I went to a party last night and took out my camera to take some photos for you, my favorite blog readers, but the screen said “change battery pack.” What it really meant? “Change battery pack, dumbass.” What it really really meant? “Change battery pack, dumbass! You’re finally going to a party and not only any party but one with a Bollywood theme and people are wearing all sorts of crazy outfits and all your friends are here, well, maybe not all, but many, and this would obviously be a night where you’d want to take photos and you didn’t think to charge your battery?”
I have to submit a bio for this page about NY’s Funniest Reporter. Should I turn in a standard or ridiculous one? Incidentally, I think those should be condom and/or light bulb sizes.
Okay fine, that’s not a fair assessment of last night. I got some words in both edgewise and horizontally. Five across? How do words enter when they aren’t edgewise? On rails? On skates? By carrier pigeon? Anyway, my words totally got all up in that shit.
On my way back to OC after doing Red Eye. The LA bureau is a whole different vibe than New York. It's almost like a local branch of a bank, except the pens aren't on chains and actually this bank metaphor is a terrible one. But it's very relaxed and kind of sleepy and bungalowesque as opposed to nyc which is big and imposing and bustling and frenetic. That was kind of redundant, huh?
Anyway in the midst of doing the show I read an email from a fan that kind of rattled me which I'm embarrassed to admit since I think I'm supposed to be above all that or something. Anyway. I need to learn better email management.
You may have already seen this one but if you haven’t, here it is. Perhaps you’re wanting to know the backstory with the helicopter shot? Okay then. But maybe you should watch first before I blow your mind? Okay go watch while I sit here admiring myself in this rusty butter knife.
Back so soon?
So Erik and Ben were going up in a helicopter and I was supposed to stand on the top of the dimple hill and they’d get an awesome shot of the roof with me on it, waving. So I get this call from them saying they’re about to go up and that I should go up on the roof in about ten minutes and I say “you’ll call me to let me know when you’re shooting the roof though right?” except I don’t get all that out because they have to go and their phones are being confiscated and just wave at all helicopters. So I haul my toned and shapely caboose up there and there happen to be a lot of people setting up and there are some drums on teh top of the dimple hill as well but I explain that I have to go up there and wave at helicopters. I offer to soundcheck their drums but they don’t take me up on it and also they want to make sure I’m not “drunk or anything” WHICH I WASN’T, I’m just clumsyish and kind of lost at most times. So I’m up there looking in the sky and one of the guys explains that I don’t have to look, I’ll just hear the helicopter. This was probably right and it’s good he said taht because every time i craned my neck to look at the sky I started to get dizzy and worried I’d take a tumble down dimple mountain, taking out a snare drum and a drummer and possibly a guitar on my way. There was also a guitar up there. So then I developed a dog like sense of hearing, or whatever animal has crazy good hearing, and lurched at all loud noises and waved like a maniac at planes and various things flying by including a flock of birds. Finally after about half an hour I gave up and went downstairs. Erik and Ben told me they didn’t see me up there but then they didn’t see much of the roof either.
The next day they were goign to go up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building and film me on the roof that way so that it would look like it was from a helicopter. “Is the human eye so good that people know roughly what helicopter shots shoudl look like?” I asked. Ben assured me it would work, however he misunderstood my question. I wasn’t asking if people would be able to tell the difference between a helicopter shot and an Empire State Building shot. I was asking if we really need to go up to the Empire State Building for this shot, can’t we just hold the camera above our heads and shake it and pretend that was from a helicopter with some kind of phenomenal zoom function. I’m kind of glad he didn’t understand my question though, as this is why I’m in front of the camera and on a blog and not behind a camera, etc. So again I hauled ass up to the roof with my microphone and waited while explaining to the guys what was going on and worrying they would think I think I’m being filmed but really the whole thing is in my head since I’m saying I’m going to be filmed by peopel on the Empire STate Building and that’s why I have to wave at no one.
But it was goign to take an hour and a half to get to the observation deck, so we scrapped that and filmed what you saw, instead.
Also, by this point my throat and my interviewing style was a little raw.
If I drew cartoons for the New Yorker I’d do one of a guy on a horse near a cactus and maybe some antlers or sagebrush or a skull and he’d be wearing a sombrero and a poncho and he’d have a look of total confusion on his face, like he didn’t know how he got there or who he was. The caption would be “Mr. Smith has a señor moment.”
There is a disgusting smell in my parents’ dryer. At the time of this writing the smell has actually come out of the dryer and is funking up the hall. I would describe it as a pile of bile but my dad thinks it’s “just rotten smelling.” I’d also allow “a bile pile.” Anyway, it’s probably a mouse or rat in the piping. I wondered if it would be better if it were a bird or kitten. I can’t decide. Anyway though, this conversation just happened:
ME: So wait, does that mean rat gas is getting blown all over my clothes? MY DAD: no, it’s going the other way MY MOM: yeah, other way.
as part of New York’s Funniest Reporter contest which is part of the NY Underground Comedy Festival in October. I’m performing on October 5 at Gotham Comedy Club. I tried part of my act for my dad yesterday and let me just say that I killed. Meaning I think I nearly killed him, that’s how unfunny I was. So, that’s great. I feel good about that. At least I have some time to work on better material.
So you know how there are those cartoons in the New Yorker which are droll and whimsical and you read them and chuckle and then there are ones that are certainly whimsical but you don’t really get them and there seems not even to be a punch line and you wonder if maybe they aren’t cartoons at all but some kind of illustration that goes with the story? Except the story is about the evolution of the home washing machine and the picture is a man looking at his watch and saying out of the corner of his mouth, to another man “Well, I guess that about answers it.”
Anyway, the following cartoon is somewhere in the middle of the two.
A guy dressed as a pirate would be saying to another guy. “Yeah, I wrote all about it on Grogspot.com.”
Wow, the amount of self-loathing I feel right now is hard to put into words. When puns go bad…
