Lisa Madigan. Photo © 2007 by blahedo

In her latest attack on freedom, last week Attorney General Lisa Madigan banned the sale of super caffeinated Meth Coffee from the good state of Illinois, saying the product is “glorifying drugs.”

Her claim is ridiculous. Look at Meth’s web site. The product’s whole spin is blatant satire—bad taste to some, maybe, but obviously a joke—and therefore protected speech. Right from the very first word on Meth’s home page, the paranoid first-person narrator talks about his new “volatitherapeutic beverage” that “straightens drunks” and “wakes zombies”—and if that’s not enough, click on the ‘About’ page for a look at the madcap disclaimer: “CONTAINS NO ACTUAL METHAMPHETAMINES, I.E., CRANK, GLASS, SPEED, CRYSTAL, BATU, SHABU, MABU, CRACKHOO, ETC. PRODUCT NOT WARRANTED TO CURE ECZEMA, EDEMA, ACNE, CONSTIPATION, TOURETTE’S, OR GUM DISEASE.” It’s hyperbole at every turn, and carries no believable danger. What’s next, banning exploding gum because it might encourage terrorism?

Meth issued a response outlining Madigan’s poorly researched claims against the beverage, that Meth is clearly a joke for an adult audience, that its founding members include recovering drug addicts, and that the company is a good faith co-sponsor of the hilarious 2008 Comedy Addiction Tour for addicts in recovery. Meth also makes the great point that “Richard Pryor, Mad Magazine, and other comedy geniuses have unleashed dark, satiric comedy about drugs for years, and to positive effect.”

The point here is that Madigan is using taxpayer money to trample her own constituents’ freedom to see, hear, and consume what they choose. Other totalitarians have made this mistake. The people of Illinois are no doubt pissed off; read the Chicago Sun-Times comments sections and you’ll see more than one reference to “Nanny Madigan” and her compulsive need to diaper everyone in sight. Slapping an “explicit lyrics” sticker onto a Richard Pryor CD isn’t enough; apparently any product that references drugs, even with funny over-the-top satire that appeals to thousands, must be censored even if raises awareness, promotes discussion, and makes its target adult audience laugh. Madigan is waging a disingenuous fake war against fake drugs in the worst kind of political grandstanding, with Meth Coffee as her straw man. And just watch: if she really does run for IL governor in 2010, or, god forbid, President, her handlers will be sure to misrepresent her soundbites to their fullest: “Remember how tough Madigan was on drugs in 2008? She fought meth!”

We’ve all heard the criticism of the Right over wiretapping without warrants and torture at Guantanamo; this time it’s a reactionary Democrat intent on trampling the Constitution for political gain. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given how hard Madigan has fought against gun ownership and death row prisoner rights. Maybe she earned her law degree in China?

I recently heard of a coffee brand called ‘Bad Ass’. I’m surprised Madigan hasn’t sued it for giving donkeys a bad name.

Watch your ass, Illinois, if you value your freedom.

try walking san francisco’s financial center downtown at 8 a.m. and see if you don’t get run over by 300-pound corn-fed businessmen pulling their briefcases behind them on little luggage carts.  it’s no wonder america’s gotten soft—its men can’t even carry their junk. you’d think they were hauling forty bricks or hiking a hundred miles or suffering a broken arm, but noooo.  these paunchy lady men may look fairly robust.  they stop to buy snacks. they wave to fellow financiers. they puff on cigars. but then they put their bald heads down like bulls and charge with their little effete dollies rattling behind them over curbs, cigarette butts, passed-out bums….  

“sure,” they grunt. “we can put down half a pig and a bottle of chateauneuf while grabbing the lunchtime waitress’s ass, but sometimes that 2-pound briefcase gets a little heavy.  it’s the working man’s burden.  our cross to bear.  hell yes it is.  heh heh.  suck my balls.  grrr.  now. where did i put my hanky?”

maybe they just like the feel of pulling something behind—it adds length to their girth on the sidewalk. fuck viagra.  or maybe the act of folding up the cart when they get to the office makes them feel important: “hold on, larry, i’ll ride up in the elevator with you right after i fold up my big-ass samsonite all-steel roller here.  yessir, she’s a nice one.  almost as big as my cock, heh heh.  wait, hold on, i’ve gotta spit.”  

and i’m sure it’ll get worse.  next it’ll be their wallets.  then coinpurses.  ”hallo, mr. homeless person. i am a big spätzle-eating german businessman.  you want to touchen mine frankenfurter?  it iz quite large!  ha ha ha. no i only kid you.  vut iz dat? you vant a quarter? sure, let me bend down here and go into my little four-ounze coin purse i am pulling back here on my gertzheimerlund all-aluminum pully pully. oh! i am out of quarters. you vill take a euro, yah?”

This past weekend I traveled to Bodie, California’s only Gold Rush ghost town. Nestled in a grassy meadow in the high Sierras about 75 miles from Lake Tahoe, the town stands frozen in a state of arrested decay with clapboard buildings spitting nails under a blisting sun.

1800s gold miners braved isolation, fires, disease, -40 Farenheit winters with 20-foot snows, dynamite accidents, gunfights, and stabbings to work their claims worth $35 to $100 million in total, depending on whom you ask. The clothes, hats, boots, beds, blankets, dry goods, cans, bottles, dishes, games, toys, false teeth, glass eyes, tools, horse-drawn carriages, art, books, magazines, and other belongings of the miners and their families lie right where they left them as they fled violence and firestorms…or died.

The town is still. The leaning houses & outhouses, church, town bank, hotel, bar, general store, cemetary, morgue where you can see tiny coffins lined up for babies, and Chinatown where murdering gunslingers smoked opium, gambled, and screwed hookers stand in eerie quiet. All you hear is wind in the grass and your boots in the gravel. Several times I peered through a dusty window and could swear I saw movement—a shadow, maybe, or a face darting from view. I loved it though it smelled of death.

E.S.P. overload.

Photos are posted here.

Marley Davidskin. Photo © 2008 Louis Pepin

This weekend we lost our little friend Marley, affectionately known as “Little Kitty!” An almost-hairless black-grey Sphynx, he lived with an enlarged heart most of his four years of life, and complications led to its final failure early Sunday morning. He was in emergency care for three days and gave a great fight with his little paw dukes. We like to say he died of having too much heart.

If you were lucky to have played with him, you know he was a very sensitive and psychic cat; a stealthy mouser who liked to hide mice under our hall rug as practical jokes so we’d walk over them for days before finding them flattened; an incredible jumper who could leap from the floor to the top of our fridge in a single bound; and, a little clown who constantly made up new games for us to play.

But most of all he was a pint-sized purring cuddler. I miss you, Little Kitty.

Marley photo by photographer Louis Pepin of San Francisco. Marley liked Louis.

after hosting a rocking, high-energy show of 10 comics at the sf comedy clubhouse saturday, i went up in the pro lineup for the first time on the clubhouse’s new 5th floor pro stage for a drunk audience of about 80.

there’s a huge difference between performing on a smaller lounge-style stage for 40 where you can make eye contact with everyone in the room, and a larger stage with bright lights where everyone but the first two rows is lost in the glare.  i love the roar of the larger crowd (when i can *get* them to roar…), but prefer the intimacy of jamming with an audience i can actually see. performing under blinding hot lights is like performing in a room by yourself; the larger the stage, the easier your energy dissipates, so you have to work extra hard to conquer the space.

here are some big-stage tips.

first, open with something quick and hilarious—you want ‘em laughing as fast as possible.

stalk the stage to make it seem smaller, and occasionally come to the foot. getting closer to the crowd even for just a moment makes you seem more accessible, and gives you a chance to escape the lights and see farther.  make real eye contact and work as many rows as you can see during your set.  there’s a reason why people in the first 2 rows get all of the attention at a show: the comedian probably can’t see anyone else!  work those rows, riff with them, turn them into fools or stars or fool-stars, and the crowd won’t notice that you’re three-quarters blind up there.  

if you hear an audience member in the back row yell something, use it if the timing feels right. if you didn’t catch what was yelled, shield your eyes, look out, smile, and say, “what was that?”  then go after it.  don’t ignore it just because it came from 50 feet away; let the people in back feel connected to you too.  who knows, they could wind up being the best laughers in the whole room.  

before your set, hang out in back and watch the comics who are performing.  it’s a polite gesture and great for networking, plus it gives you a chance to scope out the crowd for riffing ideas and capture whatever details the previous comedians are mining about the crowd that you can then use for callbacks when you go up.

finally, use these onomatopoeic words to emulate the dental, alveolar, and laminal clicks of the clicking languages spoken by indigenous peoples in parts of africa and northern australia:

click

clack

clock

cluck

gleek

ok i’m officially tired of using the shift key. slows me down so fuck it.

if you’ve poked around here, you know by now that i did a lot of performance art in los angeles and orange county in the ’90s. testical puppet shows, screaming, running into walls, eating trash, sitting down on tacks, throwing up, getting doused in wine and blood, shaving my head, pulling fish out of my pants, rolling around on concrete, drawing on myself, licking honey off a wall, chopping off prosthetic fingers….

my performance art aesthetic is messy and imperfect. i like dirt, randomness, surreal flights, flying objects, chaos, chop, static, schmutz, and freudian slips because i like discovery in the moment. like my manifesto says, if you can’t repeat it, it’s probably performance art.

so when my comedy god-mentor recently told me that my stand-up would never be perfect, i was thrilled. by “perfect” i know he meant a stand-up set with all right angles, with perfect timing, with a clean delivery of no spit flying, no dancing around the stage, no hiccups, no ripping a fart in the middle just because it’s there.

i don’t want perfect. or rather, imperfection is my perfect. there’s nothing like taking some crazy-ass gamble for the first time in your life, then looking up at the audience and going, “shit, did you just see that?? oh my god!”  and the audience knows they just witnessed a moment nobody else is going to get. ever.

I grew up in Fresno. Even though it’s the 6th largest city in California, it’s always had a small town feel, which might be why it’s the butt of so many jokes by Californians. Like its cousin Bakersfield to the south, Fresno’s been the punchline to every predictable zinger about inglorious cow towns, dustbowls, trailer trash, rednecks, inbreeding….

It doesn’t help that the city is culturally torn between San Francisco to the north and L.A. to the south, with generous helpings of Mexico, Tucson, and 1970s ticky-tacky thrown in. Or that the approach on highway 99 is met with the aroma of cow manure. Or that summer temperatures regularly climb to 110 degrees. Or that you’ll see trucks, cars, motorcycles, and horses with gun racks. Or that K-Fed lived there—and Jeffrey Dahmer’s mom. Or that local radio stations play music that’s 15 years behind the times. Or that smog hangs low in the sky—the county’s air quality is ranked as the third worst in the nation by the American Lung Association, with 16% of Fresno children suffering chronic asthma; I still remember coughing up brown specks of blood as a kid.

But come on. Really. Fresno’s more than the sum of its punchlines. First, it’s not a small town—it has 10 high schools, 450,000 residents, and nearly a million people in the greater metropolitan area that serves as the gateway to 1200 majestic square miles of Yosemite national park. Fresno’s ag economy was worth $4.8 billion in 2006, making it the largest in the nation. The town’s produced a long list of stunning writers (William Saroyan, Gary Soto, Philip Levine, Deborah Blum), film stars (director Sam Peckinpah, singer-actress Cher), scholars, and yes, even athletes—can you guess which cow town clinched the 2008 NCAA national baseball title? That’s right. But best of all, Fresno’s the birthplace of Popping, which every dorky-cool 70s/80s kid has tried; I still remember pop-offs in my high school parking lot where a pair of poppers would clear a space between a Pinto and a low-rider Ford and get busy on the 200-degree asphalt; hell, you had to dance or your shoes would melt.

So in my hometown’s defense, here are my favorite Fresno memories of the 70s and 80s, abbreviated for your pleasure: jumping dirt hills in the surrounding fields on my banana seat bike while listening to “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” by Hall and Oates; dumpster-diving behind St. Agnes hospital at 4 a.m. where my brother and I would find used medical syringes, fill them with water, and spray each other while giggling; playing Marco Polo in blistering heat with my sister and the occasional frog in our pool; pretending to be a mannequin in the display window at Macy’s department store; running from the cops through the grape vineyards north of Fresno State; purloining beers at rich kid Alex’s house, and accidentally setting off his alarm system that caused steel riot shades to come sliding down over all the windows; Me ‘n Eds pizza at the corner of First and Bullard—best in the whole damn world, and I’ve tried them all from L.A. to Florence; KKDJ playing Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Sex Pistols, AC/DC, and all the rest; years of Karate at Way of Japan, where Sensei Robert Halliburton let me slug him in his rock-hard gut as hard as I wanted till my 12-year-old knuckles bled; eating so many cinnamon rolls at the Fresno Fair that I puked in the Arts and Crafts building; using a computer war dialer to get toll-free phone calls, then lying low when my older hacker friends got busted by the FBI; seeing Fleetwood Mac for the first time with my sister on a hot summer night; road-tripping to Berkeley’s hookeresque Flamingo Motel with my debate team pals where we caught roaches in our rooms, danced to New Order, and watched the underwearless ladies stroll by outside; breaking into a car, then getting chased down and wrestled to the ground by its owner, which turned out to be a female probation officer; dodging the ever-present school bullies; skipping through a dirt field with my brother and coming upon a sign that read WARNING: SOIL MAY CONTAIN RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINANTS; staying up late to watch kung fu films, then reenacting the moves in my backyard at 2 a.m. in pitch black 90-degree weather with my dad till one of us got socked in the dark; breaking windows and getting chased by dogs along my newspaper route; laughing so hard at the dinner table that milk came out my nose; getting so pissed at my sister’s eavesdropping that I threw her phone through her bedroom’s glass window; crawling under the house to collect little skeletons of insects and rats; dodging my granny Elda’s stink eye; and best of all, peeing into a plastic Spiderman cup in front of my brother as a joke…then watching his horror when my unknowing mom filled it with milk and set it down in front of him at dinner. He’s avoided Spiderman cups ever since.

whore  {   } 
pregnant  {0}
virgin  {x}
bushy  #{#}#
deep  (({}))
diseased  {:::}
probably too young  .
transsexual  }{
homo lying on his side  o8–

Um…maybe I have too much free time at work?

is here.

And if you need some hoodoo to go with your cool, don’t forget the most lucky mojo catalog ever. How did you ever survive without a penis or vulva candle?

So I started hosting stand-up comedy nights about 2 months ago. Before my rough initiation, I used to think the M.C.’s job was easy — get up, say hello, do a set of jokes, then introduce each comic.   I couldn’t have been more wrong; hosting takes a *hell* of a lot more energy than stand-up alone. The M.C. sets the tone for the entire night right from the get-go, and has to keep the energy pumping from one comic to the next.  If a comic bombs, the M.C. has to get up and take the hits, raising the energy before the next comic gets up — all of which requires constantly reading the audience, riffing with them, tagging the previous comic’s jokes, and building the anticipation for the next man or woman up.  This isn’t easy to do in the moment, considering the host has to be timing and giving the red light to the comics on stage while fielding questions from other comics backstage while adjusting the line-up as needed while listening to the current comic and audience for snappy material ideas while trying to memorize the name of the next comic you’ve never heard of while writing material on the spot to introduce him/her. That’s a lot to juggle all at the same time.

But there’s something deeper at work.  This’ll sound corny, but the host is the embodiment of the love and respect in the room who has to maintain the flow, order, energy, and laughs both backstage and on stage.  Every comic who gets up deserves a warm, receptive audience, and a rocking intro, and the host must deliver.  If the audience isn’t responding, try something new.  Riff.  Do a backbend.  Whatever’s required.  The host *should not* leave the stage before the audience is primed.  It’s irresponsible.  It’s shocking how many times a host will bring up comics when the audience is cold — or even pissed off — which leaves the fresh comic having to spend 2-3 minutes building the energy back up, and if the comic’s a beginner, forget it.  A comic who’s forced to do that should be given the M.C.’s pay for the night.

2 weeks ago I was given the honor of introducing the M.C. for a hot pro show with a packed audience of 160 people and a string of hot comics warming up.  With a shit-eating grin, I ran on stage under the hot lights, grabbed the mic, and said hello…and nothing.  The mic was dead.  While the crew ran around trying to get it working, I found myself in a tough spot.  I could’ve just yelled hello to the crowd and brought up the host, but that would’ve *sucked* for him.  What would he do with no mic?  Since I was essentially playing M.C. to the M.C., I decided it would’ve been unfair to bring him on before an audience that hadn’t been spun up yet.  So I just stood there and riffed, yelling the whole time so the crowd could hear me.  I tried physical comedy.  I did a little dance.  I pranced around like a dork.  And eventually the mic came back on…but only after a grueling THREE MINUTES of sweating it out mime-style for a 180 people.  I was dripping.  Fucking rough.  I grabbed the mic and said hello.  And you should’ve heard the laughs and applause.  It was appreciation that I’d held the helm.  Once you sit down in that Captain’s chair, the audience bonds with you and wants to trust you.  And you must not, cannot, betray that.

Give great comics a bad host and the evening may be lost; but give a great host to beginner acts and the audience should be roaring.