Listen, I hate to say it but... I don't remember you.

"C'mon dude! We were here last time you were here and we took you downtown and we got thrown out of that tittie bar.." I don't remember. "We bought you like 9 shots, dude! You don't remember??? No kidding. I don't remember quite a bit. I've forgotten names of close friends at the crucial moment of introducing them to someone else I've forgotten and had to fake shitting my pants to get out of the situation.

It's very scary and somewhat emabarrassing. I've seen "Memento" twice without knowing how it ends. Scary.

15 years of different faces every night. Drinks and jokes and some drugs on the side careening into morning radio. Have I done this show before? Have I done it a lot? I'd ask the club manager but I don't remember if he was here last time I was here.

Beauty Destroyed

Add into this the internet and there's way too many fucking people and now they don't even have names. "You know me. I'm 'Caligulas_knothole313' from the message board." Ok, then. And now I'm on MySpace endlessly looking at people. Why the fuck am I looking at people I don't know? I don't remember the ones I already know and like. Granted not many of them are goth chicks with latex skirts and their hands over their nipples but I'm 160 years old in MySpace years and the angry, bi-trendy S&M chicks aren't looking to watch Monday Night Football with me in Bisbee, AZ. "Keep an eye on my beer, Malice, I gotta take a shit and call my bookie."

I just called a guy to apologize for not getting back to him about a newspaper interview.

"We did the interview. It's already out."

These lapses in memory become extremely difficult in domestic conflicts, as chicks will always spin what you've said to fit their stupid argument. And if you don't remember what you said, you can't tell how they are misrepresenting it.

That's why it's important to write more, talk less and take a lot of pictures. Especially when drinking. The day-after creeper memories come in waves. You wake up and you remember you were at that one bar next door where you could smoke. A little bit later after coffee in the Super 8 lobby you remember who drove you home and make mental note in invisible ink to thank them. Early afternoon the vague recollection of some phone calls drifts through your head and you check your cell phone for the last ten calls.

You apologize when appropriate.

And you think its all come back to you when you walk into the club and you see that one face - a waiter, a local comic, whoever - that brings the rest of it crashing back like a nose-punch. You were squatting on the bar, egg-bagging some girls vodka drink while she was in the toilet because she didn't laugh when you made fun of her miscarriage. Somehow this memory has escaped you all day long and the instant recall makes you jump like a nightmare in an afternoon nap.

So please keep in mind that I might not remember you and it's no reflection on how much I like you or how much fun we had. Its only that I have overloaded my pickled brain with too many faces and ridiculous stories that only so many can live at one time.

If I see you and don't immediately high-five you, if I avert eye contact and hustle to the green room its not because I'm "all Hollywood and shit". It may be because you do in fact look familiar and I can't immediately tell if you were with the girl who's drink I tainted with my hangy scrote-sock.

The Last Day of Summer

Another summer has been shot through the heart and I haven't seen Montana in four years. I guess folks in Montana probably think they should have spent their time more appropriately as well. If you've ever done a Tribble Run, you miss Montana in the summer. It feels like being younger. Like being young.

Not that you can't still call up a hooker here and again to get that sparkle back. Just don't expect the industry has changed.

Hookers in America.    No customer service.

Hotel Derek

The Hotel Derek is all things Ikea and posh, ready for the guy with a boring job and a black suit to show up and turn American Psycho. This is where the Comedy Club puts you up because they know you will be doing coke and the Derek has lots of glass surfaces. Ikea and coke are like chocolate and peanut butter so I bought 50 dollars worth. Now the green room was full of folks all week - not posse folks like for Earthquake - just mostly busted comics who needed free beer. But still too many noses for the blow-ses at the time I hooked up so I waited until I was back at the hotel to indulge.

I've purchased cocaine before so do not see this as an excuse. But many times after a show, folks will offer you free drugs and you take them. It a courtesy to the giver. I used to refuse marijuana until i realized what an affront to the common man this could be. Then I realized that if I didn't want it, someone else would. And I took it. So when this young gentleman asked if I wanted some cocaine, I said that i certainly would. I didn't know he was "selling" it. So to avoid embarrassment I asked for the smallest amount, which was 50 bucks worth.

The same night I was given a vicodin and a small baggie of hydroponic mushrooms. They said not to take more than two of these tiny things and there had to be ten.

I gave away the vicodin.

Skip to the hotel and the beer drifting into the coke and the coke shaking off with the shrooms and the decision to call a prostitute.

Again an excuse but I wouldn't have necessarily called a prostitute without the goading of a good friend. My friend who shall remain nameless - and you know how hard that is for me - was on the phone as I was doing my internet-jack preliminary work. That's how it works. Coke can make contact with your teenage hormones like a psychic can talk to the dead. A psychic can bullshit you into believing that they are communicating with a relative that has passed. Coke can make you believe that you can bang a hooker although your dick couldn't feel a rat gnawing the cap off of it.

As I have experience with these dilemmas - I can peruse the whores online and get enough of a vicarious thrill just knowing I could fuck this chick with the blurred-out face with a simple phone call and that knowledge alone can get me on track to a fruitless coke-yank without spending a dime.

So as my good friend yammered on the phone forever, I got my Escort google-orgy in line. Then the phone hung up and I was asked what I was doing.

"Looking at hookers", I say. "Lets get one!" she says. "Okey-doke" says a man with experience. And with another bump, we go thru the many photos and decide on the perfect gal-pal, for what reason we never stopped to think. This good friend is just that and what we would do together in the same room as a prostitute would only lead to back-breaking shame but we are already into the shrooms. Shame has been moved to tomorrow. We pick a girl, make a call, get no answer or a price that is too high and we go back to rambling drug-talk before calling the next. By the time we get one on the phone, 400 dollars seems like a small price to pay, especially when she says she is buying. Vixen is her name. "I'll be there by 4 am." she tells me. "Um... its 5 am." "Oh shit. I guess I'll be there by 6."

Vixen

And we have a bump and wait. We hooker-proof the room, hiding any valuables and tidying up a bit. We speed-talk about what is to come - my good friend has never come close to getting a hooker and is thrilled at the prospect of a new experience and my horny has left for the prospect of funny. I explain the inherent shame that will come in the morning for spending 400 dollars, no matter what should come of this. She doesn't care. You never care when you do drugs. That's why drugs - alcohol included and most guilty - have a bad name. Not the feeling you get but the lengths you will take it to.

We talk and fret and open more beer. She gets a migraine and I start to trip. She showers and I second-guess. It's 6:15 and I tell her not to talk so loud as Vixen may be walking down the hall any second. It's 6:42 and we begin to think that Vixen isn't showing up. It's 7:15 and we know that Vixen has beaten us out of a story but back into 400 dollars. I'm tripping balls and get into the tub. My great friend goes back to her room and orders more Advil to stop her head from popping off.

It's 9:30 before I give up on beating my cold penis into a corner and go to bed until noon when football starts. Gambling is a different addiction altogether.        ~Stanhope The "good friend" referred to in the above story is not who you think it is. I see where some of you would just assume if you were around that week but you would be wrong. It was no one you have met, seen or heard.

30 Days of Rust

Comedy is like riding a bicycle. After you lost your license to a DUI and have no other mode of transportation. And you live 14 miles from work. In the Appalachians. With gout and a prosthetic lung and a fat girl is riding in the basket and she won't stop ringing the bell. Etc, etc. That's how it felt doing comedy after a month off. No CNN to fuel my hate and the internet porn kink of "cock-fingering" isn't popular enough to get laughs.

15 years in this business and every time your head goes dry you will swear it's the end. I'll never be funny again. 1,000 times you go through it but every time seems like the 'one'.

CNN fueling the hate

Sometimes it seems like you're just re-writing the same shit over and over, change a name and a place and add a new bodily fluid or sexual act and call it the new stuff. You bring it out and sell it with the confidence of a man trading puke for new shoes and go home knowing that this time you really have lost it.

I'm a fraud, I'm a loser and every word that drops from my tongue is dogshit. 1,000 times it's happened and every time you find that joke, that moment or topic or simple phrase and all of a sudden you can't get out of a notebook. Everything is gold and you are so excited just to say it out loud that you even book Dayton. It's coming. I'm sure of it. It better because I already booked Dayton in anticipation.

"Charlatan!!!"

~ stanhope