Comedic Diarrhea
I’ve been wanting to write this entry for a while. It’s not about anything in particular, but it’s also kind of important to me. I was talking with Steph earlier this week at work, when i brought up the news on CNN. There I saw that George Carlin had died.
I was literally speechless, which you may know does not happen very often. Whatever Steph was talking about I can’t remember, and I’m not sure if she noticed, but I was really caught off guard. George Carlin, thanks to my older brothers, was the first stand up comedy I have ever heard. When I tell people this, they are shocked, because of the foul language he uses and adult themes he discusses. Older brother’s really don’t have these concerns- in fact they thought it would be “good for me.” Needless to say when I started talking about “bombing brown people” my mom had a heart attack.
While I went on to listen to about every other comedian under the sun, there are only a few that really stick out in my mind. Chris Rock is very akin to GC, because of their political and “something more”-ness to their comedy. George deifnitely pushes the envelope a bit more, but hey- that’s ok. Seinfeld, while the butt of a lot of jokes, did it clean and was very observant. Mitch Hedburg is just out there and amazing.
2 Of them are dead now, and I saw both of them live. It was a very ethereal experience. You’d not think a shitty night club, with cocktail waitresses pestering you for another nine dollar drink would be so memorable, but they are.
As a kid, I had a lot of friends. I was friends (by chance?) with the popular kids. I was even popular, I guess. This is when being the smartest kid in class was a good thing. When being able to draw was “totally awesome.” Middle school was when that ship hit the rocks. My friends made fun of me a lot, or basically treated me like a tag-a-long. A fat kid who made the jokes. And i wasn’t really upset by this or anything, not at the time. I really jsut wanted to fit in.
This continued through the rest of middle school and the first year of high school. That’s when it started to change. I moved out to Seattle my sophomore year. This was great- you get that chance to reinvent yourself. You can be the bad boy, or the crazy kid. Unfortunately, human nature is a bitch. I started out the same exact way. I made friends with popular kids by chance. People loved my accent and though I was funny. Not really a bad thing, but I didn’t feel as though I knew krystle, meghan, JP, or Mark. In fact, the less time I spent in those groups, the more I finally learned about them. To the point where I didn’t want to be friends with exactly half of them.
I left the “popular” crowd, and that was a bit rough at the time. A lot of people talked shit about it, but at the same time I was being me, a bunch of other people came up and we became friends. Best represented by my best friend Mike, who is the spitting image of me, personality wise.
This went on for the rest of school, both HS and college. I really wasn’t interested in being popular, whatever the fuck that means. Now it seems that people are drawn to me, and that makes me popular. That’s fine, as long as it’s on my terms.
I’m still the clown, I still make jokes, and I still love making people laugh. I don’t think, and hope, that ever changes. But sometimes I look at myself, and wonder if I’m trying too hard. Not in the sense that i’m trying to be funny, but if I should cool it a bit. I wonder if people think I’m just being funny because it’s what “i’m supposed to do” or whatever. Or if me being funny is keeping people from seeing who I really am.
Not that i’m not really funny, but I feel as though everyone sees me as happy, never anything wrong. But there are things that bother me, and I’m not always excited or enthusiastic. It’s hard to reconcile what I want to be, with what I expect from myself, I guess. And, for that matter, what others expect from me.
“I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.”