I Feel Weird

Something's just not right. I feel hot and cold and out of it and with it. My skin is loose and brain is looking in either direction. The window should be closed. No, open. I need to smoke pot. I need to not smoke pot. I think I have the flu, no, worse, mono, no, typhoid, no, confusion. Something is off. I feel weird.

I'm not sure what's going on but something in my body is unhappy. I walked home from the gym yesterday still wearing my sweaty workout clothes and I think I got AIDS from the walk. I showered right when I got back, but I'm sure those sweaty clothes gave me cancer and even though I've been sleeping on and off all day I can still feel the gangrene setting in. I'm not sure what's going on, but from the looks of the pink and purple eyes I see in my mirror, something is off. Wait, that's my nose, It just landed in the sink.

I'm going to take NyQuil. I'm going to the hospital. No, I'm going to make some tea and watch Springer and then when I'm done I'm going to the graveyard to pick out my plot. And after I do that I'm going to visit my grandmother because her saliva is magical and will fix me up. Or maybe the PH is off... that could cause me to molt. But I better do something quick, come that full moon tonight I'll be running around as the Wolfman, and anyone I bite is going to have to deal with one heck of a transformation. Not to mention the gout.

STRIKE? So I guess I won't work now...

I'm not a huge fan of SAG. Any labour union having 3% of it's members proudly working at any given time can't be successfull, can it? And yet, that's just where SAG falls.

It's no secret that being an actor is a financially ruinous choice falling somewhere between scooping coins from a fountain and living off of sweepstakes winnings. In fact I am loath to even call myself an "actor" - my saving grace being that I've done stand-up long enough I can confidently call myself a "comedian" - a financially ruinous choice falling somewhere between scooping leftover coins and crashing on the couches of sweepstakes winners.

And now SAG is striking. Yes, Hollywood is striking, again. As if this year couldn't have been any worse, it's time to go back to the picket lines and walk in solidarity with the other 97% of us who aren't doing shit.

And that's my big problem.

"The SAG, representing more than 120,000 actors in movies, television and other media, said in a statement that it will launch a "full-scale education campaign in support of a strike authorization."

They're NOT representing 120,000 actors in movies television and other media, they're representing about 2,000 actors in movies television and other media backed up by the other 198,000 who want to be them. Sure I borrowed money from my Dad to pay the rent this week, but man, I'm helping the dream to stay alive. For all of us.

And so allow me a little LA cynicism. I get the letters and the robocalls from famous people telling me which way to vote on SAG matters when the truth is that I have no direct relationship with what they're talking about. But take $200 from me every half-year? Sounds good - keep fighting that good fight while I type up another email to my Dad about why December is going to be different. Maybe if you had given a script about me before this I'd be inclined to care.

Behold. The mighty LA river.

Frozen Mi

I woke up today sure I'd finally get some work done. Last night I forwent hanging out with friends at the Improv in order to go home and really chip away at the old screenplay only to find myself eating my roomate's Nutella while reading about a haunted hospital. No progress was made on the screenplay, but I told myself that in case my characters ever find themselves in a haunted hospital this was important field research.

And I suppose that's fundamentally my problem - I hate the concentration involved with writing, and because of the the doughnut-like warmth of the internet, don't find myself doing much of it anymore. I used to be able to focus for longer than a blink but there's so much quirky crap on-line these days that if I blink I just might miss some of it. Hell I'm only two paragraphs into this piece and can feel myself wanting finish the video-tour of the frozen pizza factory I was streaming from the BBC website. I do have actual shit to do today but say my characters discover a frozen pizza in the haunted hospital? What then?

I thought so.

Charles Southward is a Good Person

Somehow I lost my wallet while walking home from Ralphs tonight, my arms akimbo with Sunday groceries. When I realized my wallet was conclusively nowhere in my apartment my breathing began to quicken as I envisioned the administrative hell it would be to replace everything contained within it.

As the slow and foggy panic set in I checked my email as I do every nine seconds to find not one but TWO emails from a one Mr. Charles Southward, informing me that he had found my wallet and might I want something like that back? I called him immediaetly and said that yes, getting my wallet back might be nice, and 15 minutes later I was being handed my wallet by my Mr. Charles Southward not a couple blocks from my apartment. He was a nice guy, smoked a cigarette and kind of looked like an older Billy Dee Williams. An older Billy Dee Williams in the movie where he has my wallet.

So thank you Charles Southward. The universe needs more people like you. Visa and Master Card, thankfully, do not.

From Crohn's Advocate Magazine - A Lighter Look at Crohn's.

Hello friends. My name is Ben and I've had Crohn's Disease since 1997 when papa Crohn made digesting kind of hard. Ironically I was kind of an overweight kid in High School and losing 30 pounds in a month was actually kind of nice.

And if you laughed at that, Good. If you didn't, try. Laughing about Crohn's is incredibly therapeutic and I'll never forget how I found this out.

I was 23 years old, dealing with a nasty flare, and was doing stand-up in a small club near Columbia University. On this particular night I was totally bombing and as my mind went blank a letter I had received popped into my head. In it my insurance was declining payment for a recent colonoscopy on the grounds that ‘It wasn't a necessary procedure’, and still baffled by how anyone could think a colonoscopy was ever elective I decided to open up to the audience. “Do they think I was sitting around really bored one day being like, 'You know what, I haven't seen the inside of my own rectum in awhile and I got six thousand dollars just layin’ around, what say we go and get probed!?." The audience exploded with laughter. Crohn’s, as it turned out, could be funny.

That night changed how I look at my disease. In that one moment I had communicated to a room-full of strangers that I had a digestive disease and in a certain light, my digestive disease was hilarious. Never again would I let it scare me into silence when the truth was funnier than all the other jokes I had actually spent time writing.

Since that day I've made it my mission to get people to communicate through humor. The worst thing you can do is to crawl inside of yourself because you think you can't talk about what's happening with you, especially when it might be some grade A material. Is there anyone who can beat us at a farting contest?! No. And I got the story to prove it.

So try and allow the funny to flow, it's been put there for a reason. If you find the guts to make jokes about yours I promise you people will listen. Heck, you might even get a laugh or two. Sure worked for me.

Hey would you know where I could find some art? Oh. Thanks.

I am a Sweaty Bastard

I don't think there's any denying it to myself anymore - I am a sweaty
bastard. Yesterday I went to do an interview in Griffith Park and I
wore a collared shirt and walked to the location cause I can. Halfway
up the walk I looked down to see pools of sweat forming in my blue
shirt, which made it look like reefs underneath the surface of the
fabric. When I got there I said hello to my friends and had to stand
on the porch, catching some nice up-breezes in an effort to dry out my
shirt before the interview. And I admit it now. I am a a sweaty
bastard.

I throw out most of my collard shirts because of pit-stains. I've
tried every possible type of deoderant and or anti-perspirant that
claims that it doesn't leave anything on shirt, and I can tell you now
- they're all wrong. A persistent sweat-gland and an armpit that's
determined enough can ruin a shirt the color of sweat, trust me. I
took this picture attempting to look cool / quirky and all I can think
of when I see it is me looking stupid / sweaty. And I don't know what
to do about it.

Which is making me sweat.

"Hi I'm looking for domestic violence resources."

This is where you recycle clowns.

I dunno what the big deal is. She went from a dude with acne to an
ugly chick without.

Well I should hope so...

All these fucking people smiling at me...

Start what, taking action or being afraid?

START WHAT?!

I... I think I have something of a medical marajuana problem...