My Attention Deficit Diary

Dear Diary,

From the Wikipedia entry for “logbook”:

“A logbook was originally a book for recording readings from the log, and is used to determine the distance a ship traveled within a certain amount of time. The readings of the log have been recorded in equal times to give the distance traveled with respect to a given start position.”

I kept a logbook for 2015.  At the end of each day, I wrote down what I did that day.  Now at the end of the year, it’s interesting to go back and read it. I did a lot. At the time, the things I did seemed small. But now looking over the whole of the year, I’m rather impressed with myself. I’m not as unproductive as I constantly imagine myself to be.  Instead of making New Years Resolutions for 2016 of all the things I WANT to do, I want to look back over 2015 to see what I actually DID. Here are some of my accomplishments over the past year:

I read 65 books!!

I walked/jogged over 2,800 miles this year.

I completed a creative writing certificate program.

I wrote every single day.

I traveled to Spain.

I got a new job.

I traveled to and performed in improv comedy festivals in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada.

I began co-hosting a  weekly radio show.

I hosted a live monthly storytelling show and television show.

I got to do an NPR StoryCorps.

I created and completed Denzember 2015 (http://ift.tt/1MIVri5)

I bought myself a new logbook for 2016 which I’m looking forward to beginning tomorrow.  Can’t wait to see what kind of shit I can get away with in 2016.

Happy New Year!

I interviewed my friend Frances Chang for The North Avenue Lounge radio show on 91.1FM WREK.  We talked puppets, wrestling and weird dating stories.

I got to talk with comedian Joel Byars on NPR Story Corps and it aired this morning on 90.1FM WABE. One more thing checked off my bucket list.

Dear Diary,

I talk to myself.  Sometimes, I do it on a microphone in a radio station as part of a show called The North Avenue Lounge on WREK 91.1FM in Atlanta.  I decided to try and break down one some of my new jokes from recent shows.

http://ift.tt/1RDU0WH

Dear Diary,

I spend too much time looking at Facebook. I try to avoid it.  But it seems to be in my habitual repertoire of morning activities.  I go back and forth between email, Twitter and Facebook looking for something to change. Something to spark my interest. Rarely is there anything. I’m procrastinating doing the work I should be doing. Whether that work is for my job or the work of writing.

I scrolled through the posts on the Atlanta Comedy FB page, a page predominately followed by current or aspiring comedians in and around the city.  Most posts are promotional; open mics being put on by comedians; acting “schools” offering classes.; photographers promoting head shot packages.  I scroll right past this stuff and a single post caught my eye.  It was a photo of a flyer that had obviously been created as a Word document and converted to a jpeg.  It contained a photo of a middle aged black man wearing black sports blazer over a black shirt and holding a black ventriloquist dummy.  The caption above said “Anthony & Leroy.” I think of ventriloquist acts in the same regard I think of prop comedians. Ventriloquists are the original prop comedians.  Their prop is a dummy. Without them the dummy is useless. Without the dummy, they don’t have an act.  At first I wasn’t sure who was Anthony and who was Leroy.  The names could be interchangeable.  However, I did think the more hack and obviously pandering version was if the dummy was named Leroy. It was. Though Anthony was dressed all in black, Leroy was dressed in an outfit that looked very 1970s, complete with large Afro and colorful clothes with a large collar.

The flyer contained a website, a local phone number and the words “Available for Hire.” He was posting on the FB page to drum up work.  I had to know more. I went to the website.  There I learned that Anthony & Leroy have been an act since 1974… over 40 years! That’s an incredible amount of time to be hustling in the comedy world! The first hit on YouTube was a video of their act being performed on the street. Leroy yelling comments to passersby in an indeterminate city (which I could only assume was New York) in an indeterminate decade (my guess is sometime in the 1980s judging by the fashion).  Later generations have seen Triumph the Insult Comic Dog basically do the same kind of thing. In the video, Leroy says some one-liners to people on the street while Anthony speaks into a microphone to provide the voice. After each joke, Anthony does an exaggerated physical laugh. It’s so big that it’s almost a prat fall.  The scene instantly cuts to someone standing on the street laughing and you hear… an inserted laugh track. I found another YouTube video of the act performing at an amateur night at the famous Apollo Theater in NY (again it appears to be from the 1980s) to thunderous applause.

Here was an artist and performer trying to stay relevant in a comedy world that may have passed him by.   It’s as if Anthony & Leroy had been sealed in a time capsule in 1985 and suddenly released in 2015 and trying to get back at it again where they left off.  This is only what I could see from the videos.

As an human and artist, I fear getting old and no longer being relevant or feeling important. I’ve seen it many times in the comedian who is still doing an act that he honed over 20 years ago and who stopped writing. They may insert new pop culture reference into old routines but it’s the routine that feels dated. It’s like putting new tires on an old car. It frightened me. Someday that could be me.  George Carlin stayed relevant right up until the day he died. That’s because he never stopped writing and evolving with times in which he was living.  I hope Anthony & Leroy are doing the same thing.

I admire their hustle. The drive to get out there and do what you know and love in a world that may not be buying what you’re selling.  You can still be a ventriloquist today.  There are plenty.  You have to update the props and material to reflect the current time.  Just look at Jeff Dunham and Carrot Top.  They’ve got shows in Las Vegas!  I would love to see a black ventriloquist act that’s relevant to today. In the internet age, there’s an audience out there for everything. You just have to find it.

I don’t want to laugh at Anthony & Leroy. I want to laugh with them.

(I just realized that throughout this writing referring to the act as “they” as if Leroy was also a person. That just made me laugh.  The world is absurd and wonderful.)

Dear Diary,

Here’s one of today’s random thoughts:

There should be an Uber-like app but for the police. Because when you call the police, you’re inviting a stranger with a gun into your life.  The app would be called Swag (Stranger With A Gun). You hit the Swag app on your smartphone. When one of Swag’s cops respond, a notification will pop up on your phone like “Your Stranger With a Gun today will be… Stephen” and it would include their photo and their 5-star rating.  Now the stranger has a name.  You can cancel the request at no charge if the Swag cop has less than a 2 star average review.  A one star rating means, Officer Stephen has a history of running in, doing a shoulder roll and shooting unarmed black teenagers sitting in their underpants in their kitchen, eating Cheerios and minding their own business.  Four stars and above means you’re probably going to interact with a rational human being wasn’t the dumbest guy in his high school and who doesn’t have rage issues.

The Swag app will tell you how far away your cop is and their estimated time of arrival.  There would be surge pricing during peak crime times.

There would be different levels to fit your budget. You could request a cop on bike (SwagX), a cop in a car (Swag Black Car) or a cop on horse (SwagXL). Maybe there should be an even cheaper option where you can call a cop wearing rollerblades. Swag XS for extra-small? I wonder if cops of bikes look down on the cops wearing roller blades. It’s funny imagining a cop chasing someone down on roller blades. You could get away from him pretty easily by running off the road and onto a non-smooth surface. Roller blades suck going cross country.  You ever see someone on roller blades hit grass?  They immediately fall over like a toddler on Nyquil.  But if you stay on the roads or sidewalks, he’s probably going to catch you pretty quickly.

Dear Diary,

“You could own your own house for what you’re paying in rent,” said everyone I know who was buying a house in 2010.

The lease on the crappy apartment I rented after the break up with my fiance was coming to an end.  We had been together for three years and after a tumultuous engagement, we cancelled the wedding and I moved out of our apartment into my new bachelor pad.  I had very little money in a 401K retirement account and even less in my meager checking account.  My savings account balance was $5 because that was the minimum amount you needed to maintain to keep a savings account open at my credit union.  The one bedroom apartment in the dilapidated building on Ponce de Leon Avenue was furnished with a green couch (covered in white cat hair) and coffee table I purchased 3 years before from Rooms-To-Go; a second-hand queen size bed what sank into a depression in the center and my cat’s litter box.  My TV sat on a folding chair up against a wall in the living room.  A DVD player rested on the floor underneath it. It was the poor man’s entertainment cabinet. This tableau that told any visitor that I was a man who had nowhere to go but up in life.  My bedroom window faced the busy street and there was usually police, fire engine or ambulance sirens at 2 hour intervals throughout the day and night.   The month before, my bicycle had been stolen from inside the hallway outside of my front door in broad daylight while I ate ramen noodles on my couch watching the SyFy Channel.

Every 3rd commercial was for a No Money Down mortgage with some random bank or sub-prime mortgage company.  It all looked so easy.  My life had no where to go but up.  Two months before my lease expired, I contacted a real estate agent to take a look at some properties. Without proof of income or a down payment, I was pre-approved for a $300,000 mortgage.  I knew that was absolutely insane.  But every financial institution acted like I was crazy if I didn’t go out and buy a house for a family of four even though it was just me and my cat.  I did some calculations myself and determined that what I currently paid in rent at my crappy apartment would equate to the mortgage payment on a $175,000 loan.  In less than 30 days I found and closed on a small townhouse in my price range.  I had made an investment in my future. I began to imagine that in 5 short years, it would appreciate enough that I could sell it and walk away with enough money to have a real savings account and not live paycheck to paycheck.  Everyone else seemed to be doing it.  Things were finally looking up.

The following year, everything went to shit. The market crashed. The value of my townhouse dropped almost $75,000!!! I was what they called “underwater.” Which is financial lingo for “you’re drowning, running out of air quickly and soon you’ll be dead.” Even in the years that followed, people will tried selling that real estate was a great investment. And I imagine it was, for everyone now buying properties at REALLY low prices in short sales, foreclosures and bankruptcies.  I hung on with the hope of someday just getting out of the property. Just breaking even. Gone were my dreams and hopes of actually making a profit.

Life carried on.  My life got better. I met a nice girl. I got married. I found my calling in life in comedy, writing and storytelling.  I travelled. I performed. I made new friends.  The economy improved. Ten years later, I put my townhouse on the market and it sold in less than a month.  I made a profit!!  Behold the riches that were bestowed upon me!

So you see.. if you work hard, dreams really do come true.  Investing in real estate is the way to go.  I just hope I can afford the taxes on this windfall.

Dear Diary,

I tried a version of this joke at an open mic last night. It BOMBED. But I find it funny that a group who were known for sociopathic cruelty and genocide would be like “Don’t smoke. Those things are gonna kill ya!”  Only smoking line I can imagine a Nazis using is “Smoke ’em if you got ’em”… or whatever the German translation of that line would be.

Dear Diary,

The shiny black Lincoln MKX pulls up to the International Terminal of the Atlanta airport in an early morning rain.  Two things I like to do when I have to fly. first I like to call an Uber Black car instead of an UberX.  It’s a flat $50 from downtown where I live to the airport. The same as taking a shitty yellow cab. But the Uber Black cars are far nicer.  Plus, this trip is expended on someone else’s dime so I’m taking the more expensive ride.  The elderly black woman who was my driver this morning had the city wired.  She has been a limo driver in Atlanta for over 10 years and knew all of the short cuts to get around the morning rush hour traffic.  She took the HOV lane and skirted past the sea of red brake lights on I-20.  She past the exit to merge on to south I-85 to the airport.  “Now, what we’ll do is get off at the next exit that goes to the Falcon’s stadium and hit the on ramp back on to the free way.”  Just as we passed I-85 the traffic was gone. She got off on the exit.  Took a right at the bottom of the off ramp on to the empty street. It was 7:30am on a Tuesday morning and when no NFL games ever happen so there was no one on the feeder street to the Georgia Dome.  She hung another left, went underneath the freeway and then turned on to the on-ramp to I-85 south.  The whole thing took about 60 seconds and we were back to doing 65mph towards the airport. All of the congestion behind us.

“I’ll have to remember that next time I’m driving.” I said.

“Do you have a radio station you’d like to listen to?”

“No. I usually listen to NPR in the morning.”

“I like the jokes on the Tom Joyner Morning show. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“I like to ask. I don’t want to bore my passengers with my Japanese language CDs.”

This woman was learning to speak Japanese while driving around all day. Why Japanese?  Just because she wanted to learn it and she had the time.

Moments later we pulled up to the international terminal of the airport. This is my 2nd life hack for going to the airport for trips.  The international terminal is the newest section of the Atlanta airport. It isn’t connected to the city’s MARTA train and most of the traffic usually goes to the Domestic side of the airport where it’s always crowded.  Even if I’m flying domestic, I go through the international side.  There’s way less people and I’m usually through security and into the airport in under 5 minutes.  I’ve seen the security line snake through the domestic side with a wait of over an hour.  That’s one less hour of sleep I could have gotten for my morning flights.  I put my duffel bag through the x-ray machine, I take my laptop out of my backpack and place in a bin. Shoes off. Pockets empty. I’m a pro.  I step into the screening machine and put my hands up. The large mechanical centrifuge arm does one revolution around my body and step out.  The TSA screener stops me.

“Hold on a second sir, I need to check…Uhh…” There’s an awkward pause. I turn around to look at the screen that’s making him uncomfortable.  On the screen is a silhouette and it lights up in bright yellow any anomalous areas that the machine detected on the body and where the TSA screener needs to pat the person down.  I can never figure out what this expensive machine is detecting since it always lights up my calf or my arm and I never have anything on me.  I think it’s a piece of shit that someone got rich selling to the government to be used at all of the airports.  I look at the screen and the entire crotch of my silhouette is lit glowing yellow.

“Uhhh…” the TSA screener stammers.  I burst out laughing. “Ummm…sir, do you mind going through the machine again.” For a moment I was tempted to say no just so this guy would have to uncomfortable pat down another man’s junk, who obviously doesn’t have a problem with it and kind of wants him to. “Sure” I said and stepped back in the machine.

He scanned me again and, thankfully for him, this time nothing in my pubic area glowed yellow. We both laughed. His chuckle sounding more nervous than my gregarious bellow. I collected my things and put my shoes back on.  A few moments later, I’m standing in front of a Starbucks counter. I look at the time.  It’s been only twenty five minutes from my door, to the airport, through security to getting a hot cup of coffee.  Still had an hour to kill before my flight.

In today’s show, I talk with two Atlantans about some of the more unusual jobs they’ve held. First there’s Jenna, a singer and actress. Finally there’s Barrett, who used to be Big Al at the University of Alabama.  Let’s get weird.

Click HERE to download episode.

Isma’il ibn Conner & KRUMP dancing / Secret History of Atlanta tour

In today’s show, we talk about summer time and vacations.  Then I get a lesson in KRUMP dancing from Isma’il ibn Conner, Artistic Associate at 7 Stages.

Finally, in the 2nd half of the show, I get a secret history of Atlanta tour from Lynell Dotson, a questionable tour guide of Atlanta that I met in the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club in Little 5 Points.

Let’s get weird!

Highwire Theater cut together this fun promo for The Soap Box Show this Friday night in Atlanta.  Come on out if you’re in town!