What all this number shit means for you, is that I’ll probably be able to do another one as soon as I have enough new material.
I couldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for you people out there that enjoy my stuff, and I just want to let you all know that I appreciate it very much.
One of the things that I truly take pride in is that whenever I’m at a club the wait staff always tell me how cool my audiences are.
I have no idea how I pulled this off, but all over the country clubs consistently tell me that you people that come to see me are some of the most generous and friendly audiences that they ever see.
I have no idea how this happened, and I’m in no way taking any kind of credit for it, but I appreciate the fuck out of it.  I try to be as friendly and generous as I can, and when I hear that you guys are like that too it really means the fucking world to me.

I’m off to the Addison, Texas Improv this weekend with none other than Ari Shaffir and Joey Diaz.  If you enjoyed the comedy special, I’ve got a ton of material that wasn’t on that, as well as the real uncensored versions of the stuff they aired on Spike.
What’s really funny about the censored vs uncensored versions of my comedy special, was that the deal was when they were air it before 1am it would be censored, but after 1am it would be uncensored except for the word “faggot,” which in this goofy, politically correct, finger-pointing country we operate in has become the newest forbidden word.
Forget about context, that word is so evil it cannot even be uttered.  I don’t even use it to describe humans; I use it for a dog and some ants, but we’re being told that this is a word so heinous that context doesn’t matter.  It is FORBIDDEN!

Well, Saturday night rolls around, and they beeped just about every possible offending word including “dick” and “shit” but left in the 2 uses of “faggot.”  It was literally the only dirty word that made it though the censorship net at all, and it was the one that they said they wanted censored even from the uncut late night version.
Doh!
Go figure.  I don’t know how it happened, I just show up and do my act, but I thought that it was fucking hilarious that it didn’t get beeped.

I really wonder when as a culture we’re going to realize that words represent ideas, and that there are no “magic” words, and to give any word such a forbidden status just makes it all the more powerful when someone uses it.  It’s not like you’re ever going to stop people from saying “faggot,” you’re just going to make it have even more impact when it is used, especially when you try to say that any use of it at all, even in jest is unacceptably offensive.
What are even fucking crazier, are the people that say that it’s ok for gay guys to say it, but no one else – that it’s like black people and the word “nigger.”  I actually had a gay guy try to tell me that recently.  He said, “It’s our ‘nigger.’”  I told him that was probably the gayest thing I’ve ever heard him say, and that he could go fuck himself.

I’m not buying it.  Having one ridiculous, magic, forbidden word in our culture like “nigger” is bad enough, but to try to push for “faggot” to become the gay version of that at this late in the game is just fucking silly.
Celebrity gossip blogger “Perez Hilton” recently called Will.I.am from the black eye peas a faggot, and someone sucker punched him in the head for his indiscretion.  Apparently even if you’re gay yourself you can push some serious buttons with the use of this word!
The most disturbing thing about that whole event was the video that Perez put out giving his side of the story.  I DARE you to try to watch the whole thing.  It’s like waterboarding for your eyes and ears.  I made it through the first few minutes, but the reality overwhelmed me.  Seeing this yelling, spitting, gelatinous mass of a drama queen give his side of the story just forced me to think of what it must be like to actually be that guy, and I just couldn’t fucking take it.  I bailed at around 3 minutes.  I blame the weed.

Can’t we all just get along?

For the record, I think any kind of bigotry is contrary to, and in direct opposition of everything that is cool about people.  Love, friendship, art – bigotry is a toxin in all of those areas.  Nobody should give a fuck about whether you’re gay or straight, black or white.  I think the rational amongst us can all agree that humans should be judged on their own individual merit, not pre-judged into a group because it’s easier and requires less effort and thinking, and hating someone for being gay or for being anything else that doesn’t affect you is a horrible error in thinking.

That said… when someone sees you acting like a faggot, they should be able to call you on it.  It has absolutely nothing to do with being gay, and the straightest man in the entire world could have made that video and said those exact words in the manliest voice ever known, and it would still be an inarguable display of absolute faggotry.

Now, I’m sure a lot of you at this point are probably thinking, “Joe, what the fuck?  You’re really going on this much about Perez Hilton?  Not Iran, not, insane science experiments going on like the Jet Fusion research project – no, you wanna go on forever about celebrity bloggers getting hit with weak sucker punches?  Really?”
You’re right, and again… I blame the weed.
My point isn’t to hate on this Perez Hilton fellow, and I certainly don’t think he deserved to get hit.  He’s certainly not physically threatening, nor was he pretending to be, so going after him would in no way be a defensive thing.  It was an assault, and really kind of a bitch move.  But guess what?  That’s exactly what happens when you tell a black dude in a band, “You’re not a fucking artist, you’re a fucking faggot!”  It might not be right, but it’s probably gonna get you smacked.

You gotta give the li’l guy credit though, he got right up in dude’s face and said it with confidence.   That’s a strong line for a gelatinous, über-gay blogger to be using on a black guy in a band.  He even pissed off GLAAD.
I wonder if he uses that line all the time – like maybe it was his “go to” line whenever anyone started shit talking.

Like if he was at a restaurant complaining, “I would like to talk to your manager.”
“I AM the manager.”
“You’re not the fucking manager, you’re a fucking faggot!”
BAM!  Right in your FUCKING FACE!
When a guy THAT gay calls you a faggot, it definitely has some extra pop to it.
If you were really insecure and at a bad point in your life and he hit you with that, you might even consider it.  “Is he right?”  For a moment you will be weak, and that moment of weakness is when he’ll strike.  He will leap forth like a gay vampire, and as he sinks his gay fangs into your neck he is simultaneously marking you with the sweet, rotting scent of his acne puss as the zits on his face erupt against the stubble on your cheek.
You will be turned.

What the fuck am I talking about?  Exactly.  I was just asking myself the same thing.
Sorry.  I think I’ve been reading too much Stephen King lately, and again… I blame the weed.

So, in closing, my message in this blog is, thank you very much to all my fans, I’ll be at the Addison, Texas improv this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and please, for the sake of all that’s good in the world, don’t be a faggot.

This was my 40th birthday cake given to me by my dear friends, just to let you know that faggot can also be a term of endearment.

Another program I’m using is called “WriteRoom.” What it does is makes your entire computer screen black and all you see is the green text you’re typing. No tables, no desktop in the background, just you and your words. It’s the best program I’ve ever found for cutting out distractions and it really seems to make a big difference in my concentration and focus while I’m writing. I’ve tried a couple times to write without it since I’ve started using it, and I always eventually give in and wind up firing it up. There’s apparently a PC version of this software called “Dark Room.” For really getting into your work it’s the best thing I’ve ever used.

This past weekend I was in Montreal, Canada for the UFC and two awesome shows at Kola Note. Kola Note used to be called Club Soda, and I first performed there as a part of the Montreal Comedy Festival way back in 1994. It was really cool to be back there again, as I haven’t done shows in Montreal in about 9 years or so. The crowds were awesome, and I can’t wait to get back there again next year. One of the more enthusiastic fans at the show actually made his own T shirt to honor the insanely hilarious Southpark episode where they had Carlos Mencia beaten to death with a baseball bat. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s called “fishsticks” and although it seems impossible, it’s actually even more awesome than it sounds.
It’s going to be available for streaming at http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/ on May 9th.

That show is consistently the funniest, most fucked up show on television, and I think this season is the best one yet. I sometimes can’t even fucking believe the shit they get away with, but I’m ever so grateful that comedy central just lets them do their thing. It’s just a tremendously satisfying show in the ocean of watered down bullshit that’s on TV, and it’s even more incredible when you realize that they’re on their 13th season. I don’t think there’s ever been a show ever that just fucking goes for it like Southpark does. For obvious reasons this episode is near and dear to my heart. I already watched it 3 times, and if I could download it tonight I would probably watch it again. It’s that fucking awesome.

Here’s a little video of Ari Shaffir and I talking about it while we were in Montreal waiting to go to radio.

Some people might say that it’s cruel and downright fucked up to enjoy a cartoon of a real person getting decapitated by a baseball bat, and they would be right, but I think they’re missing the big picture. That southpark episode is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to that guy.
It is cruel, and it is fucked up, but in the end shit like that is good for a person like Mencia. He’s so delusional I think he needs to feel that jolt just to realize what kind of bad energy he’s spreading with his dishonest ways. I guarantee it’s humbled him, and it even might make him reconsider the path that he’s taken in this life that lead to him getting brutally parodied like that. The way it stands he’s going to have to do an incredible amount of positive things just to balance his public perception to a neutral level, and I really hope he does just that. Or, gets hit in the head by a meteor. Really, I would rather see him do good, but the meteor is more likely.
And with that, I’m putting the subject of Carlos Mencia to bed. I’m done with it. I really do hope the guy gets his shit together and in that regard I wish him luck.

I just did Adam Carolla’s super awesome internet podcast, and as soon as it’s available for download I’ll post a link up here. I had a great time doing it, and it’s really the perfect format for Adam. Having done his censored radio show several times in the past, it was so nice to just be able to talk freely with no thoughts about commercials or bad words. My only regret was that the hour flew by too quick.

I would love to do something like that for this site, and as soon as I get some of the things I’m working on for here implemented I’m going to try to make something like that happen. At the very least I’m going to do some more of those short video clips and a regular video blog. We’re also trying to figure out the best webcam hosting site to do a streaming webcam show with chat. We did one on Justin.tv a few weeks ago from the Brea improv greenroom, but it was really choppy and inconsistent.
We’re gonna try Ustream next, possibly this weekend from the greenroom of the Ice House comedy club in Pasadena where I’ll be performing this Friday and Saturday.

Ho-leee shit… a mother-fucking real live tornado was coming this way.
I may have chosen the wrong time to take my herbal glaucoma medication.
I looked around at all of these equally concerned fellow travelers and I felt a real bonding moment with them. We made eye contact and nodded in confirmation. We all realized that we were a bunch of strangers, stuck in this terrifying mess, and to get through it we were going to have to stick together and support each other.
Like Jack says on Lost, “Live together, or die alone.”
Indeed. We can get through this.
We were all huddled together in the hallway like scared dogs until some of us realized that starbucks was still open, and that it was right around the corner inside the airport. If we were going to hide from death at least we could do it as Joey Diaz would say, “like gentlemen,” with coffee and wifi.

What was truly remarkable was how unfazed the folks who live there were about this funnel cloud of incredible destruction just a couple miles away.
I asked the young girl giving me my coffee if this happened all the time, and she said, “Yeah, it do be happenin’.”
Indeed.
It’s kind of freaky to think that you can get so used to something as crazy as a tornado, but I guess that’s just what happens. People are creatures of habit, even if that habit is hiding from fucking cloud monsters.
What’s even freakier was that even though I know for a fact that tornadoes exist and that they fuck up hundreds and thousands of random homes and people every year, in my mind they didn’t exist.

I mean, I know they’re real, but since they’ve never been a part of my life, I don’t have a place for them in my mental model of the world. It seems like there’s only so many things about our natural environment that my mind has the resources to provide consciousness coverage to, so anything that I haven’t actually seen with my own eyes in my 41 years of life gets put into this “does not apply” category and becomes almost abstract.
It’s sort of like the role asteroids play in our daily life.
We all know that they’re out there, and that they can fuck us up, but we don’t really think about them day to day.
It’s just too out there. The idea of them possibly hitting the earth just seems something less than real.

If you were going to pick a place where you would be trapped with people and hiding from the wind, Nashville is as good a place as any.
You really couldn’t ask to be around any nicer people.
People are beyond friendly there, and despite the fact that we were under siege from none other than the sky herself, nobody panicked. People are so cordial down here. Everywhere you turn you hear nothing but “sir” and “ma’am.” I use those words occasionally myself, but Got Damn if I don’t catch myself using them at least twice as much when I’m around Nashville. The shit is contagious.
It’s southern hospitality in the truest sense of the word.

I’ve had two awesome stops on the road in the past week, doing a sold out weekend in Philly at the Helium comedy club, and then another sold out show Tuesday night at Zanies in Nashville. I’m starting to put together some new material and new ideas for my next set after my spike special airs, and to get all geared up for that, I’m gonna resume my daily blogs again starting this week. This time I’m gonna just take off the weekends, because really my writing then should be all just working on my act since I’m usually performing on the weekends.

I’ve been threatening to put up some video blogs for a while now, and I think this week is when I kick that off. I’ve got a plan for my whole youtube page that I’m gonna get cracking on. I did those daily blogs for a while when I was preparing for my spike show, and I can’t tell you guys enough how cool it was to get all the positive feedback on them.
It really means the world to me that so many of you out there enjoy them.
I started realizing that this blog isn’t just a place for me to express myself and fuck around, but it’s also the purest form of creative expression that I have in my life.
I don’t make any money from it, and in fact it costs me money to operate it, but I feel like not only is it something that I love to do, but I also feel like it’s an obligation that I have to you guys. I’ve gotten offers to put ads up my site, but that always just seemed gross. Even if the ads could pay for maintaining the site, and they didn’t distract from the content, it would still feel weird. I like it the way it is.

To me it feels like the proper exchange. I’m honored and humbled to have so many cool people that come to my shows, so my contribution back to you is not just to write and perform more shows, but to keep you entertained and connected in between shows here. This is my best, most direct and honest link to all of you, and the freest, purest thing I do. I love stand up comedy, but as an art form it has that one restriction in that you have to be funny. It’s definitely my favorite art form, both to watch and to do, but some ideas that are very much worthy of discussion and consideration simply aren’t funny. They just are what they are, like this blog. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re weird, but ultimately they are what they are, and that’s how they should be. Here on the blog I can let them take whatever shape they wish.

It’s a great writing exercise keeping these blogs up, because it forces me to think. I find myself going through my day searching for possible topics. Fortunately for me, I live a pretty fucking weird life, so there’s always something interesting happening, often times when I least expect it.
Like for instance, before the cloud monster attacked in Nashville, a guy that I had spoken to for a total of 10 minutes in the 2 days that I was in town asked my friend Ari and I if we wanted to go to a private swingers club with him and get our freak on.

We were headed to the airport, and just saying good bye to this guy we barely knew, when out of nowhere he invites us to join him and his wife at their swingers club the next time we’re in town. At first I had to pause, because I really thought I MUST have misheard him.
The guy seemed about as nice and normal as could be, and his nervous, clumsy invite to this house of fuck all came completely out of left field.
I just didn’t figure him for that kind of guy. From our interaction with him over the last 2 days he seemed like the kind of guy that would invite you to a church social or a community barbecue, not some free-spirited fuck-freak that lets guys bone his wife.

Now, don’t get me wrong because I’m certainly not judging him or looking at his situation negatively at all, because like I said he was a really nice guy, and he seemed genuinely happy, so it’s all working for him. I mean, who the fuck am I to say what’s normal or acceptable? Let he with out sin cast the first stone, and all that good shit…
The way he described it – he and his wife both love each other very deeply, and they know they’re coming home to each other, and that’s the most important thing to them. Their relationship is true love, and what they’re doing with these other people is just having fun, and they were both comfortable with it.

I can totally buy that, but then he also said something I that found very fascinating; and that was that they both had veto powers – meaning that either one had to approve their sexual partners before they were allowed to participate in any fucktuals.

I thought that was pretty interesting, because I thought the whole thing with this swinger stuff was the idea of having sexual freedom. You’re in a committed relationship, but you’re allowing each other to have fun with other people’s bodies. Your husband or wife having veto powers tells me that you’re still dealing with the sting of those primitive emotions. I mean, for the most part to be that guy you must have a pretty good grip on your jealousy, but I guess every man has his limits so he’s reserving his option on anything that registers over a certain number on his freak-o-meter.

“So like, you can deal with some guy like a nervous and slightly feminine accountant with the nice hair giving your wifey an excited, but ultimately sup-par boning, but you’ll put the kibosh on some wild-eyed Melvin Manhoef looking motherfucker itching to stuff his fat, black dick into your wife’s tight, white ass.

“Yeah, exactly. That’s too much. I can’t follow that.”

Interesting.
That’s got to be a weird little balancing act of emotions when you’re hearing your wife moaning with delight from another man’s cock. On one hand, you should be happy for her because you love her, and she’s obviously enjoying herself, but on the other hand… what… the… fuck?

I really wish we didn’t have to run, because I would have loved to sit down and pick this dude’s mind for hours.
This man was a God damned, real life sexual rebel. He’s bucking the conventionally accepted dick and pussy distribution system, and he’s doing it in Jesus loving Tennessee no less.
Guys that let other guys fuck their wives are rare freaks, probably one in a 100,000 or less – so when you come across one you really have to take advantage of your good fortune and fire off as many questions at him as you can.
I didn’t get as much time with him as I would have liked, but at least I got enough for this blog.