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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Ah, lemonade. It’s my very most favoritest of all the ades. It’s better than lime, better than orange, even better than Gator. Lemonade kicks ade ass!
I just made a big pitcher of lemonade. My wife hates it when I do that. Not that she’s got anything against lemonade, per se; it’s just that she doesn’t like it quite as strong as I make it. She’s a delicate flower, after all. Beautiful, but fragile. Tender. And not so much into the puckery stuff.
(Hey, this is lemonade we’re talking about here. Don’t get all personal and shit. Focus, dude.)
Anyway, let’s just say that we have ‘creative differences’ over how our favorite lemony beverage should be prepared. Around our house, we ‘make da ade’ using that synthetic lemony-scented powdered crap that a lot of people use. My wife uses two scoops of the stuff per pitcher. Or, as she told me tonight, ‘really, one and a half‘. Isn’t that just adorable?
Me, I ain’t goin’ down like that. Scoops, schmoops. When I want lemonade, I don’t play around with that little plastic thingy in the can. I get out the bathroom scale, and dump that shit in by the pound. I don’t make ‘lemonade’, really — instead, I stir up a lemon sludge, muddy and murky and full of tart puckery goodness. If it’s not gritty and pasty, then it’s just not good ade. I want my lips puckered up so far that I can taste my own uvula, dammit.
(What? Oh, like you’ve never tasted your uvula before. Don’t give me that look, dammit.)
Anyway, I’m a happy man right now. This is some damned good ade I’ve got going on. I won’t be able to yodel for a week. (Nor for several dozen years after that, if we’re at all lucky.) My wife’s decided to enjoy some, too. I’m having mine in a tall glass, ‘neat’; she’s going to dilute hers just a bit before she digs in. It looks like she’s got an eyedropper full of lemonade, and she’s heading for the bathtub upstairs with some ice cubes and a straw. Well, more power to her. And lemonade all ’round! Drink up, people — this is good shit!
Permalink | 6 CommentsI had some time to kill tonight (technically last night now, but who’s clock-watching at this hour, anyway?), so I decided to read a bit.
Unfortunately, the book closest to me at the time was the one that one of my (several) bosses at work gave me a couple of weeks ago. It has something to do with business, I think, and possibly management philosophy, or team-building, or some other such thing. Some part of my brain told me that if I was going to read tonight, I should really conquer a few pages in this book, so I could get it back to her soon.
That same part of my brain tucked the book under my arm, and walked me upstairs, intent on tucking me into bed with said book to peruse a few chapters before sleepytime. This was at around eleven thirty, soon after I’d finished my last post.
This was also the point at which the rest of my brain finally broke through the barricade and overpowered the part of my brain that had been doing all this ‘responsible thinking’ crap. Just at the last moment, my newly-empowered neurons detoured me to the office, where instead of reading, I read blogs, and made a few comments, and uploaded two standup clips.
Unfortunately, that rogue ‘responsible’ part of my brain was still kicking and screaming, fighting for control. Several times, I even looked at the book on my desk, wondering whether I shouldn’t take it to bed — or at least the bathroom — and try out a few pages. Each time, the rest of my brain intervened, and I went back, grinning and drooling, to my online entertainment.
Eventually, my in-charge brain told me, the ‘other’ half would be subdued, beaten into submission through inertia and the inexorable passage of time. It would return eventually, of course, but there was nothing that said I had to succumb to its sober realities and soul-rending obligations tonight. If we just stick together, my half-brain told me, we can beat this thing. Sooner or later, the will to start that book tonight will fade, if we just distract ourselves into exhaustion.
Well, I’m happy to say that three hours later, I’ve finally lost that urge. It may be two-thirty in the morning, and I may have to get up way before I’m ready to in the morning, but dammit, I hung tight with my half a brain, and I beat this thing. No book, no reading, and now I’m off to bed. Victory is mine! Well, half mine, anyway. And pretty soon, my boss is gonna ask about that damned book, too. Shit.
Man, my other half a brain is gonna kill me tomorrow when it wakes up!
Permalink | 3 CommentsAll right, I’ve had it. I need somebody out there to help me, dammit.
I need one of you to find the person, or people, who are coming up with words to rhyme with gellin’ for those damned Dr. Scholl’s commercials.
I want you to find them, and beat them — mercilessly, mind you, with a big club, or fireplace poker, or something — and then drop them from a very great height into a big quicksand trap, or a tar pit, or a blockful of hardening cement, maybe. Something deep, and sticky, and exceptionally unpleasant. Some alligators might be nice, too. Or crocodiles. Whichever’s easier.
Seriously, though, this shit has got to stop, people. The first commercial was cute, for about the first thirty damned times I saw it. Then it was just annoying, and then maddening, and finally just stupid. Sure, I’ll give ’em props for the ‘Magellan‘ line. It took a little while before ‘Want a melon‘ made my eyelids twitch with rage.
But it’s over now, dammit. I’m calling it right now — time of death, about six seconds after I saw the new freaking commercial today, with three ‘gellin’ morons in a stock trading pit, bantering that nonsense back and forth.
‘Are you gellin’?‘
‘Oh, I’m gellin’! And I’m sellin’!‘
‘That guy’s not gellin’. He’s repellin’!‘
Look, I’ve got news for you douchebags — you can all go straight to hellin‘. Just stop this goddamned nonsense!
Seriously, for the love of kicky Doc Martens, just stop it. Stop making the commercials, and stop devoting websites to this ridiculous marketing nightmare. I’m begging you here. And the rest of you, stop encouraging these asspackets by playing their little game on your own sites, and on TV, and — most especially, please — anywhere near me, anywhere in the world that I happen to be. It’s not cute, it’s not cool, and you’re not a ‘felon’. But keep this shit up, and I will be, when I pull off your ‘gellin’ shoes and beat you to a bloody broken pulp with them!
Okay, sorry, I got a little carried away there. It’s not your fault, really, out there in the real world. Fads come along, and it’s sometimes hard to tell which ones are cool, and which are asinine, and which ones start out vaguely acceptable and then spiral into a pit of moronic craptacular nonsense.
(Yeah, um… no need to apply those same sorts of judgement to this blog, all right? Nobody likes a big ironic poopyhead, all right?)
Anyway, whaddaya say we just band together on this one, and form some sort of riotous, unruly mob and go kick the crap out of whoever’s responsible for those commercials? You with me? You in? Or are you mentally unwellin’?
(Oh fer chrissakes… they got me, too. Let’s roll some Scholl’s heads, people!)
Permalink | 6 CommentsI went onstage last night at the Comedy Vault in downtown Boston. It was a packed house, full of college kids mostly — a fun crowd, and it was great to play to a full house.
I actually thought I wouldn’t be allowed to go on — Sundays at ‘da Vault’ are ‘bringer shows’, where you have to show up with two paying guests to get stage time. This week, my friends were pretty busy, and weren’t able to stop by to watch.
(Or are sick of being badgered and cajoled to come see the same jokes they’ve been hearing for four months now. Tomato, tomahto… whatever.)
Anyway, I headed down there with my wife, and hoped for the best. I had a couple of ‘maybe’s, but I held no delusions that anyone was actually going to be able to make it. A few minutes before showtime, I checked in with the organizer, and let her know that it was just me and the missus, so I supposed I’d just pay for the two of us and spectate for the evening. The organizer let me know that if anyone else came in for me, she’d let me know. I thought that was it, and settled down with a beer to watch the other comics.
Little did I realize that by paying the cover for myself, I became my second person. She left me on the list, and — about halfway through the show — I heard the emcee for the night asking around among the comics, ‘Charlie? Who’s Charlie? Is Charlie here?‘ Luckily, I was sitting near the comics area (hey, it never hurts to be close to the action), heard him, and stepped back to sort it all out.
‘I thought I was off the list,’ I told him.
‘You’re on the list,’ he told me.
‘I only brought one person tonight; I thought she marked me off.‘
‘Okay, I’ll check with her.‘
So he checked, she told him I’d paid for two, and — just like that, with only a minute or so of realizing I’d go onstage — there I was, mic in hand, blathering to a crowd of fifty or more. Fantabulous.
I thought it went pretty well — you’ll be able to see for yourself soon, when I post the clip. (And I’ll finally post the horrible, embarrassing, ‘shit, I forgot my material‘ clip from last Sunday at the All Asia, too; at least now it won’t be the last active link on the list. Pee-fricking-yew.)
But none of that’s really the point, exactly. The point is what happened after the show, as my wife and I were waiting to pay at the parking garage. We were standing in line, when two vaguely familiar-looking women walked past. And one of them, wondrous benevolent siren that she was, looked right at me and said,
‘Hey, there’s that comedian guy!‘
Wow. Nobody’s ever said that to me before.
I smiled, mainly to buy a little time to find the appropriate witty response. I’m a ‘comedian guy’, after all, right? Eventually, I came up with, wittily enough:
‘Wow. Nobody’s ever said that to me before.‘
Fricking genius, I am. George Carlin, eat your heart out. I am the king of witty repartee.
Not wanting to leave it at just that, I decided to add:
‘Well, except maybe my mom, when I was trying to get away with shit.‘
No, that’s not particularly witty, either. I do think I deserve a few points for the image of a mother, tsking and scolding a young boy with, ‘What are you, some kind of comedian?‘
But I also lose a few dozen points for the confused look that put on the woman’s face. She was still smiling, sort of, but I’m not sure what I said made any particular bit of sense. Nor am I completely certain that the woman — who looked to be a couple, but not many, years older than I — wasn’t thinking that I’d just suggested she could be my mother. Or something. I don’t know. I’m no good at actually talking to people; why the hell would I write this crap and do standup if I knew how to act in real social situations, anyway?
So, I’ll say now what I should have said then:
‘Wow, thanks! That’s pretty cool, actually being called a comedian!‘
And no, that’s not witty, either, but goddammit, it doesn’t have to be. Even if the lady was just saying it to be nice — and that’s almost certainly the case — it was pretty damned cool. We comics congratulate each other all the time, but none of us really mean it. And my wife tells me, ‘Good job!‘ after each show, but really, it’s in the contract — she has to. For a perfect stranger to take the time to say something, anything nice like that — well, it’s times like those that I wish I didn’t put my foot in my damned mouth every time I open my yapper.
But I do, and I did, more or less, and so here we are. I doubt that the woman who walked past me last night will ever read this, but if she does, I just wanted her to know that she made my night. And my day so far, and probably most of the rest of the week, as well. Maybe someday now I’ll earn that compliment, and actually become the kind of comedian who gets recognized after a show once in a while.
And maybe by that point, I’ll have figured out what the hell to say when it happens. Meh.
Permalink | 3 CommentsI was watching ‘About a Boy‘ at a friend’s house last night when an odd thought struck me.
(No, it wasn’t:
‘Hey, I really liked the ‘before’ Hugh Grant character much better than the ‘after’; all those psychos and kids are really turning him into a pantywaist.‘
or:
‘I wonder if it would be worth shoving this beer bottle up my left nostril and into my brain so I don’t have to watch the rest of this movie.‘
Not to say that those thoughts didn’t strike me. I just wouldn’t call them ‘odd’.)
(Oh, I’m kidding. Hugh Grant is just the dreamiest, and I love kids in movies. The more, and the sacchariny-cuter, the better. Oh, my word, yes.
Why, if I could have just been soaking naked in a tubful of bleach and having paper clips shoved under my toenails, then it would have been the bestest movie ever!
Wait. That didn’t really help convince you I was ‘kidding’, did it? Eh, screw it. I gave it a shot.)
Anyway, the thought that struck me was this: the sirens on British ambulances sound remarkably like those here in the States. And I’m guessing — which is all I’m gonna do, because I don’t want to have to watch a bunch of artsy films from France and Egypt and Indonesia to find out — that ambulance and police sirens all over the world sound remarkably similar. Which begs the question, who came up with that noise, and who decided that it was just the right mix of annoying, insistent, and recognizable enough to signal a dire emergency? Because that’s a job that I wouldn’t want to have.
I imagine that they put together a panel of people, actually. Probably, they seated them all in a drab room somewhere, institutional green paint peeling from the walls. Most likely, they sat at desks, with a scoresheet of some kind, and a pencil to rate each noise on various scales. I can almost see a thin, severe man walking through the windowless door of the room, closing it firmly behind him, and administering the test:
Proctor: You will now be played a series of sounds. It is imperative that you listen closely to each of these sounds, and rate each one based on how effective an emergency signal you feel it would be. You have also been hooked to monitors for an objective analysis of your heart rate, blood pressure, and state of panic.
There will be no talking during this evaluation. The sounds will be played for ten seconds each at thirty second intervals. We will begin… now!
Gigantic Speakers: WEEEEEEEEEEH! WEEEEEEEEEEEEH! WEEEEEEEEEEEH! WEEEEEEEEEEEEH!
Subject One: Holy crapping Christ, I think my ears are bleeding!
Proctor: No talking! Make your evaluations now.
Subject One: What? Oh hell, my hearing’s gone, too.
Proctor: Pencils down! The next sound begins… now!
Gigantic Speakers: BOOP! BOOP! BOOP! SSSSKKRRRREEEEEE! SSSSKKRRRREEEEE! BOOP! BOOP! BOOP! SSSKRRREE-!
Proctor: Evaluate! Now!
Subject Two: I… I think I just wet myself. Where’s the box for that?
Proctor: No talking! The next sound will play…
Subject Four: Holy father, please have mercy on —
Proctor: Now!
Gigantic Speakers: GGGGGRRRRUUUUUUUUNNNNNNHHHHHH! WHOOOOOO! GGGRRRRUUUUUUUUNNNNNHHHH!
Subject Three: Um, wasn’t that just somebody snoring really loud?
Proctor: Talk less! Evaluate more!
Subject Three: But how could that possibly —
Subject Two: Hey, look, I wet myself on that one, too, okay? Just let it go.
Proctor: Infidels! No talking! The next sound begins… now!
Gigantic Speakers: AAAUUGH! HELP! WAAAAAH!! HELP! HELP! GAAAWAAAUUUGH! MERCY! HAVE MERCY! SOMEBODY HEEE-
Proctor: Evaluate!
Subject One: That was… staged, right? That guy was just an actor?
Proctor: No talking!
Subject One: Yeah, I know, I know… but that was really disturbing. Just tell me —
Proctor: That man… was in the last group of evaluators. And he wouldn’t. Stop. Talking. Got it?
Subject One: *nod* *nod* *nod*
Proctor: Excellent. Next noise now!
Gigantic Speaker *sung* TIPTOE THROUGH THE TULIPS… WITH ME… OH, TIPTOE FROM THE GARDEN —
Proctor: Evaluate! Stop it — get back in your chairs! Stop convulsing, all of you — evaluate, damn it!
No picnic, eh? I’d say we’re lucky to have ended up with that loud whiny siren we have today, frankly. It could have been much worse. I’m just glad I wasn’t there to help choose it — I do plenty of convulsing and bleeding from ears as it is. Who needs a siren when reruns of The Nanny are still on TV?
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