Robot Monkey Pants

File this one under big-time nostalgia. Does this pic take anyone back?

When I see this pic, the first word that comes to mind is “Scribbler.” And nobody here really knows what that means.

Sigh, I’m unrprepared again. I have some new stuff, but it’s too fresh and unrehearsed. Next week for sure.

George Carlin was among my first comic idols. It’s a real shame he’s not with us anymore.

Almost every eulogy and obituary I’ve seen on the talking picture box and the interwebs makes mention of his Seven Dirty Words bit, but he was much more than that. He was a great observational comic, a gifted wordsmith, and shied away from nothing. The profanity was nothing more than a tool in the toolbox, and he often used it to poke fun at society.

One of his bits that I always held close as a personal philosophy centered on how words in and of themselves are meaningless and harmless, and therefore inherently inoffensive. Context is what should offend people, not a word. I can use a string of profanity while praising you to the highest levels, and I can not utter a single four letter word while belittling and insulting you, and in this so-called enlightened age it’s the former over which people will get their panties in a bunch. It’s ridiculous.

Alas, now there’s one less person praying to Joe Pesci. I guess I should start.

I don’t have anything new prepared. Did some skeletal writing last night, but I’ve still got nothing rehearsed, and I’m not going to make the same mistake and get up before people without having at least some polish on it.

I also have errands getting in the way, so all in all it’s just not a good week for it.

Next week, back to it, with new material.

(A) WTF is up with that picture on that story?

(B) That man is far too happy about tomatoes.

Link to full story.

Rust. There was plenty of it. It was a hot room, and I don’t mean that figuratively. And I was the last of 26 comics to go up. So, while the crowd was warmed up in the quite literal sense, it was not ideal.

I did okay. One of the new jokes got a big laugh, which made me happy. I swore not to look at my notes when I got on stage, since I was struck by how often I checked my notes at the Zanies show. (Small aside on that — I watched the bit again to get myself prepped for going on stage and I realized that I wasn’t so much checking my notes as it was just a nervous tic or something. Tonight, my nervous tic was staring at the mic.)

Alas, not checking my notes meant I breezed past some stuff I meant to do. And the little voice in my head reminded me of those bits well after I had a chance to deftly segue into them. It’s not terribly good form to say “Hey, remember that joke I did a minute ago? Pretend I’m telling this one right after it.” So, I did the fastest 3 minutes in Comedy — I think I was probably only up there for a couple, really.

But, all that being said, I didn’t bomb, I was hardly the worst one up there, I got some good laughs, and the only way I’m going to get better at this is to keep doing it. So next week, back to the open mic with a reworked bit.

No audio of tonight’s stuff — the room was dead, the mic levels were really low… nothing worth sharing.

Over six months after my Zanies graduation, I’m finally going to get back on stage. I’m annoyed with myself that I let it go this long, frankly.

Last week, I went to the Edge Comedy Club for their open mic to check out the room and the crowd, but not perform. It was a good crowd, friendly and supportive, which is no doubt partly because most of the audience were either performers themselves or their friends. But it was certainly an inviting atmosphere.

So tonight, after work, I’ll go try out some new material and a slightly different take on performing than I took in my graduation. I still need to find my voice, and this is really the only way I’m going to. So there’ll be some reworked stuff from my first bit and some new material. Not a lot, though - it’ll only be a three to four minute set.

Still, it’ll be good to do it again. Hopefully, I’ll have audio to post.

iFlickr, originally uploaded by stacecom.

I think many of us could use something like this to help get us through the day.

Turn Me Up is a group devoted to a noble cause: bringing dynamic range back into music. The age of the CD was supposed to make music clearer and bring out details we couldn’t hear before. Alas, the idiots behind the bulk of the music these days (RIAA, I’m looking at you) are driven by this inane concept that louder is better.

Layers upon layers of compression leads to a waveform that looks like a jumbled mess and all nuances in the music are lost.

It’s sad, and it needs to stop. The wikipedia page linked from the site has a telling graphic. It’s the waveform of the song “Something” by the Beatles, on 4 successive remasterings: Abbey Road (1983), Abbey Road (1987), 1967-1970 (1993), and 1 (2000).

A couple of examples of musicians whose studio mastering seems to have avoided this technique, and it shows in how dynamic the music sounds:

Tally Hall: Good Day
Vampire Weekend: A-Punk

Now these are YouTube videos, not renowned for their audio clarity. But if you can, listen to high quality recordings, and you’ll hear it.