Heroes

Anyone here remember the good old days when cops were dicks and everyone knew it?

Now they are part of the fastest growing ethnic population in America - Heroes!

Good fuck, heroes are everywhere, popping up like genital warts on a toad’s dick. Everyone’s a fucking hero. Just look for a uniform and when you spot one, drop down and suck his dick.

Go ahead and tell me how cops risk their lives to protect us. They may risk their lives but it has nothing to do with their personal desire to protect you. There may be the rare instance. Better chance that he took the job so he could jam a toilet plunger so far up your ass that it knocks off your NYPD hat. Cops are fucks and it’s not just a few bad apples. The good cops know exactly who the bad cops are and don’t do dick about it. The ones who even think about doing something about it are drummed out of the league before the can ever lift a finger to point it. Those are the good cops and they’re probably pumping gas now.

Serpico was a hero. The rest of them should get lupus.

Military? I’m sure there are lots of folks in the military with good intentions. There’s also a bunch who would trade their own asshole for a chance to kill someone on the battlefield. I remember during the Persian Gulf war there were lines of flag-toting yahoos spilling into the recruiters office hoping to get a gun before all the fun was over. Was it because America was at risk? To protect our freedom? Not even a pie-face retard thought for one second that that war was about anything other than oil but they still wanted to fight. Wanted to.

The Cambridge dictionary describes heroics as “unusual actions or achievements that are far greater than expected”. What fireman doesn’t expect to go into a burning building or would consider it unusual?

A guy walking down the street on his way to his job lumping boxes at UPS passes a burning building and, on knee-jerk reaction, runs in and saves your baby or your goldfish - that guy is a hero. A guy who trains and tests for years and busts his balls so that one day he may one day have the opportunity to run into a house fire is plain fucking nuts. One of my best friends is a fireman. When he didn’t pass the physical portion of the test on his first try he was devastated to the point of tears and it wasn’t because people were on fire and he was helpless to do anything about it. He, like other firemen, wanted the job, craved the excitement and prestige and needs the thrill-seeking in his life. If he hadn’t made the department I’m sure he’d be doing other crazy shit like skydiving or wrestling alligators. Dale Earnhardt didn’t drive around in circles at 300 miles per hour out of selfless compassion for people’s need for entertainment.

I’m not inferring that the public does not benefit greatly from their job. Just remember that one man’s greatest sacrifice is another man’s thrill of a lifetime.

That's why it's especially sad to see the grieving families on the news. “He loved his children and he loved going to church. He like playing baseball with underprivileged kids.” Ya, you know what else he liked? RUNNING INTO BURNING BUILDINGS!!! Nutty fucker. Maybe he should’ve quit that with the cigarettes before he started a family.

People always tell me that I must have a lot of balls to stand on a stage because it’s scary to them. I obviously have a pre-disposition for it and some ugly need for attention. And if I wasn’t funny I’d be pulling my dick out on street corners or singing karaoke.

stanhope

From The Road

The last three days I have spent locked in a house with four other comics being filmed 24 hours a day and it may have been the most needed vacation I’ve had (save for Costa Rica). The project is a reality show for NBC called Comic House, basically Big Brother with all comedians and a spoof slant. This was just a presentation pilot, meaning that it still has to be picked up. If it does, we go back in for a month and that’d be fine by me. I’ve been on the road nearly straight since February and it has officially sucked the life out of me.

The slow drain came to a head last week at the final night of the Chicago Comedy Festival when I closed the Murderers Row show by telling the crowd to fuck off and get out, which they gladly did.

I had been booked outside of Chicago at a new room called The Comedy Spot in Schaumberg at the same time as the festival and it was worked out so that I could stay in the city and be shuttled down to Shaumberg and then back for late shows in the fest.

I am tired of traveling.

I am tired of hearing myself talk.

People are tired of hearing me talk.

Four months on the road and now for the third night in a row I am sitting in horrible Chicago traffic getting between shows, my wife sick and in pain beside me and I can’t remember ever being funny or why I even wanted to.

We get to Zanie’s and the place is jammed. The line-up is one of the best I have seen at any festival and they are killing. People are coming up to me and telling me that they can’t wait to see my set, that they’ve heard a lot about me or have brought people just to see me and each time someone tells me that I get the fear even deeper. I can’t think of one fucking bit I can stomach doing right now. All the tried and true stuff I assume they are as tired of as me and all the new stuff is either not ready or too angry for the scene and I am too beaten at the core to muster the anger necessary to make it funny.

Sometimes the beer helps but tonite it’s just sealing the deadness and by the time I get up to close the show I just wished I could have slipped out the back door, into a cab and off to some remote coastline. I should have done at least the first two.

In the front row are a group of four middle age drunk women, one wearing a paper dunce cap that has some stupid shit scrawled on it with magic marker. I don’t know if it was a birthday party or a bachelorette party or just dumb office douche bags who failed an origami class but they are chatty and stupid and every reason that the road has left me broken like this and I let them know.

The week before I’d worked a club that bills itself as “The Home of the Ultimate Bachelorette Party” and every night I had to deal with groups of these tittering holes with veils of plastic penises in their hair expecting you to be some Chuck E Cheese act, telling her how her husband is probably at a tittie bar right now or teasing her about the huge mistake she’s making. You want a clown for your party, get one to come to your house, you fuck. I’m don’t care about you and I have a hard enough time getting thru my act without breaking to make fun of the dildo you have been forced to wear on your forehead. I’ll give you directions to TGI Friday’s where they make it a point to pretend to like your company.

All this bitterness came out on stage at Zanie’s and all without the pretense of comedy. I made attempts to get into bits (the only bits that came to mind, of course, were the ones that were the least appropriate) but I’d become distracted at the silence that had now become new to the room and at these chattering tits below me who were simply waiting for me to shut up so that they could leave. I took the woman’s dunce cap and wore it myself. I told them that they could leave now - no sense waiting since I was the last guy. Three of the four did, the last waiting so she could get her hat back. Other people started yelling out.

Get off the stage.

You suck.

Have another beer, you drunk.

Nothing extremely clever but with plenty of animosity. A lot left and a few just stayed cuz they enjoyed yelling. Either way, I was numb to it all and closed to silence and the awkward stares of my peers and the leftover audience. Nobody talked to me, save for the woman from the front following far behind me and whining to get her hat back.

Fat chance, fatty.

I wore the hat back to the wrap party where still nobody would make eye contact save for Marc Ryan and Ron White, who had hosted the show and was familiar with the demons I had going on. It didn’t matter as now I found it physically impossible to hear anything except doubt and resignation, cut only by the sheer beauty of my wife telling me - straight faced and starry-eyed - that it was a really funny set. Isn‘t she adorable. Love is knowing when to blow sunshine up your ass.

Coming home to spend three days with cameras staring at you may not seem all that relaxing but it was perfect. Sit by the pool and bullshit. No phones or computers, no planes to catch, bills to pay, tickets to buy or sets to put together ( We actually did do a set at the Laugh Factory during the filming and it wasn‘t much more prepared than Chicago but at least I was happy).

Now I have a clear head and a weekend off with my wife home at the beach with no plans but the Tyson fight and some movies before heading out to Cincinatti, St Louis and Portland to start it all over again.

Maybe it’s time to write a few happy dick jokes again, just for the sake of the soul.

stanhope