I’m checked into my hotel room right now, and it’s 1:07am mountain time.
I’m in Denver, Colorado for the weekend to perform at the Comedy Works South, their 2nd club in the city. I’ve been coming here for years, and I love it so much I’ve been thinking of moving out here. I know it gets cold as fuck in the winter, but it’s only for a couple months, and I’ve always had this thing in the back of my head about wanting to live in the mountains.
I’ve even been out here a couple times just to look at real estate. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but at this point in my life there’s not much holding me in LA. Most of the time I’m traveling for work with my stand up and the UFC, so really the only thing keeping me there is my house and my friends.
The traffic in LA has reached crisis levels. It could be 2 in the afternoon or 2 in the morning and you could easily be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic miles long. It just makes no sense. The highways are fucking huge out there, but there’s so many people that it just doesn’t matter. There’s something insane like 36 million people living in California, and at least 20 million live in the LA area. That’s all just guesswork too, because they really have no idea how many “illegals” there are living there.
The weather is great in LA, but the air quality is borderline toxic. I was visiting Boulder recently looking at houses, and you can literally feel the difference in the air. The sky looks bluer too, because you don’t have to look at it through a brown cloud of stinky exhaust fumes. Sometimes you don’t even realize how bad it is because you just get used to it, but recently we’ve had a lot of rain in LA, and right after the rain rolls in and the clouds part you could see all these mountains in the distance, mountains that on normal days are completely hidden behind the thick, brown, shitty air.
I was looking at it the other day thinking out loud to myself, “that CAN’T be good.”
I’m breathing that shit? That’s gotta be affecting me. I mean if it’s hiding these fucking gigantic mountains, what the hell is it doing to my lungs?
What is it doing to my mind? How much does all that pollution affect your thinking and your physical well-being? I’ve just got to think that it makes a big difference.
I’ve been living in LA for over 14 years now, and you can feel it getting worse every year. What used to take a half hour to get somewhere back then could easily take an hour or more today, and it’s getting worse. People are constantly moving out there, chasing the dream. Some for the weather, some for the lure of a career in showbiz, some to escape Mexico – it’s a never ending surge of human beings looking for something that’s going to improve their lives in the fakest city in the fucking world.
I just wonder how long we can keep stuffing humans into this one, clogged up area, and what it’s going to be like there in the future.
I look at living in LA like playing a gigantic game of musical chairs; you know it’s going to end eventually, but right now the music is playing and everyone is pretending it’s going to last forever. If I’m smart I’ll pull up a chair in Colorado and watch the end on TV from a house in the mountains.
Thursday and Friday morning Ari Shaffir, Tom Segura and I will be on KBPI my favorite local station here in Denver. On Friday I’m actually taking over the show because my buddy Willie B the morning DJ has something that he’s got to do, so from 7am to 10am I’m going to be the guest fill in DJ, and Ari and Tom are going to join me on the air.
You can listen live wherever you are on the internet if you go to their site: http://www.kbpi.com/main.html
And of course we’re here all weekend performing at the Comedy Works.
http://www.comedyworks.com/home.aspx
This is a special weekend for me, because it’s my last weekend before I go to Columbus to film my spike special. If you’re in Colorado anywhere near by, come on down and join in on the fun.
Thanks for all the support, I really can’t tell you all how much I truly appreciate it.
I can definitely appreciate what you mean about Big City Vs. Mountains. I’m from Toronto (a small town compared to LA) and I visited Jackson Hole, WY for the first time about 8 years ago and have been back 3 times since, it almost feels like you connect with the place more. Driving is even enjoyable, nothing is conveniently located right to you. Yet, driving isn’t a chore; the single lane roads never have traffic and you always have an amazing view. The mountains do a lot to bring you back down to earth, just the sheer size of them reminds you of how worthless you really are as an individual in the grand scheme of things, the ego has nowhere to hide. It’s a rude awakening going back to a city afterward… I say you move to Denver. A dear friend of mine moved from Connecticut to Jackson Hole about 15 years ago, and now wouldn’t call any other place home.
Thanks for the Tweet so I could catch the last part of the show streaming. What a whack job that “god hates fags” lady is. Mike Gallagher has had her on his show a couple of times, trading her air time for her promise not to picket some poor soldier’s funeral. Looking forward to Joe as DJ tomorrow.
I don’t know how you’ve lasted this long in LA. Any good Jiu-Jitsu in Denver? I’d have a hard time moving somewhere that didn’t and I think that’s a big part of your life now, too.
“Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA, The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay.” – Maynard James Keenan
I was born and raised in Colorado, and lived there for 25 years. It is easily one of the most beautiful and visually engaging states in the country. It’s rare to find nature in all its majesty, be it full bloom of spring or the collage of color that abounds in the fall leaves, and to have access to civilization and yet be able to turn the other way and see the Rocky or La Plata mountains arrayed against the backdrop of a clear blue sky or towering in all their snowcapped wonder is truly amazing. Once you have surrounded yourself with such wonders, the concept of living in a smog riddled, traffic jammed clusterfuck of an overpopulated city will seem apalling.
Whenever you’re able to have an extended stay and have time to take it in, I would highly recommend visiting the Anasazi Indian ruins and cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. It’s 11 miles east of Cortez, CO, right near the four corners, and is a unique display of true American History. The relative wonder of an advanced ancient society that inhabited cliff dwellings cut straight into the side of the mountain for 700 years is a truly unique experience and one that someone such as yourself should find to be an incredible source of inspiration. http://mesaverde.com/
Enjoy your time in Colorado – hopefully you follow through on your ambition to move there so that you can experience the beauty each and every day.
keep up the daily – or at least frequent – blogging! it has become a GREAT way to start my day. A GREAT WAY. – holly in northern cal where the air is a wee bit better
Joe just joined the site minutes ago. Keep up the quality work and good luck with your special, knock em dead.
Get out of LA and go live in the mountains man, LA/Hollywood is pretty much a really bad joke in my opinion. Ugggghhh, I wont get started. The open wilderness is one hell of a isolation chamber.
No matter where you go, just mention Colorado….it’s the place to be…. you will not be sorry.
Besides, DIA can get you anywhere you want to go (…but the fire is so delightful…)
Lots of sunshine!
Have a great show in Denver, and Best of Luck for your Speical in OHIO.
ps Hi t Ari…
Looking forward to seeing you Saturday night at the Comedy Works, Joe. And remember, the mountains are great but we’ve got top notch bud here too!
Don’t Cha Know and then when yah.
And then when ya
Joe, it’s good to hear you’ve got your foot out the door of LA. I live in Seattle and while it’s nowhere near as bad as LA, it’s getting worse everyday. There are condos going up on every freakin corner it seems like and the traffic is definitely getting worse every year. I also just feel like city living contaminates your body and mind. The water is all tainted, the air is shitty, it’s loud. There is a general sense of dis-ease associated with the city, I believe. It’s like what you say about how cities resemble a cancer or imperfection upon it’s host organism. I think in the future, given we survive our evolutionary adolescence and don’t nuke the world, we will live very harmoniously with nature and our environment (how new-agey of me). What an amazing day that would be. I hope to get out of the city myself in the meantime. Anyway I missed the radio show, though I totally would have listened to it, I’ll try and find it online. Keep blogging Brother
Peace,
John
…come do a show out in Seattle soon.
***GIANT NEWS!!!***
Justice Department will stop medical marijuana raids, Attorney General says
02/26/2009 @ 11:09 am
In a little-noticed remark Wednesday, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries established under state laws but technically prohibited by the federal government.
The decision marks a shift from the Bush Administration, which was more draconian in its approach to hunting those who sought to dispense marijuana for medical purposes.
http://rawstory.
com/news/2008/Justice_Department_will_stop_medical_marijuana_0226.html
“The weather is great in LA, but the air quality is borderline toxic. I was visiting Boulder recently looking at houses, and you can literally feel the difference in the air. The sky looks bluer too, because you don’t have to look at it through a brown cloud of stinky exhaust fumes.”
Ha. Hey Joe try to keep up. lol.
Who in their right fucking mind enjoys living in LA? Like you said, what a joke. When they say the west is the best, they are not referring to LA. WY, MT, CO, ID, OR, UT, WA, northern Cali…these are the places to be.