Death, Horny

Thinkin’ ‘Bout De’th

People mistake me for being somewhere between the ages of 28 and 32 nowadays. Until about a year ago, I was mistaken for being between the ages of 15-18. How come I have to skip all the good years?

When I was a teenager I comforted myself with the fact that despite my babyfaced patheticness was preventing me from getting laid now, that same babyfacedness would help me score when I was in my 30s and was still looking a healthy 24. Nope. I just went from one type of person who doesn’t get laid to another type of person who doesn’t get laid.

I think in high school I just wanted to assume that before I died I’d get to experience being a man of sex – a person who would enjoy sexual arts whenever he wanted. That’s not to say I was absurdly horny, or that I only thought about sex, it was just that that was the type of life that seemed most opposite of the life I had and I wanted to experience all lives. Now, I’ve come to the realization that the playah lifestyle is not one I will get to experience, and that makes me sad. Again, not because of my inability to get laid, but because it means I’m close enough to death to scratch things off my bucket list that I never even tried to accomplish.

So, death has been a pretty consistent worry for me all of my life, but now it has gotten worse as I realize how much work must go into being famous enough to have the affect I need to have on the world. This means that I will be writing once a day about what instance made me think about and fear death most in that day. Y’know because this is supposed to be a funny blog. This will last as long as it lasts.

Death, Nostalgia

Award Winning Storyteller: H2$

My mouth’s ability to rock harder than I pretend my dick rocks has been validated by three randomly chosen groups of drunks in a bar. By this I mean that I won the latest Moth StorySlam telling this story.

I now get to join a bunch of ridiculously good storytellers at the GrandSlam and tell some story that’ll probably have to do with my fear of my penis.

Success is a frightening concept. When you realize that you’ve done something that is successful – you’ve gotten something that you’ve desired for a long time – you assume that your life will be better. I’ve spent the first three hours of my day glad that I bought Veggie Stix and carrot juice to celebrate my victory, but was too lazy to return these snacks to the kitchen at the end of the night because now I have breakfast resting next to my bed. Breakfast that I must eat while watching Glee and smelling the awful smell of an armpit that has sweat nervously through a performance and not been washed. This is what success feels like? This feels similar to the failure I’m so used to experiencing.

I made a joke in my story about how I spent my days jerking off to hulu and that joke wouldn’t have been possible had I not spent days jerking off to hulu. This action is the epitome of my failure – my lack of desire to participate in society, opting instead for an insular, masturbatory (in so many ways) life spent creating a perfectly carved out indentation in my mattress. In order to achieve success, you must drive through failure – the future-past.

Retirement seemed like a crock to me. My parents attempted to retire last year and for a couple of months they managed to do so. They spent their days playing on the computer, with their horses, on their kayaks, in the garden – and they loved it. My dad called me once and said: “I get it now. I get why you don’t do anything – it’s so much fun.” The concept of retirement was always dumb to me. Retirement was the idea that you would put off your ability to adventure for a time when you were physically incapable of enjoying the world. Now I recognize that I have set myself up for a constant series of retirements. I want to bite the bullet and then talk about how ammunition tastes. I want to go through a series of lives, and I think I can. I don’t have to put all the misery in one half and the happiness in the other. I can alternate like a sine wave over the x-axis – constantly switching from shit that I have to put up with to getting to enjoy the shit I put up with.

Future-past.

Attention Whoring, Death, Nostalgia

Am I Pedo? No Just Learning

One of my most popular blog posts is one I titled “Fucking Children.” It is a very funny entry that details my insecurities of being seen as a child. That’s not the reason it’s one of my most popular posts. The reason is that it is titled “Fucking Children” and there are a lot of perverts on the internet.

I spent yesterday’s beautiful sunlight sitting and sweating in central park as I watched children play. I was sweating because I accidentally wore a sports coat. I didn’t accidentally wear it, that’s misleading. I put it on, went outside, realized its inappropriateness, was too lazy to go back in and suffered the rest of the day. I was watching children because I found it mildly arousing.. ehem… interesting.

I saw a group of kids spend ten full minutes discussing what sound they were going to make in order to indicate that they were starting their game of soccer. I saw a kid get distracted from his game of “throw the paper plate” by a stick on the ground that he then hit the ground with for 20 minutes. I saw a kid get angry because his friends refused to play tag with him and scream back through tears: “You just want to make up your own game and be king! Well I hate you!”

They are so useless, and their arguments are useless, and their frustrations are useless. But we allow it because we assume that all of this useless energy is helping them learn. I agree. It is helping them learn.

What about us? More importantly, what about me? Why can’t I spend 20 minutes discussing the rules to soccer instead of playing it? Why can’t I bash a stick into the ground for a half hour? Why can’t I cry when people don’t want to play tag? I’m not annoying, childish and useless. I’m just learning.

comedy, Death, Indignant

Laughing at Darfur*

I’ve talked before about my grandmother’s death and how it formed my desire to create comedy, but talking about something once has never stopped me from talking about it again.

She had Alzheimer’s and it was the funniest disease in the world. Senility is hilarious. I don’t think everybody thinks this, but I do think that everybody I have come to respect thinks this.

People constantly refer to comedy as a form of escape from the world that surrounds them. Well that sounds depressing. I enjoy this world around me, and I do not need to laugh in order to forget that all the awful things around me exist. Comedy can and should be a magnifying glass instead of a diversion. Comedy should focus your attention onto these horrible things so that we can change them. Comedy just allows us to have a good time while we think about awful things. There is no reason we should have to hate ourselves in order to change the world, instead we should enjoy thinking and acting upon the pieces of this world we find destructive.

The best teachers don’t bore their students, but the best teachers don’t use games as a reward for learning. The best teachers use games as a method of learning. Learning should be fun. Alternately, fun can be learning. Comedy can and should be learning. Just because you are laughing doesn’t mean that you don’t care. It means you care a lot. Not reacting means you don’t care.

My grandma’s Alzheimer’s was hilarious to me and finding it hilarious pointed toward a deeper truth about senility. It pointed to how fragile our minds were and how the simple lack of specific chemicals or whatever could change a person’s perspective on the world. My grandma’s Alzheimer’s is the reason I understand that we all perceive the world differently, and we can’t assume our beliefs to be that of others. My grandma’s Alzheimer’s was also hilarious.

That comic made me LOL as the kids are saying. It also made me remember my grandma and want to write this blog entry. Laughing is so good for this world. Do it more often. And do it without thinking about why you are laughing, that’s the best kind.

*About the title: This is a reference that maybe three people will get about a joke I wrote into a sketch that never got performed about Darfur. It didn’t make fun of the people in Darfur, in fact it was very sympathetic to the plight of the people in Darfur, but we were very aware that people would be unnecessarily offended because they wouldn’t like that they laughed at it. I hate those people. They are dumb. Those hypothetical people who were offended at the joke I never performed are dumb.

Death, Lazy, My favorites, Selfish

We Are All Post Service Employees

I left my bed at 3:45 today. I had taken a shower and everything, but I didn’t really leave my bed until 3:45 pm. Finally it was hunger that forced me away from hulu and the new RPG I found online. Hunger could get me out of bed, but hunger would not cook me food, and as my kitchen is flooded because I live in an illegal basement next to an entire apartment building’s drain hole. I couldn’t cook the rice and cous cous and onions I had been eating for the past three meals and instead had to find some non kitchen necessary food to imbibe.

I ventured into the world outside to search for cereal. I brought my book in the likely case that I got bored of journeying for the perfect granola and instead ducked into the forgiving shelter of a restaurant that serves sandwiches with tempeh. I’m reading Vonnegut again. I’ve been trying to stay away from him because Vonnegut is like crack. Once you start, it becomes impossible to read any other author because no one’s voice is nearly as interesting as the overly descriptive yet not at all descriptive voice of the scraggly haired Indianan. But I’m back to reading him and I probably won’t be able to move onto another author for a 5 months. Luckily he has quite the collection for me to spend those five months on.

Brooklyn was beautiful. It was snowing not to much so that it was cold, dreary, or uncomfortable in any way, but just enough that other Bklyn residents looked outside and acted like fearful KKK members on opposite day and stayed safely inside away from the scary white stuff that lined their windows and streets. I had the sidewalks nearly to myself. A six year old boy sat in a pile of snow just in sight of his parents’ window hoping that he would rediscover what had made this wet fluffy stuff so exciting when he first ran out the door. A daughter was pushed into pile that had been pushed up on the corner of the street by her mother who was quickly pushed in after her by the father who was quickly dragged in after her by the daughter. High school boys screamed “respect my authoritiiiii” while throwing snowballs as though copying a cartoon ten year old would help them prove their power over their friends. This lovely white, sticky joy had filled the world and the world had become joyful in turn.

I speak not of the white, sticky joy that I make bi-daily in the sheets of my bed. This was the white, sticky joy that my world was covered in, and my world was outside. I searched not only for a grocery store that would sell an organic granola, but also a barber shop that would shave me.

I grew a beard for two reasons. 1: I’m very lazy and shaving is one my biggest pains. 2: I don’t like that I look like I’m 18. Facial hair forces people to recognize that you must be of drinking age, or at least graduated from high school age and this way I don’t have to lift my shirt to show them the hairy chest of a person who must be at least 20. Now it’s getting scraggly. I don’t want to start trimming my beard because then that gets rid of reason number one for having a beard, but I can’t shave it anymore because it is far too long. I had been contemplating the idea of a barber shop shave for a while, and then decided it was necessary when I met up with some family friends that I hadn’t seen in years. Each of them individually referred to the fact that I look like my dad.

I don’t take that as purely an insult – my dad’s not the ugliest guy in the world, and despite my penchant for organic granola and soymilk and the fact that I attempt to push b-complex vitamins on all my friends I don’t want to become him. He has a beard. I will not.

I found my cereal and headed for home ready to eat the three bowls that would have to hold me over until dinner arrived.

The decision to stay away from diners and sandwich shops was one I made when I realized that I had to poop. I wanted to poop at home, not because my bathroom’s nicer – it’s too close to the kitchen to be fully without flooding – but because my bathroom is my bathroom. I have the privacy of sitting in quiet peace without the possibility of being walked in on because my roommates are out at their jobs in their lives in this world. I rushed home awaiting my toilet only to get hit in the face by the few other people walking in this snow by their umbrellas.

No one needs an umbrella in the snow. Umbrellas are for rain and Rhianna. Snow is meant to me looked into as it falls gently onto your tongue or shaken off as it follows you into your home caressing your shoulders like a fluffy white neck pillow. Snow isn’t meant to be avoided by placing a wall between you and nature’s cute little dandruff.

I poured myself a bowl and ate while I defecated. It’s the circle of my life: eat’n’shit. Just like the family pushing each other into the snow, just like my roommate traversing the tundra to work so that he can pay rent, just like the levels of my RPG: Everything is cyclical and repetitious in some way and sometimes that makes me mad. Sometimes it infuriates me that no matter what we do we are following in someone else path, or at best: a path we’ve followed before. Now though, now it only serves to remind me that we are all a part of the same world. I am a part of the world that has idiot with umbrellas who are fearful of snow, and children with red cheeks who hope that mom comes out with something more interesting to do on this snow day than sit on the corner of a city street, and teenagers who replace camaraderie with a mutual obsession with violence. We are all part of this world that continues to go on no matter how hard some of us try to keep out of it.

Attention Whoring, Death, Horny, My favorites

Age

I was IMDBing my birthday to see how many people exactly my age were much more famous than me to find that there is a porn star born on my birthday. I realize that I jerk off to people my own age (and sometimes younger) in my imagination and on my computer screen, but being confronted with that kind of tangible evidence that I am as old as a woman that was being “Face Fucked” for some old dude on his couch’s pleasure two years ago makes me really contemplate my mortality.

Sex is an equalizer. It makes us seem feel as though we share something beyond the shallow social indicators that led us to decide that sex was the appropriate next step. Shallow indicators like similar personality traits, or similar likes and dislikes. Sex is deep. Sex makes us share genitals. Genitals are deep. While the previous set of sentences are all very funny if pulled out and looked at individually, they mean to illustrate that fucking is the great way of saying we are at the same point in our life. We are at the point in life where we need to be connected physically to demonstrate how metaphorically attached we are. Yes, I do think of sex as simply a literal interpretation of a metaphor.

The point is that we are at the same point in life as anybody we fuck (if only for that second). I think this is why I’ve always been awkward about age differences. If I were to fuck an older person it means I’m closer to death, and if I were to fuck a younger person it means I’m the idiot I was 4 years ago.

Obviously I’m at the same point technically in life as Roma (VIII) (aka Jackie Avalon). We probably both learned to walk around the same time, were potty trained near the same time, and I probably learned to read earlier because I was a genius child who read at 3 years old and she’s a porn star. She also probably got laid earlier than me. But we experienced a lot of things at the same time. Cell phones were introduced to our worlds at the same point in our lives, as were laptop computers, as was the movie Space Jam. So when some 45 year old burnt out comic book store employee yanks on his penis while watching her in “Jerk it Bitch” he is attempting to imagine himself at her point in life which is also my point in life. He is equalizing our points in life. He is making me 45 and I’m still not famous. Even worse, when she participated in FILFs with Ron Jeremy she put me at the same point in life as people that are my parents age. I don’t want to be my parents age with the life I have. They got to at least watch me grow up which is a joy that I still haven’t gotten to have.

I guess I’ll have to get around to fucking so that I can have children before I die. Either that or get famous so I can stop being jealous of the attention others’ get.

Attention Whoring, Death, Gender, Indignant, Lazy, Media

Cleaning My Room Will be the Death of Me

Here’s what I have to do today:

1. Get my laundry out of the dryer.

2. Clean my room. And I mean clean it. I’m gonna scrub the fucker down and get whatever that smell is out of here since I can’t just air it out because of my lack of window.

3. Eat, shower, brush teeth, be human.

4. Call a prospective client.

5. Go watch Up in the Air and have sex.

Here’s what I have done today:

1. Watched Lost.

2. Watched Movie Previews on apple trailers.

(Note: The links are important to the narrative of this entry)

I just can’t get myself out of bed because all these things that I supposedly need to do are strenuous and I don’t know which one to do first. I just want to call my parents and tell them to clean my room to make up for the fact that I wouldn’t let them clean it when I was a teenager. If they clean than I can eat and do the other chores I don’t mind doing. But if I do those than I’ll only have cleaning left and nothing to look forward to. I can’t wait until I’m a famous person and I don’t have to deal with turning to my family in times of need. Maybe I can make this blog into a movie – except no one would watch a simple one trick pony turned into a feature length film.

I fear the fact that I probably won’t leave behind a legacy that affects millions. So no matter what happens I will write a memoir that I will publish near the end of my life. Maybe after death I can become famous. At least I can comfort myself with that thought on my deathbed. It’ll be a story of how our world is full of pretentious fucks who claim a deeper understanding of things instead of the truth, which is that they hate poor people. It’ll be about how people judge each other based on the easiest qualifiers instead of taking the time to understand how to judge people quickly based on deeper qualifiers. My search for fame is simply a desire to be seen by all, a desire to be the ultimate socialist commodity – something that everyone gets an opportunity to view and explore, and yet I am judged to be simply another whiny, effeminate, skinny Jew who is following the path of every other person that looks like him and trying to turn his ability to point out his own flaws into a humorous rise to fame.

There have been so many people in existence that for your path to not follow someone else’s to some extent is impossible. The key is not to try. The key is not to fall into every single cliche of your time period. That is the key to timelessness. If one does the things they love, then one is bound to followed by people that love that same thing because, as I said before, statistically someone else loves that too.

Which, again, is why I don’t believe in one true love. You probably love someone else more, and someone else probably loves that person more than you. So we should give up the competition for love that is jealousy and all be scared of commitment. Commitment is only good in that it leads to little kids that can carry on your legacy. But what if you fuck up and your kid is weird and won’t be an exact clone of you?

My point is that we all want to be remembered forever, and that to be cliche and to follow others is to doom yourself to an existence that goes forgotten (and is extremely boringly sexist). Striving for the undying attention of others isn’t selfish, but rather human nature, and once we embrace that desire for fame after death we can live contentedly as opposed to chasing an unknown entity.

Let’s just stop fighting. It’s too cliched and it brings on death before we are able to me immortal.

Now I have to go watch a movie so that I get ideas of what to do with my life that doesn’t involve cleaning my room.

Death, Media, Nostalgia

Jersey, Sure.

When I was little I wanted there to be an alien race very badly, but I was skeptic early on because I was never an idiot. In 4th grade I realized that the era of the explorer was over and I became unnecessarily angry at Magellan and James Cook and ChrisCo because they got to go around and discover new peoples.

God, I love The Jersey Shore. My computer is my Niña, Pinta and my Santa Maria and Jersey Shore is my Galapagos Islands and my blog is my vehicle for mixing explorations. I love Rock of Love Bus, I love Flavor of Love. These are my anthropological studies. And now that we got planes and the internet it’s harder and harder to have true new world experience outside of VH1 shit reality shows.

The reason I need to see these people that grew up so different and turned out so different than the gender confused, math comedian that I became is because I need to know that this world isn’t fully explored. We may not get more Magellans but there are still people that I haven’t met. There are still people whose decisions, morals, and reasons necessary to punch people will still surprise me. I need to know that I’m not as brilliant as I think I am – that I can’t predict what everybody is going to do all the time. If I’m never able to be surprised again than I would just sit in my room all day maintaining a destructive routine. Luckily Jersey Shore has an off season so I can’t get into a routine year long.

Also, it’s interesting that they are intense Future-Pastians. They live their lives for the stories they get to tell. Just their stories are self-aggrandizing, whereas mine involve my parents in wetsuits, and my dick in my hand.

Death, Depressed

Subway Writing 3

This is a double feature. Before we begin I want to share a sentence I wrote without any context that I just found: “I live with broken things.”

Though age 52 another woman thought her to look not a day over 45. The mistake was supposedly flattering, but she knew it didn’t mean she was attractive. At age 24 she had celebrated her little sister’s 21st by escaping to a local pub. Her newly legal sister had to force her ID on the barkeep, while our protagonist was asked and analyzed by the same man, because the legality of her presence at this establishment was in question. After the embarrassment of her seeming to be a lawbreaker as opposed to the mentor she desired to appear as to her younger sister, she then wasn’t able to show off any skills of seduction either.

Her family liked meals together and didn’t mind the extra weight that came with those meals. She had the unluckiest metabolism of her family of fatties. Nobody made her feel bad about her weight. Nobody except the world that thought she looked like a perfect piece of veal – young and plump.

Too bad we don’t love people the way we love food.

His throat hoarse from a full day of howling on the subways, he once again perched himself against a pole and strummed his out of tune guitar and attempted to make his voice heard over the rickety train wheels. His fingers were hard with callouses that pretented bleeding and his forehead was sweaty with sweat that prevented the overheating of a person who was vastly overweight and had decided physical exertion should be a constant in his life. He scurried from train to train, half panting half regurgitating sound from a throat rawer than any WWE fan’s dreams. He on the other hand was a part of nobody’s dreams.

My thoughts: I have always been self conscious about my weight, though in a way that was not relatable to anyone else. Therefore sometimes I try to imagine my life if I were fat, just to see the differences. There are differences, and the stigma attached to my weight issues does not compare to the stigma for the chunkariffic, but it’s interesting to me nonetheless. I also obviously like looking at people who have wasted their lives. The idea that I get to a point in my life where death is looming and yet I have accomplished nothing is an idea that keeps me up at night and striving to accomplish things. It is both my biggest fear and my biggest motivator; the best and worst thing in my life. These sad subway souls are the most important pieces of my life.

Attention Whoring, Death, Hungry

Show Tonight!

I am performing tonight at Tank Theater. It’s the first sketch show performed by Rachel and the Elf, my terribly boringly named sketch troupe with a really cool logo done by Paul Swartz.

It should be fun, and soon I will be happy again because I will have been onstage. I’m sorry to all of you for the upcoming drivel I will be producing from my bed of smiles, rainbows, and unicorn farts.

If you are in New York, come!

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently because I’ve been alive and I don’t really think there is a more useful topic to think about then the ultimate change (aka: death). If there is a heaven, which there is not, I would like these things available to me:

1. A very full refrigerator whose door is jam-packed with condiments.

2. G-chat.

3. A large stage with an even larger audience.

4. Porn that as soon as you’ve cum turns into very funny feminist comedy.

5. Bubble machines.

6. Two different 24 hour donut shops within walking distance.

7. Somehow I don’t have to shave anymore.

8. Or do laundry.

9. I have to go eat because all I keep thinking about is different foods that I want in heaven. And right now.

Nisse Greenberg

Category Archives: Death