Clean up your act

Our neighbors above us have gaps in their porch boards. The dust and dirt they accumulate tends to trickle down to our porch which has no gaps. We're the only ones in our complex with gapless porch boards. Our porch is also in a corner which gets no wind, so when we get dirt, it settles. We have pigeons. I swear they must shave themselves regularly. After three or four days, the back porch looks like we slaughtered a flock of birds and overturned a couple flowerpots. Because of our windless, gapless porch space, we look like bird-killing bums.

Maybe I should get a canopy or a complicated pigeon feather gutter system. Or I can quit my complaining and sweep once every couple of days. It's a five minute job to clean out the feathers and sweep up. It's mostly just gross.

I've deduced that a good way to encourage clarity of thought is to organize my surroundings and maintain a physical atmosphere of cleanliness. A cluttered mess of a home seems to correlate with an irritable, claustrophobic brain.

Our apartment is sort of messy right now. We moved a bunch of furniture out of one of our rooms so we could paint it. We're almost halfway through, but painting is really no fun at all. So we stall and the clutter generates acceptance of more clutter... and now any form of cleaning is nothing more than keeping the beast back.

A good solution to this problem is to perform one act of cleaning or organizing per day in addition to whatever standard housework needs to be done. Anywhere around half an hour is effective. A couple weeks of this produces wonders. I've done it before. I can do it again. I'd better get on it before winter is upon us, too. 'Cause winter cleaning is rough.

I will not be dominated by my mess. I will mess up that mess.

I have a scanner. Cartoons to follow.

It doesn't leave me much money for food, but $30 for a seldom used printer/scanner/copier + ink is a sweet deal.

I like to draw, so on occasion, I'll throw in a few sketches to delight your senses. It'll change things up. Our staff is loose and fancy free over here at Smell My Success. You don't like that? Then you're a fascist and I have no choice but to change your mental regime.

This is a cartoon I drew a few years back. Let this be a lesson to you... Keep your happiness deep down inside!

Love,

THIS GUY <------------

You so complicated

I try to keep up with current events fairly regularly. I don't have as much time to sift through the news as I would like, but who does? Whenever I get hot and heavy over a particular controversial topic, it doesn't take long before I am staggered by the sheer weight of information available. It's as if I had access to some virtual realm where I could draw in material from the comfort of my own home... but such things are fanciful and will never be realized. The more I dig, the more convoluted and intricate the issue becomes - that's when I tend to get overwhelmed if I'm in sad mode. But more often than not, I feel a sense of awe over the amazing complexity of our world.

For example, I get ornery when I listen to fervent patriotism.

There's something about fervent patriotism that brings out poor grammar and sloppy reasoning. Such people tend to misuse language. They throw around words such as liberty and tyranny as buzzwords, doing a great disservice to the true depth of those concepts. It is as if it's sufficient to parrot stock phrases simply because the Founding Fathers wrote them down. That is intellectually lazy at best; sinisterly propagandist at worst.

When I hear those words, a myriad of things come to mind: The world at the time of the late 1700's and early 1800's when those words emerged as powerful tools of change, technological developments that changed the status of those tools over the years, routinely challenging previous sentiments, McCarthyism, various "Fatherland" movements that crop up throughout history, political exploitation, and lots more. And then I think about my reaction to those words and the people who wield them. Following that, I ponder my relation to their worldview in society, my place in civilization, and civilization in general. Then I eat a bowl of Lucky Charms and wonder where my afternoon went.

Such thoughts leave me bewildered and, as I said before, awed by the all-pervasive march of human endeavors. We're all just winging it in life. And we can't know everything. But were I to be a policy-maker, by gum, I would make it a priority to be a lover of knowledge. How on Earth would I be able to weigh in on issues that affect hundreds to millions of lives without a burning passion to know the facts that could improve the lot of the many? I would feel obligated to plunge the depths of scientific discovery, history, sociology, philosophy, economics, religion and more. How disheartening it is that so many politicians seem to revel in ignorance.

Perhaps I should just give up and paint an American flag on my face and hump an eagle.

My first stand up experience

Have I ever mentioned the first time I ever tried stand up? Oh course I haven't. I checked my blog history. Not a trace of that story.

It was back in college. I wanted to give it a go, so I wrote out some shit and grabbed a 5-minute spot as an opener for some road comedian. A road comedian basically makes his or her living traveling to different venues doing stand up. He does a set, drinks some beer, and heads off to the next bar or hotel. It's a lonely life. This particular location was a patio bar and grill. It was a warm spring night, I believe. The kind where magic can happen. The MC did a few minutes to warm up the audience before bringing me on deck. I was prepared and I brought some friends along to watch me. My girlfriend at the time, her friend from out of town, my best friend, and a few other pals. I was nervous, but I felt optimistic. I felt I was going to do well. After all, I'm a fucking funny guy.

So the MC called me up. I swallowed a mouthful of Corona and strided on out there all confident-like. I heard some guy off to the side say to his date, "Hey, he's already funny." He said it in all seriousness. I was doing great before I even planted my feet on stage! I approached the mike, opened my mouth to deliver my introduction and... nothing. My mind wiped clean. It was as blank as the face of The Blank from Dick Tracey.

I forgot everything I had prepared. I was frozen stiff. My mouth could barely shape words. All I could muster was a hollow "Woooooah-wuuuhhh." But I couldn't just pee my pants and leave. That's so overplayed. I knew I had to stick it out and pick up whatever pieces dropped out from my brain. Somehow I remembered some of my material and stammered it out as best I could. Not a laugh in the audience, by the way. I'm sure you've figured that out by now. Barely of tremor. Everything felt stiff and still and hours long. Oh wait. One guy said, "You're doing fine," when I bleated out some half-formed joke about not doing well. I'd rather have been heckled.

Well before my five minute slot was up, I got the light from the back of the house. That light means, "get the hell off stage." I did. I crept back to my seat and ordered another beer. To my credit, I was a good sport about it and laughed it off when the MC took the mike and mildly mocked me. The next comic went up (the 'middle,' as they call it in the biz), did his thing, and he in turn was followed by the headliner. Some fat fellow in leather who did an hour. Ten minutes was about how the ladies have orgasms on his motorcycle when he revs it up. Classy to the last. Steve Martin would have been proud.

I stuck out the rest of the evening and was ever so glad my friends departed. They were embarrassed for me, I could tell, but were supportive. I had good friends. Still do! I avoided stand up for almost a year after that. I was so mortified I couldn't even think back on that night without feeling like I was going to vomit.

But I tried again. I took up a guitar and devised a character and worked my bit to perfection. I went up at a local open mic and totally rocked it. The MC there asked the audience if I should come back again and they cheered. I was flying high. Since then I've done stand up probably three or four more times. But I was never interested enough to keep developing material and showcasing myself. I preferred sketch and improv.

Nowadays, my sentiments have flipped. I like the rawness and singularity of stand up. It's all up to the one person on stage who writes and performs her set. She ultimately decides her comedic fate at that moment. And there's so much brute honesty in stand up. I appreciate it so much more than I ever have in my life.

That's why I'm getting back into it a bit more. I've experienced more and I've found some renewed anger and wryness in myself that wasn't there years ago. I can hitch that to my wagon and hit the comedic trail like never before.

If I ever bomb like that again, I hope I'll be more aware of myself and take that gut-punching moment as a challenge. As I tell my friend Scott, "you gotta go up there and take the hit." There's something inspiring in that statement. I look forward to taking a hit again... I just hope the hit is telegraphed.

Where have you been?

Where have I been, indeed! What have I been up to? Where am I going?

Admittedly, my blogging has slacked off as of late. For a week, I felt too depressed to write. Then I became too caught up in my activities (and too wired in general) to focus on a blog post.

But I have been somewhat productive! I pushed through my lack of focus to put up a blog post elsewhere. It's for the theater company I do some acting and volunteering for. Check them out. They do good deeds.

I've also been writing some stand up material. I finally performed at an open mic Thursday night at the Chicago Center for Performing Arts. Unlike a typical open mic in which a performing slot is operated on a first-come-first-serve basis, this one involved picking names out of a hat. Or plastic cup smelling faintly of Mt. Dew. Out of 30 people on the list, I was the very first one to go on stage. Oooh, it's hard to open a whole evening of comics. But I did. How did I do?

Meh... OK. My goals were to have fun and NOT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD blank out on stage. In that sense, goals completed. The material was passable, but my delivery left something to be desired. I looked like I was having a good time, but inwardly I felt overly loose and slightly frantic. I was fighting to be relaxed. I'm sure some of that conflict shone through. I needed to be relaxed through and through and take command a little better. I got some laughs, but I had less time up there than I originally supposed. With so little time, I ought to tighten my material and make sure I get the stronger bits out sooner. I had some funny short pieces I didn't get around to before I had to close up my set. Oh well! That's much better than having too little material. Or freaking out. Which is the singular worst thing.

With practice, improvement will come. For a first time in years, I did OK.

I will go up again. Guaranteed. I really did have fun and I look forward to getting up there again. After I kick this flu. I was planning to go up somewhere else Sunday night, but I got sick. On WATER PARK day, of all days. That's right. I hit up a water park an hour and a half outside Chicago. I had good wet fun, despite my impending symptoms of disease and sunburn.

I'm going to keep blogging, even if it's a little sporadic. Perhaps 3 a week is a better goal than my initial 4-5 per week. Especially if I want to work a bit more on the comedy writing.

Ciao!