You Can Surely Try To Be More Alive

Life is very resilient, and very defiant. Grass pops up in the dirt stuck in pavement cracks, plankton live in super-heated thermal sea vents, and people, I'm told, still live in many parts of Canada. Life is resilient. It's wild, and free, and almost unstoppable.

When I moved into my apartment, the woman who lived in it before me left one thing behind: a tomato plant in a red plastic pot. It doesn't get much direct sunlight, or water for that matter, but it produced some really outstanding little tomatoes last year. They were blooming all the way through December. I have no idea if that's normal or not.

I did my best to protect the plant after I moved in, but it died, as tomato plants do, once winter arrived in full force. But it left behind a slew of tomatoes, and sometime in late December I put a few into an empty San Pellegrino bottle and set the bottle on the shelf in my kitchen. And I waited. They sat there for nearly five months, never growing mold or shriveling up. I don't know much about little tomatoes, but that surprised me.

On April 29, 2007, I took the tomatoes, squashed them and shoved the pulp into the soil of the plastic pot from whence they first came. Shortly thereafter plants sprung up. Sometimes I remembered to water them. Usually I didn't. But they grew, they put out flowers... and nothing happened.

No tomatoes. For nearly four months.

One finally showed up today! It's green and tiny, but it is there. Not because of my efforts, I feel, but rather in spite of them. I've neglected the crap out of this plant, forgetting to water it for days at a time, but still it thrives. It's a very gentle reminder that life on the earth will go on just fine without us, thank you very much. Kind of depressing, I guess, but in a way it's a relief. They say that the show is bigger than any actor, and if the world's truly a stage, that means the show must, and will, go on without us.

But, in the meantime, we will have tomatoes.

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In the interests of crass self-promotion, I should inform you that I have some upcoming shows:

September 7: Oklahoma Comedy Night at The Opolis in Norman! It's a fundraiser for the Oklahoma Food Bank. Tickets are $5 at the door, doors open at 8, show starts at 9. It's at 113 N Crawford.

September 13: Music and Comedy at Pepe Delgado's in Norman! Four comics, three bands, $5. Starts at 9. It's at Pepe Delgado's on Asp in Campus Corner.

October 3 - 7: MC at the Tulsa Loony Bin! It's just like the Oklahoma City Loony Bin, only it's in Tulsa. 6808 S. Memorial in Tulsa! Open Mic show Wednesday at 8; Ladies' Night Thursday at 8; two shows at 8 and 10:30 Friday and Saturday; Service Industry night Sunday at 9.

October 12: OKC COMEDY NIGHT 2007 at STAGE CENTER in Oklahoma City! Eight comics, one night, $10 plus a reasonable service charge. You can buy tickets online here or on your telephone at 405.297.2264. For more info, check out the myspace page.

Come see me!

It's Everything That Is Connected And Beautiful

I find most art books to be utterly uninteresting and unengaging. I think it's the skill with which the art is photographed and reproduced on the page that puts me off. It's glossy, slick and perfect and it almost always bears no resemblance to what the artist created. There really is no substitute for being in the same physical space as a work of art, for sharing the same air and light as this thing. It becomes more real for me and I feel a real sense of communion that I never find from a reproduced image on a page.

Art in a book is separated from reality and the limits of the physical world. It becomes eternal and perfect, and I hate it. I hate it for the same reason that I am utterly bored by Superman. Because it is so removed, so unassailable and so fundamentally alien. It bores me.

But when I can see a piece of art, see the light reflected off of it with my own eyes, that is something very different. I never feel jaded when I stand face to face with a work of art, even the really shitty ones. Ultimately, I find beauty in the flaws. When I can see the grain of a canvas, or the irregular swirl in a brushstroke, or an errant drop of paint that landed on the picture in defiance of the artist's wishes, I see myself, and my flaws, and I find it very reassuring. We live in a flawed, beautiful world and seeing these works or art, and all of their cracks and blemishes, reminds me of just how beautiful this imperfect world can be.

There's also an impermanence to these objects. And they are, after all, simply objects. Paint, cloth, wood, bronze, clay, etc. These things begin as unremarkable pieces of stuff, and through human industry and invention become transcendent. That's fucking beautiful. But they remain things, existing in our physical world, and all things are impermanent. Things break down, they disappear. Each moment they are on display, each moment they exist, brings them one moment closer to their inevitable end. I work in an archive and the one thing I've picked up is that everything we try to preserve will one day perish from this earth, no matter what we do. Lock it up in a sealed, UV-protected vault at the Louvre all you want, but someday we will have to live in a world without the Mona Lisa. That's fucking beautiful. That's life. It's sad, and terrible and tragic and beautiful. It's perhaps the best metaphor for the human condition that I have ever found, and I'm constantly looking.

I just wanted you all to remember that I do have a soul as you listen to the hate-filled piece of shit I recorded at Othello's this week. And to all my friends who stuck around for the whole show, I apologize for throwing such a weird and embarrassing hissy. And thanks for coming out anyway, I hope you had a good time.

Winston Smith's Five Minute Hate

And go to the Oklahoma City Art Museum, dammit.

I Should Be Grateful, I Suppose, And Compare You To A Summer's Rose.

One of the most appealing aspects of religion is the way that shitty events get explained away as "God's will," or "the Universe trying to teach us a lesson," or whatever.

It's kinda true, though. Well, I'm not going to go on record either way on the whole is-He-or-isn't-He (or She or It or Them) question, but I have found that shitty events can be made to serve us. Buddhist thought, for instance, finds reasons to be grateful for failure, persecution and violent tragedy, and not just because those experiences help to burn away bad Karma (or sin, if you will). They help individuals to reflect on themselves, their past and the Universe in general. Pretty neat, huh? Most of your non-Odin-based religions have similar tenets, and I'm honestly torn from day to day as to whether or not the lemonade is real or just a means to keep chumps under control.

I got a chance to test it out last week, though. It was Wednesday, and I was on my way to the Loony Bin for the evening show. It's my first time hosting a normal Loony Bin show, and I want it to be great. Part of my ritual, when I can do so, is to feast upon a falafel and hummus from Gyro's Etc. in the shopping center across Rockwell from the Loony Bin. Best falafel ever.

Seriously.

Only sometimes they have trouble with my debit card, and I'm left with no way to pay for said delicious falafel, as I usually don't carry cash (note to muggers: I'm not worth it!). So, I decide to stop at a nearby ATM to get some cash. Now, I'm not going to name the financial institution, so let's just say that their name rhymes with "CHASE RANK." I pull up to their outdoor ATM, put my card into the green blinking card slot, and wait. For those of you curious about what blinking green lights mean, let just tell you, they don't mean "happy to serve you, sir!" The actual meaning is closer to "I'm hungry! Give me your fucking debit card now, asshole! Mmm... yummy debit card! It's mine now, fucker! HA HA HA HA HA!" Some of that is a little idiomatic, but you get the drift.

I am now sans card. I have already established I have no cash. So, I'm left with my checkbook. I might as well be paying people in fucking Confederate Dollars, because the thing has an address from two homes and one city ago. So, great. Thanks CHASE RANK! You guys "rock!"

By the way, if a machine grabs your card and won't give it back, that shit is GONE! No way you will get it back, it gets shredded immediately.

So, I drive to Wal-Mart, where I bank ('cause I'm a high-fuckin' roller!) to cash a check so I can, you know, pay for food and gasoline. I order a new card while I'm there, expecting that I'll have it by the end of the week. No, 5 to 7 days I am told. No, wait, 5 to 7 BUSINESS days. Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?! How hard is it to stamp out a damn card and put it in the mail? Are these things hand-crafted by a one-eyed master back in the Ozarks somewhere? Like, it's just him, a whittlin' knife and a big 'ol block o' plastic, perhaps? Because why else in the world would it take one of the biggest banks in the area a fucking week and a half to replace one lousy DEBIT CARD?!

But I digress.

I get the cash, I get the information, and more importantly, I get a nice dose of hate. It pushes out the nervous, the anxious, the oh-boy-I-gotta-do-good-tonight vibe in my head and replaces it with icy hot anger. I turned in a great performance that night, and like a good little method actor I had that nugget of hate at my disposal for the rest of the week, just smoldering in my back pocket where my debit card used to be.

So thanks, CHASE RANK ATM, you malfunctioning piece of shit. I hope you get struck by lightning.