Archive for the ‘comedy’ Category
Time for a transformation
I woke up this morning feeling like I’m ready to make a change in my life—and by that I mean I woke up feeling… nay, KNOWING, that I want to change my ringtone. It’s time. I just don’t quite know what I want to change it to, and I’m trying to be okay with that emptiness.
In other news, last night I met up with someone I went to grade school with who contacted me on Facebook. I went to high school with him but have little recollection of it as he was on the football team and I was on pep squad and during rallies I was just concentrating really hard on splits and balancing and so there wasn’t much time to notice anything else. That was pretty much my whole high school experience: splits and balancing. But also I think I’ve blocked high school. I wasn’t really on the pep squad in case this is your first time reading my blog. What I do remember is that he and I were both in our 8th grade musical. Also he sat behind me in fifth grade. Now he’s married and has three children. I’ve been married three times and have nine children. The whole thing was fun but it made me feel old.
Then I saw Greg Wilson perform at a club in Times Square which was cool (he was really funny) except afterwards he kept trying to lick my face. I should have been wearing my bike helmet/man repellent.
Things you find when you’re least looking
You know how they say you find love when you’re least looking? Here are some other things you find when you’re least looking:
movie stubs
lint
that you drove 20 minutes in the wrong direction
weird body hair
normal body hair
but who can really say what’s normal, you know?
a crumbly piece of paper you left in your jeans and put in the wash
that you ate a lot of grapes
pennies (note: not from heaven)
that thing you were looking for but don’t need anymore
pen caps
Signs you’ve eaten a beach ball
stomach distended as if from ingestion of beach ball
friends invite you to beach with one caveat: no eating the beach ball this time
burps smell like latex
lunch was pizza and a beach ball
the beach ball is missing and you’re strangely full
someone bet you $100 bucks you couldn’t eat a beach ball. you’re holding $100!
I’m not sure if I can hear you
My parents have begun speaking in a volume that I’d put somewhere between a prairie dog burp and a mouse fart. Which is to say, I can’t hear them. The exception to this is in the morning when my mom is having an argument with Tobey. “Tobey, NO!” she’ll scream, the windows rattling. “Tobey, I said NO!” she’ll thunder. Then Tobey will bark a tiny bit and then I’ll stumble into the room groggy and confused and she’ll apologize if Tobey woke me up. Other than this one time of day it’s all hushed tones. At first I thought it was me and that somehow my hearing had been compromised on the flight. “Something wrong with your ears?” my mom would say as I cupped the sides of my head. “No thanks, I don’t like beer,” I’d answer. I was upset about going deaf but getting drunk wasn’t going to solve anything.
And so it went for a few days: my parents carrying on in a way audible only to dolphins, me wondering if I should get a manicure before learning sign language, until I stepped out of the house and was commended on my incredible hearing.
Huh?
You see, all of my Costa Mesa friends used to play in bands and so their hearing is fairly terrible. “That alarm is going to drive me crazy,” I announced a couple days ago. “What alarm?” asked a friend in all seriousness. “Are you serious?” I asked, because I hadn’t read the previous sentence. He nodded and I shook my head in response. Then I clicked four times to indicate a boat on horizon. “There’s an alarm going off in the other room,” I explained. “It’s quiet but it’s been going off for about an hour.” He left to investigate. “Wow, that’s a frequency I no longer have,” he said upon returning. “That’s a shame… but you didn’t turn the alarm off,” I responded. Then I punched him. He never heard it coming.
And then I was at a party with two friends. “Wow, how can you hear that?” they asked when I said that one of the friend’s girlfriends was in the kitchen asking a question about guacamole. “I don’t know, I was convinced I was going deaf,” I said. Then they tried to claim that the reason I could hear and they couldn’t was because of angles and where I was sitting in proximity to the guacamole question versus where they were sitting. I’m not sure if they were right or not.
And… and now I can’t hear myself think because the paternal mouse farter is talking loudly on the phone. Do they just save up their volume for phone calls and yelling at Tobey? Or are they trying to gaslight me? I feel gaslit. Gaslighted? Gaslain?
Things to do in the rain
It’s like that Ray Bradbury short story where it rains every day and then one day the sun comes out and the mean kids lock that one earth girl inside and then she’ll have to wait another seven years to see the sun and it’s really sad. You know the one I mean? Sure you do. Don’t pretend you don’t because I just don’t have time to explain.
Anyway, it’s been raining every day forever here in New York and people are pretty miffed about it. I myself was frankly kind of ticked off and also P.O.’d and a little bent out of shape until I realized that just because it’s raining doesn’t mean there aren’t all sorts of ways to take advantage of Mother Nature’s urine surplus. Seriously: heaven’s flop sweat is ours for the taking! Here are some fun things to do:
Make rain tea! Put a teabag in a cup and then walk outside. Voila. Rain tea!
Rinse out your conditioner on the run! Shave a good 45 seconds to a minute off your morning ritual by leaving the house with a head full of conditioner. By the time you get to your destination, it’ll be mostly rinsed out. And your clothes will be moisturized too!
Dye your undergarments pink! Red shirt + white bra+ red pants + white panties + rain = pink undergarments! Just in time for Valentine’s Day in 8 months!
Show your hairstyle a thing or two! Oh your hairstyle thinks it’s so sassy doesn’t it? With its perfect scultping and its mousse and its framing your face just so. Well you march out there in the rain and you show that hairstyle a thing or two!
Show your dry shirt a thing or two! Your shirt thinks its SO GREAT just because it’s dry? If that sounds familiar then you just strut out there in the rain and you show your shirt a thing or two!
Turn your umbrella inside out! Tired of your umbrella always keeping you dry? No problem amigo, just wait for a little wind and then head out there and let nature take your umbrella from somewhat functional wetness inhibitor to inverted kite in no time.
Things you would be surprised to know because I made them up
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s techno
You know the Ziploc commercial with the tiger who can’t smell the food? It took them months to complete the commercial because the tiger kept eating the sound guy!
Only assholes use three pronged forks
You can tell a lot about a person by which side they part their hair on
Parallel parking accounts for one-fifth of all parking
The “i” in iPhone stands for imaginary
A remake of Silver Spoons was in the works for years but ultimately didn’t happen because they couldn’t get Alphonso Ribiero to sign on
In a pinch, Bibb lettuce can be used as a bibb
Judy Blume is working on a sequel to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret called Hey Margaret, What’s Up? She’s also considering calling it ‘Sup, Margaret?
Ice skating is twice as popular as roller skating but three times more deadly than just watching TV
Diet soda is responsible for twenty percent of all burps
Fear of clowns is called Bozophobia
Five-sixths of all people who respond to the question “Know what I mean?” in the affirmative actually have no idea what you mean
Jumping Jacks are named after a really jumpy guy named, you guessed it: Barry
The Daily Alison (Where I stalk Eugene Mirman and then talk about seafood and graduation)
Today my guest is comedian and Brooklynite Eugene Mirman who recently gave a hilarious commencement speech at a high school graduation. Was that redundant? I mean, you wouldn’t really give a commencement speech at a prom. Or sporting event. Or a funeral. Yet if I were to say that he recently gave a commencement speech at a high school that would sound, well, it just would sound sort of incomplete while being technically correct. Anyway, enjoy. Tomorrow my guest is notorious internet figure Julia Allison.
I’m a vegetable narc. Also, here are some photos.
So I’m overdue in posting some photos. The above is a green room shot from Geraldo. It’s actually a makeup room in the green room shot. Note the wee Josh Groban behind me.
Oh and here’s the world’s ugliest red-or-is-it-green pepper. Do you see it? If I knew how to put arrows into photos I’d do that but let’s see here. If you aren’t seeing it, it’s directly to the left of the cabbage heads in the middle row. I don’t think this photo quite captures its horrifying freak of nature quality. It looked like it had a green tongue sticking out of it. And then when I went to snap a photo I’m pretty sure one of the grocery store guys took off to alert the boss in the back that there was some kind of vegetable narc on the premises. That’s fine. I’m kind of a vigilante vegetable narc. I make a citizen’s arrest of this pepper. Do not stare directly at this pepper.
And this is why late nights are confusing lately. Maybe? I don’t know. I’m too fired up about the pepper to really think about whether this is the sign that captures the confusion or not however basically it’s very easy to misread these signs (there are a few different ones) and end up standing on a platform for a train that’s never coming which isn’t a metaphor but when it happens to you it’s impossible not to feel like it’s a sign of how you’re living your life, instead of a sign about how you misread or don’t read signs, which is also a sign.
Oh hey and this is X’s manager Mike Rouse, Billy Zoom of X and me in the green room at Red Eye. Here’s an article about how I know Billy.
And then here’s Billy and me.
And here’s Doug Benson and me. We were totally baked in this photo except for me. Thanks to his being in town I saw two plays and a comedy show last week. Left to my own devices I might have just taken photos of atrocious vegetables.
Oh and kind of related by not entirely but kind of: I’m trying to get the word out about The Daily Alison so if you enjoy it please tell your friends and if you don’t enjoy it, please try to enjoy it. No, try harder!
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