I’ve never had a good conception of how my life was going to turn out. Whatever I thought was going to happen never really happened. When I was in high school I couldn’t even fathom the idea of getting married. It was blurry and fuzzy and very far off. I just assumed that at some point around senior year of college I’d meet this crazy hot blonde girl who could never get enough sex and we’d ride off in a convertible with our amazing jobs and unique style of interacting that others around us always commented on. “You two have such amazing chemistry. You’re so perfect for each other!” Well, we don’t want to be arrogant or anything, but…we know. My little sugar princess.
Then I remember graduating from college and the first couple years after going to weddings of people that met in school. I was a little jealous of them but at the same time I was like “Really? You guys are calling it quits on what’s out there already?” And it’s funny because I still kind of feel the same way even though I’m 35.
All the time you hear people say “I’m too old for that.” And the people saying this are invariably in their twenties and thirties. You’re not too old for things in your twenties and thirties! You’ll never be this young again. However old you are today, you’ll never be this young again. That’s important. A lot of people just glaze over about what they’re supposed to be doing when they hit their mid twenties. I got a job, I got a wife or a husband, I got a house. And Dancing With The Stars comes on at nine. I’m not saying all those milestones and achievements aren’t important. I’m just saying they shouldn’t be perceived as a checklist and when the checklist is complete it’s okay to sit back and say “Well I’m done learning and growing and exploring now. I’ve done my time.” Just because society only expects you to go to school for a certain number of years doesn’t mean when that regimen is complete you just throw in the towel on pushing yourself to grow and develop.
Because look we’re all going to be dead in 60-70 years, maybe less. People are afraid of existentialism because it seems to lead to despondency. But I think it imbues life with a much greater sense of urgency and beauty. If you’re unsure if a better life exists after this one it makes sense that you would pour all of your energy and passion into making this life the best it can be. I think it’s important to create a sense of meaning for yourself in your life and to never be content and to always be restless. Think of all the thousands of years of history and the dead people it yielded that had their time here and will never have it again. Don’t we owe it to them to make sure we are trying to figure out why we’re here? And since we’ll always fall short of that goal we should still push to create the best reality we can. And always be thinking about how to create a better reality.
Anyway, every time I couldn’t figure out how my life would turn out it always ends up being good in a different way. I don’t have a wife or children but in return I am blessed with time to pursue things that are meaningful and substantial. Not that I couldn’t if I had kids, but I definitely would have less time to do those things if I had kids. I know for a fact that I’ll never be exposed to more than one percent of the ideas and information that I’d like to be. It’s impossible. The world is too large and contains too much information and history for any one person to grasp more than a miniscule amount of its content and meaning.
I’m sure I’m fucking something up right now. There are things I should be doing that I’m not doing and whatever I focus on now takes time away from focusing on other things that may be more important. So later in life I’ll look back and think “I should have worked more on X” or “I should have spent more time with Y.” But those regrets and the inability to change the past will always exist no matter what choices you make.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Developing a writing style
My approach to writing July 2011 has two distinct streams: 1) Joke writing. 2) Free association, stream of consciousness thoughts that develop and explore an overall life philosophy. They seem to be separate activities so far but hopefully over time they will merge so the more reflective, philosophical thoughts will yield jokes. I’ve been trying to tie these two streams of thoughts together but for some reason they stay unbinded. One reason is that when I start writing about more philosophical things I develop a lecturing tone. Like I have something the world doesn’t understand and needs to be taught. It feels stringent and harsh and not funny. And I’ve been frustrated by that but I think I’m just going to accept it and let it develop at its own pace and be okay with the fact that joke writing diverges from my overall thoughts about life. That’s how it is now. If I keep working on both tracks of thought at some point they’ll merge or I’ll develop a better approach just by continuing to work.
Status Updates
People sometimes comment that they like my status updates. Other times they comment that my status updates suck. Either way just fucking deal with it. Here are some that could be fun. ?
It's probably for the best that tigers are an endangered species. They're simply too dangerous.
Do all male mammals have dicks? I assume so.
I think it's time for Shawn Mullins to stop putting out albums. We get it, you had that one song.
What the hell is that dripping onto me from an awning on 8th St.? If it's urine I'm going to be upset.
Not sure you should be wearing a Baby Phat t shirt if you have too much of the adult kind.
Please let me know when Douchey McDouche Tim Tebow retires. Nobody wants to read your vain, poorly written book. Nobody cool anyway.
Tripped while walking up stairs behind a hot girl. Immediately countered it by telling her I'm good in bed.
You ever clap too close to your head and it makes your ears ring? That shouldn't be possible.
It's always disheartening to see soccer players using a baseball field. Fucking it all up with their dorkrod long socks.
It sucks when you're working and you leave a message for someone to call you back and then they do. Cause then you have to do more work.
It's probably for the best that tigers are an endangered species. They're simply too dangerous.
Do all male mammals have dicks? I assume so.
I think it's time for Shawn Mullins to stop putting out albums. We get it, you had that one song.
What the hell is that dripping onto me from an awning on 8th St.? If it's urine I'm going to be upset.
Not sure you should be wearing a Baby Phat t shirt if you have too much of the adult kind.
Please let me know when Douchey McDouche Tim Tebow retires. Nobody wants to read your vain, poorly written book. Nobody cool anyway.
Tripped while walking up stairs behind a hot girl. Immediately countered it by telling her I'm good in bed.
You ever clap too close to your head and it makes your ears ring? That shouldn't be possible.
It's always disheartening to see soccer players using a baseball field. Fucking it all up with their dorkrod long socks.
It sucks when you're working and you leave a message for someone to call you back and then they do. Cause then you have to do more work.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
What you should do to be better, like me
They say if you’re a comedian that you should write every day. So am I just supposed to start writing? What the fuck am I supposed to write? Something that some drunk laptop snooper will pull up late one night after I fall asleep and read and mock me for? Great. Let’s get right to that. Well I’m putting this on my blog so I guess it doesn’t even matter.
Free association typing is supposed to open up your soul and enter your subconscious. Supposedly there’s this deep trove of art or some shit in there. But apparently you have to write for 7,000 hours before you can get to it. Let me get cracking on that assignment.
Allen Ginsberg said if you write all day you’ll get to your feelings and your consciousness. All day? Really? Fuck dude. I don’t mind thinking all day but writing all day? Maybe I should train my mind to get better at writing for longer periods of time. I’ll turn into this evil little hermit writer who peers suspiciously over his shoulder while he writes and is always showing up a little late for chess matches. There. I changed “appointments” to “matches.” Maybe writing does make your thinking sharper. It’s working! Oh my god you guys it’s working! I’m fucking brilliant now! This only took two paragraphs! What a euphoria I swim in.
I don’t mind thinking ridiculous things all day, some of which are probably tedious or self indulgent or both. If I start capturing all that shit on paper it’s going to document and catalog my ridiculousness. But wait, the redeeming part: No one will care. That’s the best part. No one cares about the minutiae of other people’s lives. Not really. Not for long. Or even if they do it’s a small subset of people. It’s all about what Dave Eggers wrote in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He talked about how many people he’d slept with and then published it in a book that sold millions of copies. Today, how many people in this country could identify how many people he’d slept with when he wrote that book? A few thousand? Maybe? And how many out of that group care? Or know him?
That’s why it’s okay to be brave in this world. Because we’re not going to be here for long. It really doesn’t matter. I mean, things matter. I’m not a nihilist. But it’s okay to do ridiculous things and say asinine comments because there’s no need to be prisoners of other people’s eyes as they said in the Ab Fab courtroom scene.
Four paragraphs in and now I’m writing the end of an 80’s movie? Really, with the schmaltz? That’s the thing with my mind. I always have the junior high bully palling around somewhere in there. Keeping an eye out for sap or hubris or commonplace ideas that have already been stated thousands of times. Nothing new under the sun right?
The bully character can be perceived as bad but I think a big part of him is good actually. Without the editor and the critic it can devolve into drivel. I don’t know why I fight sitting down and writing so much. This reminds me of the time in college when I didn’t write my paper on time and so instead I wrote a small essay explaining why I hadn’t written my paper. That didn’t go over well.
College was fun. College was the best. Everyone was so focused on finding the best things to laugh at. Coming up with ridiculous, funny comments. And just getting really drunk. The drunk part was awesome, I felt, because it allowed us all to let our guards down and really get to know each other. I’m sure the sober kids knew each other well too but I’m pretty certain we had more fun. Sorry, but that’s kind of how it went.
There were people in college that spent their weekend nights holed up in the top floor of the library. What? Why would you do that? So their GPAs were between .0 and .7 points higher than mine ultimately. So what? Are those 6 extra bags of money when you’re 45 going to justify the fun you missed when you were 20? I don’t think so.
But hell, why should I have an axe to grind against those kids? If you have an axe to grind doesn’t that make for good comedy? I feel like in the past 5 or so years I’ve had something of an axe to grind against my peers who just went and did what everyone else did. Like my friend Eva at Case Western. She was 22 or 23 and said she wanted to get married so she could “get her life over with.” She was kidding, but not really. Get your life over with? Really?
It’s not that I have a beef with any particular life path. I just have an issue with the people that don’t put thought into why they choose a particular path. If you don’t think about your life and what it should be like you’ll just drift along and do whatever the majority does. But why is the majority doing what they’re doing? Maybe the majority is sick of the status quo, like what’s happening in Egypt. Maybe everyone else is just about fed up with things as they are but they haven’t reached the critical mass to do anything about it yet. So don’t do what they’re doing because it seems like the proper thing to do.
Sit down and think about shit intensely and drive yourself insane like I do. I don’t really drive myself insane. I like the Dave Eggers idea of having a mind that is constantly churning though. He wouldn’t have it any other way. Churning is the ideal state. Constantly pushing, revising, trying out new ideas, failing, re strategizing, re thinking, and then just drinking with your friends.
I like that I have a day job and do comedy at night. When I was in high school my grades went up when I started working on nights and weekends. I think you have to constantly be putting your mind through a wringer. Constantly show it new things. That’s why I get frustrated when people write off any particular medium. “I don’t watch TV.” What? You don’t take advantage of one of the clearest forms of communication we have available to us, a form of communication that is often elevated to art? Well, that sucks. Sorry to hear that. Any medium can provide new ideas, new information, new ways of thinking.
I’ve got these two new apps on my iPhone that I’m excited about. One is a collection of poetry where you spin a wheel and it puts together a hodgepodge of themes and poems around those themes. The other is an art application that has paintings and bios from great artists spanning different eras. I don’t know shit about art. And I don’t like schlepping up to the Upper East Side on weekends so I don’t spend as much time in museums as I should. But I can scroll through 50 Cezanne paintings any time I want now. That dude did not fuck around. Picasso said basically that he was the father of art or some shit like that. Who knew?
I’m really excited about where technology is headed. Phones are now just constant educational devices if you use them that way. That’s why I don’t download games on my phone. I like spending downtime reading or creating or let’s be honest just doing a great deal of drugs and staring ahead into space.
Free association typing is supposed to open up your soul and enter your subconscious. Supposedly there’s this deep trove of art or some shit in there. But apparently you have to write for 7,000 hours before you can get to it. Let me get cracking on that assignment.
Allen Ginsberg said if you write all day you’ll get to your feelings and your consciousness. All day? Really? Fuck dude. I don’t mind thinking all day but writing all day? Maybe I should train my mind to get better at writing for longer periods of time. I’ll turn into this evil little hermit writer who peers suspiciously over his shoulder while he writes and is always showing up a little late for chess matches. There. I changed “appointments” to “matches.” Maybe writing does make your thinking sharper. It’s working! Oh my god you guys it’s working! I’m fucking brilliant now! This only took two paragraphs! What a euphoria I swim in.
I don’t mind thinking ridiculous things all day, some of which are probably tedious or self indulgent or both. If I start capturing all that shit on paper it’s going to document and catalog my ridiculousness. But wait, the redeeming part: No one will care. That’s the best part. No one cares about the minutiae of other people’s lives. Not really. Not for long. Or even if they do it’s a small subset of people. It’s all about what Dave Eggers wrote in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He talked about how many people he’d slept with and then published it in a book that sold millions of copies. Today, how many people in this country could identify how many people he’d slept with when he wrote that book? A few thousand? Maybe? And how many out of that group care? Or know him?
That’s why it’s okay to be brave in this world. Because we’re not going to be here for long. It really doesn’t matter. I mean, things matter. I’m not a nihilist. But it’s okay to do ridiculous things and say asinine comments because there’s no need to be prisoners of other people’s eyes as they said in the Ab Fab courtroom scene.
Four paragraphs in and now I’m writing the end of an 80’s movie? Really, with the schmaltz? That’s the thing with my mind. I always have the junior high bully palling around somewhere in there. Keeping an eye out for sap or hubris or commonplace ideas that have already been stated thousands of times. Nothing new under the sun right?
The bully character can be perceived as bad but I think a big part of him is good actually. Without the editor and the critic it can devolve into drivel. I don’t know why I fight sitting down and writing so much. This reminds me of the time in college when I didn’t write my paper on time and so instead I wrote a small essay explaining why I hadn’t written my paper. That didn’t go over well.
College was fun. College was the best. Everyone was so focused on finding the best things to laugh at. Coming up with ridiculous, funny comments. And just getting really drunk. The drunk part was awesome, I felt, because it allowed us all to let our guards down and really get to know each other. I’m sure the sober kids knew each other well too but I’m pretty certain we had more fun. Sorry, but that’s kind of how it went.
There were people in college that spent their weekend nights holed up in the top floor of the library. What? Why would you do that? So their GPAs were between .0 and .7 points higher than mine ultimately. So what? Are those 6 extra bags of money when you’re 45 going to justify the fun you missed when you were 20? I don’t think so.
But hell, why should I have an axe to grind against those kids? If you have an axe to grind doesn’t that make for good comedy? I feel like in the past 5 or so years I’ve had something of an axe to grind against my peers who just went and did what everyone else did. Like my friend Eva at Case Western. She was 22 or 23 and said she wanted to get married so she could “get her life over with.” She was kidding, but not really. Get your life over with? Really?
It’s not that I have a beef with any particular life path. I just have an issue with the people that don’t put thought into why they choose a particular path. If you don’t think about your life and what it should be like you’ll just drift along and do whatever the majority does. But why is the majority doing what they’re doing? Maybe the majority is sick of the status quo, like what’s happening in Egypt. Maybe everyone else is just about fed up with things as they are but they haven’t reached the critical mass to do anything about it yet. So don’t do what they’re doing because it seems like the proper thing to do.
Sit down and think about shit intensely and drive yourself insane like I do. I don’t really drive myself insane. I like the Dave Eggers idea of having a mind that is constantly churning though. He wouldn’t have it any other way. Churning is the ideal state. Constantly pushing, revising, trying out new ideas, failing, re strategizing, re thinking, and then just drinking with your friends.
I like that I have a day job and do comedy at night. When I was in high school my grades went up when I started working on nights and weekends. I think you have to constantly be putting your mind through a wringer. Constantly show it new things. That’s why I get frustrated when people write off any particular medium. “I don’t watch TV.” What? You don’t take advantage of one of the clearest forms of communication we have available to us, a form of communication that is often elevated to art? Well, that sucks. Sorry to hear that. Any medium can provide new ideas, new information, new ways of thinking.
I’ve got these two new apps on my iPhone that I’m excited about. One is a collection of poetry where you spin a wheel and it puts together a hodgepodge of themes and poems around those themes. The other is an art application that has paintings and bios from great artists spanning different eras. I don’t know shit about art. And I don’t like schlepping up to the Upper East Side on weekends so I don’t spend as much time in museums as I should. But I can scroll through 50 Cezanne paintings any time I want now. That dude did not fuck around. Picasso said basically that he was the father of art or some shit like that. Who knew?
I’m really excited about where technology is headed. Phones are now just constant educational devices if you use them that way. That’s why I don’t download games on my phone. I like spending downtime reading or creating or let’s be honest just doing a great deal of drugs and staring ahead into space.
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