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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
This is the Where the Hell Was I? humor weblog, and you’re soaking in it. Relax, it’s good for your skin, and it’ll give your coat a healthy shine.
I started this site way back in the summer of 2003, with a keyboard, a prayer, and a truckload of parentheses. My very first post describes (between the tangents and asides) my difficulty in even finding a name for the thing. That was back when the site was hosted at BlogSpot, before I knew any better. Silly me.
From those fitful, humble beginnings, the blog has soared to… well, fitful, humble middles, I suppose. It’s got its own domain now, a fledgling CafePress shop, has just undergone its second software upgrade / design overhaul, and has two and a half years of verbosity stuffed under its belt. But you’ll find the same sort of goofy nonsense here now, in early 2006, that was here back when it started.
So what kind of ‘goofy nonsense’ can you expect here, exactly?
Well, most of the posts in the ‘main’ area — delivered daily, or near-so, under normal circumstances — are original article-length pieces about… anything, really. Bits that I’ve actually published elsewhere or syndicated as articles can be found in the ‘Articles ‘n’ Zines‘ category. A jaunt through the other categories will give you a flavor of the common themes, though — with categories like ‘A Doofus Is Me‘, ‘Making Fun of Jerks‘, ‘Fun with Words!‘, ‘Potty Talk / Yes, I’m a Pig‘, and ‘Weird for the Sake of Weird‘, you get a pretty clear idea of what to expect. It’s not Shakespeare, folks. But hopefully, it’ll make you chuckle, and you’ll never have to spell ‘Rosencrantz’ on my site. That’s a promise.
Apart from that, there are a few other doodads of interest. I turned the ubiquitous blogger ‘100 Things About Me‘ into an epic ‘100 Things Posts About Me. Mostly, so no one can ever claim I’m not thoroughly off my wobbly rocker.
Then there’s ‘Charlie’s Standup Comedy Journal‘, which includes fifty-plus clips and descriptions of shows performed during my two-year (to date), mostly amateur comedy career. There are a lot of bad jokes in there — hopefully mostly near the beginning — but a few gems and highlights, too. And a lot of fun throughout, at least for me.
There are other features, too — a McSweeney’s-inspired List of Lists, the surreally comical Cliche-O-Matic, a set of Things I Pretend the Simpsons Said About Me, and much, much more.
That’s the ten-cent tour of the place; feel free to poke around and explore on your own. Just remember: it you break it, you bought it, and if my silliness makes you upsnort Sanka all over your keyboard, I am not responsible.
(But boy-oh-boy, would I like to hear about it!)
Charlie
March, 2006
(If you’re interested, the original ‘About the Blog‘ page is still around. Knock yourself out.)
I’m Charlie. I’m the sole author, creator, designer, proprietor, babysitter, janitor, and chairman of the board for this site. In fact, I’m the whole board. Anything you see on these pages is almost assuredly my fault. I apologize in advance.
My favorite ‘about’ blurb to date is one I wrote recently for a ‘new author’ page for a certain online magazine:
“Charlie Hatton is an overzealous blogger and aspiring standup comedian offering smart, sophisticated humor about life, language, and the size of his naughty bits. Not necessarily in that order.
Charlie lives in the Boston area, and spends most of his daylight hours stuffed in a cubicle, where he’s less likely to bump into anything expensive or upset the neighbors. At thirty-five, he’s due for a(nother) midlife crisis any day now. “
For those thirsting for more info, I’ll offer a brief list history:
I grew up in a pretty crappy part of the country. I don’t think I’m quite ready to tell you where exactly, but I’ll tell you this — the state I grew up in has a compass direction in the name. Can you think of any states with ‘North’, ‘South’, or ‘West’ in the name that shouldn’t be landfilled over and forgotten about? Me, neither.
So, suffice to say that my childhood was dull at best, and screaming willy-inducing at its worst. I don’t have a sister-wife myself, but I know people who do. ‘Nuff said.
Of course, I was an ambitious — if none too bright — lad, and I vowed to wriggle out of my little pond and see the sights. Travel in search of adventure, I would, searching out the exotic and foreign wonders the world has to offer. Steep myself in new cultures, become a real ‘man of the world’. And it would all start with going to some exciting, bustling, cosmopolitan place for college.
I ended up going to school in Kentucky. Central Kentucky.
Rural central Kentucky, on a campus with fewer students than my high school. Like I said, I was none too bright. At least I made it out of the fire, and into the frying pan, though. That’s what they call a ‘moral victory’, folks.
Soon enough, the hazy drunken blur of college was replaced by the hazy, drunken blur of graduate school — this time in Pittsburgh, PA.
(You see? I was learning. Four years of college, and I finally managed to land in a state not covered in cow shit. Not completely, anyway.)
While in ‘the ‘Burgh’, I switched careers, got hitched to my college sweetheart, and finally hooked up with a company willing to move me to real civilization — Boston, Massachusetts.
(Yeah, I hear you snickering, New York and L.A. and Tokyo, Japan. Look, we don’t need the likes of you telling us we’re not big enough to count. We’ve got a teeny little postage stamp-sized bit of dirt to work with, and we’re doing the best we can. Go beat each other up over pollution or crime rates or something; we’re busy being wicked smaht over here.)
The missus and I have been in the Boston area for close to seven years now, and we’ve decided to make ourselves comfortable. We bought a house, picked up a dog, and finagled ourselves a couple of steady jobs. I joined a softball team, a pool league, and made a bunch of friends performing standup comedy around the area. I might even get back to that some day.
Meanwhile, I’m an aspiring writer. Some of what you see on this site has been — or will be, someday — cleaned up, polished, and submitted as humor articles for syndication or to various (so far e-)zines. Maybe something will come of that career. Maybe it won’t, and II’ll keep writing here and not quitting my day job. Either way, I hope you enjoy the site; drop me a line to let me know what you think. Cheers,
Charlie
March, 2006
(If you’re interested, the original ‘About the Author‘ page is still around. Help yourself.)
Permalink | 4 CommentsSix Degrees of Technorati Separation
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Permalink | No CommentsSix Degrees of Technorati Separation
I’ve heard it said that everyone in the world is no more than six degrees of separation from any other person — hopping from acquaintance to acquantaince, we’re all connected by no more than six hops. The theory’s been well-tested in the entertainment world with the well-known Kevin Bacon Game.
Well, I’m not out to find all the links between blogs, exactly, but I did wonder: what sort of sites are exactly six degrees of separation away from mine? And with a little help from the fine folks at Technorati, who keep track of who’s linking whom, I decided to find out. And now you can, too. Just enter your site name and URL below, and find out who’s Six Degrees of Technorati Separation from you. There goes the neighborhood, folks.
Permalink | No CommentsI was ravenous when I got home tonight. Blame a long week, blame a hard day at the office, blame global warming or the disappointing U.S. Olympic ski team or the flimsy excuse for a chicken burrito I had for lunch — whatever the cause, it added up to one starved Charlie around eight this evening.
So, I ordered a pizza.
Most nights, the logic used in getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘pepperoni and mushrooms’ wouldn’t fly. Delivery takes twenty minutes or more — far longer than whipping up a serviceable meal in the shadow of my own spice rack. There’s plenty of food in the house, and even snacks to take the edge off while I whip up some grub. So why bother shelling out cash for a pie? Two reasons:
So — the pizza. By the time it got here, I was ready to eat the cardboard box it came in. I think I may have licked the delivery guy’s hand when he passed it over; it’s all a blur, and I can’t be held responsible for the actions of my tongue when I’m hungry!
(That’s the ‘insanity-by-starvation’ defense. You’d be amazed at how many parking tickets and restraining orders that’s gotten me out of.
“If the meal is late, you can’t incarcerate!” RIP , Johnnie Cochran!)
“The dude didn’t ‘eat a slice’ so much as he ‘performed pizzalingus’.”
At any rate, when I finally got my precious pizza pie inside the house, I tore into it like a cat into nip. Like Ted Kennedy into a Cape Codder. Like Kirstie Alley into a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast. Like Kristy Swanson into Lloyd Eisler. You get the idea.
(Hey, so what if I had to look that last one up? I’m old, dammit. Pop references are hard!)
Back to the pizza.
By the time I was finished eating, it was a massacre. Half the pizza was gone, there was cheese all over the table, pizza crust on my forehead, and I’m pretty sure that’s tomato sauce on the ceiling. Still, even at my most shameless and famished, I’m not quite as bad as Sean, this kid I went to school with.
Sean was a regular guy, for most of the day. Smart kid, nice, good grooming — never a nose hair out of place. But come meal time, all bets were off. Sean wasn’t just sloppy — he was a ‘messy eater’ the same way that New Orleans ‘got a little rain’ a few months ago. You needed safety goggles and a hazmat suit to even sit at the guy’s table.
And his favorite meal was pizza. That’s all he ever wanted to eat, and lord help you if he got to it before you did. It wasn’t just the issue of sanitation, either — certainly, who knew where his hands had been! But just watching him scarf down pizza would put you off eating for days at a time.
Sean was as likely to have anchovies in his eyelashes as toppings down his gullet. He was a tempest — imagine the Tasmanian Devil, without the fork and knife, and with Domino’s on speed-dial. The dude didn’t ‘eat a slice’ so much as he ‘performed pizzalingus’.
Sean’s gustatory gyrations were an amazing, bewildering, above all disturbing sight to behold. Where many people brush their teeth after meals, my friend Sean usually needed a shower, or so it seemed. Truly, first-rate socially questionable behavior from an otherwise normal young adult.
I haven’t kept up with Sean over the years — but I picture him, even now, with those same eating habits. The same wild eyes and grabby hands, teeth and lips and fingers flying away in a mealtime maelstrom. I like to think he has a job now involving food — driving an ice cream truck, or taste-testing new recipes, maybe even a restaurant critic.
(Ooh, a critic would be the best! He’d leave the place being reviewed wearing his entree and half the contents of the dessert tray. He could moonlight as a reviewer for the dry cleaners he’d have to hire to get the stains out of his suits. Bonus!)
Honestly, I wonder whether the kid ever got married — now that would cure him of those food-related shenanigans. Hell, I can’t even slurp soup without a slap from the missus; imagine if I went glomming and marauding into my food like old Sean did? She’d have my ass on a platter!
At least, she would if she was around to see it. Or the aftermath. So for the love of Papa John, somebody help me get these pepperoni stains off the curtains — she’ll be home any minute!
Permalink | 1 CommentCharlie’s Standup Comedy Journal
Twenty-eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds, people. Twenty-eight! And twenty-seven! I shit you not!
So, here it is — in some ways, the pinnacle of my short comedy career-so-far. It may not have been the show where I got the biggest laughs, or played to the biggest crowd, or left the joint feeling the best. But it sure as hell was the longest show I’ve done to date — and size matters, from what I’m told. Am I right, ladies? And did I mention — twenty-fricking-eight! Slip that in your nest and incubate it, baby.
For those who don’t know — but are still thirsting for knowledge — Agawam is out in Westachusetts, just past Springfield. So it was nice to be able to ramble on for half an hour, after driving to Conn-fricking-ecticut and New ‘Are we there yet?’ Hampshire for shorter stage stints. On the other hand, considering I’d done exactly two sets longer than ten minutes ever, it was also a bit nerve-wracking. Did I have thirty minutes of material? Could I stand in one place for a whole half-hour? Would my fly stay up? Would people drift off en masse by the end? I had no idea.
In the end, the answers were, respectively, ‘yep, pretty close’, ‘amazingly, yes’, ‘so far as you know’, and ‘not to the best of my knowledge’. And there were a few friendly, familiar faces in the crowd — including my gorgeous and supportive wife; thanks, hon! — so it was a pretty fucking awesome night all the way around.
One teeny thing, though. Assuming anyone ever would want to, and actually manages to download this clip, they’ll soon see that I’m a leetle, eetsy-beetsy teeny speck on the tape. My wife and friends were sitting near the back of the fairly large room, and my wife was sweet enough to work the camcorder, so you folks can sit through the same ridiculous bullshit I put the live crowd through. Bitchin’, eh?
But I fear I’ve neglected to train my spunky spouse in the ways of the ‘zoom’ feature on the camera. And from that distance, it’s a bit tough to tell anything about the visual portion of the show — hell, it could be any comic up there, just from seeing the tape.
(Well, okay, probably not anyone. I’d like to think that even from fifty paces away, you could distinguish me from Louie Anderson. Or Roseanne. Or Chris Rock, for that matter — although I did get all ‘street’ and shit in this set. No, really. ‘Street’. Quotes and all; watch for yourself. I wouldn’t play you like that, dog.)
Anyway, I’m pretty damned happy with this show. Sure, the crowd was a bit sparse, and the host showed up late — which led to the bartender bringing me onstage as the first comic of the night with this ringing endorsement:
‘Hey… we’re starting now. This first guy’s been doing comedy for a while, and he’s from Boston, and he told me he’s pretty good. Here’s Charlie.‘
See, now, first of all, that’s just not gonna get the crowd all lubed up and ready to laugh. And secondly, I did not tell him that I was ‘pretty good’. ‘Pretty nervous’, maybe. ‘Pretty drunk’, possibly. ‘Pretty in pink’… well, he was kind of cute. And I don’t like to brag, but red really is my color. Don’t be jealous.)
So, I got a few laughs, and had some fun, and made it through a whole half hour without doing any brand new material, or stuff that I’m really starting to hate. Sure, maybe audiences hate some of the stuff I did… but I don’t hate it (yet), so hopefully I sold them on it eventually. And now I’m actually looking forward to my next long show, whenever I might happen to score another one. It’s good to have a big fat twenty-eight or so under your belt, folks — and that’s whether your fly stays up or not. The key is to get that first big show out of the way. Whew!
Download Clip of 04/30/05 Set —
Goodfellaz, Agawam, MA (28 minutes, 27 seconds):
(Click photo to enlarge)
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