You Can't Please Everybody

Friday August 3rd, 2007 - Lake Villa, IL

Time to play catch up. I’ve got a lot of time off in August and am hoping to use it to get my life together in many ways. When I’m out on the road I don’t have time to do this kind of stuff which really is just getting myself organized. It’s busy work but it needs to be kept up just like maintenance on a vehicle. I have made some progress but have a ways to go.

Getting rid of worldly possessions is an ongoing process. Things accumulate and I don’t want it to be a problem so I am going through boxes and throwing out as much as I can. It feels great to do it and eventually I want to be down to the bare minimum of personal stuff I need to survive so I can focus on being creative. If I really need or want something I will be able to buy it but I find myself needing and wanting less and less. I think that’s healthy.

I like to travel light and there is more than enough to do without having to worry about storage of a ton of junk I’ll never use or barely look at once in a blue moon, usually when I am moving it somewhere. Throwing out all my useless trinkets has had a healing effect.

What I’m working on now is organizing my comedy material and classes. I’ve got a big pile of papers with notes and ideas on them and I’ve been sorting and typing them out and putting them into files which I will back up and that feels fantastic. I’ve been putting it off way too long and getting it done makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something useful.

My friend Will C. called today and is staying in Rockford between shows. He had an off day and wanted to get together. The more I hang out with him the more I like this guy. He has some stories of his childhood that make mine look like summer camp and we hung out and had a sandwich and he told me a few more. Like me I think he’s too close to them and can’t see how great those stories are but when he told me he had me absolutely enthralled.

I’d love to have a ‘dented can’ tour with comedians who have had horrible backgrounds. I don’t think there would be any trouble at all finding them because as a whole most of the people who end up in comedy have some sort of major tweak somewhere. Comedy is our medicine and therapy and what keeps us from drowning in our sea of insanity. It’s a buoy.

Cleaning out my stuff I came across some autographed baseballs I bought years ago and don’t need to keep anymore. One of them was from the Kansas City Royals and Will grew up in Kansas City so I thought he would enjoy it. I gave it to him at lunch and his eyes just lit up as he looked over the signatures on the ball. Those names meant something to him. I know what that’s like because I grew up watching the Milwaukee Brewers and that would be my memory wheel house. If I could make Will smile I did my job and he said it was one of the nicest gifts he ever got. I am really thrilled he liked it and hope he keeps it for years.

These kinds of things go way past comedy and it’s what I want to keep doing until they put the pennies on my eyes for the last time. Making people smile and feel good is my only purpose in life whether it’s a room full or one at a time. It should be everyone’s purpose in my opinion but sadly that’s not the case. But I can only control myself so I’ll keep trying.

I don’t always succeed though. I called someone today that I wrote about in this diary a while back and that person was less than thrilled about what I wrote. I got part of a major ear full but I just hung up the phone in mid rant because I knew it wouldn’t have a chance for a pleasant ending. That person was angry with me and it amazed me it had so much of an impact. I didn’t mention that person’s name then and I won’t now. I write about what I feel on a given day and I don’t sugar coat anything. I guess I should have done it that day.

It’s hard to figure people out sometimes. I really am sorry I offended the person but then if I would have said that on the phone I don’t think it would have made any difference. I’m probably going to be on the ‘no fly’ list anyway so I didn’t need to get into any arguments.

I am the first one to admit I’m a wack job in many ways and I do try to please whenever I can but there is just no way of pleasing everybody. I admit my many faults freely and I’m only writing this to catalog my life so hopefully either me or someone else can look back a few years from now and find some clues as to what went right and wrong. I don’t want to start fights with people and quite frankly I’m surprised anyone actually reads what I write.

The main reason I started it was because a lot of people ask what being a comedian for a living is really like. It’s not all fun and laughs and my life was screwed up long before I got into comedy. In fact it’s precisely WHY I got into comedy. Stepping on a few toes writing my diary is the least of my worries but I do feel bad if I hurt someone because that wasn’t my intention at all. Believe me, when I want to attack someone with my words I can do it.

I’m hoping to not have to do that though. I don’t enjoy it and I want to focus on making peace and getting laughs and building a good life. It still hurts that Bob and Tom wouldn’t accept my apology when I got kicked off their radio show last October. That’s been a long time now and I have heard they’re still angry at me but what can I do about it? I tried very hard to do the right thing and apologize and I truly was and am sorry but if they or the one I offended today won’t accept it then what else can I do but move on and try to improve?

This life sure isn’t what I thought it would be when I was a kid. I pictured my adulthood to be a lot different than this but now all I can do is ride it out and hope when it’s all over that I can look back and say I did my best. Maybe this world is all one big joke. I hope so.

One part of the joke that isn’t funny is the bridge disaster in Minnesota. It’s just horrible. What an example of total random luck. It could have happened anywhere at any time but it happened precisely at that moment and nobody expected it. The people who died were not anything other than in the wrong place at the wrong time and it cost them all their lives.

Who doesn’t feel bad about it? Everyone does but deep down we all know it could have been anyone and everyone else including us. This life can be a real bite in the shorts and to try and figure it all out is useless because there are no solid answers anywhere. That’s why I am going to stop trying and keep working on making myself a better comedian and more importantly a better person on top of that. I don’t intend to hurt anyone on purpose and if I do by accident I will apologize. If they don’t accept it then it will be on them and not me.