My Latest Relapse

7 minutes and 25 seconds of mostly new material recorded last Thursday at the Relapse Theatre.



Stand-up has always been hard for me. A deliberative, lonely, terrifying process. Then when a set goes alright and you listen to the recording later there's room echo, you find out you were mumbling again in spots and the mp3 compression loses even more clarity.

Oh well, what can you do?

My Latest Moral Quandary

There’s a thin line between being edgy and being an asshole.

Edgy comedy is thought provoking, occasionally cathartic and strangely poetic. It uses disturbing imagery, tragic events or discomforting language to reveal a sometimes-horrific world for what it is but with the saving grace of wit. Assholes are anti-intellectual and use abuse and bullying to revel in life’s cruelties and celebrate the asshole’s supposed superiority.

So which is this:

Can a “pox-infested AIDS quilt at an Indian museum” simply play on the strange coincidence of a folksy memorial to a modern epidemic being the very vehicle of plagues past? Or is it cruelly mocking the lame and vanquished?

Maybe it's how ya tell 'em.

Yellowed from Coffee and Neglect

Had a dentist's appointment today that I forgot about. Completely slipped my mind. If only there were some way I could've remembered today's date. Perhaps some kind of National Event. One both deeply somber, solemn and disturbing to each of us individually yet still politically exploitable so that it's in the news constantly. Maybe then I would've remembered I had a cleaning.

Now the earliest date I can reschedule is Dec. 7th.

Nobody remembers Dec. 7th.

"An Incident At An Outhouse"

Our lone bachelor president, James Buchanan was the subject of much of the same sexuality speculation that today swirls (counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere) around Larry Craig—whose names make a cute couple.

Buchanan was once expelled from Dickinson College for an “incident at an outhouse” in which he offered to “make this a two-holer” while a classmate awaited his exit. The future president was soon readmitted after a private meeting with the headmaster.

As Senator from Pennsylvania, Buchanan was often seen in the Senate cloakroom near the chamber pot normally reserved for Henry Clay tapping his foot and orating “wanna share?”

While president, Buchanan once stood throughout a cabinet meeting after a "problem in the privy." “Had a little trouble with the corncob,” he allegedly explained. “Let's just say Kansas isn’t all that’s bleeding.”

Yet Buchanan biographer Erasmus Swisher pooh poohs drawing too many conclusions from such anecdotes. “There’s no hard evidence,” he says. “Just some semi-erect speculation. True, Buchanan made a lot of references to 'close friendships' in his letters, but that was common usage at the time.” His closest friendship was with Alabama Senator and Vice President William Rufus King with whom he lived for 15 years. Buchanan called him “my closest of close male friends” and “my Dearest Companion” and “my Best Unto The Topmost, or BUTT Buddy.”

Yet Swisher insists we can’t read modern ideas into historic words as when Buchanan wrote to King “my face awaits your dough.” This is actually a reference to doughboys or Northerners with Southern sympathies. And “would that I could choke on your fluids” is simply Buchanan’s wish to alleviate King’s tubercular lungs.

“Like Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings,” Swisher wrote in 1996 “we’ll never know for sure.”

Songs of Praise and Free Trade

Gave a shout-out to Orrin Hatch/

On a boat with Simpson and Snatch.

My Thwarted Porn Career

Simpson & Snatch Houseboat Party is a daily webcast originating from the comedy capital of Lawrenceville, GA. Recently, I got to crash a couple webisodes. Watch the master improvisers work while I just stand there.




They do a new show every day.

The Sevananda Bit--Live at Sevananda

Took my new portable audio recorder out for a field test.