Starbuck (4/9/1997-11/26/2010)

Various of my pages feature pictures of my Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Starbuck. I have a collection of his photos on my Facebook page, Starbuck photos on Facebook

He may have been the most beautiful dog this world has ever seen. Not just his looks, which were extraordinary, but his sweet and loving nature.

"Black Friday" was really a dark day for us this year. On the morning after Thanksgiving, we had to put Starbuck to sleep. Even now, a month later, when I write words like these, I want to shout to our veterinarian, "Stop! Don't do it! Don't kill our boy!" But I can't un-do what's done.

I wouldn't, of course, even if I could. It was the right decision. I know if we'd asked Starbuck, he would have said, "I want to love you and make you happy forever. I don't care about the pain." But we loved him, too. We couldn't let him suffer.

His ashes and a little clay paw print are 6 feet away. I don't pull those things out when I want to talk to him. I just talk to the place I know he'd be sitting if he were here.

Playing Doctor's Office

I went to see the doctor Tuesday. The receptionist said, "He's running behind." I said, "I know all about that. I had to start taking Imodium."

Islamic Martyrs Get 72 Virgins?

I've been thinking about this whole "72 Virgins" thing for a while. I wrote a joke about it I published here before that I'll retell below, but I got to wondering what the specific attraction is. What about it would help convince a young man to become a suicide bomber?

I have an idea, but nobody with whom to confirm or deny it. Here it is anyway.

The little I know about Islam suggests they frown upon (forbid?) premarital sex. That means many/most/all the young men who blow themselves up have never had sex before. If you were one of those men, you wouldn't want to get to Heaven/Paradise, have sex for the first time, and have the woman tell you, "You are the worst lay I ever had, you premature-ejaculating pencil dick." I can see how that wouldn't be a very desirable experience. It wouldn't make *me* want to blow myself up.

The "72 Virgins" offer, on the other hand, is enormously attractive. For 72 times in a row a woman would say, "So THAT is sex. I had always wondered. Making love with you was the most fabulous experience of my life." Or something like that.

By removing the sexual performance anxiety from young male virgin zealots, those issuing the orders have a far greater likelihood their men will follow through with their missions.

BTW, there are many *female* suicide bombers, too. I wonder what they get promised.

And now the aforementioned joke ...

Islamic suicide bombers are promised 72 virgins in Heaven. If Popeye the Sailor became a suicide bomber, he'd get 73. He'd have that extra virgin, Olive Oyl.

Dating somebody at work

When I was very, very young, I dated a woman where I worked.

We all gave her a 21st birthday party (I *said* I was young), and somebody brought a bottle of wine -- but no corkscrew. I handed her the bottle and asked (in a normal voice), "Why don't you suck out the cork?" Everybody, including the girl and me, thought this was very funny.

Only a very special set of circumstances made that moment work. But it did.

Telling Jokes, It's Like an Addiction

I guess I'm suffering serious withdrawal symptoms from not performing stand-up on stage.

Today I went into Trader Joe's and was unable to resist the impulse to tell these:

A man was telling an acquaintance about his buying a Jack Russell Terrier. I walked over and said, "If your dog is too hyper, give it some booze. The Jack *Daniels* Terrier is much more mellow." Laughs.

Checking out, two relatively young employees were talking about current cultural things (bands, movies, etc.). I said, "Have you heard about that new vampire movie, where the vampire becomes a gardener? It's called Eclipse the Lawn." Laughs again.

The environment in which I'm living now, my mother-in-law's rumpus room, doesn't lend itself to inventing many jokes.

Oh, one left-over from the World Cup. Guess who defeated the USA? Ghana with the Win. I looked for it on Google and found several sports writers had used the same line. Oh well, nothing new under the sun.

If you're so smart, why ain't you rich, Rich?

I belong to a small group, having perhaps 200 members worldwide, called "UAMSIG."

The "SIG" part stands for "Special Interest Group." There are all kinds of SIGs, all around the world. Wikipedia's definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Interest_Group is a good one. You might take a break and visit their page before you continue reading this.

OK ... so do you know what a "SIG" is yet? If not, go back and follow that Wikipedia link. I'll tell you one organization that has a bunch of SIGs: Mensa, the High IQ Society. Mensa encourages its members to form groups, large and small, to learn about or promote whatever subjects interest them.

In my group, UAMSIG, the "UAM" stands for "UnderAchieving Mensans." We *may* be the smartest people you'd ever meet who never accomplished anything of significance. Not that everybody in the group fits that description. Some *have* accomplished things, perhaps enormously important things, yet feel they haven't lived up to what they *should have* done with their talents.

I, however, *am* one of those who've never done squat with their lives. What makes this a particularly egregious waste of a talented mind is that Mensa requires an IQ of 131 for membership. Eligibility, therefore, requires only that your IQ be in the top 2% of the population. The USA's population is over 300 million. If they wanted to, 6 million of those people could join Mensa.

My IQ is considerably higher. The actual number doesn't matter, but Mensa represents the highest 2%, the "98th percentile." I'm in the top third of one percent. I don't think of myself as special, because there are a lot of people as smart or smarter than I am. About a million of them in the USA.

And it's inappropriate to call myself "smart." I'm smart at taking IQ tests. And IQ tests measure only a limited set of mental skills. If I were *really* smart, I'd be doing something with it.

Hence, UAMSIG.

After I was fired from one of many jobs (maybe 25 years ago), my ex-boss was kind enough to arrange an interview for me with a "headhunter" -- an executive recruiter. Now I don't generally run around telling people my IQ. I never have. This blog post is an exception, because I want to point out how *not* smart I've been in living my life -- but sometimes (like when I had that job) what I say or do reveals I'm intelligent.

The first thing the headhunter said to me was, "I hear you're a genius." I was surprised. I thought for a moment but still couldn't think of anything better to say than, "Yes." I realized, years later, that the right response wasn't "Yes," it was "At what?" If my ex-boss had told the headhunter, and the headhunter told *me*, maybe I would have had a direction to go with my life. Of course the headhunter might have replied, "He didn't say you were good at *doing* anything; only that you're really smart." That wouldn't have done me any good.

As I said, I don't go around telling people my IQ score. About all I've used my intellect to do is write comedy material. Mensans love "word play" -- puns and such. Far too much of my comedy material is that sort of thing. Maybe that's why my act hasn't "taken off" yet.

In one or more other posts here I talk about having been a hippie in the Summer of Love in San Francisco, 1967. I'm pretty sure I smoked enough dope that summer to burn out a significant number of brain cells. Luckily (for my membership application to Mensa, anyway), I took the test a few years earlier.

1st post in a long time

I had the first funny thought in a long time.

It's just a stupid pun [well, alright, a clever pun], but it's nice to think of something that amuses me.

"A man with an eidetic memory can usually picture the last time he slept under a down comforter."

I considered putting spoiler space in here, but what the heck.

I'm using "eidetic" as a pun on "eider." An "eidetic memory" is commonly called a "photographic memory." Hence, "picture." A down comforter is made with "eider down" -- duck feathers. That's really all I can tell you.

Remember, you can't get down off an elephant but you *can* get down off a duck.

Bipolar

I think you hear a lot of people talk about being bipolar who actually *aren't*. So I thought I'd tell you a story from somebody who *is*.

It's a tad boring and technical (because it involves medical malpractice). It's also emotional, because I was the patient who experienced the pain and suffering. So I decided to break it up with "bipolar jokes" I've written over the years.

For instance, I think this the only one I've told on stage. Depending on my perception of the savviness of the crowd, I sometimes tee it up by saying, "I'm bipolar. They used to call it "manic-depressive." Big mood swings. Lemme see if I can explain it." and then "Being bipolar is like buying a Peter Paul candy bar. Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you just wanna f@#$ing kill yourself."

I'm tired now, so I'll continue later.

A horny dilemma

When some people are having trouble making a decision, they say they're "In a quandary." Others say they're "Between a rock and a hard place." I think one word combines the two ideas: "Quarry." It's a hard place where there is plenty of rock -and- it sounds a lot like "quandary."

So, let's begin a slang trend. The next time you're facing a difficult decision, tell people you're "In a quarry."

You rock!

Aging, Broadway Musicals, and the News

Sometimes people say I should just "be me." That I should tell jokes I like, even if I know they're wrong for the audience at hand on a given night. They say not to pander to the crowd; not to "dumb down" my act.

I don't to listen to such advice, at least not completely. Yes, I put in some bits only a few audience members will get, but I hope those people will explain them to the ones that don't. I try to get the audience to rise to the material. But I can't make an entire act out of such material.

A case in point: There's this former Congressman Eric Massa who's apparently admitted to having gay sex, even in the Navy. A new term is entering the mainstream, just as "teabagging" once did, and the term is "snorkeling." Rather than explain them, I'm going to let you look up each one. So, first of all, this bit requires an audience of news hounds, people who have heard of Massa and the "snorkeling" act he's supposed to have committed.

Which brings us to Aging and Broadway Musicals. Not everybody follows Broadway Musicals any more. In fact, probably few people do. There was a time when more people did. That was back when I was a child and watched their touring companies play in San Francisco.

And so, I have a bit I think is very funny, but cannot tell, I'll tell it to *you*, but I'll add an explanation afterwards. If you need me for anything later tonight, I'll be quietly chuckling to myself.

This is how the snorkeling song begins:

Get-ting be-low you
Get-ting to blow all a-bout you

Leaving it up to you, as I did, to find out the meaning of "snorkeling," I'll tell you there's a song in the musical "The King and I" called "Getting to Know You." If I thought more people would understand that fact, I'd write more verses.

Not that it matters, but I saw Yul Brynner play the King both on stage in San Francisco (1951-1954) and in the movie version (1956). Et cet-er-a, et cet-er-a, et cet-er-a.

Girl Scout Cookies

'Tis the season for Girl Scout Cookies. The little darlings and their mothers are sitting behind collapsible tables outside every supermarket. For fun, I like to walk up and point to one of the girls while saying to the Mom, "Wow! Will you look at her sash? That's impressive. Does she have her fellatio merit badge yet?"

This inevitably is followed by the Mom attempting to leap over the table to tear my eyes out. I haven't yet seen a Mom do it in a single high jump move. Most require stepping up onto the table. Some actually have to push a girl out of her chair, so they can step onto the chair to get up onto the table. Their intensity and focus is such that they never lose eye contact and never even consider walking around the table.

It is important, while the Mom is negotiating the table, to beat a hasty retreat.

I'm still waiting for two things to happen: 1. A Girl Scout asks the Mom, "What's 'fellatio?'" and 2. A Girl Scout says to me, "I've got that merit badge. What do I have to do to get you to buy some cookies?"

Happy Olympics

I'll get around to posting my set notes from several weeks ago, I promise. I've been fighting a nasty cold.

My topical joke of the day is this:

"The Israeli Winter Olympic team has skiers who specialize in the Giant Shalom."

Slow start to the new year

I intentionally didn't book many gigs in January. Nor did I try to increase the number of venues where I perform. I wanted to slow down and decide whether to make the commitment to become a serious performer.

Geography plays a role. Tommy's and Bunjo's (in Pleasanton and Dublin, respectively) are each about 5 miles away. Other clubs where I perform are in Sunnyvale and San Francisco, a 40-minute drive or BART ride away. Other clubs where I have not yet performed are all over the Bay Area. I simply have to decide to invest the time and gas money to get there.

I had a good set at Bunjo's tonight (the text of which I will post later) and am booked at Roosters for next Wednesday, plus Wharf Room February 16 and 23rd. I'm also in competitions at Roosters and Bunjo's over the next few months. So I guess I'm starting to get busier. Yes, I *do* like performing.

Slap-Happy New Year!

I got all anal retentive over the holidays. I went through my database of over 220 bits to select only the ones I thought were worth telling. These were almost all things I'd told successfully before, plus a few I hadn't told yet but decided to give a chance. There were also a few new things I'd told but hadn't added to the database yet.

I ended up with around 100-120 bits, many of which I'll only use in certain topical situations (e.g. Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, or George W. Bush jokes).

I picked 21 that I might use last night. Of those I ended up telling 8. Going up, as I did, last, I was able to make much of it sound as though I had written it on the spot as responses to the other comics' material.

My opening was, "I made a New Year's Resolution to memorize my set ahead of time, but f$%k that." I need to re-evaluate my position. *Actual* comics *do* have their sets ready to deliver. I need to decide if I want to pursue stand-up or become an author.