30 Day Challenge: Day UNO

Yo yo yo. That's a start, yea? Gotta write something, anything, anything at all. Writing something, even if it's nothing is better than actual nothing. So there's that. I've done something today. Sorta.

 I have a hard time with Louis CK. It's funny I think I first became aware of him in 2008 just after Shameless came out. I remember laughing my ass off and thinking he was really funny. In 2009 when I started doing stand up he became an idol for me. I thought it was amazing how said things that seemed so simple and yet cut to the heart of some universal truth that I could relate to even though I shouldn't. I mean I don't have kids now and I certainly didn't have them 5 years ago. Yet I laugh and can feel the truth of the jokes he tells about his kids. Maybe it's because I was once someone else's child myself, who knows. But the point is he's incredibly talented. I hesitate to say he's "funny" because I feel like in many ways he's not. Louis CK speaks to the truth of so many aspects of our society, and the thing is when we're faced with bare naked reality often times we don't know how to react so we laugh. Does that make the thing we laughed at funny? Is it funny when he says that life is incredibly sad and meaningless? Not really. But we laugh. Oh how we laugh. And that's such a beautiful moment when we laugh. Because for those precious brief seconds we are all sharing the experience of being aware of how ridiculous life is.

 I love comedy. And more than that I love stand up comedy. I've loved it since I was a child. I remember seeing "Rowan Atkinson Live" when I was 11 or 12 and I remember seeing watching Robin William's "stand up" (really it was more like brilliant one-man improv) again and again and again because I couldn't get enough. I remember staying up late in middle and high school watching BET's Comic View. But here's the thing, I loved it. But like many things it didn't stick with me. When I was younger, I never thought my own interests were important. So, everything I was into was just sorta there. It's hard to describe, but my whole life has been like that. Until maybe 3 years ago I've just sorta floated through everything, not really knowing what anything meant or really paying attention to what I was doing. Unless someone explicitly told me to pay attention (Hey! This will be on the test later, pay attention!) I wouldn't. I would never have tried stand up had my good friend Mean Dave not said something to me. I wanted to, oh ye Gods how I wanted to perform comedy, but I needed someone to tell me to.

Had someone told me at the age of 18 to get in my car and drive to New York and start doing comedy I would have in a heartbeat. But my whole life the only thing people told me to do was "whatever makes you happy". Well I had no idea what that was. I had inklings but I never really understood how to go about things or what I should be doing with my life. Specifically I mean. I was always just coasting, waiting for a road sign to tell me where to go or to at least hit a speed bump.

I get really frustrated sometimes because I feel like I wasted my 20's going from one relationship to the next. My step-father killed himself in 2002 just before I turned 21 and from that point until about 30 I was just in one relationship and then another and I pretty much existed solely for those. In the back of my mind I knew that I wanted to do creative things and I so badly wanted to be in movies and working with people to make people laugh. But I had no idea how to go about that.

I remember New Years Eve of 2002 I was in Corvallis, OR with my then girlfriend visiting my mom. We were at this small bar and sure enough they were having a stand up comedy show that night. The headliner was some dude whose name I can't remember, but I do remember seeing some fliers up around the bar that said he had performed in New York and had opened for Jerry Seinfeld. The guy was terrible. He got way too drunk and alienated half the audience and was pretty belligerent. Anyways, I remember thinking "Gosh, this guy did all this stuff, studied with all these people, performed in Chicago and New York, I could never do that, guess I can't be a comedian". Because that was how my mind worked, I didn't understand the concept of "find your own way". I didn't get that all you need to do is decide on a goal and that your life would start to reshape itself until it pointed directly at said destination. I thought, "Well, this guy started at 18 and I'm 21 so therefore I can't do exactly what he did so therefore I shouldn't even bother. Besides I've got this girlfriend and I'm sorta in school and people keep telling me school is important and so I should just stick with that and hey maybe someday later I'll figure things out or something. Or maybe I'll just die and then I won't have to worry about it."

Well I guess, in a way, I was right. I'm older now and I've got more of it figured out. I just wish my past-self would have done a little more leg-work so that my present-self wouldn't have quite so much catching up to do.

Anyways, my issue with Louis CK is basically that he says things so perfectly and succinctly it sometimes makes me wonder if I'll ever be that clear and concise. I mean, sure he's got a good 20-odd years of writing and doing comedy on me, but I can't help but wonder if he's always been this way.

Then again, I don't need to be Louis CK to be successful. I just need to be me. But apparently I need to be a different me because the me that is right now just isn't getting all that much work.

I'm sure my future-self will figure it out.

ATNN

Additional: I don't know what it is, but I really love condensation on the outside of a beer bottle. There's just something reassuring about it. Maybe it's the fact that I know my beer is cold. Or maybe it's the knowledge that the Universe is working as it should. I dunno, physics are just cool I guess.