Monday June 18th, 2012 – Fox Lake, IL
One thing life isn’t these days is simple. I don’t think it’s ever been easy, but it used to be a lot easier to figure out. Get a job, pound out a middle class living, retire. Have a couple of marriages along the way, hope your sports teams win the big one and try to make the best of life. Then die.
It’s not like that anymore. The world is changing so fast I don’t know who can keep up with it. It’s especially tough for pig headed crusty old farts – like me. I used to laugh at my grandparents for their lack of staying with the times, but I’m much worse by comparison. They were fine with a black and white TV, an AM radio and a black rotary telephone. Technology was not an issue.
Oh, how I wish that were the case now. There are some definite conveniences that come along with everything that’s changed in the past twenty or thirty years, but there are also things that are totally baffling. Twitter is a perfect example. Everyone but me seems to be enjoying it, but why?
I have an account, just because some people told me I needed one. But I still haven’t sent out a single tweet. I don’t see a need to. Facebook is pretty stupid too in my opinion, even though that I’m on. I don’t really care who just had a tuna melt for lunch or how many puppies their dog had. I try to make my own posts interesting, but I know most on my friends list don’t ever read them.
Professionally is where I’m really getting buried. I think the internet is the worst thing that has happened to the comedy business since the heckler. It allows every halfwit psycho who has ever had delusions of grandeur to inflict their unvarnished insane ramblings on the public without any filters. Wait a minute, that’s exactly what I’m doing now. And that’s my point. Rules don’t exist.
Random idiots like me can have a forum just by deciding to create one. I still can’t believe that anyone reads my claptrap, but apparently someone does. I’ve pissed enough people off with what I wrote that I should probably stop, but I don’t because I think doing it is a worthwhile discipline.
When I started in comedy, it was a very small community. Every town had a subculture of their local comedians, and most of them knew each other or at least had heard their name. Now, it’s an out of control mish mash of madness with too many clueless kooks having access to a computer.
Anyone and their imaginary friend’s dog can have a website, You Tube channel and newsletter going in about ten minutes – even though they’ve never had even ONE paid gig. That totally puts people like me who have paid dues for decades in the trick bag, as it waters down whatever I did to earn my rung on the comedy ladder. Anyone who buys comedy has to sift through the chaff.
It used to be, comics would do their best to hide their early attempts because they realized they weren’t ready. It’s a process, like learning any craft. Now, thousands of piss ant newbies fight to get their latest five minute train wreck on You Tube thinking they’ll get a million hits. It’s nuts.
It would be like someone saving their soiled diapers and displaying them, but nobody can stop it because anything goes. I’m now the dinosaur fighting progress just like my grandparents did.
1 comment:
I used to be very technophobic ... i was NOT on Facebook until most of the known world had joined up ... as a matter of fact everyone and their baby was on Facebook and finally after all of my younger more cool friends told me about it, i joined. Youtube was actually created by a guy who went to my high school - and i found it to be very fun & entertaining ... even though there is a TON of rubbish ... Twitter is fine - it's a tool. You link up twitter to Linkedin & Facebook and it makes 'Sharing' easier ... and if you need to do a search you can FIND fun cool things on a flash ... it's just another sharing tool. Not much fun, but it's helpful and you can be creative with it. There are other better ways of spending time - offline - too many charities to count - food pantries to volunteer at - carpets to keep clean & laundry to fold ... if I had to never go online again I might be better off ... we all might. I say the Amish have the right idea, but who cares what I think?
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