If You Can't Beat Em, Fuck Em - Pt. 2

The way I see it, the Religious Right Wing owes me money. Since the FCC's vague and oppressive crackdown on radio, the road can be even more lonely than ever. Where I used to do maybe 5 or 6 stations in a given market to promote a show. Now I'm lucky to get one or two - and half of those are pre-recorded to make sure they don't border on funny.

Reason being, the FCC provides no defined rules on what is obscenity. Therefore, the station doesn't know where to draw the line until after they have been raped, fined, fired and put out of business. So radio isn't taking any chances, especially when it comes to people like me.

I do less radio, less people know I'm in town, I make less money. This is bad.

The only radio I could do in Shreveport - oddly enough - was Gator & Cher on KRMD. Hardcore conservative country. Gator told me they don't even want them saying "hell" on the air. So rather than burn the bridge and jeopardize their jobs, I said everything their listeners wanted to hear. Go George Bush! To Heck with Michael Moore! We need to think about the Troops! Screw the left-wing liberal media. Sure, I may use strong language in my show but sometimes you need strong language when you're talking about OSAMA BIN LADEN!

And the phones at the club lit up. Book another table of four under the name "Walkout". All weekend long we'd watch the people line up and pick out the ones that were gonna walk. Red State Payback. It's one thing to tell an asshole how you feel about their political insight but to make them pay to hear it is a whole different level of catharsis.

Your bullshit family values have cost me a lot more than you spent tonite but thanks for making a small contribution in return.

Better still was watching them sit through Brett Erickson pounding them with some of the best Jesus jokes ever written, cringing and thinking that somehow I'd make it all better. Don't get me wrong, I don't like walking people. The inevitable hatred I get without trying wears at my soul like snowtires but this weekend we'd decided to embrace it. Invite it, even.

This gave more adrenaline to the prospect of drinking downtown after the shows, since you never know just how far the walkouts opted to walk. The closest we came to actual problems came about 3:30 in the morning ( you can drink til 6 am in Shreveport and we may have) at a bar I wouldn't recognize today if I owned it. The blurriest of memories at best.

There's a table of three military guys, the dumb and self-congratulatory type that punch each other in the chest after they masturbate in a huddle. Ooo-Rah. They want to tell me that I ruined the Man Show. I'll drink to that. Next thing I recall is me blathering on with my long-winded and under-educated points of view about how they all got fucked. Either it's not coming out right or they just didn't agree but it's turning into -

"Are you trying to tell me that what we're doing over there is worthless??? Are you trying to say that we weren't attacked on September 11th???"

I'm certainly too drunk to debate and I'm forgetting what I said seconds after saying it. I walked away once and they called me back over. Meanwhile there is a very small man next to me that is trying to ask me about getting into comedy but can't get words in edgewise over the meatheads that are trying to elevate this conversation to an Abu Ghraib situation.

I was keeping it light enough to avoid violent confrontation but that probably wasn't going to last. Seeing this, Brett Erickson stepped in and did what any guy would do to get a friend out of a beating. He came up behind me, pulled my head back by my hair and plunged his tongue deeply into my mouth. For a while. For several silent, prolonged beats. You'd think a terrifying display of shameless man-love would cause a negative reaction but it quelled the situation immediately. Maybe it confused them, maybe it excited them. Either way, I don't remember them ever saying another word.

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Just like me to brag about fucking with rednecks when my next gig is in Macon, GA. I'll be the Theo Van Gogh of comedy. Let me know if you got my back. Not in the Brett Erickson way, of course.

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December 1st I'll be pulling a name off the Mailing List for a private party of legendary proportions. Get on it, whore. And start burning off them CDs and DVDs. 2005 will be memorable, I guarantee. But the mailing list may be the only way you'll know about a lot of the shit.

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Did you get your tickets for the Emerald Theater in Detroit yet? It's my last show before I go to Costa Rica, meaning it's my last show without AIDS.

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Hey Brendon Burns -

I was going to plug your CD but you don't seem to have a fucking website. What up with that? I'll tell folks they can buy it off your Mum.

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Was I drinking during this update? Perhaps. Read The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom. You'll be drinking too.

If You Can't Beat Em, Fuck Em.

The Red Sox have won, Bush has been re-elected and Scott Peterson has been found guilty. You'd imagine that CNN would collapse like a black hole after the post-game wrap-ups. Don't you worry, son. There is "Breaking News" right around the corner. Some new persons life or epic struggle for us to live vicariously through so we don't have to notice how pointless our own existences are.

I was depressed about the Bush re-election for about 9 hours. Then I sat down at the Ale House in Chicago before the show to swill down some 12 ounce bottles of false enthusiasm. The bartender is one of those fake-cranky people - old before her time - who probably pre-dates the bar. They just saw her on that empty lot one day and built the bar around her character. The regulars have long since stopped paying attention to the election coverage and now listen to the bartender complain about tips and waitresses who change shifts without letting her know and Bill who was supposed to pick up some shit in the basement and still hasn't come with the pick-up truck to get it.

And it reminded me that - for most of us - it doesn't matter at all who makes it to the White House. John Kerry wasn't going to get Bill off his ass to get that shit out of the basement any faster than Bush or even Nader. Nor would they help you find a babysitter that won't raid your liquor cabinet or get your girlfriend to let you fuck her up the ass.

Keep in mind, at the end of the day you only have yourself to rely on and only yourself to blame. You are now and always have been The President. Only you know the problems that face your country and you have to figure out how to overcome them. Paying too much in taxes? It's up to you to figure out better ways to fuck them out of the money. Don't like the education your kid is getting? Teach em yourself. Worried about getting sent to Iraq? Smoke a joint, fail the piss test or suck a dick in public.

The world is always going to suck and you will always be out-numbered by assholes. Just because some assholes are the self-described "people in power" doesn't mean they are any diiferent than the civilian assholes you have to dodge on a daily basis. A cop is no different than the angry bouncer you avoid when you're trying to get blown in a nightclub toilet. The IRS is the same as the raccoon that eats your garbage. You just have to make it harder for them to get to your shit.

So stop worrying about who claims to be in charge and start putting your own policies into effect. Begin Operation Fuck The System. The next revolution will come from the inside out. Protesting in the street is for the young and those lacking in imagination. There are more people than you think who understand that it's all fucked. Unfortunately the majority of them are already to deep into the system to fall out of it. You have kids and mortgages and your Mother-in-law has diabetes real bad and she'll be staying with you for a while. It seems that you, sir, are fucked.

But being part of the system is exactly where you need to be to become a cancer to the system. And you can do that by doing what America is known for - by fucking up. All you have to do is fuck up a little bit, here and there.

If you're a cop, lose some paperwork every now and again. Get a bad cold on a day you were supposed to show up in court for a drug possession case. Forget to read their rights instead of saying "I'm just doing my job." To err is not only human, it's revolutionary.

A red flag on a tax return doesn't exist if you don't notice it, Mr Tax Man. Hey, look Officer Border Patrol, your shoe is untied - conveniently when that mother and her two small children are make a mad dash towards a new life in housekeeping.

Whatever it is that you do, you can find a way to overlook some small details to make someone elses day better. Approve one more home loan than you normally would. Fuck it, it's not your money. How much perfectly good food do you throw away when your restaurant closes? Drop it off with at a shelter on your way home. Work at the DMV? Well, now there's a world of details to overlook there. Be lazy to the benefit of the guy in line, not the state.

You get my point. There's a million ways to punch holes in a system meant to keep life overcomplicated and tragically dull. George Bush is dangerous but so is the guy who yells at you for forgetting your name tag or the shithead who tells you that restrooms are for customers only. Just because your life is too mired in the shit to be huffing tear gas at a WTO riot doesn't mean you can't take a few chips out of the wall in your own arena. Weaken the foundation to topple the house.

More on this later, I got shit to stir up in Shreveport.

Sign onto the message board and share your ideas or just be an asshole.

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Did you take a look at the Psytopia link? Stop emailing me to complain that I never play in Allentown or Lawton, Oklahoma. Come down to Jamaica to what could be the most fucked up party of your entire life. Seeing me there will be way better than seeing me at the Ramada in Greensboro. Sure, it's a bit pricey but if you start stealing just a few dollars a day from that job that you hate, you'll have plenty by the time we're blown out of our tit in the Carribean.

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Oh, and if really don't know it's all fucked? I'll tell you a good place to start. Buy "You Are Being Lied To" at www.disinfo.com. Then go from there.

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Someone tell Mitch Hedberg to update his fucking site. I really enjoy his words.

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Buy my shit. Give it to someone you hate for Christmas.