Another Visit from Swamp Thing

June 1^st marked another birthday for me. If you know me at all, you’ll also know that in general, I hate birthdays. In fact, anniversaries of any kind fill me revulsion. Just when I find myself enjoying life and not caring about this pain in my knee or that wrinkle which wasn’t there last week, there’s this murky thing which rises up from deep inside me like a hideous swamp monster about a week before the event. It begins to bitch slap me into trying to believe that my life is almost all over.

“You’d better hurry up Julia. Time is running out. You are kidding yourself; no one is going to want you at this age! Get real...get some new dreams....”

This slimy, smelly wretch with mud skin and seaweed hair takes great pleasure in reminding me that the best years of my life are behind me, that I should have done this or that, that I have made a complete wreck of my one and only chance at success on this earth. He does his demented little happy dance in my head in a circle (with me in the middle), and continues it until his miserable feet dig a trench around it. When the mood strikes him, Swamp Thing takes out his rusty sledge hammer and clunks me in the head and sings his jerky song. As if I needed a reminder of his presence

“One more gone... one more gone... one more year till another one’s gone!”

All the people around me who are my age seem to be retiring, dying, getting parts of their body replaced, moved or removed. Some were here yesterday and gone today. People half my age have children in high school. How can that be? My head is still only twenty six years old!

“You’re old, you’re old, I ain’t lyin if the truth be told!”

The whole process seems to be speeding up too; so much so, that I can’t sit for a minute and just absorb what I’m seeing. 

And so, with the passage of another year of my life, I find myself once more wrestling with the man-made concept of time and its effect on my life goals.

At the risk of being crude, the idea of a race against time just blows the big one. Still we are reminded of it constantly through the incessant brainwashing of media, who would have us believe that nothing useful has ever been accomplished by anyone with a varicose vein or gray hair.

We have learned to dispose of people long before they are ready. 

The thing of it is, we who are in this period of our lives are so easily susceptible to believing that our age of usefulness is done. Each of us has a personal Swamp Thing that visits us from time to time, who nudges us into that realm of complete and utter defeat, where sitting around and reliving our ‘glory days’ becomes our reality. The problem with such an exercise is that it only serves up Swamp Thing with a big ole’ platter of FUCK IT to feast on and we begin to accept our ‘fate’ and just give up.

 I’ll be the first to admit that I do battle with Swamp Thing each and every birthday, holiday and New Year’s Eve.  Every time the seasons change, I see him poke his head out of the muck of my mind, like some hellish groundhog to remind me that it doesn’t matter when spring arrives, because I only have a few left and what’s the point of making plans?

“Give up, give up, and drink your half empty cup! Put your ass in the rocking chair because your time is almost up!”

 I really hate this bastard. And though it takes me a week or so to shove him back down into the ooze, I always do.

And then I get mad.

I’m just about out of the funk now and I can feel the fires inside getting stoked; particularly when it comes to comedy.

My goals as a comedian now are far different than they were in 1980, when I began. Back then I was an idiot who thought the world would beat a path to my door just because I thought it should. I felt like I was different than my colleagues and that stuff should just come to me. Sure I worked hard back then, but I didn’t work smart. I just assumed that word of my genius would spread like wildfire and they would find me.

I was an asshole then, as you can see.

Thirty-three years later, I may still be an asshole, but I finally get it. There is only one path to success in show business-be funny and work at it. Have goals and work those goals to the exclusion of everything else in your life; Write, network, work. And when the Swamp Thing pops up, kick that son of a bitch right in his fang filled, filthy mouth with the steel-toed boot of resolve.

In just a year and a half back at this I have accomplished more than I did in my first twenty years because I get it now. I won’t let anyone tell me I’m too old or too odd for mass consumption. I won’t allow any thought to be squirreled away because I’m afraid of the public’s reaction if I put it on stage. Indeed, one of the great advantages of getting older is that I just don’t give a flying fig what anyone thinks of me, and that freedom is what allows me to enjoy standup a hundred times more than I did in the past.     

Swamp Thing does his dance occasionally. I fear that nothing I do will be remembered, but then I remember that isn’t the reason I became a comedian. I do it because I love it. I love it because it makes people happy. And when people around me are happy, I’m happy. That’s why any of us should do it I think.

Nothing we do is permanent, yet everything we are has permanence to it. The world will not remember how funny we were no matter how famous we become, yet our influence as people, as comedians, will ripple through the generations. Our age doesn’t define us or diminish our relevance. Those people who won’t give us the opportunity to speak? Fuck em. Do an end run around them. They are the compatriots of Swamp Thing, his legions on the outside world.

Touch people with your comedy, your heart, your love, your voice, and your time here will matter in ways you will never know. Ignore the “No s” you hear, that’s just Swamp Thing, and he can go to hell if you send him there. If you have a dream, make it real! What’s the worst that can happen; you die before it comes to fruition? Well I would much rather my last thought be that I did what I wanted than to see Swamp Thing laughing his scaly head off at my surrender to popular opinion about age.

The blessing of time is that you have a supply of new days to renew yourself. The curse is that they are limited. The gift is that you have a choice in how to spend them. 

That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat. Abbondanza!

   

Satori-al Splendor

Every now and again, human beings (and for this specific essay,  comedians) are blessed with moments of  satori, which is a Japanese Buddhist term encompassing moments of  awakening, comprehension, understanding and clarity. They are usually fleeting, sometimes lasting only and minute or two but occasionally longer than that. Whatever their length, a satori experience carries a lifelong impact and an elevation in consciousness, often carrying the being experiencing it to new levels of awareness. Sometimes they are blinding, as was the case with the biblical story of Paul on the road to Damascus. I’ve always found him a fascinating character because clearly, they describe someone whose satori experience was so intense that his life was turned around because of it. 

But satori is not always so sudden. It can come over time, the result of a single experience and/or an accumulation of knowledge. It is the culmination of the magnificent human brain processing, dissecting, filtering, sorting, and realization that brings the person to that moment of clarity. Personally, I have had several of them throughout my life; the most significant, of course, was becoming aware of my gender dysphoria.

Now that you know have some background on this wonderful, glorious gift of the universe, you might be wondering, what does this have to do with standup comedy?   

In my first incarnation as a comedian (1980-2000), I can clearly remember wanting to be a writer of clever observations a la Seinfeld. My roommate at the time, Nick Cosentino, had that ability in spades, and I can recall feelings of jealousy toward him because I did not. What I had to offer on stage was more of a personal story, and I capitalized on the usual subjects, family, children spouse and sex. It was an okay act which made me a nice living for a long time, but it was not satisfying to me because even then I knew the part of me that really wanted to speak onstage was living in the shadows. Something dark was haunting me, and although I didn’t know what it was at the time, I was deathly afraid of displaying it even though my instincts screamed that I should. As a result, the potential of my act never materialized and my talent suffered.  Instead of running full speed toward my truth, I ran away and hid from it, mostly because it was too painful to face. I quit comedy because I was getting closer to my truth, not because I was tired of performing. The constant internal struggle between what I really wanted to talk about and my fear of what the public would accept was debilitating. The best thing I could do for myself at that time was to get out.

It would be eleven years before I set foot on a comedy stage again. This time, I decided, I would do it on my terms only. I made a vow that there would be no secrets anymore. All that I was as a person, all that I felt inside, would be fair game up there. I didn’t know if anyone would buy it and to be honest, I didn’t care. If I were to be driven back to anonymity, it would not be because I had feared my truth on stage, but because the public had decided that I was not their cup of tea. I would then go away quietly and permanently.

A year and a half later, I can happily tell you that it appears I took the correct path. I have gone from people telling me that they thought I had either died or went off my nut, to headlining once more. This spring will see the production of a television pilot which I co-created with the insanely talented comedian Joanne Filan. I have a manager now who believes that we are destined for great things. And my audiences have responded in ways that I never could have imagined in the past. Most of all, I’m free up there, unfettered by fear. It is a glorious time and I have never been happier. All of which leads up to this current moment of satori.  

 

In the last few months, my performance skills have improved, and thus my confidence, which is a key ingredient necessary for a comic to grow.

Because of this new-found confidence, I’ve noticed that my act has taken an interesting turn in its subject matter recently. Conscious of my personal vow, I’ve begun to dig deeper and deeper into those areas on which I had previously placed an internal censor and as a result, the responses I’ve gotten from my audiences have also grown in intensity. I did not realize how much progress I’d made until I ran into a couple in the parking lot after last night’s show.

I do a piece (a work in progress) on growing up with abusive parents, particularly my mother’s mental illness issues. It’s a somewhat dark piece and I always sense the audience’s anxiety level rise when I begin it. But here’s what the woman in the parking lot said to me about it.

“I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. I could relate to everything you were saying about your mother and father, because I had experiences that were very similar”

We spoke for about fifteen minutes. She revealed so much about her difficult childhood, and then she said something that flipped on the satori light.

“A lot of people in that room tonight felt the same way, but were afraid to ever talk or God forbid, laugh about it. Thank you for bringing it out in the open using humor.”

Comedians use common experiences to generate laughter with audiences. The people laugh because they recognize themselves in the comic’s piece. But I had never realized until that moment, that the horrors of my childhood were not mine alone. Others had experienced them with more or less severity, but the scars remained for all of us and needed to be addressed in a public forum other than a group therapy session.  What was so enlightening to me was that I was not alone and that this subject could be dealt with in a comedic manner.

Self-Analytical comedy is not everyone’s strength or forte. Observationalists will always gravitate to that form and I have great respect for it; Prop and musical acts too. But it is to the comedian that wants to know the why and how of whom they are that I urge to take the chance of self revelation up there. Step close to your personal edge. And when that fear starts to well up inside as you do so, take another step. Over time, you will see that your act will become something unlike any other comedian out there, because your story is unlike any other. As your skill grows, so will your voice. You’ll find that once you’ve taken those steps, material will gush from you as never before. It may come as a complete piece,  thought or a phrase or a subject, but it will come. Most of all, have faith in your moments of satori. That’s the universe telling you that you’re on the right track.

That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat.  Abbondanza!

   

Raging Innocence

There is no better day for a sixth grader than Friday. Just after lunch, all thought of learning disappears and is replaced with the rambunctious anxiety of the weekend ahead and the adventures it held for us. In my beloved Fairview, NJ, that meant stickball, baseball card flipping, practicing with my band, The Untamed, and hanging out on the street with friends on the steps of St. John the Baptist School, which was just across Walker Street from my apartment. At eleven years old, much of the world’s ugliness has not chipped away at the soul and the universe can be measured in several square city blocks.

And so, on this particular November Friday in 1963, we expected nothing different until Sister Marie Rene paid an unusual visit to our class. She seemed in a hurry as she glided across the floor in that angelic way that only nun can. It’s as if their feet never touch the floor. They are little black and white Hovercraft who do the Lord’s work.

Sister Rene’s eyes seemed soft, weary and moist as she whispered something into the ear of our teacher, Sister Jane Aloysius. Whatever the message was, it was brief in nature for she left the classroom as suddenly as she entered. It wasn’t until Sister Jane’s countenance had changed dramatically and tears had welled up in her eyes that we knew something wasn’t right.

“Class,” she began tentatively, “I’ve just been told that President Kennedy has been shot. We don’t know how bad he is, but in a couple of minutes, the radio is going to be broadcasting over the P.A. system.”

The clock on the wall, which prior to Sister Jane’s announcement had ticked happily toward 3 pm and freedom now thudded ominously with endless space between clicks as we awaited the news. Finally the speaker next to the clock crackled to life and the voice coming from it was unmistakable even to our class who cared nothing for the news of the world. It was Walter Cronkite.

“Dallas...President Kennedy.... assassination attempt...two or three shots.... Parkland Memorial Hospital... Last Rites administered....is dead”

It was all a blur at that point, all happening so fast until shortly after 1 pm when the announcement came from Walter Cronkite via Dan Rather in Dallas that our President was dead; thus marked the end of my age of childhood innocence.

That weekend, instead of running and playing, I sat gripped in fear and sorrow over what had taken place in the country. I watched as President Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One with Lady Bird beside him and Jackie Kennedy, still in shock and still covered in her blood-stained outfit, stood by the coffin as it was unloaded from the plane. I watched in shock as Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby in front of the entire country just two days later.

I wondered how it could happen here. Here I was, still feeling the effects of my parents’ divorce, feeling alone and strange, and now the roots of my country, the one place where I was supposed to be safe had been pulled out of the ground and rode in that funeral cortege to that place in Arlington, Virginia where the President was to be buried. There was Caroline and John-John saluting when just weeks earlier he had been playing under his Dad’s desk in the Oval Office and Life Magazine had shown us all how happy they were.  How could this be? What was happening to America?

In the years to come, I would be witness to so many more moments like that one, though November 22 will always stand out in my memory as if it happened yesterday. The murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy only a few years later would trigger the memory of Dallas once more. Riots and bloodshed just twenty minutes from my home in Newark, NJ, bombings of churches in which innocent little girls were killed, students shot by National Guard troops at Kent State University, riots at the Chicago Convention and in Watts, my country nearly torn apart by a war in Viet Nam,  would all follow. Columbine, 9/11, Aurora, Tucson, Newtown, and now Boston were still to come. Each time a new group of eleven year olds would hear the news maybe from a parent or teacher. And each time, a new generation would lose their insulation of innocence to wonder the same things about their country. Horrific events have sadly become a rite of passage for America’s youth it seems and a way of life for us older folk. And yet each time one occurs we ask, how could this happen in America? Things like this are supposed to happen in far away places full of strange looking and fanatical people, but not here.

The truth of the matter is that our country’s history is rife with similar tragedies of lesser and greater proportion. We’d like to believe that the seemingly recent spike in horrific events is a relatively new phenomenon, but the reality is that you would be hard pressed to find a decade where one or more of these things didn’t occur. In fact the real surprise would be if we could get through an entire decade without one.

But we are an idealistic people, a nation of eternal optimists who believe in the better nature of mankind.. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the original Transcendentalist would be proud of us I think because over and over again, in the face of profound sorrow and pain, we choose instead to imagine a reality where love abounds and triumphs over dastardly acts such as this most recent one in Boston. Instead of spiraling down into anarchy, distrust of one another and hatred for those who do us harm, we reinforce our vision of a world where peace and love abound and seem genuinely perplexed when someone perpetrates a heinous act which contradicts that vision.

This view of ourselves seems naïve and Pollyanna-like around the world perhaps, but it is our greatest treasure as Americans. We choose to believe that the founding principles of our country are genuine and that we are a collective family. And because of that belief, the vast majority of us hold fast in our commitment to make America a better place during our time here by elevating those principles.

These events will not stop in our lifetime or in the lifetimes of the many generations to come. Someone will always come along who feels disenfranchised enough, or angry enough, or will be mentally ill enough to remind us of the black thread of evil that runs throughout the land and which occasionally becomes frayed enough to rip the fabric of our souls. But age and hindsight will eventually reveal to everyone that although horror shows itself from time to time, the goodness of our people will triumph. We will see that in general, we live remarkably peacefully and that the ideal of America is in the hearts of its people and not its government. And we will pass from this planet choosing to focus on the positivity that abounds in our hearts and the collective heart of our people.

Mourn the dead and wounded once more. Hold the hand of a stranger in these times and share the love of friendship and comradeship for this moment of sorrow. But resolve to walk away from the belief that fear and despair will triumph here because it will not. Not now. Not ever.

I would like to sign off with the words of Emerson, who was a pretty insightful guy. Peace and love to you all. .    

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson             

 

 

  

Comics of a Certain Age

Sometimes the comedy business is like a great automobile assembly line. Talent moves down a conveyor belt where gigs, accolades, resume credits and accomplishments are added to the chassis of a newbie comedian. He or she slowly moves down the line for years until finally, the constructed talent is polished and takes on the patina of notoriety and/or fame. Those who reach the zenith of their careers, through talent, hard work and luck become stars, and the rest, missing one or more components, become ‘veteran’ comics eking out  a living at Uncle Hah-hah’s Comedy Emporium somewhere in America, or auditioning for whatever project comes their way. But always, there is that little glimmer of hope for them that this next ‘thing’ will finally be the ONE. Thus, I became a little optimistic when I recently received this call from an agent friend of mine.

“Yeah Julia, it’s an industry showcase. A casting agent is looking for comedians for some television project and I thought you’d be great for it. Be there Wednesday night. Show starts at nine pm and you’ll do four minutes. You in?” 

“Sure, why not.”

Little did I know that this seemingly innocuous phone call would begin one of the great karmic bitch slaps of my life.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the older we get, the greater the divide between the mind and the body when it comes to aging. While our bodies are busily withering away, our minds continue blissfully busy planning, looking to the future, developing ideas and material.....being immortal. It isn’t until the physical world meets the spiritual that we become aware of that horrible ugly thing which we refer to as reality.

This showcase was being held at one of the major clubs in NYC. I arrived early (my custom) and watched as the other auditioners began to filter in. Oh look, there’s so and so from the old days at the Improv, and wait...isn’t that...wow, she looks old! And what about....omg, what the hell happened to him?

On and on it went; Comedians who I had known in the 1980s and hadn’t seen in thirty years were showing up for this thing, which I came to find out was for, what else, older comedians.

We stood around in that room, greeting, hugging, and cracking jokes just as we did so many years ago at the Improv, Catch and the Strip. We reminisced about the horrible bookers and the hundreds of hell gigs we did on our comedic journey to fame. And as I looked around at all these people from my past, I couldn’t help wondering, what was to become of us now that we are 'past our prime'? Even though I may now need a step stool to get on the stage, why is there no place in comedy for comics of a certain age? Why are we no longer relevant just because we’ve committed the crime of aging?

Our culture is as youth oriented as ever. Young comics today look upon us as we did the Borscht Belt comedians in our day.  For them, age automatically qualifies us as outdated and schticky in our delivery and material, and in many cases they are correct. But I could point to dozens of young up-and-comers whose material is bland, derivative and soulless, and who are lauded nationally for no discernable reason other than that they are smarmy and crude. And with enough PR behind such a person, it’s rather easy to convince the public that an act like this should be elevated. And so, relevance to society has taken a turn. Whereas a comedian’s job used to be to comment on the inequities and inanities of society as Carlin, Pryor, or Tomlin did, it seems that today’s comedy is now judged by the appearance of social commentary and for TV purposes, the amount of jokes per minute. And that’s what passes as relevant.

This is not to say that there aren’t contemporary versions of the aforementioned comedic heroes. Certainly there are many there today who are carrying on the tradition and who will be role models for the generation that follows them. My question is, why does television limit the voices of the older comedian who still has something to say? Why does age automatically equate to irrelevancy? Surely an older comic with years of experience and life under his/her belt has a vast storehouse of experience from which to draw new material. Certainly, an older comic has a point of view that is still unique, don’t they? And if they are funny and original, what difference does it make how old they are?

But it does make a difference. The ‘suits’ that decide who gets on at a particular club or a particular television show have never been known to have great comic senses. It was true then, and it’s true now. In their minds young equals contemporary and hip. But this is only partly true. Content, which used to matter, is not relevant for the most part, but packaging is. And that point is, in my opinion, the reason why we see so much diluted dreck passing for comedy out there. And it is also why with each succeeding generation of comedians, our beloved craft, and our art, our voices will be chiseled and polished away to the point where all is smooth and shiny in order to succeed. What they don’t understand is that comedy was not meant to be smooth and shiny. It’s funniest when it’s jagged and a bit dangerous. People in the ‘mainstream’ media like Chelsea Handler, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Craig Ferguson get that. Leno doesn’t, although he used to.

There are older comedians out there who you don’t know and probably will never know who are saying plenty of those things and who are still very relevant to today’s world. They deserve a chance too. I know. I stood in a room full of them last week.

We all did our sets for the casting director and the very small audience in attendance and hung out for a while afterwards to chat. I don’t know if anyone else felt it, but there was a tinge of sadness in seeing how we have all aged. That night on the drive back to Jersey, I couldn’t help but think back to the beginning of my career. How many times had I made this drive on a deserted New Jersey Turnpike? Hundreds? Each time is just like the first. I think back over the set. Could I have done better? Should I have tried a different bit instead? Will anything come out of this? Why am I still doing this at my age? What more have I got to say?

That weekend, I performed in Pennsylvania somewhere. I drove a long way through snow and ice to a gig I presumed would be hell since it was a pretty conservative group. I didn’t alter one word of my content but it still got big laughs. And all I could think of after the show was, this was so worth coming all the way up here for. I didn’t back down and I didn’t edit. I just plowed ahead and I won them over. That ability comes from experience. That sense of fearlessness comes with age. I am relevant and I have a lot left to say! All I need, all WE need is a place to say it. Wake up television!

That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat. Abbondanza!  

A Flying Monkey Ate My Incentive

Well, we’re almost four months into 2013 and from the looks of things here at the blog, I have been quite remiss in keeping up with things here. For that egregious betrayal of your trust, I humbly apologize.

In a world where the only way of saying ‘hello’ to the person standing next to you is via a text (#wtf?),  it’s sometimes easy forget what a lifeline to humanity this blog is. In my greedy little narcissistic world, I have forgotten that there are people all across the continents who read it, depend on it, who count on it as their only source of quality entertainment (in black and white, color, and HD where available). You could say that for millions of readers around the world, Julia Scotti-Inside and OUT is as important as PBS, but without the annoying entertainment factor or fundraising drives which seem to come faster and last longer each time they interrupt my television watching. You could say all of that, but I wouldn’t in front of other people. They’ll think you’re out of your mind. Trust me, I know.

There are major reasons of important national security why I haven’t been keeping up here. However, I am sworn to secrecy....and there is a little exploding pellet just under the skin of my skull which, if set off by a super secret government agency, would make a huge mess at the dinner table and ruin my family’s Easter. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? Here’s the real reason I have been AWOL from this blog.

After months of creative toil, it became apparent to me that I had to take a break from writing JS-i&O for a while. What began as a wonderful creative outlet (it replaced North Korean Monopoly) for me became over time, a job, like an assembly line factory worker or a ‘fluffer’ in a porn movie. Week after endless week of trying to find creative ways of saying in three pages what I could have easily accomplished in one, I realized that I had gone dry creatively speaking, with no source of material that I deemed “Blog-worthy”.  I rapidly became an impotent, useless piece of flesh not unlike Mitch McConnell, Rush Limbaugh, or Karl Rove.

It didn’t take too long before my idleness, and a blossoming friendship with some rogue Elks Club members, led me into a sordid life of donut addiction which nearly killed me. Broke and with nowhere to turn, I resorted to performing  unspeakable acts, such as standing on the shoulder of a highway dressed as a cell phone to promote A Terrible & Tragic  phone company just to feed the two-box-a-week powdered sugar monkey on my back. It was an unimaginable horror I tell you.

It wasn’t until I began to hear from readers like Ushi, the Japanese commercial Swai (Japanese catfish) fisherman, or Lech, the juggling rabbi in Latvia, or the entire male Russian gulag prisoner dance troupe, GETUZOWTSKY (who longed for the top secret sex messages I had playfully embedded in it), that I came to understand that maybe it was time for me to stop being an isolationist, set aside my beloved hobby of Splenda packet collecting, turn off my beloved  Swamp People television marathons and. spring into action. I had to get these keyboard keys a clickin’ once again!

Realizing that it was time to make some major changes to my lifestyle; time to get back into the fray, to once more create posts so mundane that they would border on profanity if read by a genuine writer. But how? How does one get a mojo back which has seemingly flown the proverbial coop?    

I considered becoming a kosher vegan just to annoy and confuse my friends when they invited me over to dinner. Then I actually met a vegan and realized that yes, I too could be pushed to a level of rage which I had heretofore never thought possible. Those people get on my nerves with all their dietary lectures! But it wasn’t enough to jumpstart my desire for resuming the writing of this blog. It would take more.

Entering a convent for a few months of spiritual reflection seemed like a good idea initially, but did no good either. I made the mistake of going to one in which  the sisters take a vow of  poverty, chastity and silence, Of course I had no problem with the first one, but it’s cruel to put a lesbian comedian in a room full of women and expect her to be chaste AND quiet all the friggin time. Plus, they didn’t appreciate my smoking, watching Letterman through my ‘cell’ window on the neighbor’s giant flat screen TV across the street, and my constant use of the world ‘friggin’. Couple that and the complete lack of donuts in the convent fridge and I don’t have to tell you, I went nearly mad! Sisters of Mercy indeed!

Tibet and the Dalai Lama beckoned for a bit. What better place than that to get your soul in gear, right? But the pilgrimage fell by the boards after the Dalai wrote me saying how much he was looking forward to meeting me because he had a keen interest in doing stand up comedy and had been writing material for years. He sent me some of the stuff, and trust me, he might be able to float in the air or sit naked on a Tibetan cliff in the dead of winter for an entire week, but he has zero comedy bones.  And so my journey continued.

I’m two pages into this entry now and have managed to fill it with nothing which even remotely explains why I have shied away from writing here. I guess the truth of the matter is I got lazy. I made excuses for not writing (see today’s title) and kept pushing it off like a summer school book report that was due on the first day of September. Like my credit card payments, the more I postponed it, the more behind I got. The more behind I got the greater the guilt, and as the guilt grew so did my resentment of the blog, to the point where I opened the blog one dark and stormy night and yelled at it for a good ten minutes. “How dare you try to push me around, blog? You aren’t the boss of me! I’ll write when I damn well feel like it and you and all your entries can go straight to ...” well you get the idea.

But that isn’t the entire reason. Since we last spoke, I have been doing some really cool things. And if I hadn’t eaten up the first two pages with the nonsense you’ve just taken a few minutes of irretrievable time from your life to read, I would have told you some of them.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I will hold off until future, more regular posts to share with you Ushi, Rebbe Lech, and  the GETUZOWTSKY crew and anyone else who wants to read this because there really is a lot to tell. Honest. Dammit it went to three pages again!

That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat. Abbondanza!