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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Well, this should be interesting.
On Saturday — a short, quick six days from now — I’m scheduled to do a 30-minute standup set at a bar out in western Massachusetts. So this weekend, I’m taking inventory — just how many bits do I have, how long do they last, and do they add up to thirty minutes, or anything like it?
So far, the results are mixed. Certainly, I’ve done more than a half-hour’s worth of material on stage. I could montage every bit I’ve ever quipped into a set of, I don’t know, forty-five or fifty minutes. Maybe more.
But is all of that stuff good? No. Is any of it good? Eh, who knows. Some of it gets the occasional giggle, and doesn’t make me especially embarrassed to deliver in front of strangers… but ‘good‘? Who can say, really? Goodness is in the eye of the beholder — it’s like ‘beauty’, or ‘truth’, or ‘great boobs’. It’s not completely subjective, but personal preference plays an awfully big part.
So, now I’ve got to make some tough decisions. After the twenty minutes or so of stuff that I’ve been performing recently, that I’ve got a pretty good handle on — then what? A few minutes of new stuff, that maybe I haven’t really tried yet? Older stuff that needs to be chopped down and reworked to be stage-worthy? Riffing off the bits I know, to fill in a few seconds here and there? Six minutes of juggling, or tap dancing, or old-skool breakdancing?
(Only one of which I can actually do, by the way. I’ll leave it up to you to picture me doing each, and try to figure out which is most likely.)
I suppose it’ll probably be a combination of several things. Plus, if I’m feeling frisky, I can throw in a bit of ‘crowd work’. That’s where we talk with people in the audience, instead of to the crowd as a whole. You don’t want to depend on it, of course — you never know when you’re going to be performing in front of a group of monks who’ve taken a vow of silence — but it can be a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll just have a friend come, and heckle me around the fifteen-minute mark.
(Yeah… no. That’s not gonna happen. With my luck, I’d screw up with even a ‘friendly’ heckler, and foul up the whole thing. I’d either lose the crowd, get carted off the stage, or get my ass kicked by my heckling friend after the show. I know it might sound like a good idea, but honestly, nothing good can come from asking a buddy to come and berate you while you’re doing your job. Really.)
Anyway, I’ll get it figured out — and hopefully, I’ll have a tape of the show, too, so you folks can eventually see how it turns out. I’m thinking it’ll be a lot like me having sex: it may not be pretty, and it may not be ‘good’ — however you decide to define it — but dammit, it’ll last about a half-hour, and I’ll be ready for a good long nap afterwards.
(Hey, that’s not bad… maybe I’ll use that on Saturday. Ooh, there’s another twenty seconds or so I don’t have to worry about. Woo hoo!)
Permalink | 3 CommentsOkay, I have a question.
Not an important question, true — but a serious question, nonetheless. It involves my showers, somewhat indirectly. And my ass — much less indirectly, as it happens.
(Yeah, yeah, go ahead — run away screaming. That’s fine — get it out of your system. I’ll be here when you get back, and you’ll still have to read what comes next. ‘Cause I know you’ll come back. They always come back.)
Okay, here’s the thing. Sometimes in the shower, as I’m washing, I notice these little blue fuzzy things on my washcloth. I’m pretty sure they come from my jeans, somehow. And I’m fairly certain that they show up after I’ve wiped down my backside. I don’t know exactly where back there they come from, mind you — maybe on the periphery, or maybe right on the edge of Old Brown Canyon; I couldn’t say for sure, without a more flexible neck and a series of mirrors.
(Or a shower buddy. A very understanding — or a very drunk shower buddy. And really, if I had one of those, would I really still care what sort of fuzz happens to be on my ass? I’m gonna say, ‘no’.)
Anyway, here’s what I don’t get: assuming that I’m right on both counts — the fuzz starts out on my jeans, and ends up on my ass — then how, for the love of Levi Strauss, does it get there?
Because there is zero contact between the two, as far as I know. I’m not running around commando-style, sans undies, with my jeans and ass spending the day rubbing up against each other like a couple of dry-humping teenie boppers. I always put on underwear before jeans, for two very good reasons: first, if I don’t wear undies at all, there’s all that icky ‘beans ‘n’ franks‘ paranoia to deal with.
(And thank you, Something About Mary. Bastards.)
And second, if I put the underpants on after the overpants, then I get snickered at by the people at work. Even more than usual, which I didn’t think was possible. But oh yes, it is — some peoples’ snickering knows no bounds, apparently.
Anyway, back to the point — I still don’t see how those little fuzzies manage to migrate from pants to ass. It’s not like my boxers have that little ass-flap that you used to see on the old pajamas.
(Well, except for that day when I accidentally wore them backwards. Which I might not have noticed, except I had to pee while I was at the office. And there was no ‘access port’ in the front. They found me twenty minutes later, standing in front of the urinal with both hands in my zipperhole, yelling, ‘I can’t get to my penis! I can’t get to my penis! Call 9-1-1 — my penis is trapped!‘
They gave me a Valium, a glass of water, and a box cutter, and told me to figure it out for myself. Man, that’s the worst Tuesday afternoon I’ve ever had.)
So, is it just me? Am I wrong about this phenomenon, somehow? I’d really hate to think that my ass is somehow manufacturing blue fuzz, somehow. Sure, that’d explain how they’re getting there, but I really think it would raise more questions than it would answer. And I’d have to take a good, hard look at my diet, too, I suppose. I don’t remember eating Grover, but hell — some of those comedy after-show parties get pretty wild; anything’s possible.
Permalink | 3 CommentsFolks, you know you’re desperate for a meal when you’re making a sandwich, and have the following thought process:
‘Wow… this meat has been in the fridge for a while. It’s proooobably not good any more, but let’s see…
Well, it smells… kind of okay. Lunchmeat is supposed to smell like battery acid just a little bit, right?
Wait, what’s the ‘sell by’ date? Oh. Hmmm. Well, if I put a ‘1’ in front of the day… yeah, that’s still last week sometime. Damn.
Eh, screw it — it’s not gonna kill me, right?‘
So, I spent the better part of the night fully expecting to projectile-hurl smoked turkey all over the room. Which, as I understand it, is usually seen as some sort of faux pas in most social circles. The ones where they don’t keep plastic tarps on the floor, anyway.
Which is not to say that I don’t travel in circles that require plastic on the floor, from time to time. But last night, I was in more polite company. Well, maybe not ‘polite’, exactly — it was a bunch of comics, after all — but neater, at least. Hoagie-hurling is still frowned upon, even in that crowd. Apparently, blowing chunks is only funny from a distance. Hey, I saw Meaning of Life; who would have guessed?
Anyway, the night was a good time — a few of us standups got together to critique ourselves and each other on a tape of a show we’d done earlier in the month. Constructively, of course — always constructively. It was helpful, too — and nice. There were only a couple of times when someone looked at me and said:
‘You know — every time you tell a joke, God kills a baby seal.‘
So yeah, it was a good night. It didn’t help much with the writing — considering that I’m writing this fourteen hours later and backdating it to Friday night — but hey, we can’t be Hemmingway every night, can we?
So… can we be Hemmingway just one night? Is that too much to ask?
Permalink | 1 CommentFolks, I was just doing something tonight. I can’t tell you what, exactly — you’ll just have to use your imagination.
(Or better yet, don’t use your imagination, and just let the story wash over you. Which means that you’d especially better not use your imaginateion, because the combination of what you’re probably about to be thinking, and the ‘wash over you’ comment… not good. We’ll all lose some sleep over that one, if we’re not careful.)
Anyway, I was just doing something. And the last time I did this unspecified, completely innocent thing, I came out of it with six. Or ‘six’, if you prefer, but I’m pretty sure those quotes are going to lead to the imagining thing, and it’s all downhill from there. But, if we must, I did this thing a while back, and got ‘six’ out of it.
So, tonight? I did it again. And what did I get — six? Or even ‘six’? No. Not quite. No, this time, much to my wide-eyed delight, I got ten. Not ten, or even ‘ten’ — which would be lurid enough, mind you — but ten. I went from ‘six’ to ten. Maybe even TEN, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Let the smoke and confetti clear, and we’ll determine exactly what’s what later on, with a clearer perspective.
And really, all I can tell you is… it’s got nothing to do with my penis. Really. I know that if it did, I’d have some miracle story to tell about a wonder cream, or amazing exercises, or the importance of living right, eating healthy, and stretching daily — or maybe that’s ‘stretching’ daily — but honestly, this is so not about my penis. Promise.
(On the other hand… in the thing that it is about? I just went from ‘six’ to ten. It’s not about my penis, per se, but yeah — the room’s feeling a little woodier right now, if you smell what I’m cooking. I’m all jazz hands and hard-on right now.)
So, unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you right now. I can’t share any details, but I did want you to feel my excitement. In an entirely non-creepy, penis-free, leg-humping-less kind of way, of course. Let’s keep this tasteful — or as tasteful as we can, after seven paragraphs of penis enlargement euphemisms, anyway.
(And I repeat — it’s so not about my penis. I can’t possibly stress this enough. I may have to hire a skywriter, in fact, just to be certain. My penis? Not the thing. Scout’s honor.)
Anyway, there you go. Last time: ‘six’. This time: ten. Sure, you know nothing else about what’s going on, but still, just aak yourself — if it happened to you, how happy would you be right now, eh? I think we should all take a deep breath and smoke an afterglow cigarette, just to commemorate the occasion. I’m talkin’ ten, people. That ain’t chopped liver, no matter what you’re talking about. Booyah.
Permalink | 9 CommentsSo… new pope, eh?
You know — maybe I’ve been in Boston a little too long, but doesn’t the new guy look just a little like Cliffy, the mailman from Cheers? Is it just me? His name is even close to the actor’s; maybe they’re related, or something. I think I might be a little anxious, if I were Catholic. Cliffy’s a nice guy, and all, but ‘leader of the faith’? Hoo boy.
But enough about shit I know nothing about — let’s talk about my world for a while. As is my involuntary custom on Tuesdays, I spent most of the day in meetings at work. Today was a doozy, though — from eleven to seven, straight through. Ten minutes to grab lunch, but that was it; apart from that, it was eight straight hours of full-on meeting mania. I can’t tell you how much fun that is, people.
(Why not? Because it isn’t. Eight solid hours of anything is too much. I can’t even sleep that fricking long any more. That shit is wrong. I should file for employee abuse, or something.)
Anyway, when you’re stuck in as many meetings as I am, you eventually work out ways to entertain yourself. It’s not like you’re actually going to sit there and listen, right? But you can’t blow your cover, either — you’ve got to be cool. If you spontaneously break into song in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation, or hump the boss’ chair during a status report, they’re probably going to figure out that you’re doing the ‘rich inner life’ thing. Again.
Still, there are only so many times you can count the number of tiles on the ceiling, or balance a pen on each finger. If you want to put a spark into your cockamamie conferences at the office, you’ve got to be creative. Personally, I’ve started playing a little game in meetings — I call it, ‘Who’s Got the…?‘ Let me explain.
Imagine you’re sitting around a conference room table, surrounded by a dozen or more suits, all blabbering on about third-quarter revenues and project management seminars and TPS reports, blabbity blabbety blah. That’s ‘Who’s Got the…?‘ time. I like to start off with something simple — like, maybe, ‘Who’s got the biggest nose?‘
So, while I’m looking around the room, nodding and pretending to be interested, I’ll size up the schnozzes pointing back at me. Usually there are two or three honkers bigger than the rest, and I’ll have to make a second round to really study them. And finally, after careful consideration, I’ll crown the champion, and declare someone as the Big Nose King or Queen of the meeting. In my head — always in my head, only. And hey, look at that — I just killed five minutes of boring meeting time! Score, baby.
And there are so many games to play! There’s ‘Who’s got the beadiest eyes?‘, or ‘Who’s got the ass-ugliest shirt?‘ Ooh, ooh, or my favorite, ‘Who’s got the biggest boobs?‘ That’s always a good time. Except when it’s me, of course. That hurts a little. You probably want to leave yourself out of the games, actually — crying in the middle of a meeting is another giveaway.
So, there you go — another way to have a little fun around the office. And just try not thinking of this game next time you’re in a long meeting at work. You’ll be right there with me, playing ‘Who’s got the porn-starriest sideburns?‘ or ‘Who’s got the saggiest arm flab‘, whether you really want to or not. Welcome to my nightmare, people. And try not to giggle while the boss is reading the agenda. Heh.
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