Knight Of The Living Dead

Thursday September 17th, 2009 - Lake Villa, IL/St. Charles, IL

I’m in a deep dark nasty funk. I’ve been here before and even though it’s been a while, the seat is still warm. The older I get the more I dislike these times and I’d almost rather have a period every month. At least I could plan for it and know it would be gone soon.

I need to be careful what I wish for though. I know my luck. The last thing I need is to be the only man on Earth with a period. I’m sure there are women who get depressed too and they have both to deal with so I guess my life isn’t so bad. Still, right now it’s ugly.

I haven’t walked for a while and I’ve been eating poorly and been on the road for a few weeks and maybe that has something to do with it. It really is difficult to stay healthy on a road schedule and the fact is I’m just getting older. All that fast food is catching up to me.

Dwelling on how rotten I feel isn’t going to do much good so I’ll stop for now. I slept it off much of today but that didn’t even feel good. When I get like this I have vivid dreams that are very disturbing and it’s never a restful sleep. I can’t even remember what they are about most of the time but I do remember waking up not refreshed and still feeling tired.

That’s what happened today. I woke up in a sweat and didn’t feel rested at all. I took an extra long hot shower and tried to scrub up and get the blood flowing or something. It’s a chore just to get out of bed but I knew I had to get out of the house or I’d feel even worse.

My friend John Knight is working this week at Zanies in the Pheasant Run Resort out in St. Charles, IL. I was just there Tuesday teaching a class but I hadn’t seen John in a while so that was my destination. He’s a great guy and has been doing comedy as long as I have or maybe even a little longer. He’s originally from Pittsburgh and we met in the mid ‘80s.

Those were the boom years of the comedy business. Every old fart (now including John and myself) talks about how amazing it was then but I have to agree. It really was the best of times for comedians but unfortunately neither John nor I had an act then. We were still learning our craft but we had a whole big country full of clubs to go explore. And we did.

John and I laughed about how now we’re the crusty old bastards we used to make fun of back then and how fast the time went. If we had acts we both have now in 1989 instead of 2009 we’d both be millionaires, or at least doing a lot better than we’re doing. It’s like we have the winning lottery numbers twenty years too late and are still trying to cash them in.

It was great to see John. I watched his whole show and it made me laugh out loud. He’s a pro and like me he stuck with it all these years. He moved to L.A. for a long time and is now back in Pittsburgh squeaking out a living like I am here in the Midwest. We’re lifers.

John was telling me stories of how he’s scraping up work just like I am and it makes me sad because guys like us should be kicking ass right now. We’ve paid our dues and have a lot to offer but now it seems fewer and fewer want it. What’s next for road dogs like us?