Focusing On Fun

Sunday April 13th, 2008 - Lake Villa, IL

No Mothership Connection radio show because Jimmy Novack had something planned with his kids and wanted to take a week off. I suppose I could have done it with our other partner Stu but we decided to just take a week off and start back up next Sunday. I took a day to just hang out and take inventory of where I am in my life and where I want to go.

I went up to Milwaukee to take a lap at the monthly sports card show at Gonzaga Hall. I love to look at old baseball cards and even if I don’t own them I still appreciate the beauty and history they represent. It scratches an itch somewhere inside me and I am not going to fool myself anymore and not admit that I love it. What’s wrong with having a fun hobby?

I’m never going to be a big time dealer and that’s ok. Everyone dreams about finding an attic full of baseball cards or comic books or some other collectible worth zillions but that happens about as often as lottery winners. It does happen, but rarely to anyone we know.

I’m farting around with it again and have a nice inventory of stuff I bought on Ebay and I’ll keep learning about how to sell them so I can get my own Ebay store eventually. I will use that knowledge to help sell funny stuff for Uranus Factory Outlet. I’m learning for the future and having fun too. My friend Richard Caan sells cards full time but it isn’t easy.

He’s got a real eye for cards and knows how to buy right and sell right too. He’s my age and has a knack for the hobby I don’t think I ever will. I buy from him frequently because we like a lot of the same stuff and he’s always been very fair with me. It makes it all fun.

Fun is what I focused on in my thoughts today. What’s REALLY fun? I thought about it all the way home and then watched a DVD documentary about Elton John and how he put the ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ album together. It was really interesting and everybody involved all talked about how it ‘all just came together’ and ‘everything fell into place’.

Quincy Jones talked about that same vibe with Michael Jackson and ‘Thriller’ also. It’s a peak of creativity when everything comes together and that success will never be seen at that level again. The Beatles had it with ‘Sergeant Pepper’ and George Clinton had it with ‘One Nation Under A Groove’. It’s the peak of a career when everything is at it’s zenith.

In a lot of ways I think I’m at that place in my life right now. If I were to die today I feel like I left some of my best stuff inside me and that thought repulses me. I have a recorded comedy course on cassette from 1997 and my one CD recorded in 2003. That’s all I have to show for a lifetime of hard work and I don’t think that’s enough. I’ve got WAY more.

I want to have the effect on people in the same way I felt when I saw ‘Airplane’ for the first time. I was in high school and I went with my brother and sister and cousins and we laughed so hard we couldn’t see straight. We talked about it for months and it blew us all away. THAT’S the kind of reaction I want and it doesn’t matter if it’s a standup comedy CD or DVD or movie appearance or funny commercials as the King of Uranus. I want it.