A PERSONAL ESSAY AT THE END OF A VERY ROUGH WEEK. WRITTEN THIS MORNING FROM MY HOSPITAL BED.
Only a couple of my friends and family know this but I’ve been really sick. Some of it even my family didn’t know. It got worse this time, and last week was the toughest and most brutal week I’ve had yet. It’s over now, I’ve had surgery and I’m lucky. It’s over. I just have to get strong and back on my feet. I feel gloriously sore.My father’s favorite line near the end was always just, ‘Getting old sucks.’ Then he’d smile.
LOSS
The day of my surgery Richard Lewis died.
A great man who was always a good friend to me. I’ve lost a large fortune in good friends to death these last years. Sadly I’ve lost a couple to them just being cunts. Shrug. It happens. I’ll get into it later.
Richard Lewis dying hit me really hard. I wasn’t as close to him as I was to Bob Saget, or my mentor Larry Brezner, my nephew Sean, my high school pal, Hitu, or my great, great friend, my Godfather Eli Broad, who was so good to me from the time I moved to L.A. until he passed during Covid. I loved him so much.
Richard wasn’t close quite like that, yet I respected him incredibly, and maybe it was at my weakest moment having him go out, while I was in so much pain and so hurt and scared that it rocked me so much harder. Maybe it brought up all the great ones that I started with that are gone now that I loved, Robin, Belzer, Louie Anderson, Norm for sure. Gilbert who I once put in one of my movies and he drove me nuts, but he made me laugh so hard. I thought the world of him.
I thought so much of Gilbert that I didn’t let him tell a shitty joke about Bob Saget that he’d done twice before and hurt Bob’s feelings over a video he sent me that Bob’s family and best friend begged me not to play the night of the tribute we made to him. I didn’t want Gilbert’s family having to live with him having hurt the Saget family on the way out the door. Gilbert was too sweet of a man for that. I couldn’t do it to him.
The point is, I’m going to die. Not now. Not soon. But I will and I’m damn sure of it. What I’m not sure of is I’m afraid of dying. I really don’t know if I am of afraid of death. I could assert confidentially one way or another but it would be a lie. I’m not going to lie anymore.
It’s all coming into focus now. I do know I’m afraid of living in this time without speaking freely. Without knowing who my friends are. Without being able to go back and to love my work and life without fear of cancelation of friendships. I want to know who my friends are. I’m done with the cunts.
I’m not a star-fucker anymore. I don’t care about you if you’re a star. I only care about you if you have a soul and you’re a loyal person. If you’re a star, you’re not only easily replaceable, but it’s in fact inevitable. You’re only getting a moment. If you’re a cunt, it’s going to be a quick one.
If you’re a big shot studio, streamer, agent that doesn’t want to work with me because of talk like this. Sorry. I’m gonna die someday, and I’m glad that I’m not dying in fear but more that I’m not working for you or worse the stupid little Mao-tard young asswipes that work under you yet have you somehow shaking in a panic in this piss ass version of a Cultural Revolution we’re all so damn glad we’re having until we wake up and have to eat what we ordered for breakfast.
If you’re a subscriber and you want to cancel this newsletter or the blog or my podcast, now be my guest. It’ll be your loss. It’s going to get good now.
STARS
They all come and go. So, I’m saying to everyone, if you’re hot now. Enjoy it. Be a good person. It’s a short ride for ninety nine percent of you. That’s what I’m seeing here this morning, a little drugged up after thirty nine years sober, beaten up, but kind of clear headed about my life. There’s only one big comedy star that I’ve ever worked with or known who’s unreplaceable. Adam Sandler.
There’s a reason. If for some reason Sandler went cold, the big shots would dump him, and if they went cold, Sandler would still be a solid friend to them. Sandler’s not a star. Sandler’s a good man, through and through. A loyal man, with a huge heart, and that’s why he’s where he’s where he is. Yeah, he’s talented as hell, but he’s got more than that. The camera and the audience knows this somehow. Knows he’s an authentic. When you’re a friend of the Sandman’s you’re his friend for life. He loved his father and his father loved him and it was all he ever needed. The rest of his life was a bonus. He has a sense of loyalty because it was built into his life. He felt comfortable on the path.
That’s the point of this screed.
I’m a good man. A loyal man. I have a big heart. I’ve been a great friend. I’ve never purposely hurt or abandoned any of my friends. I never stole from anyone. Ever. In my entire career I never sued or was sued by anyone. No one ever accused me of stealing from them until one friend did. He threatened to sue me. One of my best friends.
It rocked me, I have to be honest.
It blew my fucking mind. I begged him to have a talk with me over a cigar or on a walk as I had done with him hundreds and hundreds of time. Instead he would only speak through his lawyers, then he and his people went around town seriously damaging my career. After I loved him, backed him, pimped and begged for him, and even several times putting up with his yelling and temper tantrums unloading on me in front of my crew. If I thought a friend of mine really did something like that, stole from me, someone that I cared at all about, I’d be over at this house the next morning trying to find out what was going on that he had needed to do something like that.
If he had a sense of loyalty built into him this guy we could have talked and I could have explained so much and I wouldn’t have had to spend so much to brace for a countersuit, which I did. It wouldn’t have cost so much more than the small pittance this multi- millionaire accused of me in the things I just let go of. Residuals. Health benefits. I just shrugged. He’s being a cunt. Shrug.
The truth is though, and this is important, he started hating me long before all that. It had nothing to do with money. It was because of my opinions. My beliefs. That’s the point I’m getting to. This is where we are as a people.
It was never about money. It was about my backing Joe Rogan, and Jim Breuer and others on the thoughts I had on the whole covid deal. About my backing my friend Bobby Kennedy on his book on Fauci. I just saw the world differently then he did. So did Bobby, who he had become friends with over the years through me, and now like others, he bought the company line that Bobby was a kook and the enemy, and from then on slowly started hating me. Looking back the whole thing was so revelatory of where we’re at right now.
THERE ARE SMART PEOPLE AND DUMB PEOPLE.
Guess which category I’m in? I wasn’t smart enough to understand that some people are smart enough not to show any cards. No one knows Sandler’s opinion on big deals ever. It’s not that he doesn’t have them. It’s not that he’s afraid of anyone’s reaction. He just doesn’t like to walk on that trail. I have other friends like that. I just am eager to talk it all out. I want to hear the other side to a lot of stories that a lot of people in our world now have decided we just can’t talk about much of anything. At all. It’s a fault.
Some people, the dumb people, need to share their opinions. You see I want to live in a world that people that love people can disagree on a few issues and move along. When I moved over into the world of movies I adjusted to the fact of you’d make a movie with people and become close for eight weeks, maybe longer, then move on. Some you’d stay tight with, but not too tight. Stand ups. It’s forever. We all kind of eat out of the same latereens and the war never ends. We love then we hate then we love and hate again and again and again. And truthfully, we’re most of us all just different brands of weird meat in a tube.
My good friend for years just became a cunt because he could. He was a star, he’d struggled and worked hard and made it on his own, he could shit on who he wanted. It was his right. It hurt. But I still love him because I understand. (But he’s a cunt!) Since being back in line at the latreen I’ve met a few cunts. Also a lot of wonderful people. Coming through what I’ve just come through, has made me sure what I want to do with what time I have left.
I want to make myself happy with who I am and what I’m doing.
I’m going to write about everything and everyone in the world, and do comedy that I feel is funny and real. I got back onstage after twenty eight years because it was unfinished business and because there was good food sitting out on the table for whoever wanted to go for it. I didn’t treat stand up right as a kid. It all it all came too easy to me. I didn’t understand how hard it is to be great. What it takes. I’m going to spend the rest of my life being my version of funny. Taking writing more serious while not caring what anyone thinks about it, save the audience. The audience, myself, and the people in my life that are loyal to me because I know I’m loyal to them.
THE STRIKE
When I was eighteen, and I’ve talked and written, and discussed this before, there was a Comedy Store strike and all my friends went on strike against Mitzi Shore the owner. I stayed on the sidelines for as long as I could, because Mitzi had been so good to from the minute I got to town. I felt I had to be loyal. The problem is that Jay Leno was like an older brother to me at the time. I hung out with him almost every night and a lot of the days. In fact, before this time here in the hospital the last hospital thing I had was as a kid when I had a colitis attack and ended up in Cedars Sinai for three weeks. Jay had to come pick me up in the middle of the night and had to basically carry me to the hospital I was so sick. He was such a good friend to me for so long.
Three weeks into the strike Mitzi called me into her office crying. I had been there at the Store during the day shooting a part in a CBS tv film THE FREDDIE PRINZE STORY. It had been set up in advance and all of the striking comics, Jay included, thanks to Tom Dressen, had worked it out that we could shoot there during the strike for the four or five days. When the shoot ended that evening. She called me up, and begged me to go on stage in the OR. I did. I felt so bad for her.
The comics were outside now, the picket line had started and they saw through the window that I was up on stage. All of my friends. They didn’t believe it.
I came off and left. Jay called my apartment and wanted to know if it was true. He thought maybe I had to shoot something for the movie. I told him it was true. I had crossed the line. I didn’t know what to do. He was so hurt. I went home to Detroit the next morning. I never went back onstage at the Store until long after the strike was over but the damage was done. I wanted to be loyal to my friends, and I wanted to be loyal to Mitzi. I know now how much the Store did for me in my life. Jay and I were never as tight as we were again. It was a big loss, but we’ve always been friends. He knew I made a mistake. Same with Dressen.
Some people, still to this day have never really gotten over my crossing that line. I understand. Yet I will say I learned more from the ones who forgave me for that over the years then from almost anyone.
Here’s the real thing I want, I want to be the kind of person that can have friends, have them in my life, and it’s okay if there’s one or two or even three things, points, important points, that I see the world different from them. That’s loyalty. I want to have friends that can do me wrong, think wrong, irritate me, but if they’re my friend. They’re my friend for life. That’s loyalty. Loyalty isn’t doing one thing I need done. Seeing everything my way. Loyalty is having your back no matter what you’re going through.
These are tough times. A big part of loyalty right now is letting each other be right or wrong on the big issues. Letting everyone just flail through some of this stuff for awhile. Especially the people we care about.
DORE, PEPITONE, SMITH, TRIPOLI
These are four stand ups on fire right now that I respect so much. Sam Tripoli, Eddie Pepitone, Dave Smith, and Jimmy Dore (Another brilliant Covid special by the way) Right now they are four of my favorite comedians. I watch everything they do. I write them up in my work, they’re welcome on my blogs or podcasts anytime. Smith and Tripoli have been on it already, Dore has had me on his. They all four in my opinion have abborehent views on the Israel situation.
Just off. Ughh. Are you serious? Dude?
But so what? It can’t bother me. It can’t.
I will never allow myself to lose respect for them for an ideal or position in life right now they take I don’t believe in. Sadly, we do live in an era where there is two sides to every story. There are two versions of the truth. Sometimes more. I want to support people who can tell me the side I don’t know about. The side I don’t agree with. I don’t think we can afford anymore of the ‘well I don’t know about that really because I haven’t looked into it but I’m against it.’ or even, ‘You’re wrong and if you believe that there’s something wrong with you.’
We have to have people that will tell us the other sides of the story. We have to want to hear the other side of the story.
Here’s Dave Smith and Bobby Kennedy Jr. debating on the Israel / Gaza thing. I’m with Bobby on this thing. Both of us are huge fans of Smith. He’s got the best angle in on so many of the serious takes of the world. Especially the Ukraine thing. He’s dead on on that one. On Israel / Gaza he sees it different than we do. He’s dead wrong. Ten yards shy of being a cunt.
(Kidding!)
This is such a great debate. Two smart people trying hear why the other one feels the way they do about something so cataclysmic. It’s a perfect example of why the new medium is so important, long form content like this is so perfect and needed, and why even if you can’t get someone to change their mind, which you most likely never will, it’s so important for them to hear what’s on yours.
That’s why Rogan is so important.
ROGAN THE CURIOUS
Joe Rogan is a beast obviously. We have had a tough relationship. I had no idea who he was before I was called to do The Comedy Store Documentary. I just knew he was the guy on a show about making people eat bugs. I didn’t listen to podcasts. I didn’t watch Sitcoms. He didn’t know anything about me. I didn’t go on the internet all that much. Just movie sites really. I had walked away from stand up. I had never set foot in the clubs for twenty years, it wasn’t important to me because I didn’t and couldn’t get great at it. I loved it so much as a kid, started at seventeen, put my heart and soul and everything into it and didn’t understand or have what it took to be great. So I walked away.
Marc Maron pulled me back in. He had me come on his podcast to publicize Keep Calm a novel that I had published and was going to make as a TV ltd. with Kate Winslet and Owen Wilson and he wanted to talk about The Comedy Store days. I had never heard one podcast of any kind ever. Funny enough, when I made the doc, when I brought Leno and Letterman and Jim Carrey and Rich Lewis, Jimmy Walker, Johnny Witherspoon and Marsha Warfield back to the club to talk about our time there, some for their first time in years, I was amazed at how little they all knew about the generation below them, and the underworld they dwelled in. They were all just as illiterate of the time after us as I was.
The idea for me to do the doc was an incoming call from Mike Tolin and Peter Shore the owner of the club. They were working on it for awhile and had others involved to make it, and for various reasons it didn’t work out. They called me and I said yes. Immediately. It changed my life.
Saget was really the true link to all the different generations of the store and the world of stand up. Saget and maybe Dice. The generational intermingling now, with Howie Mandel on Shane and Matt and Spade and Dana having a podcast along with every other one us wasn’t happening then. It was all that group.
Rogan was the man and he saved the Store in it’s tough times when stand up’s heart and soul went elsewhere. He and Chris Delia and Whitney Cummings, Theo Von, Bryan Callen, Sam Tripoli, Iliza, Brian Moses, Joey Diaz, Ari Shaffir, Dave Chappelle, Neal Brennan, Ron White, Ali Wong, Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, Christina P., Doug Stanhope, Duncan Trussell, Brody Stevens, Jeff Ross, Tony Hinchcliffe, Eleanor Kerrigan, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, and others, they built the Store back, but Joe Rogan saved the Store,
Rogan’s got this damn big bear energy. I ran into it full bore one Sunday on my couch, after battling it with him for a couple years, with Peter Shore and Adam Eget thrown in the middle. Joe had decided he didn’t like me. I had decided I didn’t like him that much either, but I knew also the early episodes were the easy ones there on my first documentary ever and the late later ones were going to need the help from his generation. The later ones were reportage. I came to realize a year and a half in I couldn’t just write him out. Work around him as I had then planned to do. He was as important as anyone. Freddie Prinze, Letterman, Leno, the strike, Sammy, Pauly, Kinison, even Mitzi, even Pryor,
Then I hit the wall. The last two episodes were the hardest. I didn’t understand how to tell them because I wasn’t there. I was going to make a fake version if I told a story without telling the Rogan side. One night I was home in bed and the phone rang. Joe called out of nowhere, he wanted to be in the documentary. He became the heart and soul of the fourth episode just as Freddie Prinze, Richard Pryor, and Sam Kinison had been the emotional core of the first three,
Click photo to watch the episode.
He ended up being excellent in the documentary. So good. So real, open, and honest. Uniquely, and on brand, passionate. In episode five he helped me put a round table together on the roof of the Store to wrap up the whole ending with friends from his world, Burr and Whitney Cummings, from my era, Jay Leno and Paul Rodriguez, and a new comic that Adam Eget had turned me onto that I was, and still am, crazy about, Annie Lederman, who we did an entire chapter on in Ep. 4.
Joe loved Ep.4 and really loved it so much he put his whole heart into putting the roof wrap around together for the final episode.
It was a magical night. The next morning Joe had Annie and Whitney out to his LA studio and did an episode and they all were still high on the night and talked about it. If Joe hadn’t been in the documentary it would have only been one side of the story. He was the King. There was no doubt. I love that guy. He saved the show.
CLICK PHOTO TO WATCH EPISODE
A FEW MONTHS LATER
Joe hated me again.
Annie Lederman wanted me to pay her ten thousand dollars for being in the doc. No one else in the entire doc got paid, but she was just young and bat-shit crazy enough, and inexperienced, that when she threatened me with going to Joe Rogan and the press, etc, etc, and I told her to go fucking do it. She did it. I was sitting home on my couch on a Sunday afternoon resting from the race of getting the fifth episode out and on the air. Beat to shit. Joe texted me.
‘MIKE. IT’S JOE. YOU NEED TO PAY ANNIE LEDERMAN THE MONEY SHE WANTS. I NEED THIS TO HAPPEN!’
I couldn’t believe it.
‘WHAT? NOBODY GOT PAID. IT’S A DOCUMENTARY.’
‘I NEED THIS TO HAPPEN. SHE’S FAMILY TO ME. PAY HER!’
I really was shocked.
‘TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?’
‘PAY HER!’
I sat up. Thought about it. Texted back
‘FUCK YOU JOE. WHAT ARE YOU GETTING INTO MY SHIT HERE FOR?’
I had poked the bear. My phone rang instantly. It was Joe. Yelling at me. ‘What did you just say to me? Did you really just tell me to fuck off?’ Did you just tell me to FUCK OFF?’
I was eight years old all of the sudden. Just so tiny on my couch. So glad he didn’t know where I lived, at least sure he wasn’t in his car on the way over to kick my ass and make me eat bugs.
‘Joe, no one’s getting paid.’
‘Yeah, she is.!‘
I asked him;
‘Do you pay her to be on your show? I just did a nice six minute piece on her in your episode. I love her. She’s driving me nuts. If she’s your family, you give her the ten grand.’
He almost laughed. Calmed somewhat. We talked. He convinced me that I was going to somehow get Annie paid then hung up. I got her the money. We’ve never really had a good talk since, Joe and I. It’s okay. I love Annie, I do, she’s nuts buts she’s special, and I really love, Joe. Not because Joe Rogan saved the Comedy Store.
JOE ROGAN MAY HAVE ACTUALLY SAVED AMERICA
This is what I’m getting to here. Saving The Comedy Store is big, but it’s small potatoes. Being a good comedian is important, but so is being a good Uber driver. It’s just your job. The big deals, are what we’re doing to either hurt or help this society we’re part of while we’re here. The small society of our family, friends, and neighborhood, and the bigger circle as it expands around the world. A lot of comedians became big podcasters, major talents like Marc Maron, Burr, Sarah Silverman, but none of them were curious enough to want to know what they didn’t know. They’re all super talented, but they’re damn sure they’re right about most of the big issues, and they absolutely, okay, maybe rarely, have anyone on that would have views they diametrically disagree with. They weren’t curious people. They ate what they were fed and they lived off folks loving them.
As we went into the covid and the vaccine era, one of the nastiest, unhealthy, emotionally unwieldy, and despicably dishonest chapters in American history, not only in government, but media, sports, medicine, science, politics, and ‘impolite’ society, Joe Rogan wanted to know both sides of pretty much every story. He had on many Dr’s and scientists and asked them to tell him which way was true North. Several of them were important players who had key views in the story and had been silenced by the Fauci police.
Rogan was generally curious. He had stepped aside from the fun Rogan with his drinking and smoking pals and wanted to get some answers in a moment when You Tube and Twitter and of course every paper or program that any of the West Wing cast or the gang on Seth McFarland’s private plane would read had banished anyone that had any opinion other than the Pfizer sanctioned one until the day Trump was finally gone. I won’t bother to say we were lied to, history is sorting that out. I only know in my opinion it was a dark time for this country, not because of a virus. We were sick because the hose that fed the blood of free speech had been absolutely stepped on. It was a different country.
And it was evil because there was a fix. Right from the beginning. Something to take at the onset that beat it. They knew it. Even friends couldn’t have talks though. Talking and discussion and disagreements were a thing of the past. We couldn’t talk race, politics or religion for awhile, but this new one, this virus thing, you couldn’t say shit.
IVERMECTIN
It worked. I took it. I got covid finally. I had been doing good, zinc, vitamin D, a lot of sunshine. I finally got it. At a comedy event. I went to RFKjr’s house right away. As I’ve said, Bobby is one of my oldest friends. I’ve known he and his brother Max and a lot of his family for forty years now. I had had dinner at his house with Diane and Cheryl not long before and he told us he had it if I needed it. The minute I tested positive, Diane said, ‘Call Bobby’
He gave me a dose and told me who to call in the morning to get more. This was in a time it was hard to get. The CDC and the WHO and WHOOPEDEEDOO didn’t want anyone taking it and were putting out a lot of bad huff and puff about Ivermectin. Lies. Flat out lies. I took it though. I trusted Bobby. He was still the Riverkeeper to me back then, why wouldn’t I? He cleaned the damn river. Was the first person I ever heard mention ‘Earth Day,’ sued a bunch of greedy companies that polluted up the joint and poisoned kids, and he ‘s basically wandered all around the planet and the country meeting people and helping them out his whole damn life the guy and understands the ebb and flow of the whole dance better than anyone I’ve ever known.
Always loved B.K. He tells me to take Ivermectin, I’m taking Ivermectin.
Took a few other little things his doctor friend had me take and I had covid for maybe two days at the most. I was right back up and out in the world, unlikeable as always.
Now, Joe Rogan got covid. He talked about it. He had about the same protocol I did. The same result. He was Joe Rogan. This wasn’t going to fly. The DNC’s anti-freedom press locomotion set steam to immediately destroy Joe and Ivermectin. CNN and MSNBC the WKRP-KFC, they all made up a slew of garbage that the CDC and the WHO and the BOOP DE BOO all told the press what to say non-stop about the Horse De-wormer the idiot -boy Rogan had taken.
Now know this. Know it well because they knew very well Ivermectin and other repurposed drugs, taken at absolute first stages, could beat covid. Stop it in it’s tracks for the most parts. This was before the vaccine even. They knew. They needed you, not to know.
The DNC and the media and the rest of impolite society basically ran into the bear that I made the mistake of texting ‘FUCK OFF’ to from my couch on a Sunday a few years earlier. Joe didn’t back down. He came out harder. Came out swinging. He wanted to know the truth, and he wanted you to know the truth. He brought on Dr’s like Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone one of the people that basically cobbled together the MRNA format, and several other experts, and he dug deep.
One show after another. He wanted to know what he didn’t know. He wanted you to know. He want after it.
NEIL YOUNG SHIT THE BED
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the list went on and of famous people that wanted Joe publicly de-wormed. The big episodes were taken down, but he kept at it. He let people tell their side of the story. It was the first big crack in the wall of silence. Others followed. Long form interviews were interesting again, and well, at least half the world were hearing the other side of the story. Then, he got Elon Musk on the show, got him high as a kite, and I’m convinced he talked him into buying Twitter
.
The rest is history. Elon owns Twitter, and he’s a human version of a Horse De-wormer, but there’s a space that is going to be basically Free Speech. He’ll be raided, and scorned and be part of the reason Democracy is about to shit it’s pants, but I’m convinced they’re never going to be able pull that kind of garbage again. I think a lot of it is thanks to Joe Rogan. A stand up comic who saved America.
SO, NOW I’M HEALTHY AGAIN. 65, AND ALIVE.
I’m going to tell jokes onstage and write anything that I think is funny about any subject I want to write about. I don’t care what a bunch of white liberal reporters and angry black or fat or gay or right wing religious people have to say about things I think. I don’t give a damn about stupid people that don’t get that idea that gay men having their right to pretend they are women is not more important then protecting woman swimmers and women’s rights and just the dignity of women, and for that matter childhood. My kid at six wanted to be an astronaut. I didn’t build something to sling him into space.
By the way, who is the more insane? People wanting to make jokes about these dudes actually thinking that life as a woman is gonna be easier on them, or the sheep that are letting them turn this into something worth talking about? Because if you really want to know whether or not it’s gonna be tough to be woman, just go ask a woman. But do yourself a favor, book a lot of time. She’s gonna have an opinion.
How about these sheep dips that are placting all this b.s. into our society just for politics and not standing up to silly ass things that no one cares about or really in their hearts believe. E.Jean Caroll, a woman who isn’t even sure which century Trump raped her in, but knows exactly which of the four Bloomingdales dressing rooms he took her down in mid day during a business rush? You’re okay with that just because you hate Trump? Hard truth; if Trump was gonna jump on something on that non -existent day it would have been a Bloomingdales cash register. Not the mop in the dressing room.
Or that long grim faced Blazzy Ford, or whatever her name is, that only remembered the wannabee Supreme Court Justice hitting on her in a home miles away in the dark like some bad horror film, only once again, not sure what year, planet, or position she was on, or in at the time. Did you really believe that?
No, let’s fight and protest and ‘obstruct’ over an old federal abortion law which will not stop any woman from having a damn abortion. Smart woman know this. Sheep play the game that Roe Vs. Wade means anything other than change, and for sure not any change that won’t include any woman’s ability to have an abortion. Sorry. That toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube. Women in this country will be able to have an abortion if they choose.
‘But, but, they may have to drive to the next state though? What if they hit a bump going over the border and lose the baby? ..Oh wait.’
It’s all bullshit! We kn0w it now. They plays us all for fools. I got back onstage after twenty eight years because it was unfinished business and because there’s meat on the table for anyone willing to take it. I didn’t treat stand up right as a kid. Didn’t understand how hard it is to be great. What it takes. I’m going to spend the rest of my life finding my version of funny. I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, save the audience. The audience, myself, and the people in my life that are loyal to me.
I’m gonna care about funny for the rest of the time I get and I’m gonna care about the truth. About breaking apart this sick two state religious ideology of the new version of the uniparty. I’m gonna care about figuring out about being funny so I can make audiences laugh. They need to laugh. It’s so damn healthy. I also want to make the supporters of my good friend RFKJr laugh. Yes, I am supporting him for President.
I think he’d be a great leader. Much better than the two others that he’ll be running against. In the tough years we’re going into they won’t even make decent members of a shuffleboard team. And by the way, if he doesn’t win, he’s going to serve in a lot of great ways. He doesn’t crave power. I know that. Service satiates him. That’s why I’m all in on his campaign. If people don’t like me posting stuff about him, I’m sorry. I’m gonna. He’s been unfairly maligned by the ideological marching soldiers. I detest him being made out to be anything other than someone that wants to serve. If you’re not worried about the team that’s running around trying to sue and jail and keep everyone but their candidate off of the ballots, claiming if ‘what’s left of Joe Biden’ doesn’t win it’s the end of democracy, you’re high, on the payroll, not paying attention, or something else. But, I do want to know you’re story. It’s gotta be a damn good one.
THE UPSIDE OF ANGER
Is my favorite of all my movies. I rarely talk about what it really was trying to say, partly because to do so would give away the ending. But the movie was about a woman, Terry Wolfmeyer, Joan Allen, who’s husband just one day leaves her and their four daughters and just runs away. Takes off with his hot Swedish secretary. I wrote it in another moment, after 9-11 when we were all so damn pissed off, hated Bush, hated Saddam, hated these ones, that ones, those ones, and were glued to the T.V. and radio, listening to people arguing about the invasion we were prepping into Iraq. Half of everyone I knew waas kicking sand in a different direction, but everyone I knew was livid.
I was always so interested in the two basic columns of the anger. I thought, no one knows. This could end up great. These maddies could be in for a real surprise? If it works out, this invasion here, and democracy breaks out in the middle east, will they admit they were wrong? On the other hand, these frothers over here could end up shocked. It may just be more turmoil and the road to serious hell taking this Saddam guy out. If they’re wrong about all this, will either of them every be able to deal with it? Able to admit they were dead wrong after being so sure they were dead right? I mean look at that one guy, he’s standing on a table with his pants down yelling. Are we ever able to later see that kind of glaring wrong in an undeniable way?
Terry Wolfmeyer does. At the end of four years of her misery towards her husband taking off, making her girls hate her and each other, and only after finding love again with a neighbor, Kevin Costner, she discovers that her husband didn’t run off. He walked into the woods and fell deep into an old well where he’s been for years, only to be uncovered now when a house is being built on the lot. Terry can’t run from the truth. It’s a parable. She has the convenience of seeing the truth staring her in the face. It’s up to her process how wrong she’s been.
Life isn’t that easy. We don’t get to live long enough to see history unfold, or worse, it doesn’t unfold, it streams off into another lake of lies and misunderstanding. In an age of constance uncertainty we are all now a rabid pack of experts, forever certain of what needs to be done and not be done.
I was trying to say that it’s okay to be wrong.
I REALLY JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO NOT GIVE A DAMN.
The point is it just needs to go back to being safe. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to shut anyone else up. I just want to say what I think. Hopefully it’s funny. Hopefully it’s true. I really don’t need to be right. I just want to be okay having an opinion.
And I want to tell the people I love that I love them and really care about them. I want them to understand it’s okay if they don’t agree with me too much. I’m really wrong a lot, but the twice a day I’m right is so much fun. I love my life. I love America. I don’t want anyone shutting me up and I don’t want to shut anyone up. I’m coming out of the toughest period of my life. I’ve learned who my friends are though. I know who I’m afraid of. I got the cunts figured out. They don’t worry me a bit. I have a good angle on God and which side of the street I want to walk on. (Hint; The sunny side.)
P.S. As I said, I wrote this from a hospital bed. I don’t care about the grammer and all. I’m going home healthy later today. Not in fear. They took most of the bile out of me.
I just need to figure out if I’m afraid of dying. I love you. I even love the cunts. Mostly because I know I’m one of them. They seem to be my people.
Mike
SO ONE MORE THING; SAM TRIPOLI – TOMORROW NIGHT
My buddy boy, the epic stand up visionaire Sam Tripoli, is taping his new special at the Bourbon Room tomorrow. Sunday Night. March 3rd. I was so hoping to be there but I don’t see it happening.
Please, if you’re in town go and support his taping. He’s so great, and he works so hard. I so love this guy. Pack the damn room out. It’s on Hollywood at Vine. I love it. One of my favorite rooms in LA.
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