joekyoju

This is now my only online presence.  And I like it that way!  No MySpace, no Facebook, no Twitter, no website, nothing.  Ahhh.  So much better now.

I thought it would be fun to transcribe the drunk calls I got from A-Ron and Bean last night.  Normally such calls would not be for public consumption, but these were too fucking funny not to share.

Call #1, from A-Ron, received 3:53 AM:

A-Ron:  Ohhhh, my name is Jooooe, I turn off my phooone, on New Years Eeeeve...
Bean (in background):  (laugh)  You suck!!  Woooooo!!

Call #2, from A-Ron, received 3:59 AM:

A-Ron:  Only faggots... forward their fucking calls to a voice messaging system... I want to say Happy New Year... and that you're a faggot...
Bean (in background):  (laughing)  Wooooo!   Faggot!
A-Ron:  Jill says Wooo!! Faggot!! Hope you guys had a good night, hope you have a good New Year... either way, you're gaaaaayyyy...
Bean (in background):  Woooooooo!! Gaaaaaay!!
A-Ron:  (laughing)  If you're uh... still up... cuz you said you're like an insomniac and shit... give us a call cuz we're still up.  If not... uh.. fuck your mom and stuff... and that'd be Jill's mom too so fuck Jill's mom and stuff.  Byyyeee...
Bean (in background):  Wooooooo!!! (inaudible hilarious yelling that sounded like "Yattaaaaaaa!!!" like Hiro on Heroes)
A-Ron:  I don't know what Jill just said but bye.

Call #3, from Bean, received 4:04 AM:

Bean:  Joey!!  You're.. so (laughs)... totally (laughs more)... missing out!!  Cuz Aaron is being the funnest dancer right now ever.  (laughs)  And we're watching Office Space... And also... wait what was I gonna tell Joe again?  (A-Ron mumbles answer)  Oh!!  Did you wear eyeliner tonight?  Inquiring minds.  Come on.  Yay!!!!

Call #4, from A-Ron, received 4:06 AM:

4 seconds of silence, then:
A-Ron:  Hello?  WOOOO!!!
Bean (in background):  WOOOO!!!!

I wish I could wake up to voice mails like that every morning!! 

Love my Blackhawks, but they're not quite ready to take the crown away from the Wings.  Soon... very soon...

I loved Thomas Jones when he was with the Bears, but the fact that he spoke up and said THIS with Favre Favre Favre still on the roster makes me love him even more.  Someone needed to say it - Favre Favre Favre played like crap this year and should have been benched.  Favre Favre Favre threw 22 interceptions, most in the NFL, including nine in the final five games.  It's time we stop enshrining him in bronze and sending him to the Pro Bowl simply because his name is Favre Favre Favre and look at the facts - Brett Favre is a me first player that is simply an adequate quarterback with an extraordinarily long career.  I'd love to see someone make a logical case for why Favre Favre Favre deserves the Pro Bowl spot ahead of Chad Pennington or Matt Cassell.

The new Where's Waldo game!  Find Brett Favre on the list of QB leaders, if you can!  Hint:  Look way, way down on the list!

So, Wife and I decided to go dancing tonight, because we only got 8 or 10 hours of it last night.  We headed to Saddle Ridge, which is where in Lexington all the younguns go to drink cheap booze and grind on each other.  We got there, paid the ridiculous $10 cover charge, walked in... and saw an empty bar.  I mean empty.  Three dudes sitting around a massive bar, nursing Bud Lights and vaguely watching the Orange Bowl.  Nobody on the dance floor.  Nobody to dance.  I think even the DJ was asleep.  Come on, people!  It's the New Years!  Did nobody resolve to shake their groove thang?  So, Wife and I debated for a minute.  We're both OK with dancing by ourselves, but we at least wanted the possibility that we would be joined by other people... so we walked out.  I asked them on the way out, is there any chance we could get our cover charge back?  We came to dance... and the bar is EMPTY.  They said, well, the cover charge is for the booze... so I was like, OK.  Fine.  I wasn't happy, but I wasn't going to make a scene.  Wife and I walked out... and the bouncer came after us, with two $10s in his hand.  "Hey man, I don't want you guys going away angry, we were going to give you the money back..."  Which was really freaking cool.  I explained, you know, I'm not mad at them specifically, I just hate it in this town where they charge you cover for an empty bar.  If it's empty, just let me in, I will spend 10 times that on liquor, just because I don't feel like I was gipped right out of the gate.  He understood, and hoped we'd come back, which we totally will.  Tomorrow, in fact!  :)

Wife and I played racquetball today, I think she had fun with it.  We didn't play competitively, we just hit the ball around.  Which was fine.  After last night's drinking, and dancing, and today's buffet, and the workout we did just before racquetball, we were both pretty freaking wiped.  Bully for us for even getting out there!  I'm thinking my lower body workout tomorrow morning is going to be brutally hard...

OK, folks.  Time for yours truly to rock out on the guitar.  And yes I'm all... lit up, again... on the couch... in my bed! 

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OK.  Lexus, Jared, and Kay - I wish nothing but ill for you.  I hope your collective testes get infected and that Rosie O'Donnell moves into your houses and for Christmas you get Lions season tickets.  Anything bad that happens to you is your own fault.  You spew the most horrible commercials over the airwaves and infect my brain and for that you deserve lifetimes of horribleness. 

"Every kiss begins with Kay"  - congratulations on coming up with an ad campaign that cleverly notes that your name sounds exactly like the letter K.  Oh, wait, it's not clever.  In fact, kids learning to spell would find this ad campaign stupid.  And it's been your trademark for years.  For this slogan, you get four Rosie O'Donnells out of a possible five.

"Nothing could ever be more perfect" - really?  REALLY?  A spoiled brat of a child that got a friggin PONY for Christmas has grown up into a spoiled brat of a woman that gets a Lexus for Christmas??  I hope the pony shat in the Lexus, you self-entitled waste of skin!  Four and a half Rosie O'Donnells.

"He went to Jared!!" - Rarely has something on TV actually been able to make my eye twitch in annoyance but this manages to do it.  The whole line of these commercials are probably what drove Plaxico Burress to shoot himself in the leg.  Nobody wants Jared jewelry.  If you hung a Jared necklace on your GPS system it would probably give you directions to the nearest cliff and tell you to drive off of it in an attempt to commit suicide.  The girl would be telling her girlfriend that "He went to Jared!!" but not with the ring on her finger, but over a pint of ice cream explaining to her why they had to break up.   Five Rosies.

I'm switching over to Myspace for my blog and other cool stuff. I'm going to leave this account in place to keep all the old journal entries, but everything new will be over in Myspace. Come join me!

The blog is in the upper right corner.

http://blog.myspace.com/joespinelle

So it looks like my architecture project is about wrapped up, leaving me only with a requirements project and two finals between me and a diploma. Whee! The only problem is that requirements project is a hideous bitch goddess. I'll be at this thing all frackin' weekend. It's gotta be done by Tuesday night.

Wednesday night is my dress rehearsal. I'm taking all my best jokes (e.g. the ones that actually got laughs) and I've made a coherent 5 minute set out of it. My killer closer is back, and I'm going to practice everything to make sure I have a really good set. Because - Thursday I'll be out in DC, doing an open mike where Shadowcat's parents will be there, and I want to kill at that performance.

I've been writing some and practicing the guitar some, but I really have to buckle down this weekend and wrap everything up, so I'm going to get back to it. Remember tomorrow is Caramelicles' Day, so offer several sacrifices. Peace, love, and chicken grease!

One project down, one to go. I turned in my architecture project to the group - at least my piece of it. My job was to tie the pieces together and show how we did a good job, which is hard because I had less than half the pieces to work with. So, I winged it. Editing boy can make sure there's matching between my piece and the other pieces. :)

Now, I just have a 15 page (or so) requirements document to write this weekend. Sounds bad, but I already have a requirements document from last semester that I can use. Hey, I'm a coder, it's the oldest trick in the book - reuse what works.

I'm really not happy with a lot of the jokes I've written recently that I was going to do on Tuesday. I think I'm going to make different ones tomorrow. Gah! Why do I always feel the need to revamp my act the weekend before a show?

Let's see. Not much else is going on. Work is ridiculous as always. Today I got grilled on why I'm helping someone out. Weird. Fracker should be happy I wasn't surfing the net all day. Whatever.

Okay. I'm going to go watch Prison Break now. Later taters!

My birthday was fun yesterday. Alisa bought me a guitar "kit." I didn't know you could buy a guitar kit, but I shouldn't be surprised. It is the musical equivalent of those Campbell's supper bakes. Everything you need to play the guitar. Included:

1 guitar
1 guitar bag
1 guitar strap
2 picks
1 spare set of strings
1 electronic tuner (which works real nicely, btw)
1 allen wrench (??)
1 DVD - "Getting started on acoustic guitar", with Keith Wyatt

In addition, she got me the book whose title graces this post. So, I have everything I need to start re-learning the guitar. Now, the question is if my old, stiff fingers can move around anymore. :)

I also got Harold & Kumar go to white castle, and Million Dollar Baby. Those movies rule.

I did a set at comedy caravan last night. Ugh. I bombed, for me. My delivery was off, my timing was off, and I went over time. And my opener drew dead silence. But there is an upside to all of that.

At least I didn't take of my pants and eat a hamburger as part of my act.

No, really. There was a guy, bigger than me, who took off his pants, flung them to one side, and started eating a hamburger. Somewhere in there he told the table where the pants landed that he was going to sleep with the guy's wife later. Twice.

Quite possibly the worst act I've ever seen. Worse than whiteboard puppet/rubber chicken man.

So no matter how unhappy I was with my set, at least I wasn't him. You'll know in the future if I really, really bomb if I ever say "I should have eaten the hamburger."

Heh.

I'm tempted to do haiku, but that requires, like, thought, so - frack it.

So, I'm actually trying in class now. In my architecture class, I got part of the project done, and one guy has his part done, and it's like pulling teeth to get the other parts in. It's like dealing with 3 other "me"s. Grr.

I have a set tomorrow. I can't wait for it to be over with. That sounds stupid, but what I mean is that I've got polished versions of the new jokes I did last Wed. So this one is the make or break performance for these jokes. The ones that get laughs, go in the bank. The ones that don't... well, it depends on if they're salvageable or not.

I've got another two minutes lined up and ready to go. I'm anxious to try the new new stuff out, which is why I want tomorrow done, so I can finish with those jokes and move on to the new stuff.

I guess it's not too bad of a problem to have. I'm creating material at such a rate that I can't perform it and polish it before there's a backlog of newer stuff. That doesn't mean the new material is great, but at least it's being created, I've got fresh stuff for sets. That's important, because it means that people coming to my shows regularly aren't going to be bored because they've heard the joke 389 times. Plus, if I can get enough polished material in a set, I can start thinking about emceeing.

I figure I need a solid, solid ten minutes to emcee somewhere. At least, before I audition for something like that, or even a guest spot. I have one good solid minute right now. Sounds bad, huh? But that's how comedy goes. Lots of work, slow progress.

Depending on how tomorrow goes, I'll feel good about putting up to two more minutes in the bank. At that rate, after 6 months of performing, I should be seriously looking at starting to get paid, at least a small tiny bit. Like, $20. But paid.

What feels really good is that my material feels like it's getting sharper and sharper. My instincts are getting better. What's awesome about that is that my time between premise and joke is being greatly reduced. It's getting easier for me to sit down and write 4 jokes -- that's a minute of material! Maybe only one of those will survive and go in the bank, but if I can get two bankable jokes per week, that's 2 minutes of great material a month. That's freaking awesome.

You're probably going, "You're excited about two minutes of material?" Well, yeah. If you look at an HBO special, a one hour special. That 60 minutes of material probably took that comic five years to create and perfect. Yeah. Five years.

I can only hope to do that that quickly. Right now, I just need to focus on the plan. The plan:

End of 2006: Begin getting emcee gigs. Receive money for comedy.
End of 2007: Receive money for comedy regularly (emceeing). Feature somewhere once or twice, even if not a top location.
End of 2008: Begin to feature semi-regularly.
End of 2009: Feature regularly. Quit day job?
End of 2010: Headline somewhere once or twice.
End of 2012: Headline regularly.

Yeah, it's sort of type-A ish of me to plan out a schedule for my comedy career. In my defense, though, I want to switch careers from whatever it is I do now, to comedy. Also, comedy is a business. It's networking, and proving yourself, and good performances, and all the same stuff that it takes to get ahead in a normal business. So, it's really no weirder than having a plan for what I'd want a regular career to do.

Holy crap can I talk. But during the writing of this monstrosity I also wrote another joke that I will be performing tomorrow. Hehehehehe. It's a good one, too. :D

The title of today's episode is "Holiday Hell Feast" and is featuring (right now) two sisters who were at first fighting, but now are food fighting, over some guy. Here's some dialogue:

Jerry: "What happened?"
Trailer trash girl #1: "What happened? Well, let's see, I got him back and the bitch (pointing at her sister, Trailer trash girl #2) broke into my house."

Trailer trash girl #2 reaches onto the table and grabs an abnormally large platter of stuffing and throws it at Trailer trash girl #1.

The producer assigned to restrain Trailer trash girl #1 is unfortunately not quick enough to prevent the loss of the stuffing.

The crowd goes wild. The trash sisters fight some more. This is classic television right here.

Okay. I'm up, I've had breakfast, it's time to be productive. Two class projects need to be done, and by Caramelicles I'm the one to do them.

But ooh. More food fighting. :D

Some things that I'm thankful for, in no particular order:

* My beautiful wife.
* My sometimes kooky, but always lovable friends.
* My always kooky, but sometimes lovable family.
* My job, which pays the bills and gives me some fun times sometimes.
* My truck. Looove my truck.
* My puppies. :)
* My big screen TV.
* Tater tots.
* My kick-ass house.
* Alyson Hannigan's parents.

Okay, so now to the journal.

I did my first set in a while last night, in a restaurant. Great place - good atmosphere, good food, and very intimate. I felt extremely at ease on stage, absolutely zero butterflies. The set went well. The jokes I thought would kill, did. The jokes I wasn't sure of, some of the ones I thought would do better, did worse. Some of the ones I thought would do worse, did better. I got a good tape of the performance, and that rocks. That will really help to make my act better.

What I'm happiest about, though, is that my joke writing is getting stronger. In my very first set, most of my "straight up" jokes didn't do well. In this set, it was my "straight up" jokes that did the best. I know I can write a bit with a premise, then hit it from different angles. Now I know that I can write a regular joke too. This is going to be hugely helpful as I like to mix both into my act.

So now I get to unleash "Joe the Bloody" (my editing alter ego) onto my set and try and rework everything into solid gold. Apart from getting a laugh onstage, editing and rewriting jokes is easily what I enjoy the most about comedy.

So, that's what I'll do today. The rest of the weekend is all homework, all the time. So I better get my comedy done while I can. :)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

What a weird day. So last night I'm exhausted, and decide to go to bed around 9. Good thing too, because I get a call at 3 in the morning, and need to go into work. I get into work by about 4:45. I do my thing, and around 3 pm I'm so tired I need to go home.

Driving when you're exhausted is always fun. Thank Caramelicles for the braille strip on the side of the road. And during construction, those orange cones are helpful too. They mean, "scoot the other way."

I took a nap when I got home and now I'm feeling wonky. Not tired enough to sleep, not awake enough to rehearse. That's okay. I'll rehearse later.

So this is what it's like to be awake on a Saturday morning. Weird. I feel lost and without purpose. I don't have to go to work, and yet, I'm not sleeping. What do I do? What is my function?

I love that Bush is countering critics of the Iraq war, who say that we don't have a clear strategy, by saying that "we need to stay the course" - instead of outlining a clear strategy.

I tried this at work. My boss asked me when I expected to have a project completed, and I responded by saying I wasn't sure, but we'll keep plugging away at it until it's done.

He wasn't too happy. I think he thought I might not have been taking it seriously enough.

So now, I'm up. I'm not at them, whoever they might be. I'm not at them at all.

It might be time to play Pac Man World 2...

Everything is set. My set is polished. Roger is coming down for the weekend. Alisa will be off. I'm all ready to do my best set ever, to be followed by Emo Philips. I'm fairly excited. I call the club to buy the tickets to the show.

Open mike is cancelled.

Wha wha whaaaat? Yeah, open mike is cancelled, but I'm welcome to buy tickets. Uh, lemme see... (thumbs through index cards)... I got a response here somewhere... Oh. Here it is! Frack a whole big bunch of that!

So now I'm a comic in search of a gig. There might be an opening in a Cincy club on Sunday. Otherwise, looks like I'll be at 316 Ormsby in Louisville on Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving. Ugh. But I gotta work out the kinks in the material.

I got no studying done tonight. I could have, but I decided to take Dad out to dinner instead. Bad student, good son.

The good news is that Roger came up and we'll get to hang out all weekend. Shadowcat comes home in the morning and may be home all weekend. Oh yeah. Movies. Foosball. Waffle House.

But off I go to bed, I have to be up at 8 in the frackin morning for a class project meeting. Ugh. Kill me now.

I have to mention that the house is beyond clean because Shadowcat went on a maniacal cleaning spree. Like, I can sit down on the couch without a puff of dust being launched. It even smells nice. So, to celebrate, I am going to go to sleep in our nice, clean, flannel-sheeted bed. Sure, I should be studying. But as we all know, research has shown that studying is much more effective when the student has gotten adequate sleep. So by going to sleep, I'm preparing to be far more productive than I would be if I stayed up and studied now.

Does anyone buy that?

Unfortunately, I wasn't accused of not taking my job seriously today. It would have been appropriate, as I wrote about 4 new jokes, of which two survived the editing knife of "Joe the Bloody." No, scratch that. I blame Roger, he killed them. They were such nice jokes too, they studied hard and never made trouble in the neighborhood. Then big bad Roger came along and snuffed out their young, promising lives.

That's okay. I mourn them, but they'll rest in peace in another file, maybe to be reborn someday as jokes on a higher plane of existence. And in their place appeared some possible openers if I'm able to make it up to Canada. So goes the circle of life. Caramelicles be praised!

My possible Canadian opener is a little rowdy at the moment. I may to have to tone it down a little, while keeping the same punch and context. It's the most tempted I've ever been to use one of Carlin's seven bad words in a joke. Sometimes, those words are the only appropriate words. As the date approaches I'm going to get some advice from a Canadian comic or two to see if it'll fly. The real issue, apart from scaring a polite Canadian crowd, is if it doesn't fit well with the rest of my set. i.e. I open my set so sharply and then I'm toned down from there, do I confuse everyone? Probably.

Robopoop is fast asleep on her dog bed. She's so cute. She is absolutely in heaven, her eyes haven't been open since I got home. I think her Christmas is today, she finally got to lay back down on her dog bed.

Well, there's my light, you've been a great audience. Thank you! Goodnight!

Well, funny thing happened yesterday. I got a mild hand-slap at work, apparently my boss's boss doesn't think I'm taking this particular project "seriously."

Urge. To ask. "Do I look like a comedian to you?". Overwhelming.

The project in question basically is how to protect our parts pipeline from winter weather. In a meeting, my boss's boss asked some question about whether or not we've checked the Farmer's Almanac to see how bad the winter was going to be this year. I responded with something funny, I'm sure, but not too bad, because I don't go too overboard at work. What I was really thinking was:

* Yes, I checked the Farmer's Almanac to see how winter would be this year. I also anxiously await Punxsutawney Phil's prediction to see if there really will be 6 more weeks of winter after Feb. 2.

* Yes, I checked the Farmer's Almanac to see how winter would be this year. I also checked my horoscope and apparently, I need to take care of my special someone. I shouldn't try to be modest; I should brag at will.

* Yes, I checked the Farmer's Almanac to see how winter would be this year. Also, my gods tell me I must sacrifice a cheesecake.

I mean, wtf, seriously? If you don't want a smartass comment from a fracking comedian, don't ask a stupid-ass question.


Anyway. Here's the cool stuff. Check this e-mail I got from the Second City:

"Thank you for registering for classes on-line.

You are confirmed for the following class:

Level A of the Beginning Program. This class is held on Sundays from 12-2:30pm and begins January 8th

Orientation for this class will be held Sunday, December 18th at 10am in the Second City's e.t.c. Theater, located at 1608 N. Wells, on the second floor of Piper's Alley. Orientation is not mandatory, but it is recommended.

On your first day of class please report to the lobby of the Second City Training Center approximately 15 minutes before your class begins. At that time we will check you into class and you will receive your
Training Center I.D. The Second City Training Center is located on the 4th floor of Piper's Alley 1608 N. Wells Street, Chicago"

All cool, but uh-oh! I'm planning on performing Dec. 18 at Wiley's in Dayton. What's a boy to do, skip the orientation? Nope - whip out the superkickass free flight bennies, boyyyy!! So (heh, I need to call Rog) I'll be flying down to Atlanta on the 17th, partially to hang with Roger, partially to eat at the Varsity for lunch and the Vortex (the other one this time) for dinner, and partially because getting a flight to Chicago that gets me to Second City at 10:00 is a hell of a lot easier from the A T L. Then I'll haul ass from Second City, get a flight to Cincy that gets me in at about 5:30, and drive right over to the comedy club and perform at 8:30. Yeah, boy. Any comic would give their right (__whatever__) for free flights, and I've got them. So for all you other comics out there who don't have this benefit, I'm using it. I'm not letting it waste.

I'm too frackin' tired. I couldn't fall asleep until 3:30 this morning. And now I'm paying for it. I'm going to sleep on the couch now. :)

I finally got my requirements mid-term done and turned in at about 9:45. Yeah, it was due at 10:00. But it was complete, it was fairly right, and it was on time. Should be good for at least a B. Now, I have one project in requirements, one project in software architecture, various responses to class postings, and of course the finals, and I am oh-ficially a college graduate. Whee!

I didn't work on comedy at all this weekend. I pretty much just studied, and slept. Okay, truth be told, I played a couple of hours of PlayStation. But not too much. Only when the urge to run away from the mid-term was too strong to deny.

I found a cool little calendar/forum that I added to my website. Poor Script. I need to sit down with her for a day and hammer out a bunch of things I want to do with the website, then buy her a half-hour massage or something.

What else is going on? I love that phrase. It is the kiss of death on stage, but I can say it all I want in a blog. How you all doin'? Havin' a good time?

Some of this stuff is just for me.

Back to the grind tomorrow. I really need to spend my lunchtimes getting my projects done. See, this leaves the rest of the workday for me to work on writing and rewriting jokes.

Anyway. I'm too tired to babble. Actually studying wore me out. Frackers.

She took the batteries out of the remote control... What kind of sick bitch takes the batteries out of the remote control?

I have cool friends. I talk a lot about what I'm doing (since this is my blog after all, I can do that!) but my friends are up to some pretty cool shit too.

Check out this partial q & a session with Moira's agent:

Q: The traditional way to get a book published was to first build up a track record by publishing short stories in genre magazines. Fans I've talked to who read novels say they rarely read short stories. And those who seem to like short stories and anthologies don't seem to read many novels. Can you speak to this issue? Is the traditional method still the way to go or can a new author get a novel published without this?

A: There is no single way to get started; I have clients who started in magazines and now either write novels exclusively or do both and I have Canadian Moira Moore, whose first book sold to the first editor I sent it to...without any short fiction credits to her name.

Getting signed the first time you're seen??? That's talent folks... I wonder if the first time I perform at Second City I'll get signed to Saturday Night Live. Somehow, I doubt it.


Check out this e-mail exchange between me and Roger - (It's helpful to note that Rog manages a help desk.), who is my second. Oh look at me, I'm the "comedy dueller" now. What does that even mean? Anyway, Roger is also kick-ass behind the camera, and has already done a paid gig at a wedding. Not that I'm jealous that he's gotten paid to do what he loves. In fact, I'm going to ask him to do my head-shot. If he can make me look halfway decent I'll even pay him. Anyway, on to the e-mail:

Me: I need a fake hand signal for unfashionable conduct. Any ideas?

Rog: Pull your shirt away from your chest, or pull your pant legs way up.

Me: The pants leg rocks!

Rog: I'm going to write that down as one of my accomplishments today.

Me: Put a .5 down on your time sheet for "comedy writing"

Rog: Track-it Ticket 11112005123: hand signal for unfashionable conduct.

Problem: received email from user about a procedural need for hand
signals for unfashionable conduct.

Action required: emailed user suggestions - 1) shirt tug 2) pant leg
pull up

Resolution: user confirmed by email the effectiveness of the 2nd
suggestion - pant leg pull-up.

Ticket 11112005123 closed with .5 billable hours charged to Comedy
Writing.

So if you get to see my routine and you see that signal, you'll know where it came from. ;)


So ends my ode to friends. I must do homework now, since I can't watch TV!!! Bitch. :)

I haven't been posting as much here because most of my writing has been in a notebook recently. You know, those pieces of paper bound together with a piece of spiral metal? Yeah. And I write with this weird stick that dribbles ink out of one end. There's no typing at all!!

The result has been some good comedy. That's bad for you, the faithful blog reader. But I, as the not-so-faithful blog writer, make out like a frackin bandit. So nyah nyah.

Hmm, what boring things are going on. I still have been procrastinating badly at school. Starting tomorrow (tonight?) though, I'm back into the school deal. I have one month to finish everything, projects, midterms, everything. I gotta buckle down and just get it done. So I will. My set is good for now, so I don't need to worry about it until after the weekend. Rock and freaking roll. Time to get my study on.

I'm going up to Chicago on Saturday. I'm registering for improv classes at the Second City. I'll be flying up there every Sunday and taking classes and flying home. This is sort of the comedy equivalent of getting a French phrase book and liking French and then deciding to go study at the Sorbonne, but what the hell.

Okay that's it for me... I have to finish some chores and then plan my study strategy. Later taters!

I had a great day today. I got to frackin' sleep until 12:30 or 1:00, which rocked. I didn't sleep all week. Tuesday I didn't sleep because I can never sleep after a performance. Wednesday I didn't sleep because Alisa was here and I wanted to hang out with her. Thursday and Friday I didn't sleep because I bought a book and was up half the night reading it -- I even finished it on Friday night. The book is called "The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists."

No, I'm not going to go out and pick up women. I just think the psychology behind it is fascinating. Also, the way that the pickup artists construct their "sets" is exactly parallel to the way comics construct their acts. There are even parallels to the way bits are built, and in some cases the routine the pickup artist will use is actually a modified comedic set.

Beyond that, I've learned some truths about people that will eventually find their way into my act as well. It's a fascinating book. At any rate, I finished the book late last night.

Today, we all went out to Jillian's to celebrate Script's birthday. It was great. Good food, football on TV, video games, pool, and alcohol. What more does anybody need?

Anyway, tomorrow is sadly going to be a little busy. I need to write a couple of pages for a school project and start on my midterm and project for my other class. Yuck.

I did do some writing today. I wrote almost a minute of material today alone, on a great new premise that weirdly had nothing to do with relationships. Since I've been reading about picking up women, Cosmos, etc. you'd think that I'd be writing all about that, but I don't think I've fully processed that stuff yet. Maybe next week.

Anyway, see you all tomorrow!