All My Rowdy Friends...

Mat Becker has a birthday today. Who knows how old he'll tell you he turned. I bet there's a 4 at the beginning of it but he'll swear otherwise. Becker and I have runned and gunned for a good 15 years together. Once we were Warriors, us. We still manage to laugh our balls off when we get time to cross each others path. Alaska isn't easy to work into your routing. There is no upside to aging, save for that you stop giving a fuck about the trivial pursuits. The ding in the car door, the stain on your shirt. Who gives a bleeding shit - I have real problems. And the real problems I will see in ten years as pointless. But getting older eats even more of an ass if you don't age like the rest of them. We still live, Becker and I, like we did when we were outcast amateur comics in Phoenix all those years ago. We never settled down. The circumstances change. Becker married the greatest girl in the world, bought a house and keeps a job like the others but if you call him in the middle of the night there's a good chance they are blotto and setting things on fire in the backyard, laughing to scare the moose.

Mat Becker

Becker's age begins with a 4. Here's where the suck comes in - the bar is still young. You get old and the bar is always 23. Your other friends have a baby, they get jobs where they have to put on a suit and strive for status. They get tired. They start to take things "seriously".

They call it settling down when it's usually settling for less. Your social circle begins to shrink. Your old friends have taken permanent residence in Middle America and the bar is still 23. You don't have much to say to them either. 23 is still terrified of what you've grown bored with and people your age are watching CSI and going to bed. I wish I could see Becker more often so we could laugh at all those friends who succumbed to the real world.

I don't want to be young again. I have a hard time accepting that I'm as stupid as I am now, much less what an idiot I was back then. I don't want to be young, I just want people my age to stop being so fucking old. I want to see a room full of people my age full to their throat on Ecstasy and wine, not aware or caring that it's a weeknight. I want you to come out of retirement and be alive again.

You are a professional now, you can't behave like that anymore. You are a cop, a stockholder, a leader, a captain of industry. Even people in my own field who became 'successful" and immediately panicked and started walking the straight 'n narrow out of fear of losing status. You could be using that status to find new and inventive ways of fucking around. You know we're dead at the end of this, right?

And all you cocksuckers who have opted out of the fun because you spilled young into the world - you, who now sits and teaches those same eggheads all the same garbage we rebelled against before you quit and sold in - that sex is dirty and that these certain words are bad and how to behave to appease the masses - that all the drugs we did were bad (although we did fine by 'em) and that education is important (although we taught ourselves) and that it's your duty to vote (although you say all politicians are corrupt) - you are the shittiest of the bunch. You'll only make this world as dull for your kid when he's 38 as it is for me.

If you are reading this and your age begins with a 4 - chances are you are in a position of medium authority. So do me a favor, in honor of Mat Becker's birthday. Fuck something up a little. Tell your kids the truth about at least one thing you've lied about. Steal something. Fuck someone ugly. Skip work and get drunk at noon at a tittie bar. Prank call your higher-ups in the middle of the night and tape it. Remember what a shithead the young you would think you are and change it a little.

Happy Birthday, Becker. We'll break these cocksuckers or die in the effort.

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This mid-life crisis is brought to you by www.MySpace.com, where I have spent far too much valuable time when I could have been out actually doing something. If you're already infected by this internet disease and are as addicted as I am - send the good ones to my page www.myspace.com/dougstanhope as its far more effective than the mailing list.

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I lost my cell phone so if I had your number, I dont have it anymore. That's why I haven't called. I still have the same number on the new phone so gimme a ring. I'm on the road thru Thanksgiving.

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Got word today that comedian Kelly Moran passed away. Sorry all that got blown out of proportion, Kelly. I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Kelly was a good guy to me. Weird how it works. ;mso-"eo
10link;mso-no-proof:yes'>
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.

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.