August 2007

That’s the name of the new single off Prince’s latest album “Planet Earth” If you don’t have it, you should pick it up, or pull it down, or whatever. This song is HOT!!! with a capital SERIOUSLY.

Huh?

Prince can take a song called Future Baby Mama and make it an anthem for women — make us forget that baby mamadom is not what we should be aspiring to… WHY? Because he is Prince. Like I said, I love the song, but I think it’s hilarious how he’s basically telling this woman how all of the other women he’s dated in the past didn’t have what it takes to be his future baby mama. They weren’t special enough. But she IS. The chorus says: “None of them got what it takes, to be a future baby mama…”

I’m sorry, but did the connotation of the phrase “baby mama” change without me knowing? None of them got what it takes, to be a future baby mama… that’s like saying “Girl, none of the other women I’ve ever been with have been worthy of the disrespect I’m about to shower on you. Baby, I’m gonna ignore your phone calls and neglect our children… because you’re so special to me.”

Why not say they don’t have what it takes to be my wife, my everlasting love…? Again I’ll tell you why. Because he is Prince. He could say any crazy thing that came into his head and we’d all still swoon. Fantasia, who is herself a B-A-B-Y-M-A-M-A, sang about it and got blasted. She was trying to ‘reclaim’ the word and make it positive and she got slammed. Prince writes a song about baby mamas and he’s probably gonna get a Grammy.

Gotta love it!

Today I did a performance out on the Wilson Plaza of the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown D.C. It’s a lunchtime thing where tourists and people who work in the area can come outside and see a bunch of different kinds of shows. It’s free and it happens every weekday all summer long. It was really, really fun. Also on the show were a couple of good friends…

Queen Aishah: She’s a good friend and NJ homegirl. We met about 4 years ago, and she’s been absolutely awesome to me. If you don’t know her, Boo for you! She’s hilarious. She’s done ComicView, had her own commercial for Verizon a little while back and she used to be on the Russ Parr Morning Show based here in D.C.

and Kevin Lee: Kevin’s a Def Jam alum… from the first go-round. He does comedy and magic and juggling and….. Very funny and a very cool guy as well.

The show was a blast. It was really chilly outside this morning, but it warmed up a little in time for the show and we had a pretty good crowd out. Of course it was a G-rated show, but it was awesome. There were some little kids out there who absolutely LOVED Kevin. He let them help with the magic tricks and kept throwing out all these jokes that went right over their heads… It was perfect. Anyways, it was big fun. BTW, the photos I took are pretty good, huh? I even took the one of me. Yes, I am amazing! Anyways, this show was probably the highlight of my day, but if anything else goes down, I’ll be sure to let y’all know. Peace.

Living in DC for as long as I have, I sometimes feel like I’ve become immune to crazy. I don’t really stare or pay much attention at all to the crazies… And I feel like I’ve become a pretty good judge of whether or not someone’s REALLY crazy, or just acting a damn fool for attention’s sake.  But I was totally thrown on Sunday nite. I was in my car on the way to the Improv and I was at the light on Mass and New Jersey I think? And there was this guy waiting to cross the street. He had on sweats so I assumed he was a jogger waiting for the light to change. As he was standing there, he started shadow boxing — which by itself isn’t really crazy. I’ve seen guys do that plenty of times… But this guy… he was getting hit back.

Really.

Like uppercuts to the chin. Repeatedly. Now before you ask, no — it was not regular shadow box bobbing and weaving. He was kicking his ass. Guess he didn’t see it coming… HA! And neither did ANYONE ELSE.

It was the kind of crazy I wasn’t prepared for… How are you gonna be shadow boxing and lose? That’s redunk…

1: The evolution of a joke
Watching a comedian start with a premise, add to it, subtract from it and then turn it into something amazing. Some of my favorite shows have been when I’ve worked with or gone to see a comic who was working on material for a specific event — a DVD taping or an HBO special. You see the material in its rawest form and they’re not afraid to ask the audience, “Does that work for you?” What part of that bit did y’all like?” I saw Robert Klein do that. It was like a 2-hour show and it was super entertaining. A workshop. And when I actually saw the special it was like WOW. This is the job. This is what it is. I’ve heard people say, “I bombed at an open mic.” And that makes zero sense to me. The way I see it, if the purpose is to find out if a bit or a part of the bit works, then whether or not people laugh, you’ve done what you came to do. That’s just where the process begins.

2: The beat before the punch
There is no better feeling than when you know you’ve got an entire room full of people with you. I live for that moment right before the punch, when it’s totally silent and you can feel people listening harder — waiting for it… And if the joke hits, maaan, that’s just the best feeling in the world.

3: Comedy club hot wings
Really. Do I need to elaborate? If you’re a comedy club with no hot wings on the menu, shame on you! It’s like not having a brick wall. Can somebody say BOOTLEG?

OK, so that’s it for part 1. Who knows, I’ve been better lately about updating this thing, so there could quite possibly be a part 2. Stay tuned!

Yesterday I tripped out to Lewes, DE to perform at the Delmarva Blue Crab Festival. Yes, you read right. Good bud comedian Kelly Terranova invited me out to perform with him and I said sure. In the last post I mentioned that I was gonna try to go to Rehoboth… Yeah… Since the Friday show was cancelled, I went up Saturday morning with every intention of spending the first part of the day at the beach. Showtime was 4pm. Left DC, hopped on 50 East… no traffic. Came up on the Bay Bridge… no traffic. Got on 404… no traffic. It looked like my first beach day in years was actually about to be pretty sweet. It wasn’t 100+ degrees like its been all week. The high for the day was supposed to be like 82. Perfect.

So I’m on Rte. 1 in DE and I pass the Crab Festival. OK, now that I know where it is, I’m gonna just go on to the beach, pull out my chair, read my book and be back for showtime. But as soon as I passed the festival grounds, I hit a brick wall… I’m like 10 miles from Rehoboth and I swear I sat in the same exact spot, with my car in park, for like 45 minutes. Boo.

I never made it to the beach y’all… which stinks cause I was so close. But I did get to witness firsthand the gentile dining habits of blue crab enthusiasts. I myself have never eaten a crab that wasn’t in a crab cake or a bisque. I dabble in seafood every now and then but I’m scared to go full throttle because of a childhood allergy to shellfish that I may or may not have outgrown. But I’m up on stage and it almost made me ill to see the audience picking those crabs apart. Man, there was this older white woman in the front — she would have done my grandma proud. Grandma wasn’t having it if you left any chicken meat on the bone. This lady would have been able to teach her a few things. Not to be judgemental — but hey, whatever, I AM me after all — I can’t understand how you can eat in muck like that.

Really?

And believe me, that’s not nearly the worst photo I took. It’s just the only one I could bear to post. And as if the crab picking weren’t enough, the mallet-banging to get to the crab meat… Let’s just say that there might be a more distracting thing to do during a comedians set — but I have no earthly clue what it could be. I just told the audience that whenever they banged I was gonna take it as an endorsement of the joke I was telling. But then that quickly got out of hand b/c then whenever they liked something they banged on the table INSTEAD of laughing. Maaaan… :)

All that said, it was a good time. The people enjoyed the show. They had a good time, we got paid, and really isn’t that what it’s all about? It was just a very interesting day.

Why do I even keep this blog page on my site? Really. Once a month? This is really sad. I’m sure I’ve personally spoken with everyone who reads this blog within the past month. You don’t have to come here to find out what’s up with me…

For the none or two of you who might still be reading… I’ll give you quick summary of what I did between July 9 and today… Let’s see… I worked with Roy Wood, Jr. at the Comedy Factory in Baltimore. He’s amazing. That was fun. My photo was in the weekend section of the Washington Post Express… It was probably the worst picture ever taken of me, but it was in print so I’m not complaining. We had another hugely successful weekend with the Broad Minded Comedy shows. I took some new headshots and I think they came out great…

Next weekend I’m going up to Lewes, DE to perform at an outdoor family festival Friday and Saturday. So I plan to head over to Rehoboth. I haven’t been to the beach in at LEAST 3 or 4 summers. I know… I know… as much as the idea of putting on a bathing suit thrills me… I somehow haven’t had the urge. So I am looking forward to that as well… Got a few other projects in the works… I’ll catch you all up as soon as there’s more info to share… or you know, next month sometime when I sit back down and force myself to blog again…

Before I go, wrote a bit yesterday about prayer and religion, that’s not really about prayer and religion. It’s like the religious joke that isn’t. I think it has legs. I just need to get it out of my head so I know for sure… Sometimes it’s hella funny in there but once I say it out loud, I wanna apologize to the audience. Stay tuned. If it works like I think it could, it’ll be right up there w/ my I don’t trust senior citizens bit. Gold people… or should I say, person. Gold I say.