I saw Mitch Hedberg perform a couple years ago at the Benedum. It was a Comedy Central sponsored show with Dave Attell and Lewis Black. I had waited to the last possible second, the day before, to get a ticket. I think I got to the ticket office at Noon. The show had been sold-out earlier in the day but a few tickets had become available. I ended up sitting in the third row.

Lewis Black went last and was better than I thought he’d be. I enjoy his work on the Daily Show but in larger doses he sometimes rubs me the wrong way. He was really good.

Attell was amazing. His timing, down to when he would take a drink, was incredible. I laughed the hardest for Attell. Even for all the jokes I’d heard before. One of the most striking things about Attell and Black was just how professional they were. You could see the years of working in clubs that had gone into refining their acts.

Then there was Hedberg. He went first. You should understand that the Benedum is the big theater in Pittsburgh. It’s where the Opera and the Ballet perform. This is as big as it gets before you get to arenas. Hedberg, notes in hand, was trying out new material. A lot of it bombed. A lot of it wasn’t funny. His reactions to our reactions were. He had some incredibly lame joke about Carnegie Mellon University where he referred to it as ‘Carnegie Cantaloupe’. Wait, I laughed at that one. Bad example.

Hedberg was as funny as Attell and Black. He deserved to share a stage with them, but he was so different from them. Black, and especially, Attell were so controlled on stage. Hedberg wandered all over the place. He went off on tangents. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. He was the most memorable performer of the night.

He was back in town in January. I didn’t go see him. I figured I’d catch him one of the next times he was in town. I guess that won’t be happening.

Thanks for the laughs, Mitchell.

My old "describe who you want to meet" thing from Friendster...time for a new one but the old one must live on!

Boys with girl's names. Girls with boy's names. Beauty pageant runner-ups. Those who deny the existance of god in the face of death and/or like to watch cartoons. People who are just here with their friends. Anyone who's on speaking terms with the devil (el diablo!). And, of course, anyone who can make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. Good dental hygiene is a must.

Mitch Hedberg died.
That is not cool.

Oh my god.
Personal favorites:
Shotgun Settle,
Nice T-Shirt,
Gnome Bubbles,
Adult Heaven.
Go read them all.
By way of Warren Ellis.

Happy birthday, Al Gore.
You are the second greatest President that never was.
Right behind Ben Franklin.
No, wait. Maybe Gary Hart is number two.
Wait, wait.
Bobby Kennedy.
Bobby Kennedy, Ben Franklin, Gary Hart, Al Gore.
That looks about right.
Alexander Hamilton.
Damn.
Happy birthday.

Current music: Lost In Love - Air Supply.

There are Mexicans everywhere. Not just in Mexico. That was by far the deepest thing he said to me. None of this rises to the level of stand-up comedy routine. I remember falling down the stairs. Endlessly. I believe in the power that holds rice crispy treats together. Start with the second draft my mother always said. You can’t get grant money to write nursery rhymes. I hope it all works out in the end for you. There are so many pretty girls but so few have perfect noses. Trivial but true. A bone to pick. An axe to grind. One good whack on the behind. Who would you rather have covering your back in a street fight: Lindsey Lohan, Hilary Duff, or Amanda Bynes? Is thinking too much good or bad? I can never remember. Writing is a form of sadism. What if you had to create a third form of currency? Paper bills, coins, and what else? Could you do it? What if they were holding your family hostage, too? Can you imagine the pressure? There’s no point in trying to be hip. I need 174,239 people. We’ll each get one of the 174,240 frames of the original cut of Star Wars tattooed on our chests. Optimism grows in me like a cancer. I don’t have anything in common with Hitler. I don’t even like dogs. Verbal poisoning. Like Sinatra with a forked tongue. He rained a bevy of punches on the lad. In the morning we take Copenhagen. More and more I find myself planning my outfits weeks in advance. What will the future bring and when will it bring it? The man rolled down his window and barked at the girl to throw the damn snowball. She complied missing her target by six feet. How long do you have to sit in the dark before you hear the devil singing? The fifth was always my favorite lash. I named my children after earthquakes. The leading edge of the storm hit Pittsburgh. The rivers swelled with confetti. At the zoo, the monkeys eyed the children suspiciously. God doesn’t have a bake sale because He needs money, He has a bake sale because He likes for there to be a place where people can buy and sell homemade baked goods.

I've been cleaning up my inbox and reading old emails from my brother. I thought this was amusing. I sent this to him on May 22, 2003.

“I went to the Pirate game last night (Bob Prince bobble heads...). Earlier in the week [Pirate first baseman] Kevin Young made comments about not having a home field advantage because the fans don't really cheer them and don't boo the other team. The home fans didn't take that very well. So he pinch-hit in the 8th inning and got booed pretty bad but the funniest thing was that they did the 'charge' thing and the organ goes 'da da da da da daaaa' and everyone goes 'boooooo'. It was hilarious. There was a quote from KY in the paper this morning where he said he laughed at that. I may have to start liking him again. He made the game more interesting. You've got to have a heel.”

• One Christmas in the mid eighties the four of us kids got Weird Al Yankovic in 3-D. It was the only LP I ever owned. I owned 1/4 of an LP. Most of the songs still amuse me. But I’m easily amused. I’m partial to I Lost On Jeopardy, Polkas On 45, and Theme From Rocky VIII.


• I’m sitting here eating a bag of ‘spiced’ jellybeans. I’m discovering that I really don’t care for ‘spiced’ jelly beans.


• On the ride home on Sunday, just across the border from New York into Pennsylvania, I saw a sign that read ‘Fireworks and Karate Supplies Next Exit’. That's the kind of place I'd like to work at.

It is all becoming clear...

When I was a child I went to a fortuneteller.
Last Friday her prediction came true.

I got a ticket to go see Art Spiegelman on April 9.

Titanic! Titanic!
A Big Big Boat!
Self is so awesome.
Go download some music.

I got a Departmental Honors Award from school because I graduated with better than a 3.50 in Studio Arts and better than 3.25 overall (I had a 3.77, fool!). Also, I apparently “demonstrated leadership and excellence in [my] discipline”.
You know, I did, I really did.
I really, really did.
A lot.

Ha!

I'm back in Pittsburgh.
This weekend was a blur of strange beds and shampoos.
I'm really tired.
And really excited.
Seeing my brother always pumps me up.
He's so damn talented and I've got to bust my ass to keep up.
But it's good, you know?
I feel really good about where everything is heading.
This week is going to cook.
I can feel it.

Join me next week at this time when I wonder:
"Where did the week go?"
And I ask:
"Why did I waste my time playing all that on-line poker?"

Ha!

Going to Vermont to see my brother.
Be back Sunday night.

Hey! I know that guy.
No, not that guy.
The other guy.
There you go.

I’m not a religious guy.
But you’ve got to listen to Jesus Christ Superstar at Easter.

Current music: The Last Supper - Jesus Christ Superstar.

"Fischer, with a long white beard and wearing jeans and a baseball cap, was characteristically defiant as he left the immigration detention center on Tokyo's outskirts and headed to the airport.

As he walked toward the airport entrance, he turned, unzipped his pants and acted like he was going to urinate on the wall. He called Japan's ruling party "gangsters," and said he was being hounded by the United States because it is "Jew-controlled."

Tim, Benny, Bjorn are you paying attention? Get to work.

I got stuck in my fantasy screenplay writing at the end of last week. What I had was much shorter then what I thought it would be. It looked a lot longer in my outline. I wasn’t sure if I should put my effort into expanding what I had and then going with the ending I had or saying ‘that’s the first act’ and having all hell break loose.

So I find myself without a computer. I had all my files backed up, but I was in a low level panic all weekend that something would happen to them, especially my screenplay. I decided to print out a hard copy. It was only twenty-three pages, but it was very satisfying to hold in my hands. I put those pages at the bottom of a stack of stuff next to my bed.

Then comes Monday. My computer has gone to Florida, and I’m sitting in bed suffering from withdraw.
“All right,” I say. “Lets figure this thing out.” I pick up the pages and go through them writing notes in blue pencil.

It was good to go through it as a whole and look at the big picture in a way I don’t when I’m typing. I didn’t need any major changes. The notes were for small things—move this around, break this up into two parts. Most the notes are a simple ‘more’—have these people talk a little longer. Show some more of their character.

Then I spent some time trying to figure what happens at the end. I have the sad final scene and I know a couple things that happen along the way but my outline was very vague. I made some decisions. It’s still not all there but it’s another step along the way.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that it’s so much easier to write that ‘more’ in the margins then to actually go in and write the ‘more’ of the screenplay. Why did it take me 300 words to say that?

Dandy Don Simpson has a blog.
His Megaton-Man is a classic of the superhero parody form.
And funny, too.

I’ve been harvesting ideas from my old notebooks for my screenplay. I started keeping a notebook way, way back in 1999. The beginning of that one is so sad. It’s all tiny thoughts (but it’s a small notebook so maybe that figures). I was 21 but still an infant. But, you know, I got the old brain muscle going and that book eventually got some cute ideas in. I never did actually fill that book up. I just sort of moved on.

In December 2001 I started the first of the good notebooks. It probably isn’t a coincidence that that was when I switched from the smaller book to a normal sized one. In March of 2002, exactly three years ago, my writing started to become more complex. I started writing short narratives. Now, I had written little stories when I was really young (see the Big Fight written on a piece of construction paper) and my brother and I had made some wonderfully awful comics, but this was something different. I can still remember forcing myself to do this—going from unrelated sentence after unrelated sentence to stories.

It was like magic.

Also, in the course of keeping these notebooks I started keeping track of my dreams. They naturally made their way onto the page.

Later in the notebook from 2002, in the summer, are a series of one-page stories that I wrote in one sitting. They were completely unedited, and, remain (until I finish one of my screenplays anyway) the acme of my writing. I would clear my head and wait for an interesting first sentence. Then I would lay there for forty-five minutes until the story was finished.

No one has ever read these stories. They remain these private, secret things that make me smile.

Maybe I’ll finally type them up.

Bobby Fischer is free.
Crazy.
But free.

So I've been writing my screenplay, right? It's a fantasy thing and it's going okay, but I have a hard time getting into the right state of mind to write it, and, I guess, just to write in general. So I have another file where I just type for awhile just to get the old brain going. Well, that file has a script fragment in it that I wrote as a one off gag after I misheard a name on TV. So I add this other story fragment I’ve had in my head forever to the end of the first one and all of a sudden I have eleven pages. I’m basically taking every idea I’ve ever had and throwing them all together. You have to realize that I never finish anything so I’ve got a ton of loose story fragments. It’s my Pulp Fiction.
I’ve also been inspired by the trailers to Sin City.
It sure is fun writing violence and swearing and sex, isn’t it?

AND THEN A LOUD VOICE SAID:
TAKE THOSE SOCKS OFF YOUR HANDS
AND GO ANSWER THE DOOR!

Did you ever have a dream about a girl you used to know and in the dream she had grown to hate you in the years since you’d last seen each other? And then when you wake up you wonder if you should try and get in contact with the girl to find out if she hates you in real life?
Because you just couldn't stand it if she really hated you.

I have a new computer now.
It's exactly the same as the old one.
Only better.

I am living a computer Soap Opera right now.
Shouldn't be many posts until the middle of the week.
Do your best to carry on without me.

Eggs and french fries for dinner!

Wait...Ozzie Smith's son is on American Idol???
What the hell???
???

A dream I might’ve had if I could fall asleep:
I went to the doctor’s.
They took some blood and ran some tests.
Turns out I have a passion deficiency.
After the doctor gave me the news I asked, “what can I do?”
She said, “son, you need more Coltrane in your diet.”
She danced off down the hall and left me sitting in stunned silence.
Lou Reed’s voice came from somewhere in the distance.
“It ain’t nothing at all. It ain’t nothing at all.”

Party trick

Lets all eat a boiled egg and celebrate Bobby Fischer’s birthday.
Happy birthday, you nut.

Don’t you think little Jimmy Mattressprincess and little Bobby Spermherder get enough grief at school already? What’s going to happen when all their friends are getting personalized NFL jerseys and they can’t. Please, think of the children.

Tim Rice should get to work on a sequel to Chess where Freddie's insane and in a foreign prison and he's all anti-semitic so you hate him again, but then he sings a song about how they wouldn't give him another egg (the song could be called Pity the Guy Who Wants Another Egg but They Won’t Give Him Another Egg) and suddenly you really feel for the guy. You know? You know? Then he breaks out of prison and escapes in a rocket to the moon where he plays a life or death game of chess against a giant, singing chess robot that was created by a clone of Florence's father. This is fucking golden.

The first draft is a bitch.

From the great Scott Mccloud:

03/05: I have a nine year-old daughter who dances around the house singing "Blister in the Sun" and an eleven year-old daughter who, when asked for hobbies by her D.A.R.E. councillor (a Bush supporter who muttered a few things about Michael Moore in class -- hardly on topic, Buddy) responded that she liked to talk about "random things", and when asked for examples, mentioned "pointless elevation" leading to the following exchange:

Mr. D.A.R.E.: What do you mean by "pointless elevation?"

My 11-year old: You know like chairs. They don't need to be elevated.

Mr. D.A.R.E.: Ah, but if they weren't, how would we reach our desks?

My 11-year old: Well, the desks don't have to be elevated either.

Mr. D.A.R.E.: What about the dinner table?

My 11-year old: Well, in my hypothetical universe, we'd all eat on the floor. You know, like the Japanese do.

Mr. D.A.R.E.: But what about...? [etc]

It finally ended with D.A.R.E. guy saying "You're good." and moving on to intellects more in his range.

After the D.A.R.E. graduation ceremony, at which my girl politely mouthed the words to "God Bless the USA" -- 'cause the classes put it to a vote and all, though she didn't mouth the "God" part -- I took her aside and made sure she did know that drugs were a colossally bad idea, despite the sub-standard reasoning skills presented by her supposedly all-knowing superiors.

Her response, in a nutshell: "Well, Duh."

Today is 03-04-05. Well, in the United States, anyway.
Those of you in Europe can celebrate this magical day next month.
I like numbers.

• Today I recorded three Patsy Cline songs with my sister. She sang and I played guitar. I haven’t been playing much lately and there were no calluses on my fingers. My fingers were hurting like crazy. We got through it and the songs sound pretty good. We ended up having to have this crazy hook up to get the recordings off her Mini-disc player and onto my computer. There was an old record player involved. It was nuts.
  
  
• I’m not really sick anymore but I don’t think this cough is going away anytime soon. Nothing like a good lingering illness, right? The worst part about when I was really sick was that I couldn’t listen to music without my head hurting. I listen to too much music. I know I should turn the music off and work in silence more often. I think better in silence. But, you see, I’ve got this system worked out in iTunes and I like watching the songs move in and out of their different playlists. Yeah, I’m a dork. I’ve got all my songs rated. I have my five star songs go out of circulation for a week. Four star songs for a month. Three star for three months. Two star for six months, and one star go into the One Star Purgatory playlist and don’t get played. All the five, four, three, and two star playlists feed into a bigger one along with a playlist of songs that have never been played or have only been played once. Unrated songs get fed in too. I switch between listening to the big playlist (named 0-1-2-3-4-5), a playlist of both the four star and five star songs (named PARTY!), and just individual star lists (sometimes I feel like listening to four star songs). It all makes for a pretty good mix of music. I get to hear the songs I like the most more often, but at the same time enough three and two star songs come through to make it interesting. Of course, I spend a lot of time listening to whatever three or four albums I’m really into at the moment (currently Nash Kato’s Debutante, Joan Osborne’s Relish, and a live recording of a Local H show from new years eve) or the individual songs I'm really into (currently Do the Vampire by Superdrag, Pensacola by Joan Osborne, and Debutante by Nash Kato). Wait, what were we talking about?
  
  
• This month we get the Incredibles on dvd and Flight Volume Two. Pretty sweet.
  
  
• We are plotting world domination through screenplay writing. If only we would finish a screenplay.
  
  
• Remember when 11:00 pm was really late at night?
  
  

I just overcame this major hurdle and finally banged out a nearly complete outline for my screenplay (Yes, I’m writing a screenplay. Shut up.). There was this part at the beginning that I couldn't figure out but yesterday my mother and I were stuck behind this school bus as it was dropping off kids and everything came together (the first scene is a school bus dropping off kids). I realized that I needed to have the kid who is the main character get dropped off the next day too. Just about everything fell into place after that. It's freaky. I know I have to tighten up the ending and there are still a couple things I have to figure out exactly where they go, but for the most part it's there. Now that the hard part is over I can get on with the hard part of actually writing it. I've been trying to figure this story out for years (Yes, I’m really slow. Shut up.). It feels really weird to have it all right here in front of me. I should make a back up copy. I should print it out. I should definitely print it out. And, no, there won't be any poop jokes in it.