like to write about all of the commitments I have at the moment.  Unfortunately, many of them are not public knowledge and it would sound like I am whining when in accuality, I would be trying to boast about how important I am.

So instead, I’ll tell you a quick little story:

About 2 weeks ago, right before I left for Aruba, my iPod died.  I have terrible luck with these damn things (read the tale of my previous dead iPod HERE - what are the odds?  And on the day AIDS was cured!)

Story of The Cure For AIDS

Julie gave me her iPod and told me to go ahead and wipe it clean allowing me to load my music on.  What a sweetheart!  So I totally did it!  But I kept some of her music too.  Which is how I up driving down the road blasting The Muppets theme song followed by "Girlfriend in a Coma." 

I have just hit shuffle and these are the first 20 songs that played…

1-Joseph Smith American Moses from The Book of Mormon.  Speaking of AIDS!

2-Cigarette by Ben Folds Five.  There is always a good chance a BF5 song will play when my iPod is on shuffle as most of my iPod is Ben Folds.

3-Missing Piece by The Forces of Evil.  This is a side project from 3 of the current members of Reel Big Fish.  Basically it’s Reel Big Fish, but Aaron Barrett gets to say “fuck” a lot more!  He feared RBF was breaking up and started this band.  RBF is playing in Lancaster this month.

4-Scott’s a Dork (Skacoustic version) by Reel Big Fish.  What are the odds right?  This song is about Scott Klopfenstein, the former trumpet player for the band (I know, I can’t believe he’s not in RBF anymore either).

5-The Real Me by The Who.  Quadrophenia bitches!

6-Bulletproof by La Roux.  Honestly I don’t think this is one of either Julie or mine.  Maybe it came with the iPod?

7-The Sunnyside of the Streets by The Pogues.  Irish.  

8-Dig My Grave by They Might Be Giants.  I remember when Erick bought Apollo 18 from Wee Three Records.  We listened to the shit out of that album.

9-(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding by Elvis Costello.  There really is not a bad Elvis Costello song. 

10-Mrs Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel.  The greatest incomplete song ever written.  I love that the first half of the song is “missing.”  

11-Country Girl from The Ultimate Pickin' On Neil Young: The Fiddle & The Damage Done - A Bluegrass Tribute.  I have a bunch of these!  Not just of Neil Young either...

12-Badd by Richard Cheese.  Cover of the Ying Yang twins tune.  You should all own at least 1 Richard Cheese album.

13-Richard by Frank Mackey & The Keltic Cowboys.  More Irish (see song #7)

14-Violent School by The Dead Milkmen.  I dated a girl in high school that turned my on to The Dead Milkmen.  I have been to at least 3 of their “last” shows.  This song is from 1985, yet it’s message sounds like it was meant for today…guess things haven’t gotten better in the world in 25 years.

15-Magic by Ben Folds.  Told ya (see song #2)

16-Brown Eye Girl (Live) by Van Morrison.  The quintessential summer song.

17-Daydream by the Wallace Collection.  This song has been sampled by multiple rap groups.  I don’t find sampling to be an “unoriginal” artform, but when multiple groups sample the same song…

*There’s no reason you should know this song.

18-C’est la Mort by The Civil Wars.  Translated “that’s death.”  But such a beautiful song…about death.

19-Tommy Overture by The Who.  Very difficult to listen to this song and not then decide to listen to the rest of the album.  But alas I have 1 more song until I can take my iPod (Julie’s) off shuffle.

20-That’ll be the Day by Buddy Holly.  Oh Charles Hardin Holley.  You fucking rock!

 

Kind of an eclectic mix…though my music clearly dominates Julie’s...maybe I did erase it all.

___________________________________

 

As I finish writting this blog Christian Brothers by Elliott Smith comes on.  Julie's music is alive and well...even if the people playing it aren't.