Valentine's Day

It's Valentine's day and I am in love. That Renee finally caved in after all these months and years of chasing her and it's about good Goddamned time. It's also nice to finally have a girlfriend that's not "good for me". I always get the "she's really good for you" girlfriends, which means they give you tons of shit for all your vices and dubious side work. This girl is horrible for me in all the right ways and will go down with me in flames when I go. There's a big difference between someone who accepts you for who you are and someone who actually understands who you are. This girl has all my demons and I am happy as pinworms in a black baby's stool.

The new CD should be ready on February 25th in time for Aspen and I think it might suck. I always hate my CD's and now I already hate this one. Who fucking knows. If you think it sucks I'll dump off the first run of 1,000 as a "collectors item" and record again in May with all the new fun war shit that was just getting going when I did the CD in October. Problem is finding 1,000 people who are into my shit. Hard to sell cd's to walkouts without putting the stage in front of the door.

Again, for you cheap fucks with lots of time - download my shit off Audio Galaxy. I recommended morpheus before but evidently it's not as good at finding my shit as it is great for porn.

In the upcoming Aspen Comedy Festival, I will be doing a show "Regarding 9-11" where the question of how 9-11 has effected comedy or the recurring "When will it be ok to do comedy again?" question will be widely discussed.

I put quite a bit of thought into that question. When will it be ok to do comedy again? The best answer I could come up with was this.

June 8th.

That's when it will be ok.

Considering in the five months since the attack, the death toll has fallen from 6,700 consistently down to now 2,800. I figure at that rate on or around June 8th no one will be dead anymore.

Then, let the jokes begin.

Even today when you consider the drop - 6,700 down to 2,800 - that's a difference of 3,900 people that are now undead. We have gained 1,100 more people than we lost. And they need jokes.

Why do death tolls always start high and go lower? Because the media is a pessimist? No, because death, if it doesn't directly effect you, is entertainment. The more dead, the more entertaining, the more papers it sells. No one rubbernecks at a car wreck to make sure everyone's 'ok'.

They even add death tolls where there aren't any. They'll say so many people died from a blizzard when they collapsed of a heart attack while shovelling snow. They didn't die from the blizzard, they died from cheese.

I remember the Olympic bombing in Atlanta where they claimed two people died when one of those people was a cameraman whose heart blew out while he was running toward the blast to exploit the person who actually died from the bomb.

And if people aren't directly effected they will always try to attach themselves to the tragedy. Everyone playing Six Degrees of Separation from 9-11.

"My sister's ex-fiance went to school with a guy who almost took a job at the World Trade Center and he could have been in there so that's not funny."

It's ok to do comedy now and it's been ok and comedy has actually occured all over the place - in barrooms and at kitchen tables and in break rooms and all over behind the backs of the people who are truely affected or would just get cunty about it. Just because it doesn't fall into a network slot between Friends and Leno doesn't mean it ain't comedy. It's ok for Leno to do comedy again when the Geico gecco tells him it is.

If you're gonna be in Vegas in March come to my birthday show - Tuesday, March 26th at 8pm until we all fall down at Tommy Rocker's.

Costa Rica, Part 1

This is the email I get from Mat Becker right before I fly down to meet him and his wife Becky for a week in Costa Rica :

OK I hope you get this.

Bring clove cig. for Becky Dejarum (?) Couple more Copenhegans and when you land

you must now go to Golfito it is a town to the north.

We sent Becky and Shawn north but the roads are so bad we can´t get back to you in San Jose. We are at the air port in Golfito waiting for you. AS SOON AS YOU LAND GET YOUR BAGS AND TELL SOMEONE YOU NEED A FLIGHT TO GOLFITO ON TRAVELAIR OR SANSA. THIS IS NOT A JOKE YOU WILL SEE WHEN YOU GET HERE. IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CALL ANYONE SO IF YOU NEED TO MAKE ANY CALLS MAKE THEM NOW.OH YES BRING SUN BLOCK. THE PRICES SWING ALL OVER THE PLACE. WHEN YOU LAND GET ON A PLANE. BRING COPENHEGAN SUN BLOCK

AND CLOVE CIG. FLY (ONE WAY TICKET$55-85.00) TO GOLFITO. WE ARE AT THE HOTEL SIERRA TEL:775-0666 or 775-0336 in room 202. No phone but they have an alligator. Get ready to go back in time about fifty years. MAT (I hope you get this) ps hope you get this

His wife being there is the only reason I'm not sure we will soon wind up playing jug and washboard in the San Jose All-Prison Band and now I realize I forgot her cigarettes. The flight to Golfito was fucked, a 12-seater single prop landing on a dirt runway like I was a Colombian drug-runner. No airport, just some guy with one arm missing at the shoulder with an orange cone. Hotel is right off to the side, alligator and all.

Golfito is not, as Becker said, to the north. It's south, down near Panama. But it doesn't matter cuz we're leaving immediately. Mat is a bit of a paranoid and is sure "something fucked up" is going on wherever he is. And of course something fucked up is going on in Golfito so we check out, load up the rental and drink warm Pilsen beer as we tool up the windy jungle roads to Dominical, a little surfer hang out two hours north.

Mat is a bit of a paranoid and is sure "something fucked up" is happening wherever he is. And of course something fucked up is going on in Golfito so we to check out, load up the rental and drink more warm Pilsen as we tool up the windy jungle roads to Dominical, a little surfer hang out two hours north.

We get a room with a double and single bed for 45 bucks right on the dirt road that parallels the beach and I can barely manage to stay awake for the sunset. Between the travel and the beer I'm out by 6, half-hanging off the hammock outside the room. I wake up later that night about 10:30 to find the town is shut down. Completely. Not even a Coke machine. And I'm wide awake. I eat some cookies Becker had left on the nightstand (possibly for Santa, knowing Becker) and then break the first rule of travel by drinking the water. No mind. The way I drink beer, firm stool is something I've grown accustomed to living without.

Email home:

buenos huervos - spent 10,000 colones on pogo stick tour of kilamanjaro before thinking to look at a globe - waited two hours for him to come back with my change - still waiting -

current exchange rate; 2 dollar american-style breakfast equal to 4 days violent intestinal disorder -

local fashion for ladies is heft and they are wearing it spillingly! -

balls constantly clung to inner thigh - unsure if cause is humidity or if they're just plain scared -

must go bring jesus to locals as well as small pox

puente mal en estade,

douglas stanhope

In the morning we head North again to Quepos to the Tulemar Bungalows, octagonal bungalows overlooking the coast where monkeys regularly come right up out of the jungle that surrounds the pool/bar area. No monkeys came when I was there. They knew better. I been in this jungle without a woman for far too long.

Tonite we pace ourselves and are shitfaced by 7 instead of 6, hanging around the hotel bar watching the sunset and fucking with some tourists before heading into town. Town isn't much but a couple dozen bars but they had some slip-shod carnival going on - a pick-up-and-go type of thing that you'd see in any shithole Burlington, Iowa town in middle America. Becker and I cruised thru - opting to not take any chances with the "El Whirlo De Tilto" - and see a guy taking tickets at the door of this sheet metal ramshackled arena. I look in and see some kinda rodeo shit so we pay about 3 bucks and head in.

The place has about 6 rows of benches in a wide circle around the arena and looks like its built for cock-fights or Russian Roulette matches. About 6 feet down to the floor is this bullfighting/rodeo event where a guy rides the bull out of the gate until he gets thrown and then a couple of low rent matadors fuck with it like crazy.

Thing is, there's about a dozen other people in the ring just running like hell from the bull and we realize that they are just people from the crowd. One of them is some American frat-boy shit-stick who waits for the bull to get lassoed up before taunting it and kicking dirt at it. No wonder people hate us. I ask the guy behind me if anyone can go in the ring and he says yes but I can't tell if he's fucking with me. Sarcasm is the last thing to transcend the language barrier.

We say "fuck it" and head back down the stairs and under the stands and sneak out thru the fence into the ring where we wait for the next bull. The fence is three wooden slats that people in the ring have been climbing up for safety when the bull comes at em but I'm not much of a climber and I'm drunk so I spot where there's enough room to go under if need be.

The first bull comes out and I jump to run and immediately slip in the gravel, eating shit and taking lots of skin off my hands and knees. The people are laughing with me, not at me, I'm sure of it. When the bull comes my way I dive under the fence, losing more skin and realizing I need a better plan. I find a place where there is a 2 foot vertical gap in the fence where I can slip thru if need be and set up camp.

When the bull finally does come my way, I just stand my ground and eyeball it. I'm drunk and think I'm Doctor Dolittle as this thing stops completely and stares me down from 5 feet away. For a moment he is peaceful and can obviously see that I am not like the others, that I mean him no harm. I'm sure of it.

Then it starts to get riled up again as I see red banners being shook at him over my shoulder right in front of my face. Some little cunt of a gold-toothed man was behind me, jammed into my escape route waving fucking red at the bull. I knock him out of the way as the thing comes at me and wish I knew at least one Spanish vulgarity.

He does it again on the next bull and I tell him very slowly "I will punch you in the face very hard." I know he doesn't speak English but the cop behind him does and gives me the appropriate stink-eye and we decide to leave.

We spend the next few days on the beach in Jaco, drinking beer and taking it easy. Took a zip-line tour of the rainforest, racing over a cable on a pulley from tree-house to tree house a hundred feet over the jungle floor. Becker was laid up for a day thereafter riding a Bogey board head-wise into the ocean floor. Took hair right off his head. Found out real quick that you can get pain-killers easy with no prescription. We all slept well from there on in.

Email home:

Arroz con Chorizo Chino!

After a wonderful morning of breakfast at Bob's Big Boy and souvenir shopping at Big K and Ross Dress For Less, we realize we are not in Costa Rica but Costa Mesa / Continued south after strong words with travel agent /

Newsflash! Becker goes head and neckwise into ocean floor in a 6 foot wave / concern for his wellbeing usurped by knowledge of readily available muscle relaxers with no prescription / not the panacea we had hoped as local diet requires some muscles, ie sphincter, to remain ever vigilant/

Today's exchange rate: One American picture is worth 38,160 Costa Rican words /

Locals drink Coke from old style glass bottles / impossible to figure out which one is God /

Upcoming presidential election all the talk / Have declared ourselves Perez men through and through and will have words with any who say otherwise / Lack of a Perez on the ballot is of no concern to us /

Coming Soon ... Paralyzing blood vomits.

Missing you very much

Douglas Gene Stanhope

We head back toward the city on the highway of death. The major highway that runs thru the country is a windy two lane that's more like a 1 /12/ lane that they somehow turn into a three lane. It's like Laurel Canyon, only here the guy in the flatbed pig-hauler ahead of you isn't losing his cell phone reception to his agent. The only reason there aren't more deaths is that it's rare you see a car in good enough condition to achieve the power to kill.

Becky is so frazzled by the three hour drive that we take the first easy hotel we see in the city - The Airport Hampton Inn - which we'd seen signs for 100 times during the drive up, like big American herpes dotted across the otherwise clear beautiful ass of Costa Rica. In times of frustration it's natural to move toward something familiar. We should have just stopped for a beer. The Hampton Inn sucked all the flavor straight out of the last 5 days and sanitized it for our protection. We plopped down 100 bucks for a room and I was immediately back on the road in Omaha, Dayton, Charlotte or a million other places watching CNN and getting mad at the world.

We had to get in city mode and that would first require beer. Then we got a shuttle to the mall and finally found Becky's clove cigarettes so everyone was happy. Our hotel shuttle driver, Geraldo, recommends the Blue Marlin at the Del Rey Hotel in San Jose for a good time. It says Hotel Casino on the sign but this is a whorehouse first and foremost. Wall to wall. Whores. And some really good looking ones. I'd heard about the hookers down here from many people but just the term "Costa Rican Whore" conjures images of bedraggled street-walkers with wiggly teeth and eye-rotting syphillis. Not the case at all. I been to whorehouses in Nevada and this place was in a different league all together. I decided this is where I have to stay on the next night, my last night before leaving. Fuck that Hampton Inn.

We played roulette, drank beer and watched whores for a few hours til Geraldo came back, just in time before we may have put Becky on the market. There's a tittie bar across from the Hampton so we pop in for a nightcap. Empty, dingy and dark with barely a half-dozen folks in there - we're immediately set upon by two Filipino girls who want drinks real bad. Must not have drank in days these girls. Of course their drink cost ten bucks a piece but I'd just won 50,000 colones (150 bucks sounds like so much less) in roulette so why not play the game. Becky whipped out the camera and I was surprised that they let us take pictures at all til I realized that ten bucks could buy a lot in this country, maybe even their freedom. Lap dances here are done fully clothed, the only place they get naked is on stage which is conveniently the darkest spot in the bar. As much as they talked about their babies, I'm sure that's a good thing.

Becky and Mat still had a week left here and we parted ways in the morning - them North to the rain forests and me just into the city to whore country. But not before we noticed the many signs in the Hampton Inn saying "100 % Satisfaction Guarantee!" And we weren't satisfied. I had been told that they had Internet service when I checked in but it was down all night. Therefore I was only 95 % satisfied and told them so. The girl was dumbstruck and bickered before getting her supervisor who did the same but finally caved in and gave me my money back. He was really pissed. Fuck him. This hotel is for the guy who kicked dirt on a tied-up bull and I hope you both die from lymphoma.

Email home:

Una Via Adelante!

Have sent the Beckers on their way and am now in the city - was stuck behind two steers pulling heavy farm equpiment on road yesterday, last night had one of them for dinner. It was like eating Jack Lalane -

Today's exchange rate = 34 colones for your thoughts

They call this a third world country but I can't see how it even made the top ten

100 whores downstairs in Hotel Del Ray Casino - for 50 American I make them wear your headshot like mask and speak words of love and devotion - your Spanish is excellent -

Back Wednesday at 4 unless locals draw up petiton campaign for me to stay -

Room spinning now from muchas horas on roulette wheel - 7 is considered the devil's number and I am believed a witch

asta lambada

douglas stanhope perez

The last day was perfect. Saw a midget waiter in the Hotel Del Rey lobby and knew it was a good omen. Walked around the city, ate on sidewalk cafes reading the New York Times from the day before like I was some kinda man of the world. Nothing can make bad music good like love, death and foriegn countries. I cried like a cunt after my Dad died listening to "Leader of the Band" by Dan Fogelberg, possibly the worst song ever wriiten and now I'm jumping around at the black jack table to "I Love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jett. Played more roulette, watched more whores. I like whores, I'm comfortable around whores. But it's difficult to drink a beer at the place in peace cuz it's always the skaggiest whores who have to hard sell and won't leave you alone. The good ones don't have to bug you, you would go to them. So to sit and drink a beer by yourself was to invite the most desperate and ugly of the pack to plead with you in bad English. I'd tell them I was just leaving. Then they would see me still there later and give me shitty looks. I asked the bartender for a polite way to turn them down.

"Just tell em "Otra dias", he says, "other days".

My flight left early the next morning. Coming thru customs at LAX was like walking from out of a blow job and into a AA meeting. Stink-eyed and finger fucked ever which way. Where were you? What towns? Who'd you go with? Who'd you see? Where are they now? Questions that are none of their fucking business. Free fucking country my ass. If you wanna know if I have drugs - search my fucking bag and shut the fuck up, you fucking low-life wart on a chicken's dick.. I pray to your dirty Jesus that all of your family members die in a fiery snowmobile wreck and the youngest ones live without legs.

"What's your occupation?" he asks finally.

"I'm a stand up comic. I make fun of you." I answer and am sent to the line to have my bag, full with the sweet stinking remnants of moldy, sand-filled, dirty Costa Rican vacation clothes picked thru like a Dollar Store shit.

Happy New Year, Dopes.

And thus begins the journal on this site, one I plan to keep up regularly - just like i plan on losing weight and cutting down on the smokes and exercising and getting younger.

I spent the week up to New Years as I often do, blown out of my tit on a wide assortment of narcotics in the Great State of Alaska. I got to Anchorage X-mas night around last call, making it the only night I didn't go to sleep reeling in intoxication. More on the drugs and cruel sodomy later.

The Year In Review, 2001, was more good than bad, even taking into account the death of my father and that this is the first year I got a sunburn on my scalp. Betsy gave me an overdue out of our relationship in June just in time for that old Renee to come creeping back around. I always fall madly in love with her and she's not nearly as into it as I am. You all know what a drag that can be. She still comes around and gives me false hope and I still bite but in the meanwhile it ain't like I kept my dick in a jug.

The break-up left a brief lull for a short while like they always do followed by a multi-state pooning spree that made me think comedy was actually fun again. Thanks to all those involved. Every time I fuck myself into a relationship, I realize that I'd had the perfect life all along. I have met and now know some of the most incredible women you can imagine and occasionally we fuck. Never an argument, never the stink-eye, never a problem. No judgments or jealousy. Perfect. Until some Renee shows up and takes a gorgeous dump on the whole idea.

Taped a new CD in October which should be ready in February, although it'll be with a temporary cover. The artwork won't get done til April. Title is "Die Laughing". Fuck off if you don't like it. In the meantime, buy my old ones here or, if you're a cheap fuck and have time, you can usually grab tracks off of Morpheus. If you don't have it, it's better than Napster. Get it at Music City.

I was returning from a Tribble run in Montana with Mat Becker, proof positive that you can't go home again, when I heard about the WTC attacks. Wild shit but after the last year or two of reading alternative press and, for lack of a better term, conspiracy theorists, it is impossible for any sane person to jump on the flag-happy mongoloid bus.

If you do anything worthwhile today, order "You Are Being Lied To" from Disinfo. It's a compilation of essays from 40-some authors ranging from Zinn to Chomsky regarding the disinformation you're fed daily from Jesus to OKC, from the public school system, mass media to the war on drugs and much more. It'll fuck up everything you thought you knew about. Then keep reading from there. Educate yourself.

Back to Alaska. I've being going up to Anchorage for 6 years now, every year for the holidays as well as other trips during the year. The first trip will have to go in a story by itself. Most of the good Alaska stories I don't tell without witnesses present, as they seem to far-fetched. It really is the last frontier.

Every year since '95 we've had a traditional ecstacy party during Christmas week, about 12 - 15 of us that get together at a house and boil our brains with drugs, love and partial nudity. It's what I look forward to every year.

Last year we had to skip it, too many of the main players having personal life-shit going down. This year we doubled up. In six days I polluted myself with coke, x, shrooms, pot, xanax, loritab and more liquor than a dozen sweatshop livers could process in a Jakarta workweek.

I'm not a big drug guy during the year, mostly just a drunk. Rules don't apply in Alaska and it's funny, I always feel better after a drug binge than a regular night on the sauce. The later parts of 2001 brought a nice run of mushrooms, though, and I would do mushrooms any day of the week without hesitation. Was eating 'em right on stage in Vancouver where they make em into chocolates. Nice trip that night, building fires on the waterfront with some hobo.

So I thought it would be fun to do shrooms on stage in Alaska for New Years Eve. The crowds I get there are small, room only seats about 60-70, and most of them are familiar with what I do so I didn't see where it could go that wrong. Of course, I never took into account New Years Eve crowds. Although the room I play at Chilkoot Charlies may be small, the bar itself is a combination of 8 different bars under one low ceiling and people will wait in line at 20 below on weekends to get in. Add New Years Eve and you have a mass wandering pig sty of losers and rookies wandering in and out, blowing horns and not ready to accept that this is just another night in their miserable lives. Mushrooms are not the right drug for this night. Other drugs make YOU fucked up. Shrooms make other people fucked up to you. And these people didnt even try to disguise it.

Becker is shrooming too but can't tell anyone cuz he's gotta bartend there after doing the show. He goes up to do his 20 minutes, freaks out after two jokes and bails. I go up and freak out after about four jokes but am forced to suffer thru another hour with the owner and his Mom sitting right up front. Talk about buzzkill.

I eat another big cap and stem right after I get off stage and head for the loft bar above the south side where my friend Colleen's disco band is about to play. The place is a wall-to-wall nightmare. I sit in the far corner with a few of my friends who are stuck being go-go dancers for the band and are as thrilled as I am to be there. Some are X-ing, some are tripping, others just getting sauced. All of us are waiting fro the countdown so we can get the fuck out. At some point I had to piss violently but couldn't bring myself to make the long walk from the loft bar thru the maze of jugheads to a bathroom. JJ, the world's greatest lesbian and her galpal Jax, trippers on the pro circuit, said not to worry and produced a plastic party hat and held it for me at groin level so that i could empty off the urgent part of my bladder. Never batted an eye. Just handed it to Bart behind the bar and asked him to throw it away. Bart used to trip before the cunt got married. He knows how things go, scowl or no scowl.

One little girl with a pierced tongue who has been hanging out all week is liqoured up and dancing all over me. She screams "victim" and I tell her so. She just smiles and writhes some more.

At midnight we all hit the stage and yell an uninspired happy new year and I grab this girl and head for the door. My friend Longo is fullfilling her go-go obligation and says she'll meet up with us at my hotel when she's done firing off the toilet paper cannon into the mob.

I eat a few more stems into the room and start making a subtle play for the victim girl, who tells me "Stop acting like you've never done this before " as she starts undoing my pants. She's got me there.

My bags are packed for my flight that leaves in about five hours. One of those bags was filled with a full inventory of smut-shop sex toys, the bag that I'd packed and purposely brought up as a carry-on hoping to make a spectacle of airport security. It hadn't been searched but it was certainly gonna come in handy now.

The girl tells me she wants to be tied up and I was glad to oblige but I was just too fucked up to figure out all the clasps and ties and whatnot so I eventually had one hand in a wrist-to-thigh restraint and the other wasn't tied to anything so I jut held it behind her back. Nothing Houdini couldn't get out of, but then again, Houdini wasn't getting fucked in the ass during any of his escape attempts.

I spend some more time stuffing different latex items in different holes, more out of high amusement than anything else, when there's a knock on the door. Longo! I open the door spook-eyed with a boner and a smile. "You gotta watch this!" and I know if there's some who like to watch , it's Longo. Unfortunatley she has her drug-buddy Dean with her which instantly robs me of a nice Viagra-free hard-on.

They aren't so fucked up and agree to take over the duty of tying up this poor youngster. Nobody bats an eye at this shit in Alaska. Just another weird day. They start twsiting up bed sheets and pulling out television cables and before you know, girlie is pinned wrists and ankles, butt naked and spread out like a snow angel.

"I wanna watch you fuck her." says Longo, more like she's studying apes than in any sexual way but a turn-on none the less. Unfortunately Dean does too and he's a big goofy Flounder from Animal House and he's ruining it.

I try jabbing her once or twice but I cant get past the audience and I'm laughing too much so Longo and Dean head to the after-party at Colleens and I dump one off in this sweet young girls rectum, re-pack and head for the party.

Happy New Year

It might help to know that a couple days prior this same girl drove me and Becker to get colonics after doing morning radio. We'd met a girl at the Thursday show who, after I complained yet again about my pained liver, suggested we come to her work for a nice, detoxifying colonic. We obliged and I had the victim and Becker both in the room when I was told to "Lift your cheek, you're going to feel some pressure." They laughed for the next 45 minutes and I was violated and pumped free of "toxins". When it was Mat's turn to go, straddled and sweating on the table in his gown, the fucking hot water heater had gone south and they couldn't do it. Motherfucker. never let Mat Becker go second.

Point being, it was a nice feeling when I eventually said to the victim girl, "Lift your cheek, your going to feel some pressure."

We go to Colleen's where its always very mellow and suck down a handful of nitris hits to take the edge off. Whippits on shrooms are a beautiful near death experience that can't be good for you at all. I did all I could.

I got out for my 6 am flight and it was all I could do not to just turn around, get in a cab and stay in Alaska forever. It's harder and harder to leave that place every time I go.

I took a Xanax and a half before I got on the plane and didn't wake up til the plane hit dirt in LA.

I never felt better.

My New Years resolution had been to try and save more money but i think I may try to do more drugs as well. Maybe spend more time in Alaska in the summer.

In the meantime, I'll be heading to Costa Rica on the 16th with Becker for a week.

Remember, it's not whether you win or lose - as long as you wake up with a good story.