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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Hey, all.
Not really a post, I’m afraid — I just wanted to let you know that last night’s set is up. (Since Joe was kind enough to ask… and go check Joe out at Play By Play, dammit; you could learn something from him!)
As for me, I’m off to play volleyball wearing just one contact lens.
(Okay, that’s ‘just one lens‘, as opposed to two lenses, not ‘just one lens‘ in lieu of all other clothes. I’m seriously thinking of wearing pants for this. And not just because of the bruises I gave myself last time. I’ve really got to be more careful diving for the ball.)
So there’s your choice of image, folks. Picture me — and see me, in living color — doing standup in front of exactly one audience member last night, or try to imagine me running around half-blind tonight on the court, getting bonked on the head with the ball and running into the net every twelve seconds.
Holy shit, how jealous are you people right now, eh? There’s not one of you who wouldn’t trade your life and two fistfuls of cash just to live in my shoes. No, you don’t even have to say it — I can tell by that horrified, pitying look you’re pretending to have right now. You’re not fooling anyone, you know. You’re just aching to get your hands on a little piece of this life. Yeah, I know. It’s cool.
So, anyway, I’m off. Assuming I don’t suffer a horrible car crash or ear-bleeding head trauma, I’ll be back later to squint my way through a real post for you. Man, it’s been a crazy week. I’m just looking forward to the weekend — maybe I can regroup and get off this frickin’ merry-go-round. I’m looking forward to that. Oh, and seeing again. Yeah, that’d be nice, too. Baby steps, people… baby steps.
Permalink | 2 CommentsFolks, I’m just here to apologize. And I apologize for that. For which I’m very sorry. And my condolences for being sorry. And I apologize for —
Oh, enough of this crap already!
(Sorry, sorry. That was uncalled for. I apologize. For the last time. Or just for now. Whatever.)
Anyway, as I hope that little ‘effort’ clearly shows, I’ve had a rough day, kiddies. I don’t want to bore you with the lowlights… but then again, I don’t want a lot of things. Sometimes life doesn’t go the way we’d like it to, you know? So here are a few tidbits from my past twenty-four hours:
Sometime after midnight (so technically today, but still feeling like yesterday), I lost my right contact lens as I was getting rready for bed. The water was running, and our drain stopper doesn’t work, and I’m pretty sure it was just whooshed right on down the sink. Maybe one of the feral gators that live in the sewers can use it; I don’t know.
What I do know, though, is that I’m essentially blind without my contacts. So, I looked for that backup set of contacts that I never ordered after getting my new prescription a couple of months ago. Mysteriously, they weren’t there! (Spooky, no?)
So, I checked all my old contact cases, and found exactly one contact, an ill-fitting, uncomfortable, out-of-date left lens in the back of the medicine cabinet. But what the hell — any old piece of plastic in your eye in a pnch, right? And a crappy contact is better than no contact, at least when you have my dysfunctional eyeballs, so I soaked the thing in saline overnight and went to bed.
Next came morning. (As it so often does after nighttime. These are real gems, people — pay attention here.) I had an early meeting this morning, so I’d set the alarm for about two hours before I’d normally get up. And so, of course, despite way too few hours of sleep and general exhausted crankiness, I woke up. Twenty minutes before the alarm was set to go off. Bitches!
Twenty minutes is the absolute worst amount of time you can have left in bed. A half-hour would be fine — you can get some real sleeping done in a half a damned hour. Two minutes is fine — hey, you beat the alarm, and didn’t have to listen to it blaring on and on before pulling your sorry sheet-wrinkled ass out of bed. Bully for you. But twenty minutes? That’s a friggin’ nightmare! All you can do is lie there, not sleeping because you know the alarm’s gonna go off as soon as you do, and not getting up because… well, dammit, because you have twenty whole minutes of bed-time left, and you’ll be damned if you’re giving that up without a fight, a court order, and a cadre of fucking Clydesdales to drag you away from it. This is America, people. The right to sleep is, like, the Ninth Amendment or something. You can look it up.
Anyway, here’s a summary of the twenty minutes I spent in bed this morning, circa seven in the fricking a.m.:
‘Hurnngh? Wha? Oh. I’m awake. Shit, it’s light outside. Is it time to get up yet?
Hmm, no. Still twenty minutes to go. Damn. Why’d I set an alarm again? Oh, the meeting, right. Well, maybe I can get in another nap before the alarm goes off.
*brief pause as I try to sleep*
Is it time yet? What time is it now?
Oh. Damn. Now there’s only eighteen minutes before the alarm goes off. I’d better get to sleep quick.
*pause*
I wonder if I’m hungry. I thought when I went to bed last night that I might be hungry in the morning. Am I hungry? Hmmm… nope. Not hungry.
What time is it now?
Poop. Seventeen minutes. Better work on that nap.
*pause*
Gotta sleep, gotta sleep, gotta sleep… am I asleep yet? No. How about now? No. Now?
Dammit, stop thinking about sleep and go to fricking sleep before it’s too late!
Too late? What time is it, anyway? Jeez, only twelve minutes left. This is gonna be one short nap.
I can’t believe I’m not falling asleep. I’m just wasting good snooze time. Why the hell am I getting up, anyway? Can I get out of this meeting? Call in sick? Just quit suddenly and move to Barbados?
Mmm… Barbados. Reminds me of Barbasol. I’m gonna have to shave today. Gotta shave for those meetings, that’s for sure. Can’t be scruffy. Might be exhausted, but I can’t look it. How long did I sleep, anyway?
Let’s see… in bed at one, after looking for that stupid contact… that sucked. Never want to lose my contacts… lose contact… no… must gain contact… need human contact…
Hey. That’s weird. Why is Lucy Liu walking into my bedroom? And whoa — yeah, take it off, baby! Oh, yeah, slather on that tapioca pudding, girl! That looks tasty!
What? Do I want some of that? Well, you bet your sweet perky ass I do! Here I co —‘
*BRRREEEH!* *BRRREEEH!* *BRRREEEH!* *BRRREEEH!* *BRRREEEH!* *BRRREEEH!*
‘Damn. There’s that fucking alarm. I officially hate my life. Bleh.‘
And frankly, folks, that should have clued me in right there.I should have smashed the clock on the floor, Riverdanced on the damned thing for a while, pissed on the remnants, and crawled back into bed. Because it was all downhill from there.
I’ve taken up enough of your time already, so I’ll just whiz past the milestones I saw today — I paid three hundred dollars plus to get my dryer fixed, performed in a comedy show with an audience of two people (no shit, and here’s the kicker — the two were never in the room at the same time!), had my replacement contact pop out en route to the show and never go back in properly, meaning I had to drive one-eyed and half-blind for twenty miles each way, and then, to top it all off, decided to fight through the crowd situation (or lack thereof) at the show and deliver my jokes as best I could… and my videotape ran out mid-set.
There may be something there to salvage and show you tomorrow — I’m not really sure. I’m too tired and too blind to check it out now. (Though I do want to give mad props to our lone audience member at the time, Eric, who held the camera for me; you’re a good sport, Eric — the best one-man audience a motley group of comics could hope for.)
Anyway, enough of this pissy nonsense. While I’ve been bitching and ranting, it actually has become tomorrow, so hopefully my luck’s about to change. I’m off to bed now — after backdating this post first, naturally — and I’m sleeping as long as I goddamned please tomorrow, meetings and alarm clocks and tapioca-soaked Hollywood hellcats be damned. That oughta put me in better spirits. And I’ll get a replacement lens and be good as new before you know it. But for now, I’m calling it a night. Febrary fourth was no friend to me; here’s hoping my fifth — and yours — is one helluva lot better. Goodnight, and sleep tight, folks!
Permalink | 4 CommentsHey, all — just a short note to let you know that the King of the Blogs competition is under way again, after some sniping and griping and general tomfoolery the last go-round. The judging and scoring and such for the first week of the competition will happen over the next few days; in the meantime, if you’re interested, you can check out my humble entry for this week.
And yes, you regular readers, it just might look somewhat familiar, which is why I’ve linked it off the main page, rather than bore you with this particular window into my blackened, wretched soul again.
(Hush up, Amber. Shhh, shhhh, and shush! I’ve got no control over which questions they ask!
Just be cool, all right?)
Anyway, check it out — and go see all (well, okay, most) of the others’ contributions, too. I’ll be interested to see whether another snarkfest breaks out, but for now, Nick seems to have things pretty well in hand.
While I’m here, I’ll also take the opportunity to list my Blogger Idol ‘Picks o’ the Week’. This week’s topic was ‘A Day in the Life of…‘, and it spawned some very interesting posts, including these:
(As always, click the image for a list of all of this week’s Idol posts. It’s a veritable grab bag of goodness, folks!)
And again, if you haven’t read it yet, feel free to peruse my submission, about a day in the life of a professional comic. Oh, the places we’ll go!
So, anyway, that’s about it for now. Right now, there’s a big burly dude in my basement, fixing my dryer.
(Yeah, you know what? That is so not a euphemism. Ick.)
But I’ll be back sometime later — either before or after my Emerald Isle show tonight — to bring you… um, well, the sort of crap I always bring you. I’ve got nothing in mind yet — I’ll just pull something out of my ass and see what sticks.
(Eep! Note to self: when mixing metaphors, try and avoid beginning with those that contain the words ‘ass‘ or ‘stick‘ Yeeks.)
Okay, that’s it for now. I’m gonna go see how the dryer’s doing. The guy better work his magic on that thing today — I’m down to my last pair of clean undies, folks. If he can’t resurrect the thing, we may have something involving ‘ass‘ and ‘sticking‘ around here, after all. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.
Permalink | 1 CommentHey there, kiddies. If I may, I’d like to direct your attention over to Al at Shouting Into the Void. Al‘s come up with a brandy new meme, and I’m proud and thrilled to say that I’ve been selected as the very first participant!
(No, really, it’s very exciting! I’m all hard-on and jazz hands over here. Really.
Um, yeah. Too much sharing? Sorry. I’ll work on that.)
Anyway, here’s the jist… oh, no, wait, you know what? Screw the jist. I’ll give you the entire set of rules, right from the original post. (Jists are for babies.)
Okay, so I’ll be honest — I might cheat just a little, and post something on the same day as your post. You know, just to keep in practice. But mine’ll go up before your post, and you’ll have ‘top billing’ for at least 24 hours, just like Al said. So if you want to see your words here, in the seedy naked-lightbulb glow of the dive bar that is my blog, send me a topic. I’ll pick the one I like the best on… oh, let’s say Thursday evening. So get those thinking caps on, people — this space is for rent.
In the meantime, toddle on over to Shouting Into the Void, and check out Al‘s fantastic stuff. And if you’re up for it, take a look at my guest post while you’re there. As usual, it’s ridiculous, personally embarrassing, and extremely, extremely long. You won’t even know you’ve left. *sniff* Beautiful, ain’t it?
Permalink | No CommentsSo, me and Andy go way back, blogging-wise. August of last year, maybe. Perhaps even July.
I had only been blogging for a month or two, and Andy even less, I think. We were both on Blogger at the time. I still am, as a matter of fact. But Andy… well, he’s moved on to bigger and better software.
(Or perhaps bellsier and whistlier. I can’t really say.
No, really. ‘Bellsier‘. I’m not sure I can say it, physically, at all. My tongue just doesn’t move that way.)
Anyway, I was curious to see what the extra freedom would do for Andy, what new content he’d concoct, which new features he’d create. And I didn’t have to wait long. Hoo boy, no I didn’t.
For you see, folks, our dear boy Andy has decreed the month just started to be Facial Hair February. He’ll be keeping a running log of his progress, with daily ‘State of the Face‘ posts.
(At least, he’d damned well better call them that, unless he can think of something better. That’s pure comedy bronze, folks!)
Apparently, young Andy‘s not the fastest hair grower on the face (heh!) of the planet. Two days in, and I’m afraid he’s got little to show for his efforts. Or lack of efforts in the form of shaving. Whatever.
Look, the point is that you should go check it out. Partly because he’s a good guy, and deserves your attention. Partly because this is one of the few things I’ve seen out there in the blogosphere that outweirds some of the shit that I’ve done. But mainly to suggest to our dear friend a better name for his little experiment.
(Personally, I’m in favor of ‘When Hairy Met Andy‘. It makes me giggle. But that’s just me. Go tell him your idea, too — maybe he’ll have a contest or something. The winner could get a lock of beard, if he manages to grow one in the next twenty-six and a half days.
Ooh, ooh, and the booby prize could be his ‘soul patch’!
Um… yeah. You know, that’s one of those sentences where there seem to be a lot of good words floating around, but in the order I put ’em, they just sound creepy. I think it’s time we left that little incident behind us.)
So, anyway, go check out the ‘Facial Hair February‘ extravaganza over at Walking Stick. (There’s even a cool little icon that I just might have to find room for over here.) And tell Andy I sent ya.
(Just don’t tell him I said he doesn’t have any hair yet. He’s very proud of his fledgeling stubble, from what I understand.
Enjoy it while it lasts, Andy, old boy — soon enough, you’ll be growin’ that shit way too fast in places you don’t even want to dream about. Places they don’t make trimmers or waxes for, either. Fear the hair, baby. Fear it!)
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