Attention Whoring, comedy

I Want to Be Funny So Bad

I’m a pretty useless person who feels the world is unfit for my presence. Or, more accurately, my presence is unfit for this world. Actually, I don’t think that’s more accurate. I don’t think it’s less accurate either though. I think I just wanted to repeat myself, but sometimes when you repeat yourself you sound super serious and I wanted to sound super funny.

Part of my problem is that I always want to sound super funny, but I rarely have anything funny to say. All of my thoughts are super serious. But I do love laughter and attention. Which seems to imply that I would have liked the stares I was getting for laughing out loud as I listened to This American Life on the subway. I didn’t like it. It’s not the right type of attention. In my head they were asking shitty questions in their head. “Why is he having so much fun? Doesn’t he know how miserable you are supposed to be while in transit? Can’t he contain his excitement out of respect for my boredom?”

Of course no one thought that, but I thought that they thought that and then I felt guilty for my imagined inspiration of their jealousy and then indignant at their annoying jealousy making me feel guilty. “Who are you to be frustrated with my fun? Why can’t you just let me be? This person talking into my ears is funny and I want to appreciate it fully, why won’t you let me?” I continued the conversation in my head with my imaginary opponents.

The subway is a really distracting place also.

There are too many exciting people to watch who don’t realize you are watching them. I once saw a man dressed in a full yellow suit looking at pictures of himself that he had just taken wearing the full yellow suit. I’ve never seen someone happier.

So I took pictures of him to share with the world. It’s so funny!! He’s so funny!! And all I want to do is share funny things, but I’m too serious and so I have to find funny things that aren’t me and take them down as evidence that I recognize funny things.

We had a put up circle in 3rd grade. Each day a different kid would go in the middle of a circle and the rest of the students would go around and say one nice thing about the one in the middle. In the midst of the barrage of “you’re nice”s was either a scattered “you’re funny” or “you have a good sense of humor” and I was consistently frustrated with the use of “you have a good sense of humor.” It was used to mean “you laugh a lot” which is the opposite of a discerning sense of what’s funny and what’s not. I have a great sense of humor! I don’t necessarily think I’m funny, but I know what is.

So, while I’m feeling embarrassed for laughing on the subway I notice something much funnier than This American Life. There is a man asleep on the subway. Not all that funny. His baseball cap is about to fall off. Still not all that funny. But I notice that he has his Iphone out and it is on his calculator app which is displaying the number 10.5864… This is very funny.

There is some epic story here of a man battling his demons trying to overcome the obstacle of sleep to do one last subway calculation – to find this number that will solve all of his issues, and just as he does he falls asleep. Or it’s less epic, and he was so bored by the bath he was doing that he fell asleep mid-calculation. Falling asleep mid-task is very funny to me, but especially when it’s a task that is necessarily completed on a calculator.

So I took a picture.

Or tried.

I held my phone up high as though the glare was preventing me from seeing which hilarious song I was listening to, then aimed it down to take a photo of my sleeping accountant. And I snapped the photo discreetly. Except that I forgot to turn off the flash and I awoke my subject, attracted more attention, tried to turn off the flash and ended up taking a photo of my feet with a flash, and had to rush off the subway two stops too early out of embarrassment.

Also. His phone screen went to sleep right before I flashed my picture and therefore nothing is funny about this photograph. Nothing is funny about me.

Attention Whoring, Indignant, Media, Socialism

Getting Arrested is My Only Inspiration

There’s a thought that keeps screaming back into your head – it’s as if you’ve left this thought to run away on its own, but it’s attached by a bungee cord and at some point you’re smacked in the face by this thought again: “I shouldn’t be here. I haven’t done anything wrong. No one thinks I’ve done anything wrong.”

We’ve named our set of jail cells “correctional facilities” despite the fact that they are not intended to correct and are barely facilities. It’s like some morbid stand up comedy routine. There are 8 of us in 4 cells. 3 men to my left, 1 man to my right, two men in the cell with me, and two women in a cell within yelling distance. We’ve all been arrested for various degrees of being a tourist. One man can’t stop ranting about how all he did was pat a cop on the back and say “good job” sarcastically. From their our crimes become more and more confusing. One was trying to put away a sign he was legally allowed to carry, but didn’t do it quick enough. Another didn’t want to put away a sign. Another put away his sign and started to walk away in order to follow police instructions. Me and another were standing near the guy who tried to walk away. One accidentally backed up into a police blow-horn. Another was accidentally backed up into by a police officer.

None of us wanted to get arrested that day, but the feeling doesn’t change when you intend to get arrested. You still feel like getting arrested is not a proper response to a mild disagreement about where to stand.

Honors British American Literature was the first class I had with Lucas Michelson. I knew him vaguely as the rich kid. I’m sure he knew me vaguely as the tiny vegetarian. We quickly came to not particularly care for each other. It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t even true dislike, but it was a disagreement about how to handle life that we weren’t quite mature enough to handle in discussion. One day Lucas went to get a drink of water and go to the bathroom. He had been sitting in the comfy chair. I had been sitting in it at the beginning of class, but I had gotten up to get a drink and go to the bathroom. Now the chair was free and I was free to take it back. He had set the rules that a free chair was a free chair, and though I disagreed with his ruling, the rules were now turned in my favor. I retook the chair and our classmates applauded my decision. It wasn’t that Lucas was disliked. He was. But so was I. It was that we had all witnessed his original seat stealing antics and had decided against trying to reason with the spoiled kid with the well known temper problem. When he re-entered the classroom, Mrs. Lyons’ large wooden hall pass dangling from his wrist, his eyes lite up with fury. The primordial screams of “GET OUT OF MY CHAIR!” seemed to echo in my ears as he grabbed me by the throat and picked me up – feet dangling above where my books and homework assignments had fallen. Mrs. Lyons was a measly 3 feet away and yelled with the same force “LUCAS!” Her scream was surrounded by a cloud of confusion and disappointment. Though I never scream at the cops, I feel that same cloud of confusion and disappointment surrounding the words I do say to them.

When I was slammed down on the ground, I asked if I was under arrest. “Am I under arrest?” It wasn’t a snarky response to a police officer to claim a higher understanding of my rights. It was a question asked out of genuine confusion as it seemed as though I had just been collateral damage as the cop tackled a crowd of people trying to leave a crowded area. It was a question I was realizing the answer to as I asked it and it filled me with disappointment. Disappointment in this police officer, disappointment in the country, disappointed that we lived in a society that would immediately interrogate me and my motives first.

We all spent 11 hours in those tiny cells without getting a drop of food before we were shipped off to another jail cell. I tried to sleep, but I kept getting woken up by this thought. This thought that I shouldn’t be here, I didn’t do anything wrong, nobody thinks I did anything wrong.

The cops don’t even want to look you in the eye because they know they’ve screwed up. Your “arresting officer” is never the one who tossed you to the pavement, but they know you have no reason to be there. They feel guilt and shame but it doesn’t change their actions because they’ve been told a job is more important that morality. They’ve been told that you do what the rules say not what you believe – and this becomes an increasingly difficult tightrope to walk as the rules keep getting changed.

The system is broken because it pits the guilty against the confused in an effort to distract from the evil. The system is broken and needs to be corrected, but in its last act of self-preservation the system got rid of the correctional facilities. Let’s create our own correctional facilities. Let’s start correcting the facilities that be without fear of laws because laws do not translate to morality – that connection is becoming thinner and thinner every day. If we have morality on our side then we will eventually tear down the laws that bind us to immorality. At least, we have to believe that. At least, I have to believe that. For me. And Mrs. Lyons.

Attention Whoring

Why Storytelling. A Post an Hour.

10AM:

Playing yourself on stage or in writing is bizarre, but I think it’s the only genuine way to make art. Art is a way to let the uncomfortable ramblings in your head out without being considered schizophrenic or, at least, friendship-numbingly self-absorbed. It’s a way to say “listen to what I have to say and I promise I’ve practiced this self-indulgence long enough to make it worth your while.” As artists we demand your attention, and in return offer you nothing but the hope that we will have enlightened you enough to turn that attention back inward with a new set of eyes.

People pay to perform.

It happens all the time. You can say it’s product of the american dream – a method of investing in your future – a method of putting the money down to practice so that later people pay you to perform. But you’d be saying incorrect things. People pay to perform because it’s cheap therapy. If you come away from an open mic with any other conclusion, you went in and came out blind.

This attitude towards art is what gravitated me towards storytelling – a supremely narcissistic concept. Storytelling becoming an artform can seem as rational as chugging out of a beer pong as an artform. Both were done by that kid you wish didn’t show up to your party in college. But looked at from another angle, and we can see that it’s the only artform that makes any sense. It’s the only artform where you honestly describe the process that created a situation where you thought that it was important that people pay attention to you. You are explaining the exact details that happened in your life that compelled you to demand that everyone stare and listen to you create art. If all art comes from life (and it does) then storytelling is the only artform that’s honest about that. Even stand-up operates under the guise that some of this might not be true – some of this might be my imagination running wild with truths that might have been, but storytelling is not lying.

What can be beautiful about this honest is that with it comes no assumptions about what you are supposed to “get” out of this art. As an audience member, you “get” what you “get,” and as an artist I am not at liberty to change my art in order to change its meaning because doing so would be betraying your trust. This relationship is freeing.

I guess in the spirit of honest I should be open about my intentions. I want you to come to the show I co-produce:

It’s something I care about deeply. I will be getting therapy on stage and I need an audience otherwise no one will consider it art.

11AM:

Laundry, and my hatred for doing it is my most written about subject. It is the bane of my existence is the most cliched way possible. Tasks that are meant to be mindless turn my mind inward and I get very distracted by what’s inside and therefore fuck up my laundry a lot. Laundry is not mindless. It is a multistep task based on remembering times and tools that is totally too much. I can’t focus on other things while I do my laundry, but it seems so easy when I’m not doing it that I let my mind wander as I forget to bring the quarters, laundry detergent, clothes, and myself down to the laundry machine in our basement. Then I forget that I left clothes down there for days and find my robes strewn across the cement floor awaiting their owner or a cold rodent depending on which one finds it first.

This invented story invites no happy ending, and therefore I resent its conclusion so much that I refuse to begin it. Instead I let the rotting, mildewy pile of cotton and polyester build upon itself in the corner of my room. As stray socks creep up the side of my bed and towards my desk I start to wonder if the shirts have mated with the pants and created little underwear children because I don’t remember having that pair that’s resting on my pillow before.

Two weeks ago I brought the wrong detergent down to the laundry, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. I said: “soap is soap, right?” Wrong. All my clothes came out with white streaks of crusty powder.

When the story becomes about my garmets instead of myself I start to get jealous. “This is my room! Get out!”

I guess I’ll have to do my laundry.

12NOON:

When I was 12 I drew up a plan for what I thought would be the best, most fun, basketball team to watch ever. Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, Shawn Marion, Lamar Odom, and Marcus Camby. Right now four of those five players are on the same team and they easily have the resources to trade for the fifth. The problem is that it is not 1998, and the 13 years I’ve aged since then has corresponded to 13 years of aging for each of these players as well. The Mavericks are my 6th or 7th favorite team. But purely out of nostalgia. Despite their plethora of late ’90s powerhouse players, their leader is an ugly German who shoots silly shots and yells at the fact that he’s angry. He’s one of my least favorite players. It’s incredible how nostalgia can make us look past the awful and seek the good, as if out of defiance of change. The Mavericks play my least favorite type of basketball – slow moving half court offense waiting for old people to move into the correct geometric shapes until one of them is open, but I will root for them over most NBA teams because I remember the days when four of the players on their team who play 20-25 minutes each used to have names synonymous with alley-oops and fastbreaks.

I’m not sure what this is an argument for/against. I think it’s an against Rick Santorum as a popular political personality. Nostalgia can be a fun exercise in understanding where we come from, but it should not be used as a template to determine where we should go in the future. Vince Carter can’t jump over a man, Shawn Marion is less Matrix and more Matrix: Revolutions, Lamar Odom second position isn’t PG it’s reality TV star, Jason Kidd can’t get triple doubles any more than he can get senior citizen discounts, and the US can’t bomb countries to “protect” Christian capitalism – that was the Vietnam War.

1PM:

I love to sit on the subway next to the girl listening to Nicki Minaj too loud on her headphones. I get to share a pleasurable experience with a person without them having to give me consent to share. We’re friends in my mind without her even having to be aware of my existence. I bob my head to her beat, mouth lyrics in my mind as she mouths them in reality. Of course this delusion is steeped in problematic elements of racism, classism, and sexism through fetishizationism. My beautiful dark twisted fantasy is that for a brief moment me and this WOMAN who grew up marginalized because of her RACE and kept in check by the man because of her CLASS and I, who have been forcefed the power that is inherent within my white male inheritance, are not simply singing a duet of mental karaoke, but also cultivating a friendship based on the content of our character – defined through a mutual love of Young Money.

This subway ride is becoming stressful.

I’ll just post something about Lady Gaga on one of my gay friend’s walls. That’ll make me feel better.

2pM:

The expiration date on the almond butter was 3/04/11. It’s over a year later, but the ingredients are almonds, oil, and salt. Oil and salt can’t go bad and almonds can only get stale. I’m fine with a mildly stale almond butter and cinnamon agave and raisin sandwich on flatbread. I should have something more substantial for breakfast before I go to court. I’m going to need energy to fight the man. All I have in the fridge is spinach and homemade pickles. So now I’m going to have an almond butter, agave, raisin, pickle, and spinach sandwich on flatbread. That’s when I realize I have granola. I feel like “I always find the granola too late” could be a good metaphor for my misfortunes if it were accurate. The truth is that granola and the things it metaphorically represents are some of the few things that I don’t come across too late and I am surprised at the absence of crunchy oats and clusters in my pre-court snack/breakfast. A handful of granola later and I’m realizing that the expired almond butter was wholely unnecessary.

An hour into waiting for my legal representation to explain to me how boring my fight against the man was going to be and I was wholely regretting the expired almond butter that was making a concerted effort to become almond butter of the butt. My power struggle with the powers that control had turned inward as I fought my innards for the power to control my bowels.

There is a lot of waiting when you are trying to fight the man. I wait in a room full of scruffy beards, sewn on patches, pins, and cool hair while sitting in pews facing an empty throne behind which reads the words “IN GOD WE TRUST.” I’m waiting to go into an indentical room that is filled with selection of similarly dressed/appearenced people and a selection of uniformed individuals whose job is either to sit and record or stand and menace. I think about whether or not to write about the fact that uniformed and uninformed are simply one letter apart. I decide it means nothing and is simply a distraction from my point. The recorders are given pens, and their uniform involves a tie. The menacers are given a gun and their uniform involves a badge. We’re all waiting for the day to be over.

“The people move for an ACD”
“The defense refuses”
“Trial moved to May 7th.”
“Trial moved to May 7th”

In the age of email attachments, facebook events, and googleplus hang outs this feels prehistoric. Things move quicker nowadays. Phones and all recording devices have been left by the security checkpoint in an effort to transport us back in time. We read books, and write with pens, and nap, and wait. The patience required feels like punishment enough and I want to scream out: “What do we want?!” “Modern Technology!” “When do we want it?!” “NOW!” and by “now” I mean this instant not “now” according to this absurdist representation of rural southern life that it feels like we are parodying now. i do not need sweet tea and a story before “now” comes. The almond butter is pushing its way out.

I can’t stop looking at the uncerimonious way in which “IN GOD WE TRUST” is written on the wall behind the judge. Though in gold it is not celebratory. It looks as though it is a reminder – dry wall somewhat peeling around it, only illuminated in shadowy flickering florescent. It doesn’t say “God is a great and trustworthy figure who we must envy” it says “we have no one else, let’s let God make the decisions. It just seems easier.” It is a deceleration of laziness and conformity. It proclaims relinquishing self empowerment for the ease that comes with giving THE MAN that power.

It takes patience to tear down the powers that be and start over, and it’s hard to have patience when we’re given the option to know exactly how long our pizza is from our doorstep. But waiting is important. Rome wasn’t built in a day, fuck, that shelf I thought I could build took longer than a day. Our country has made a mistake. You could call that mistake capitalism, imperialism, puritanism, xenophobia, globalization, or the Reagan years, or whatever, what’s important is that we’ve made a mistake. I ate expired food from my cabinet and now all I can do is wait for it to exit me. I’ll eat healthily in the mean time as I try to expel the expired almond butter of the butt.

3PM:

I’m leaving to do this show. I think I’ve spent each hour contradicting my first hour more and more – finding ways to try to “say something” by only talking about my life. I need to focus less on how the world relates to my life and more on how my life relates to the world, but I’m 25 years old and I live in Brooklyn and my laundry doesn’t get done. I don’t think I’m ready to fix that equation yet.

Come to the show tonight, maybe I’ll have fixed myself by then.

Attention Whoring, Indignant

Thoughts of a Hardened Criminal III (There will only be IV)

The minute I was permitted to prison, I was pained by the possibility of public pooping.

I didn’t want to be the first occupier to occupy the half stall in the back of the cell, but I was aware that the two servings of yogurt that I had scarfed down to start the day were finding their way to the bottom of my large intestine. The farts that were sneaking out somewhat embarrassing, but I felt the farts were really just warnings of a more embarrassing situation. As I peed in anticipation of a more significant bathroom experience I noticed that there was no toilet paper sitting next to the toilet, but I didn’t want my last sentence in this paragraph to have a different form than the other two.

“Mic Check!” “We need to ask for some toilet paper.”

A few chuckles followed, but everybody knew I was deadly serious. A few people hugged me and told me that they were proud of me for speaking up.

This is what the Occupy Movement is about: reveling in the small victories that good communication affords us. We live in a world where shame rules our conversation – where we sometimes refuse to say what we want to say solely because we’re scared that people will be scared about the way we say it or the place we say it. Opinion is simply opinion – it isn’t fact. No one’s opinion is true. Just as no one’s opinion is false.

On my trip back to New York after Thanksgiving I found myself in Baltimore’s downtown just after I got off a bus looking for another bus that would take me out to a suburb where another bus that took me to NYC awaited me. As it was downtown in a major American city, there were people milling between the buildings – all with a better understanding of the public transportation of Baltimore than me. Instead I opted for trying to read maps that were new to me as my ride stopped and left. I called after Bus 35 to White Marsh, but it was too late. The next one was 20 minutes later. Just late enough to make me miss the third leg of my bus journey. Well, that was only half of it. The other half of it was that I got off three stops too early because I was too scared to ask… anything. I had overheard someone say they were going to White Marsh and just got off with them, but there were multiple stops in White Marsh and I was left with a 15 minute walk to catch up to where the bus would have taken me in 2 minutes. Once again I found myself unable to find the correct bus. It wasn’t until my third Magellanesque trip around IKEA I finally asked someone for directions. They quickly directed me toward my final leg and I was in New York 4 hours later.

My inability to create dialogue with my fellow man left me $23 poorer, an hour later, and a pound of sweat weaker.

Somehow in leaving New York I forgot what I had learned in my occupy days. I forgot to ask questions and listen for the answer. We do not live in this world by ourselves, so to think that we can solve the world’s problems by ourselves is absurd. We must work together.

Sometimes it is nice to be alone though. To allow yourself to think on your own can sometimes lead to positive results. Like this joke I thought of on my journey to the bus:

I think the existence of IKEA has to make us question the very fabric of our government, I mean now socialists are better at even capitalism.

Attention Whoring, comedy, Indignant, Lazy, My favorites, Pathetic, Selfish

Honesty: My Excuse

I’m often reassured that I’m the only one that enjoys myself. The mirror is the only audience I respect because it is the only audience that reacts appropriately to my misfortune. I see myself as powerless not because I aspire to be the victim, but because I aspire to fit in with the majority’s perception.

These oversimplifying statements of self deprecation mixed with self pleasure aimed at analyzing my neuroses are necessary cathartic lies.

After every sentence I want to stop writing because it feels like saying anything more would be giving too much away – taking away the journey that a reader has the opportunity to go on and making them see what you see as an author, as a creator of this story that you are supposed to paint a picture of because you have taken up the responsibility of leading this audience and asked to be paid attention to – to take time away from others’ lives in order to participate in your own because you believe your’s to be far superior, at least for the time being, and with that great demand comes great obligation to maintain enjoyment, but isn’t giving them, the audience, an invitation to join you as the creator the most selfless way to enjoy an art with someone? Probably not.

I ask myself stupid questions about when form and message intersect because I’m a stupid person with stupid thoughts. My answer is always that they do, but typically it is not a premeditated desire. In my case it is nearly always an accident. I’m still pleased with the result.

My work is almost always reddild with mistakes. ecause I only want to write about what I’m writing aboute. I start feeling dishonest when I’m presented art that has been edited. If that art is about me, ten it must be about me. I typed this entrie paragraph with my eyes losed.

Mrs. McIntire was my typing teacher in high school. Later she would become the vice principal for a year, but for now she only taught typing – a class where maintaining a watchful eye over child-soldiers completing mindless, useless tasks is your only duty. I was and am a good typer (or typist depending on which one is correct) and was/am able to complete my tasks at such a speed that large portions of class time would be/are dedicated to me finding other ways to occupy my time besides staring at completed assignments. This led to the game Wiz3. Whose instructions read/read: Guide Wizio the Wizard as he journeys through a magical land. Collect the potions as you go to create spells that will help you on your way. Use the keys to enter locked doors and hidden treasures. Throw the levers to get to reveal new routes and bonuses. It was a great game that I played/play well and played/play loudly. I liked/like perceiving the anger Mrs. McIntire directed towards my playing loudly as jealousy towards my playing well. That made/makes the competition more fun. She won/wins of course. She was/is the teacher. She instituted/institutes a rule wherein every time a student finished an assignment she would have to check over their entire homework before they could play games. Those two minutes of class where she would be/is hunched over my shoulder breathing in my oxygen displaying my total inability for full control were the worst two minutes of school every day.

I struggle with tense often in my writing, which I think is because I’m never sure whether I’m reliving by writing or perceiving by writing. My biggest struggle with writing is which version of myself am I. Since I can only comprehend the idea of writing through a self-manufactured lens that looks upon myself, my goal becomes to bend the funhouse mirror in a new and interesting shape. It’s selfish: the inability to focus the mirror elsewhere, but focusing it elsewhere sounds mean. Maybe that person doesn’t want to see themselves in a funhouse mirror. I’ll take the bullet. The selfish bullet.

I worry that humans won’t exist when I die, but that’s only because I define humans as me.

Attention Whoring, comedy, Indignant, My favorites

I Always Wanted an Origin Story

A show that has been over a year in the making is finally happening. It’s called Drawn Out Storytelling, though I’m constantly trying to get people to abbreviate it to D.O.S. or Drawn Out. This show, which if you’ve spoken to me at all over the past month you will be far too acquainted with the idea of, is a stretching of the storytelling genre into a fully encompassing experience where your visual and auditory senses are bombarded with all of the elements of a story that we can so that it feels like you are there… maybe?

I don’t think that’s the point.

I constantly struggle with the point.

Here’s the evidence:

I moved to NYC and was immediately entranced by the storytelling scene – it was finally that melding of life and art that I had been searching for. Honesty had always been important to me in art, but specifically how to stretch honesty. I then saw that there were people stretching this “honesty” and pushing it further into the boundary of art. There was Mimsy – the experimental improvisation troupe of storytellers. There was the BTK Band – a band that played behind a storyteller with gogo dancers in front.

Then it hit me that one of my best friends is a comic book artist and drawing stories out would be awesome. But it couldn’t just be literal. The art had to bring out a truth that wasn’t able to be brought out through words alone. Then I added music. The music had to stretch that honesty even further. Now I have ideas of adding cooking, science experiments, dance, computer programs, and the list goes on.

Why is mixing media so important to me?

I told you: I constantly struggle with the point. Stop asking me.

Sophomore year of high-school Mr. Schaffer took us outside to the awkwardly placed turnaround on the side of our parking lot. He told us to stand at different points around this almost-road. Some of us were behind bushes. Some behind other cars. Some right on the road. Some inside a building. He then explained how a hypothetical car-accident was happening.

None of us understood how this lesson was supposed to teach us how the truth was a matter of perspective because none of us were listening because we were in high school.

Art can attempt to approach honesty, but by virtue of it being on stage an audience has altered expectations. Therefore we can’t actually provide true honesty. That being said the biggest enemy of honesty in art is genre.

Genre defines more expectations. Genre creates more preconceptions without providing more art. Genre is just what you expect to see, and as an artist I strive constantly to undo the genre I am “participating” in. Mixing mediums of performance defies genre. It demands that as an audience you come in with an open mind. It demands that you approach a show allowing yourself to be influenced.

I really struggle with the point because I think the point is often not the point. The point is so personal. The point is what you take out of it as an audience member – in so many ways it has nothing to do with the creator of that art.

Do you want to see if this makes sense? Come to Drawn Out Storytelling and find out. Tomorrow at 5:30 as a part of the Comic Book Theater Festival.

Attention Whoring, Selfish

Bird Guilt

To my left a bird flapped its wing. It scared me, but that’s because most sudden movements frighten me. The bird wasn’t able to move, was about to die. It had moved from scary to gross. I didn’t want to deal with it.

By the end of the block, the guilt was all consuming and I walked back to the broken winged bird hoping that I would simply have to roll over the small yellow bellied creature that I assumed was some variety of sparrow only because my biggest resource for bird types is Monty Python. After I rolled over the bird, it would miraculously re-learn its instincts and fly away to go have happy bird babies and a happy bird family. That theory was for the birds.

It was dead.

I was supposed to go on an OKCupid date four weeks ago. Because I was busy with my latest project, and still am, I wasn’t able to go on the date or find a time for rescheduling. I also became involved with a girl that I knew outside of the internet – inside the real world. I had never met the girl who I only knew was a 99% match with me according to a series of questions about my political and sexual views. I cancelled with her on time and I don’t think she was mad. I don’t think she had anything riding on our excursion to a bar at 7pm that never happened.

I wake up every morning feeling guilty because a girl I know as “tiny owl” didn’t get to experience the joy that is being across a table from me drinking beers.

Maybe guilt is a egotistical emotion – an emotion based on assuming you have some sort of affect on everyone else’s sadness. Maybe miniature birds just fill me with guilt.

Attention Whoring, comedy, My favorites, Selfish

I Am Archetype

There’s a reason I want to be on TV.

My favorite game is to play is what fictional character in a specific fictional world are my friends. Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Winnie the Pooh are the best three stories to play this game with.

The reason I want to be on TV is so that people can compare themselves to me. They can say: “I’m the Nisse of this group” or “You’re the Nisse of this group of friends.” That would be awesome!

I’ve been working on a webseries. Finally people will be able to say “I’m the Nisse of this group.” But they’ll just be explaining why their life is an utter failure.

I’m okay with that.

Attention Whoring, Lazy

Need Want

I don’t know how I feel about the latest episode of Parks and Recreation. It’s my favorite show on television-online right now, but the latest episode felt stale. The important thing to note about me saying this is that hulu is running turbotax ads, meaning I have a constant reminder that I’m not doing things I need to do. I’ve been filming a webseries all week that I am a co-writer/director/producer/actor in and it has taken up a lot of my time. It has eaten into my time to accomplish other goals – goals that involve writing stuff and making money.

These goals are less important to me than garnering fame.

Less important, but still more necessary. I’ve been to three job interviews in the last two weeks. Two were food service jobs that I killed at and received invitations to participate in their restaurant serving agreement during the interview. One job demanded I work my first day on Super Bowl Sunday so for the first time in all years of my life, I missed the super bowl. While I like sports, it is not the sport of football that I missed seeing. I like the Super Bowl because it involves hanging out with people and drinking and eating and not moving. Most importantly, no one can say “Let’s go do something!” because you are supposedly doing something just by watching TV and shushing each other when possibly good commercials come on.

I missed it out of fear that my rent would be hard to pay and I needed any opportunity to gain money.

I made a dollar that day.

$1.

They sent me on a delivery and I received a dollar tip. I was never paid for my day of work because I ended up getting a better job the next day. My better job involves a less full schedule and … I’m sure there are other pros too. I just like the less full schedule.

It’s necessary.

In this last week I’ve got nothing done out of obligation – only out of desire. Filming a webseries is what I want to do, but it cuts into what I need to do. Mostly it cuts into what I need to do because I no longer think I should do things out of necessity, but rather only out of want. I haven’t done my taxes yet. I haven’t done my laundry yet.

I started a new website that I think is good.

Attention Whoring, comedy, Lazy

Self Promotion

I’m really sore. Like I hurt a lot. In my thighs and my arms and my back and my neck. The thighs and arms are because I went rock climbing two days ago. The back and neck are because since then I’ve found it too difficult to put on clothes and therefore don’t feel quite comfortable lounging in the public space of our apartment and therefore spend all my time in my bed and therefore prop my neck and back in weird positions against the wall and my bed in order to view my computer screen.

Remember that song “My Neck, My Back?” I also want all those things licked, if the tongue is laced in icy hot. Yes, I want my pussy and asshole laced in Methyl Salicylate. Yes, for the purposes of this joke I have a pussy. Yes, for the purposes of this joke I have an asshole.

This is why I don’t work out.

Working out is the act of competing to see who can be in more pain tomorrow. I have no desire for future pain. It’s a waste of time

In an attempt to illustrate how aware I am of my hypocrisy I’m putting a colon before this next sentence: I was surprised by how everyone at the rock climbing gym was very attractive. I’m not very attractive.

Let’s list the things that I think are important to note now:

1. Some male friends of mine wanted to start working out when we were in college. I was sitting in the back of the minivan on the way to McDonalds drawing penises in the fog of the back window. “Nisse, do you want to work out with us?” To which I responded: “No, getting buff would ruin my image.”

2. In one of my writing books I have a list entitled: “Disparaging Ways to Insult My Body.” There are sections on skinniness, chest hair, eyebrows, and facial hair.

We all make sacrifices for our art, and fortunately my art demands me to look like a holocaust victim who got leprous squirrels stapled to his body. Comedy is my art, but more importantly my life is my art. I write, talk, and perform mostly about me which means that I have to create a me that I appreciate writing, talking, and performing about.

I had half a beard for 4 months. During that time I created a blog specifically dedicated to jokes that a person with half a beard would write. I abandoned the blog when I abandoned the facial hair on the right side of my face. I’ve come back to that blog because I realized that I didn’t need to have half a face of pubic looking strands of gross to act like a person with half a face of pubic looking strands of gross. This one‘s my favorite.

Nisse Greenberg

Category Archives: Attention Whoring