The Geoff Lott Rules Live Tour Of Comedy & Talking

=--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==

Friday, April 09, 2004

What's So Funny?

Wednesday night I drove to Olympia to see M, who loves this bar, and hang with some of the new people I've met through her. Over the course of the night I got up and did comedy at a place called Hannah's, a local bar (there must be 20 in 4 blocks on 4th in downtown Oly, it's awesome), and had a decent set. Scattered but I got to riff a little, do a few new jokes, and had a good response from some dudes. Those who listened were laughing, but it was mostly a pool & brew room. There was an open-mic for music, and after some dude who thinks he's the 2nd coming of a guy who obsessively idolizes but has not 1/10th the talent of Neil Young and looks like a drug-free Ted Nugent, and another guy who knows a lot of Dave Matthews and Pearl Jam songs (dude, you have to stop touching college chicks), I got up. I think the crowd was happy to not hear another song mangled by the "seeking spirit of a wandering soul." Why can't people just say they're un-hireable? Gawd, there are few jobs that are "beneath me," as some would say, but what I KNOW is not below me is making money, getting paid to do what I do. That being said, I called in sick yesterday, and spent the afternoon in full-on Writer mode, reading and writing and being a little introspective. Then I had dinner with M, who felt like chicken last night!, and it was awesome. Then on to Giggles for the open mic night. On home for sleepy. Sweet.
------------

I have 4 shows this weekend, mostly tune-ups for next week's "headline" stuff I'll be doing. I always start freaking out a little when the "have-to" shows come up. I wonder if I have the time. I wonder if I have the material. I wonder how long I can stand on a stage and talk and not pee inside of my pants. I love comedy, but I understand it so well, for myself, that I feel like I'm standing really close to a large picture of a naked woman: I am close enough to see details of a small area, but I couldn't tell you what it is unless I back up, and if I back up too far, what if I find out I was eyeball-to-follicle with a furry part of Roseanne Barr, like her lower back? My coughing's been keeping me up enough, I don't need that burned into my head.

I don't really know what I'll talk about tonight, let alone next week. I have some stuff that I really like, some stuff I love, and some stuff that I think is really bad, but crowds always laugh at. I'm writing a lot about relationships lately, but not the "men and women are differ'nt, boy-howdy!" I think it's so interesting how the interaction between friends is a step below the interaction between people who are dating and emotionally involved. I doubt that I have any actual insight to share, but I know that Love shouldn't be hard, I believe in taking things slow, and other than the opposite sex, you don't need any real skill to get married.

Oh, and every time I hear someone say "I am looking for my soulmate", somebody should punch Ethan Hawke in the dick.

I wonder what's going to happen over this next week. I have an urge to say whatever's on my mind at any time, as an experiment of true honesty and forthrightness. There are so many people who I think could use a compliment or a reality check at any given moment, and I mind my own business and say nothing. I could leave out the negative stuff and only say the nice things, but I don't even do that. If I only point out the yin, that doesn't mean I don't see the yang. And sometimes my yang is hanging way out there, but I have to cover it with my yan to make sure people don't call the cops.

I'm no longer concerned with marriage. In this country, the governing bodies say that people of the same sex cannot be officially recognized as married. It says nothing of the fact that people must be in love, or mature, or ready for everything that follows their wedding, which is NOT a marriage. Weddings are big "look at me" parties that usually mean a bride's parents are out $15,000 to make their "little girl" happy. I want none of that. Give me a wedding on a beach in Hawaii, a few friends and family. I'll post it on the web, you can keep your garter tossing and your Electric Slide.

I'm off to get on with my life. Work so you can Live. Get a buzz tonight, anyway that you can.


Geoffers

Take Me Home

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

I'll Take "Days That Remind Me Of Nothing" for $600

My respiratory illness is being beat back by a cocktail of DayQuil, NyQuil, Penicillin, Juicy Juice! (100% Juice!), and a lot of sleep. I slept most of last night, but woke this morning to the dulcet tones of my lungs forcefully expelling air and whatever else is in there. I've got some sort of hoofed beast in my manifold, it's horrific. Overall I feel fine. No aches or pains, except the ones that are in my back and abs from the full-body lung-spasms. I'm actually gettin' a pretty good work out in all this. Lots of cardio, lots of abs, and my neighbors are kept up all night by my hacking or crying. Either way, I'm a winner.

So I get up and get moving today, and thankfully my first human contact is with M, who's got your Quizno's right here punk, and not hearing Gary Jules again. Gawd, how can you face a day when the first words you hear are "I find it kinda funny/I find it kinda sad/That the dreams in which I'm dying/are the best I've ever had." I need huggy now.

I get to work, 9-ish, not much going on. I have jack-all to do, a couple of reports to run, which I ran, and really weren't worth the time to run them. But it's my job, so I did it. And that's about where I stand now. Yay. Ideally I would like to win the Lotto, and work at some job I could abuse customers at all day. That's a blown premise, but gawd if it isn't true.

Cool: Coffee ice cream, knuckle pushups, squats, romanian deadlifts, gettin' fonky, open bar, Monterey Jack cheese, BioTest GROW! Low-carb protein shake mix (chocolate), and cool people.
Cold: Trucker hats, pooka shell necklaces, baseball traffic, men wearing jerseys, bleeding ulcers, non-bleeding ulcers, ringer t's, rumpley jeans, Frats, Sluts, and hacks.

Take Me Home

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Working Out My Issues

Last week I had a weird encounter at the gym. I was doing some lat-pulls, and was finishing a set of 15, and did 2 behind my head, which as we all know is BAD BAD BAD, right? Compresses your vertebrae a little more than is necessary. As I'm walking away from the machine, a "trainer" comes over and says to me…
"Hiiii! I'm Angie, and I've been here about 3 weeks now as a trainer. I noticed you were doing lat pulls behind your head which can cause some strain and injury to your cervical collar. Try to do all of your pulls in front of your head to protect your neck, okay?"
Apparently Angie gets her exercise from jumping to conclusions. All I could muster was "Hi Angie, I'm Geoff. I've been lifting weights for the better part of 15 years. I notice you like cheap make-up and home perms, which turn your skin orange and your hair to Easter grass. From now on, try not to answer questions I didn't ask, and I won't damage your cervix, mmkay?"
Canyon Park Fitness has an opening for Personal Trainers, if anyone's looking.

Opening Day Of Pro Baseball...

Today is the first day of the Major League Baseball season. That means for 81 days, at the least, traffic into Seattle will be 4 times as crappy as usual. It means little else to those of us who could care less about baseball. I don't like pro baseball. In-stadium, okay, but not on TV, not on the radio. BO-RING. Since I'm not frequenting the park, but 45,000 other people are, that's an average of 7 million more cars on the road, and not nearly enough entertaining if not horrific accidents involving Semis and Mariner car-pools.
If you're a big baseball fan, good for you. I'm sure I could tell by your pull-over, t-shirt, socks, cap, pins, sweatbands (sweatbands? you have a desk job), and SoDo Mojo decal, which is now 4 years too late, I think. Anyway, this marks the end of many nights for me at the Comedy Underpants with the Mariners are in town. It will be harder to find parking than finding a straight guy wintering in Ibiza.

Take me out to the ball game, take me out with a bat.

Take Me Home

Monday, April 05, 2004

The Weekend In Review

I had myself a great weekend. It was way more relaxed than I thought it would be, but that's good, as I'm soldiering through the SARS-like chest cold that everyone else beat about 6 weeks ago.
I played a little pool on Friday night at Jillians. Here's a quick transcription of me playing pool, regardless of how easy the shot is:
"7, corner pocket, (breathe, breathe), >PLICK< SH*T!"
We almost ended up at some dive on Cap Hill, a bar that has an awning that says "Typewriters" (and why wouldn't it?). It apparently serves only imported beers from Belgium, Denmark, and North Dakota. I didn't want to go in at first because the billowing smoke was reminiscent of a couch fire, but we were there to meet friends and were going to play the PR and be like dat.
I was there with M, who wants to Rock&Roll All Wednesday, and we bailed after 5 minutes of waiting on the friends who suggested the place. We hoofed it to B&O Espresso, which has a very café-like bar and a dessert case that would shame Anna Nicole's breakfast menu. She apparently Trim Spa'ed her way to a leaner bod. That's no big feat, when you consider Trim Spa is in pill form, and she was already downing more pills than a test-rat for Bayer. "Take one more? Okay, but I gets to wash 'er down with buttermilk! Eew, this one taste like the green food." Bluck.

Saturday comes around, and I head to the state Capitol, then South-ish for two towns I've never been to. I got to see a little of Satsop and the Mini-Mart in Brady. Great night of chillin', chattin', and serious eatin' in Satsop. Met M's mom, M's brother and his fiancee, and threw darts against a jail guard with a penchant for do-it-his-own-damn-self woodfire stove installation. The amount of smoke that thing emitted INSIDE the garage/workshop/dart arena, compounded with the Friday night Typewriter joint's smokiness, probably only exacerbated the amount of lunggage I am carrying. It was funny to hear them say "Close the door, you're letting the heat out!" Guys, that's not heat, that's lactic acidosis from asphyxiation. At the risk of sounding like a weenie, I'm not down with monoxide-induced bronchial spasms. Call me fickle, pickle, but my brain cells are leaving in clown cars every other hour. Dig it.
Sunday started late due to not setting the clock an hour ahead. I wasn't paying attention to the clock anywho, but I think the time change figured a bit into today. Read on...

I SCREAM FOR THIS STUFF!
Last night we got some iced cream, a treat for me as I'm usually adhering to a strict high-protein, low-fun diet. I opted for Godiva Chocolate Truffle Raspberry, and M, who could kick it if it needs to be kicked, grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry's classic Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.
The CCCD is always a crowd pleaser. I had a hankering for something fruity with a kick, but there's only one David Lee Roth. So I grab the Godiva Chocolate Truffle Raspberry, plop on the couch for a viewing of Cold Creek Manor (wait for it on GameBoy), and settle in for a-viewin'. Damned if I didn't eat 3/4ths of the pint. I don't even feel bad about it. It was good. NAY, it was spiritually erotic, or erotically spiritually. It was a delight for all the senses. Don't eat any, it will kill you. If you eat a bunch, I won't be able to have any, and I will pants you at lunch.
Try me, jerk-hole.

More Hacks Than The Tacoma Underground
Holy Lumberhacks I have a chest cold that is working me over like Ike on Tina. About 4-6 weeks back it seemed EVERYONE had this cold. It starts in your face and makes your head feel like it's going to pop, but not the fun "One more DayQuil & Cran, bartender!" kind of floaty-head popping. It feels like a quick turn of your head could cause inertia to take over the contents of the nasal passages, and sling it back to the other side while your face collapses. I suggest Claritin, lots of water, and not looking at stuff.
So I get past that part of it, and for 2 days I am golden-retriever healthy. Good color, cold, wet snout, peeing outside, plenty of yard-time. Then it hits me. Last Tuesday night, WHAM, this chest cold lungjacks me and won't leave. It's taken up squatter's rights in my bronchial tubes, and the only way to get it out is through the spasms my lungs are running through. This isn't "tickle in the throat, time for tea and honey!" coughing, this is full-diaphragm, red eye bursting, back cracking, ab-tightening lung assault to break this up. Last night I would sleep for 40 minutes, wake for 20, and cough for 10 of those. I'm surprised I wasn't asked to sleep in my car. Don't think I wasn't gonna volunteer.
My plan of attack for tonight: DayQuil and 1 Tylenol PM, OR, Cherry NyQuil over Godiva Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Chocolate, a.k.a "The AnnaNicole."

The Straight Dope
There is almost no more liberating feeling than realizing and accepting your parents as People, not just Mom & Dad. It makes it much easier to see where they've been in life, how we can affect each other with the smallest gestures of love and kindness, and how much it's gonna suck to put them in Shady Pines Adult Center. That sounds kinda saucy, if you aks me.

Go ahead, aks me…
Geoffers

What UpHomey?