Comedian Ari Shaffir

Well, it’s my first night of insomnia since I got here. That’s not bad. It’s been a week and I didn’t get it once until now. For a while I was getting it every time I went on the road. I’d be dead tired but for some reason as soon as I put my head on the hotel pillow, I just wouldn’t shut off. I smoked a bunch of indica, I took a sleeping pill, I got up for a while. Nothing works. I’d try beating off, but I’m up to 7 weeks on this streak and I don’t want to break it now. I don’t know what to do when this happens. I usually just fall asleep at 10am or something and then try to sleep only 5 hours so I can fall asleep reasonably the next night. I guess I can do that. I don’t have to be up until 4pm for an interview on 990 in Montreal.

But until then, I’ll just rand for a while and give you some of my observations since I’ve gotten here.

I worked with Jimmy Carr twice. He’s a nice guy. Jenn Leigh, this girl who works at the Hermosa Beach Comedy And Magic Club loves him. Tomorrow I’m gonna see if I can get him to let me record him saying hi to her. She’s a nice girl and she’s got great boobs, so she deserves a treat.

The Comedyworks show was EXACTLY what I needed. It was a packed crowd of 85 people. It reminded me so much of the Belly Room at the Comedy Store in LA. In fact, they’re both upstairs rooms. I got to fuck around a little instead of doing tried material. There was some 16 year old boy from Denmark near the front, but I didn’t notice him until after I had told a couple horrible stories about strip clubs and homosexual lust. I thought it was weird that he was there, so I decided to make it weird for everyone in the audience by asking the kid when he lost his virginity. Everybody enjoyed it but now that I think about it, it seems really pedophilyish.

I ate an Ole Ole poutine from La Banquise. It had meat sauce instead of gravy and a bunch of jalapeno pepper slices. Awesome. Perfect daytime poutine.

I saw a tee shirt in a window with a gold print of poutine on a yellow shirt. If I pass it again I’m gonna buy it no matter who I’m with or where I’ve got to be.

The pot in Montreal is not that great. It takes a lot more to get you there and you don’t stay very long.

Somebody told me that he got to Montreal yesterday and he already heard from 3 separate people about how well I did. That’s good. I have no idea how to act on that information to get me anywhere closer to getting some representation. That’s bad.

They said they might try to put me on even more shows while I’m here.

I wish I could do this all year round. Make 3 grand every 12 days to do 1, 2, or 3 shows a night in front of great crowds and have a maid come to clean my room every day and keep forgetting to give me new conditioner. That would be an awesome life.

I think I’m gonna have to have surgery on my knee again. It’s not getting better. Hopefully the e-stim will help.

I’m gonna go down and get that damn breakfast since I’m still up and it’s 7:21. I hope there is such a thing as breakfast poutine.

God DAMN that was good.

What did I tell you. The only way I’d be awake to eat breakfast is if I were STILL awake to eat breakfast.

I found the Montreal gay neighborhood yesterday. It’s really similar to the gay neighborhoods in LA in that they’re both filled with men who like to have sex with other men.

The original name for AIDS was GRIDS. It stood for gay related immune deficiency syndrome. That’s not a joke. That’s really what we used to think.

I think the way I’ll get AIDS is probably gonna be from a contaminated AIDS test needle.

Later someone will say, “That’s really ironic.” and other people will think that being ironic isn’t that interesting.

The pot in Montreal is really not that great.

I’m gonna try to hit the bed one more time.

Montreal Blog Day 7 (vid)

We taped The Nasty Show for Canadian television last night.  The shows went pretty well.  There’s something about a TV taping that throws an audience off a little bit, though.  I don’t know if it’s that they’re aware of being part of a recording.  I’m sure the fact that they light up the room way brighter tends to queer them a little as well.  But whatever the reason, the audience last night was the most subdued of the whole week so far.  Still, it was a great show.  British comedian Jimmy Carr was added to the bill for the taping to make up for the loss of Shimmel off the lineup.  I’ve never seen Carr before and I still haven’t.  He was on right after me both sets and I’m too self absorbed to actually come back in the room and watch someone else when I’m so deep into my own head about how things went.

What really made the night annoying was that they were doing this backstage crap where they try to get funny shots of comedians for interstitials.  Those are the little moments before and after commercials go on to take you from the standup and into the break and then from the break and back into the standup.  The problem is not being funny.  The problem is being funny with a camera in your face while there are a bunch of comics in the room TRYING to be funny.  I’ve never enjoyed competing for laughs.  I’m a proponent of picking your moments.  I even have a rule that if you say a joke and no one laughs because you think they didn’t hear you, NEVER repeat the joke.  They might have been distracted by a passing ambulance or they might have just thought it wasn’t funny.  And when you repeat it, you’re really committing to the fact that you thought what you said was worthy of being told.  I’m not willing to take that risk.  Because at best, they’ll all just laugh.  At worst, however, you’ve told a shitty joke that no one liked and then you repeated a shitty joke that no one liked even after everyone heard and negatively judged that joke.  That means you didn’t just randomly throw out a joke with no bite, it means you don’t understand what funny is.

Actually, I don’t know if that was any sort of apt comparison at all but it’s still a rule.  My problem in the green room was that all these polished comedians were cramming into the lens to try and yuk it up for the camera, and it just grosses me out too much to join in.  It’s like when you’re hitting on a girl (this is a better comparison) and a couple other guys come up and start flirting with her, too.  Instead of being comfortable and casual about the relationship, you now have an added dimension of slight desperation.  Desperation because if you don’t say something charming soon, someone else will.  So instead of naturally letting the real you come out, you have to force out as many jokes or deep observations as possible to keep her attention.  But the other guys are doing the same thing.  So then it just becomes a minstrel show.  You become a clown and not a person.  I usually leave those situations and just go to sleep.

So here in the green room you have all these people trying to win over the camera lens in the same way guys try to win over a woman.  It’s gross.  I don’t want to compete with them, and even when they’re all gone and it’s just me, I don’t want to do the same things that grossed me out 5 minutes earlier.  So I tell them about my new cardigans and I keep disappearing.  And they keep grabbing me to do come downstairs so they can get coverage of me.  And every time I go down a decent path, some clown comes in and tries to be silly.  It’s cool if you want to join in to a funny conversation if it happens naturally, just please don’t force it.  Ugh.

The chick who was producing the backstage stuff, looked EXACTLY like one of my ex-girlfriends, Allison Dynamite.  She’s an artist from Austin that I’m still in love with even though we’ve seen each other once in the last 2 years.  I didn’t realize how much I still loved her until I saw this producer chick.  It’s kind of amazing to me that seeing someone with the same look can make me feel the same things.  Plus, Carolina the producer chick had way bigger boobs than Allison, so maybe that made me feel that love feeling just a little bit stronger.  Who knows?

As for the rest of the day, it was pretty sweet.  Brian Baldinger and I went for lunch and then for some street shopping on Saint-Catherine.  They shut down the streets to automobiles and have sick sales out on the streets in front of all the stores.  DJs are playing outside.  It’s kind of awesome.  And I bough 3 cardigans.  They were all pretty cool except for the olive green one.  That one has pockets sewn on the outside that I’m not sure I’m sold on.  But get this; they were 10 bucks each!  I think I shouted “Whoah!” just a little too loud when I found out because Baldinger laughed and walked off.  But it was an honest reaction to something rad.

And then when I finished my 2nd set at Club Soda for the taping, Rachel Rusch (my only female friend) came to the green room and hung out with me for a while.  I hadn’t seen her much lately so it was really nice.  She, Baldy, and Singer the Jew all went to eat afterwards at  some mediocre Peruvian place across from Schwartz’s.

Montreal is fucking beautiful, though.  I love the weather.  It’s kind of perfect.  Just on the border of hot and warm during the day, and just on the border of cool and nice at night.

And I made a video today of a possible Indian and definite drunk having a nice conversation with the local constable.  Enjoy.

They gave me these vouchers for free breakfast at the Hyatt.  When I checked in, they gave me one for each day.  Then later, they slid one for each day under my door.  So I have two vouchers for breakfast for every day I’m going to be here.  But they only serve breakfast until 10am.  The odds of me being awake at 10am in Los Angeles are pretty minute.  I’d have to be sleeping over at a girl’s house who has to get up early for work or something.  The odds of me being awake at 10am at the Montreal Comedy Festival when I have shows until 2 am and the bars stay open until 3:45 are impossible.  There’s a much better chance that I’d still be awake when they start serving breakfast at 6am.  Slayton says it’s a good breakfast, but I will never know.

I stopped eating breakfast in college.  That was the first time I was really on my own and could make my own decisions.  My two years in Israel was spent in a pretty regimented system.  Breakfast came after morning prayer services, so I was already up and out of the dorm when they started serving.  But in college, I didn’t have to be up until my first class.  And really, not even then.  The teachers at big universities don’t give a damn whether or not you’re there.  But I almost always forced myself to go to every class.  But breakfast?  Eat my nuts.  I ate the University of Maryland breakfast maybe 10 times in 3 1/2 years.  And probably all of those were when I stayed up late doing papers.  Although most of the time I stayed up late, I was on Vivarin, which is also an appetite suppressant, so breakfast wasn’t really on my mind.

So I woke up at noonish and then me and Maron and his buddy from Blair With Project all went to get some sweet fucking bagels from some place in some place.  It was called La Maison De L’Original Fairmont Bagel.  I think that means “Bagel Place” in French.  All I know is that I ate a shit ton of them.

Fuck.  They just called me and told me I had to be at the show early today because we’re taping tonight’s shows for Canadian Television.  I don’t know what channel it’s gonna be on or when, I just know I’m making an extra 2 grand and I get to be filthy, so let’s do this shit.  But the point is, I gotta leave now instead of in an hour, so I gotta cut this short.

I have some good stories, too.  One with a couple chubby chicks who wanted a fivesome with their boyfriends and another about seeing Kate Micucci’s show and going going to the Port.  Whatevs.

And if I say that “I didn’t get any semen on your Morrissey posters, what’s the diff?” would that be something you’d laugh at?  Because in 5 tries, the Montreal crowds have not laughed once.  But it’s my favorite punchline in the bit, so I keep trying in vain.

I still haven’t masturbated and I’m pretty sure I’m going to go to a massage parlor before I leave here or I’ll have to declare the contents of my balls at customs.

Kurt Metzger and I decided to take our trip to Schwartz’s deli.  It was a 30 minute walk, but as it has been every day, full of hot women.  Schwartz’s was packed again.  We waited in the line and got our smoked meat, which I think is just corned beef.  It was delicious, but I can’t imagine any trip to Montreal being incomplete without a trip there.  It was really good, but nothing that much more special than any good deli.  I probably would have just gotten the pastrami if I hadn’t been told how awesome that smoked meat was.  Bobby Slayton doesn’t even like it at all.  He says it’s just a shittier New York Deli.  I think that stretches it, but I kind of understand.  If I hadn’t been told that place was famous, and I just walked in there and ordered the same meal I got, I wouldn’t have raved about it.  I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned it.  Unless somebody asked me what I did for lunch.  Then I would have said I got a really good corned beef sandwich.  Probably the best part was sitting under an old framed newspaper article about the place and at the very end it said something like, “According to Laura Smith from Ottowa, ‘May the Schwartz be with you.’”  That’s clearly not according to her.  It’s according to Spaceballs, the movie she was quoting.  I can kind of picture the interviewer being completely unfamiliar with that movie and when that chick he was talking to said that line, he must have been like, “Oh my God.  That’s the greatest quote I’ve ever heard.  That’s gonna close this story.”  And then probably like 300 times later that week he had to say, “Yeah.  I didn’t know it was from a movie.  Yes.  Yes.  YES.  I know now.  Right, Spaceballs.  Yes, I heard.  I KNOW!”

After that, back to the hotel room to shower and get ready for the first 3 show night.  These crowds have been great so far.  I really think it’s amazing how much more laid back the crowd gets JUST by calling it The Nasty Show.  It’s like the people who might get offended on a normal night put their dispositions away for an hour and a half and just have a good time.  I’m convinced that if you put the same lineup on a show called “Montreal Comedy Night” or something like that, and we all did the same material, that there would be quite a few of the same audience members who would walk out or heckle instead of laughing and having a good time.

I remember my last show in La Jolla last month this one chick sitting up front next to the stage who was not enjoying herself.  And some other chick across from her pointed out how angry the first chick was.  I think the first chick actually was having a good time, but she just had one of those faces that constantly seems like she’s cross.  I believe it’s called cunthead.  But the point is that the second chick said, “It’s sex.  We’ve all had sex.  What is there to get offended about?”  I really liked that.  I’m amazed how many people allow themselves to have a bad time by sticking some set of rules they instituted long ago.  I dated this one chick who hated any dirty jokes.  Anything about sex was not smart material.  And I offered up a Dave Attell joke as proof of how dirty can still be smart.  “The inside of condoms are really dry.  If you’ve got a condom on and it feels good, you’ve got it inside out.  They’re just really dry.  Like an episode of Inside the Actors Studio.  Dry.”  That’s a great fucking joke and I’m not even quoting it exactly right.  But she stood her ground and said it’s about sex so it’s not smart.  She has effectively shut off a bunch of joy from her life for the sake of her rule.  Much later she had me buy a bunch of stuff for her to build me a website, but then she blew it off and never made any effort to pay me back.  So I don’t talk to her any more.  I think her mom might’ve died while she was supposed to be doing that for me.  I guess that’s hard, but still, give me my money.

The shows went great.  After my 2nd show, I snuck out and walked to the Catherine Theater to watch Marc Maron perform his show, “Scorching the Earth.”  I enjoyed it.  You know those moments in a really good horror movie when you’re so involved with the characters that you almost want to yell out, “DON’T GO IN THERE!”  Well, there were a few moments like that in his show.  Everything was set in the past, but still I was constantly feeling for this character that clearly came out alright enough to write a show about his experiences.  He did a really good job of capturing a small part of what it means to have a bad breakup.  I see certain moments in life captured really truthfully once in a short while.  It’s one of my favorite aspects of art and it’s so rarely accomplished.  This had a few of those moments.  I was happy to have seen it.

Then back to the shows.  Thursday night was probably my best show average.  I was really happy with all 3 sets.  Sometimes I hit on all cylinders and it’s really fun as a performer and then the crowd has more fun, which I can see, which gets me even looser, which makes the crowd have even more fun.  Thursday was like that in each set, especially the 3rd.

After that Kurt and Mike Wilmot and I went to Jimbo’s.  It’s a bar downstairs from the Comedywerks, where I’ll be performing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I didn’t look at the stage, but Maron said it seats 80 people, so I might do only crowd work when I’m there. Big places like Club Soda don’t lend themselves to crowd work.  If somebody says something in the audience up front, the people in the back can’t hear them at all, so you end up having to remember to repeat their responses before you comment on them, which slows the pacing past the point I like.  But in a small room, everybody can hear everything.  And I really enjoy doing crowd work.  A lot of comics shit on it, but it’s a skill I possess from all the shitty Comedy Store spots, and I get most of my material that way.  So when I haven’t done it in a while, I feel like I’m ignoring a sizable section of my method of artistic expression.  I’m not very good at political material, mostly because I don’t care much about politics.  But I won’t shit on another comic for doing something I’m not good at.  For some reason, though, comics love to shit on other comics who are too dirty or do too much crowd work.  I think it’s a self aggrandizing way to feel.  But still, I’m effected by their criticism to the point where I keep doing what I love, but feel shittier about myself for doing it.

So we drank at Jimbo’s for a while.  We met some of the local Montreal comics there and some of their friends.  Everybody was pretty cool.  I met a guy who looked like me when I was 20.  Kurt kept saying that I was future version of that dude and I should go over to him and say I had come back in time to warn him.  That would be rad if I could have pulled it off, because I really did look like this kid.  I should have just run up to him and said, “I don’t have much time.  But listen.  I SAID LISTEN, DAMNIT!  Don’t trust Margaret.”  and then run off.

After boozing and smoking with the local comics, they took us to Casse-Croute, some all night diner.  Fucking awesome.  Of course I got poutine, why would you even ask that.  And then we left when the sun was coming up.  Sweet day, all in all.  I shouldn’t even write “all in all” because it was just a sweet day.

All right, assmasters.  Until tomorrow.

Good Times in the Green Room

Sorry this is so shitty. I had a full day.

Here’s one more. I don’t know if it’ll come out.

Huge street checkers

I’m having a ton of fun up here. I ate poutine yet again. 5:00 am this time. I got the Italienne. Instead of gravy it was pasta sauce with meat in it and Parmesan cheese instead of cheese curds. Awesome with a bacon omelette.

I was supposed to go to Schwartz’s deli to get some sweet ass smoked meat, but the Jew who was supposed to take Kurt and me over there decided to blow it off.  Of course he only called Kurt, so I went to the lobby 8 minutes late and just assumed they had left without me.  God, I hate being left out of stuff.  So, like a retard, I took a cab over there.  Not even to eat with them.  Just to make sure they didn’t think I blew THEM off.  But they weren’t there and the line to get in was around the block, so I just started walking back.

Montreal is really beautiful in the summer.  It might be nice in the winter, too, I shouldn’t talk about what I don’t know.  What I DO know, is that there were hot girls all over the streets during the day.  Miniskirts and tank tops aren’t a staple of a Canadian January.  I’m sure New York and Chicago are like this in the summer, too.  But guess what?  I love New York and Chicago in the summer.  I love walking cities.  LA is not one.  Everybody drives just about everywhere.  A few parts of Sunset and a larger part of Hollywood Boulevard are kind of like little walking neighborhoods, but I really like when everyone is out and walking here or there.  You get businessmen passing by homeless chicks.  Everyone comes together and it really invigorates me.  It’s days like Wednesday in Montreal that are making me move to New York.  I want to be around all the madness.  And my apartment on the Sunset Strip isn’t enough.

So I walked back from Schwartz’s and took a left instead of a right so I could see some new areas.  I walked through this beautiful park.  You know, this is starting to sound really ghey.  No, that’s the wrong usage.  It’s starting to sound really gay.  That’s what I mean.  I’m beginning to sound like a homosexual male.  Not lame, homosexual.  Not ghey, gay.

Fuck the walk.  I bought some clothes at H&M.  Both times I’ve been to Montreal I’ve bought shit there.  Even though there’s one that’s 3/4 of a block from my apartment back home.  I know it’s retarded, but their clothes are so colorful and cheap.  How can I not.  And of course the Jew in me thinks that I can only buy 4.5 pounds worth of stuff because on the way here my bag weighed 45.5 pounds.  I don’t want to pay no extra charges.  And by “the Jew in me” I mean Ari.  I’m 100%.  I got a button down, some sweet tight slacks, a peach colored belt and some 20 dollar shoes.

I’ve been hanging out with this artist chick lately and she has all these ultra fucking hipster friends.  I USED to think I was a hipster myself.  Now I realize that I wasn’t even in the ballpark.  So I’ve been slowly working more skinny jeans, colors and cardigans into my wardrobe.  I’ve already got the mustache, which I grew to creep out children and mothers.  But apparently, the mustache is a staple of the hipster community, so I can leave it on during my transition.  Anyway, H&M is full of great shit for when you’re trying to be a hipster poser.

So I did that, finished up my blog and went to the shows.  Our hotel is 3.5 minutes away from the venue by foot, so I left at 10 minutes to show time.  They freaked out a little bit.  But it’s standup.  What did you expect from me?  If I was more professional I wouldn’t be doing the Nasty Show this far into my standup career.  I’d be doing the Gala.  It’d be my 3rd trip to the festival.  And I would have done New Faces 6 years ago.  Instead, I’m doing the Nasty Show after being told that I will NEVER be a part of New Faces.  These are great shows, and I’m super stoked to do them, but understand.  I’m gonna be unprofessional.  I’m gonna get there late and go on as long as I want, and I’m gonna be high some of the sets, and drunk some of them.  But what I will do, is deliver my own down home helping of American filth to the good people of Montreal.

The first show was a B.  Second show I opened up and did really well.  Probably just because the 1st show was mediocre.  It was some kind of revenge or something.  That first show had a dude who fake laughed really loud at some point.  And I would have just unloaded on him, but the laugh was right on the border of mocking and serious.  So I was only 65-70 percent sure that he was being a douche.  Something I learned a long time ago from my buddy Joe Rogan was that you have to let audience members hang themselves a little before opening up on them or you’ll seem like a jerk to the 90% of the crowd who didn’t observe that the guy’s laugh was mocking.  They’ll just think you’re doing it for no reason and it’ll seem mean.  Which is kind of valid from their perspectives.  So that guy was kind of annoying.  And then he opened his trap even more when Thea Vidale was on stage and she said she lit him up.  I didn’t see it, but you don’t want to get any sass from Thea.  When you look up sass in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Thea waving her index finger menacingly.  And there’s a picture instead of a definition because black people can’t read.

In between shows, Mike Wilmot’s family came to the green room.  His wife and daughter.  His wife was totally nice and really laid back.  His daughter may have been nice and laid back and may not have been.  I had no idea because she was so fucking hot it made me uncomfortable.  She looked so much like that tall Laura Prepon chick from That 70’s Show.  You know how sometimes you’ll find someone who looks exactly like someone else, just a little uglier.  Well this was like that.  Laura Prepon was a slightly uglier version of this girl.  Mike was hilarious about it.  As soon as they walked backstage he could see all our levels of degeneration start to rise up.  So he goes, “Have you guys met my wife and DAUGHTER.”  Point taken.  So the rest of the evening was spent trying not to stare at this female adonis.  Thankfully, when we all went drinking later, Wilmot kept beating the point into my skull.  Every time he’d go smoke or go to the bathroom he’d leave by saying “Don’t even think about it.”  It was really difficult to have a conversation with someone that looks like that.  Because every time you go down the road on a topic, you keep thinking about how hot she is.  So she’ll say something about Quebec wanting to secede or something, and then you respond by saying “Yeah, I can totally see their point, but you shouldn’t forget that you’re really fucking hot and if not for your father, I would totally be trying to get you into bed.  And I’d fail.  Because you’re so fucking hot.”  And that wouldn’t really be the best way to have a conversation.  So instead, I would just nod and hope that Mike or his wife got back soon so I wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable.

After that, Kurt and I went to find some Poutine.  And we found some.  The cab driver helped us out the way a Vegas cab driver will help you find a strip club.  This place called (I think) La Banquise.  The whole first page of the menu was all different types of poutine.  We each got the T-Rex.  Kurt was like, “Why don’t you get something different so we can try the different tastes?”  But I was like, “You’re not touching any of my fucking poutine and if you try we will fist fight about it.”  The T-Rex was regular poutine with shredded beef, sausage pieces and bacon.  God damn it was delicious.  And there was sooooo much in the bowl.  That’s right.  A bowl.  So you could fit more to get into your disgusting fat face.

Really good, fun night.  I got called a gay Klute by Kurt Metzger.  Everyone laughed except me, since I didn’t get the reference.  But I looked up the preview from that movie and there’s a scene towards the end where Donald Sutherland was wearing a cardigan, and I could totally see it.  Alright.  Another blog tomorrow.  I tried recording a video about Poutine, but the Photobooth on my MacBook kept cutting off at random intervals in my rant.  It was like someone installed a censor and a dump button on my computer for when I cross the line.  Which apparently was every take.  Maybe there’ll be video tomorrow.  Right now I gotta go fuck up my toilet.  Poutine does not stay down long.

Well, after I got to the hotel room the first night, I figured I should walk around a little or something.  I managed to fuck up a fax to the billing department, so I had to print a contract and fax it over, but then the night was mine.  Only I don’t know anyone in Montreal.  And I’m socially awkward as it is.  So I figured I’d take the 2nd half of that breath strip and make a night of it.  This one kicked in a lot sooner.  About an hour, maybe even a little less.  I might be building a tolerance, which would suck.  The only tolerance I like to have is for booze.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I have a very low tolerance for booze.  I’m a complete puss when it comes to drinking.  I’d just LIKE to have a higher tolerance.  I’m maybe 3 beers to a heavy buzz.  4 to blasted.  Every once in a while I can drink for hours without feeling anything, but usually anything I drink goes straight to my head.  The reason I’d like to have a higher tolerance for booze is that booze makes me want to fuck.  And miraculously, it also makes women want to fuck.  And even more of a miracle is that it lowers my inhibitions to the point when my winning personality can come through.  This sometimes helps my desire to fuck, mesh with women’s  desires to fuck and it results in fucking.  But if I’m too drunk it’s really hard to get home and sometimes my dick don’t work.  Which does not aid in the fucking.  So I’d like to be able to drink enough to fit in and feel nice and loose, but still maintain enough sobriety to be able to drive decently and achieve at least a 70% boner if we’re not using a condom and a 90% boner if we are.  I know a lot of people will say that driving while buzzed is just as bad as driving while drunk.  Well, that’s stupid.  Buzzed and drunk are two different words which mean two different things.  Drunk people have serious trouble standing up.  Buzzed people are in complete control of their diminished ability to stand, they just have to concentrate on it a little harder.  I once saw, (I believe in Atlanta) a guy trying to use his key to get into his car for a solid 90 seconds.  That doesn’t seem like that much, but think about how long 5 seconds is.  Seriously pretend to put keys in a lock and count out 5 Mississippies.  That’s plenty of time to get it in.  He did at least 18 times that long.  And then he realized that he had been trying to fit the key into the back door.  He kind of looked around, realized his mistake, and managed to get into the front seat in only another 15 seconds.  And then he drove off and immediately ran the first red light he saw.  Didn’t even slow down.  Just ran it.  That guy was drunk.  There’s no one that would say he was driving while buzzed.  So they’re not the same thing.  Quit trying to sell that.  Those people who think they’re the same thing might try to say, “Well, they’re the same in that they’re both dangerous.”  I have one answer to that.  Absolutely.  When I’m buzzed, I am not a good driver.  It takes me too long to stop.  I have trouble driving a straight line for more than 10 consecutive seconds.  I lose the ability to tell myself not to text while I’m in moving traffic.  I’m a shitty driver while buzzed and I am a clear danger to pedestrians and other motorists.  It’s too dangerous and it needlessly puts innocent lives in harms way.  It’s just not as bad as drunk driving.  And I drunk drive, too.  I’m not trying to make myself out to be better than other people.  No.  I’m an asshole.  I just want it noted that those aren’t the same thing.  And you might say, “Well if you know it’s so dangerous, why do you drive drunk or buzzed.”  Because I have a car with me and I want to get somewhere and I’m too drunk or buzzed to exercise caution or good judgment.  Plus, I might want to get home to fuck.  And if that happens, I’ll drive drunk even if I’m not drunk enough to think it’s a good idea.  But the whole time I’ll be wishing that my tolerance was higher so that this wouldn’t happen in the future.

Well, I got sidetracked again.  So I took the 2nd half of this breath strip the first night and went walking.  It was a really nice night out.  Mid 60s and clear.  I passed by two black men and the drunker of the two asked me, “Yo, is you a faggot, nigga?”  I didn’t respond.  The more sober of the two told his friend to keep walking, which sort of worked.  He just ended up saying “Fucking pussy, nigga.”  I didn’t mind it.  It kind of reminded me of home.  Isn’t it kind of reassuring to know that black people act the same in every country.  Here’s the problem.  I’m generalizing black people here..  I’m giving black people a bad reputation because of this one man.  And he was only one of the two black men in that group.  The other was calm and in control and almost apologetic about his friend’s behavior.  So why am I generalizing black people based on this tiny data point.  Because that’s what humans do.  And if you’re a black man who doesn’t act like the drunk guy from last night, you need to take some of the responsibility for my innate racism too.  If you see a friend of yours acting embarrassingly black, you need to yell at him and put a stop to it before more non-blacks have a lower image of you because of your friend’s actions.  When I was orthodox, there was a saying that went around.  “Chilul Hashem.”  It meant something along the lines of “embarrassment to God.”  This meant that if you made an ass of yourself while you were wearing your yarmulka, people would see that and have a negative image of God’s chosen people (Jews, idiots).  This didn’t just mean when we got drunk.  It meant and continues to mean anything that would make people negatively judge our people.  Like when we try to grab change out of the wishing well, or when we constantly ask people if we can get a discount by paying cash, or when we act just generally Jewey.  And if a friend is doing that, it’s our responsibility to at least try and stop him before he makes things harder for all of us.  Well, same shit goes for that gentleman black guy from last night.  Control your friend.  He’s acting ni**ery.  Put a stop to it.

So I walked around a little more, and then got a Dagwoods sub, recommended to me by Jordan the Jew.  I also got about a billion snacks and ate most of them.  I decided I can’t have any chips or anything in my hotel room or I’ll come back from this trip 20 pounds heavier.  But regardless, I ate a bunch of those and tried to stay up late so I could be awake at 2 in the morning.

The next day I woke up at noonish, fucked around a little, and then took a walk around the city while I tried to find the Just For Laughs offices.  I fucked up faxing those contracts yet again, so I thought I’d just go down there and sign the stuff myself.  I did that, met some of the staff, got a slice of pizza, and then got ready for the shows.

The shows themselves were great.  They put me on first after Bobby Slayton.  It went:  Bobby, Ari, Thea Vidale, Intermission, Bobby Stayton again, Kurt Metzger, and Mike Wilmoot.  It was my first time seeing Slayton live and he made me laugh on a few occasions.  Thea has been rocking LA since I started.  I remember once at the Comedy Store Joey Diaz was hosting the Sunday paid regular show and he wanted to throw Thea on.  All the young guys like myself (at the time.  Now I’m old) got real bitchy about him throwing her up.  “She’s not a paid regular.  This is bullshit.”  But the Cuban didn’t care.  “She’s better than all you little pricks.  You have no idea how to kill like her.  Fuck you.”  And that’s exactly what she did.  She killed so hard it shut us all up and made us consider whether or not this was the right profession for us.  That’s when you know you’re killing.  When a bunch of comics in the back are thinking to themselves, “Maybe it’s not too late for law school.”  That’s when you know you’ve done your job.  So Thea is on my show.  Then Kurt Metzger, who I had previously met when I was at the Cellar in New York when I was there to film Down and Dirty.  He’s a friend of Joe Derosa’s, and he’s really funny.  I hadn’t seen him before, but he has a joke about Korean’s fat faces, so he won me over right there.  And then Mike Wilmoot went on last and killed.  He’s a Canadian who lives in England somewhere just like Jason Rouse used to.

So we had two great crowds.  They were laid back and relaxed.  Some old people were in the first show, which is usually a sign of death for me, but I guess they bought tickets knowing it was called The Nasty Show, so that probably made everybody chill out a little more.  Not that I’m that filthy.  Well, I am, I guess, but it’s not offensively dirty.  It’s just me being honest.  And sometimes old people come to my shows.  And they can easily get angry about the things I’m saying.  These old people were not like that at all.  They had a great time.  So did the rest of the audience.  Kudos to everyone.  And then Leonard from Skunk Magazine showed up during the 2nd show intermission and brought all the comics Skunk style treats for the week.  That was a life saver.  Maybe an hour before, we were all wondering how the fuck we were gonna find any pot for the next 12 days, and then our prayers were answered.  Everybody go buy an issue of Skunk Magazine out of respect for the respect.

After the shows, we went to get some more booze and then some poutine with Jordan the Jew, Robbie the Jew, their girlfriends the Jews, Sara the Jew, Sheena the Jew, her boyfriend the Jew, and Kurt the goy.  Poutine, according to Robbie, is Montreal staple that we had to have so we can say we had it, but would definitely make us destroy our toilets.  I had already overflowed my toilet earlier in the day (I forgot to put that in earlier) so I wasn’t scared of it happening again.  Poutine is just French fries with some sort of cheese balls on top of it and then smothered with gravy.  You can get chicken poutine or sausage poutine or ground beef poutine.  I got the regular and was amazed at how the Canadians all devoured it.  It wasn’t that it was bad.  On the contrary, it was actually quite tasty.  But they pounded it like newly liberated Auschwitz survivors.

And that’s it.  Kurt and I walked back to the hotel.  Day 2 came to a close.

I’m on a plane headed to Montreal for my first experience at the Just For Laughs festival they have there every year.  I’m gonna be there for 12 days and I’ll try to write a blog or record a video every day while I’m there.  I’m either going to edit them and rewrite them to make them good, or I’m just going to post a first draft.  This is going to be one of the non-rewritten ones.

Today, I woke up at 8, snoozed till 8:30, and then had 30 minutes to get dressed, make b.m., and pack for 12 days.  I’m sure I forgot something.  I know I forgot my roll shorts.  But I’m probably not gonna train while I’m there anyway.  My knee’s too fucked up right now.  Anyway, I got all packed and out the door by 9:20.  My friend David Taylor drove me to the airport.  We stopped by an audition at 10am sharp so I could try to do this callback before I left, but my call time was at 1:20 and they didn’t even have a morning session, so I skipped it.  Fuck you, Progresso, you’ll have to find another patsy to sell your cancer soup.

We got back in the car and drove straight down Lincoln to the airport.  Straight through all the cool, rich, white neighborhoods, and on into the poorer, black neighborhoods.  We saw tuckered out crack dealers heading home from a long day of slinging rock and violently driving off competitors.  “Slinging rock,” by the way, is street slang for when crack dealers sell crack rocks to people addicted to crack cocaine, or people becoming addicted to crack cocaine.  I learned terms such as that one and many more by watching television.  I’m cool going through neighborhoods like that because we had power locks and David has a low level of respect for traffic laws and human life, so I felt pretty safe.  We were able to relax and talk about the UFC 100 fights from which I had returned the previous day.  Fun car ride overall.  Uneventful and we were plenty early for the flight.  Usually, I’m swerving in and out of traffic when I’m on my way to the airport.  My anxiety level is usually through the roof as I try to somehow defy the laws of time and space yet again and somehow make whatever flight I’m late for.

At the airport, I took a half a THC breath strip.  It’s marijuana concentrated and mixed into one of those Listerine breath strips that dissolve on your tongue.  It takes up almost no room.  You can put a pack of two into your wallet in between credit cards.  Half of one is enough to get me super baked for 5 hours.  The only problem with them is that, like most edibles, they take a little while to kick in.  Usually around 2 hours.  This is just getting going really strong in me and it’s been 2 hours and 15 minutes.  So now the next 5 hours will be a lot more interesting.  That’s kind of perfect, because that’ll last me until the cab ride from the airport to the hotel.  Another problem, is that sometimes they last longer than 5 hours.  Me, The Cuban, and Death Squad Tech Support each took a full one right before UFC 100.  And then for some retarded reason, we then took an additional 1/3 of one about 2 hours later.  So usually 1/2 of one means you’ll still be high 7 hours after you take it.  For this 1 1/3, I swear to God, I was high 23 hours after I took my first strip.  It was crazy.  I woke up the next morning feeling hung over.  But I only had one beer with dinner, so I couldn’t be hung over.  I thought it was from all the food.  I ate a full dinner after the fights and then went to my room to watch Breaking Bad and eat and eat and eat.  Gummy bears, chocolate covered chocolate chip cookie dough balls, and sour cream and onion Pringles.  I literally came home 10 pounds heavier than the morning I left.  5 pounds of that weight went away during yesterdat’s shitfest 2009, but still, 5 pounds is a lot to gain in 2 days.  Anyway, back to the story.  Once I saw Tech Support, we realized that we were both still high.  We took a ride to the airport, ate, got on the plane, I slept for half an hour, and I woke up still high.  I took that first strip at 4 and the last strip at 6 and I was still high at noon the next day.  And I was still high for the next 3 hours while I did all my chores before I had to leave.  Eventually I got back to normal, but you gotta admit, that was pretty awesome.  I know it was fun and weird.

So I took half of one of those strips at the airport.  I’m feeling good right now.  I’m gonna land and sign contracts and then walk around Montreal for a little bit.  This should be a fun, relaxed road trip full of booze and trouble.  I brought 8 Viagras and 3 condoms, you do the math.

Dan Bialek made it.  It was for a show in LA.  Maybe 5 people were in the audience, but it was still a great show.  The comics were all fucking with each other, but in a good-natured way.  David Taylor found a law book in the back and read a passage about a rape case.  Pete Carboni interviewed a guy who I thought was wearing a Willy Wonka costume, but apparently was just dressed in normal “macabre” attire.  Dan Madonia went on and was interviewed by the crowd about the time he fucked two chicks outdoors that he met at the Comedy Store the same night he met them.  Boon Shaka Laka, the resident gay homeless used goods salesman/used goods thief from the Store fucked up probably every introduction.  Mike Black and I were there too, but we didn’t do anything too noteworthy.

It was a fun ass show.

The people at the LA Comedy Festival (http://www.lacomedyfest.com/) asked me to write a promotional description for my page on their website.  So I went over all the best messages I’ve gotten over the last 3 or 4 months and I came up with this:

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Ari Shaffir is a standup comedian and actor living in Los Angeles, CA.  He is a regular at The Comedy Store, The Improv, and The Laugh Factory, and headlines all over the country. You might have seen him as “The Amazing Racist,” in a series of internet videos that have gotten over 30 million hits when they aren’t being pulled down by YouTube. Or maybe you saw him as he garnered rave reviews for his standup on the HBO comedy show “Down and Dirty with Jim Norton.”

The response to Ari’s comedy has been overwhelming.  ”I’ll fuck you in the ass when you least expect it.” proclaims Greg Rodriguez.  Idean, from Rancho Palos Verdes, CA has also caught the Ari Shaffir fan fever. “You fuckin shalom a bitch racist ass wenevr i see you in la i will fuckin jump your ass.” You may need to wait, Idean–Ari does the road as well. It’s no surprise, considering that he has fans like West Haverstraw, NY’s Miguel who raves, “I bet it wasn’t so funny when your relatives got turn into lamp shades or bars of soap, huh?”  Or Clayton Meeks of Red Lion, DE who hails “Die.”  And that’s just in America.  Ari’s appeal is quickly becoming international.  One new fan from Cihuatlan, Jalisco, Mexico named •°¤*(¯..°(F)( J¿Øø$Ûµ€ë)(F)°..¯)*¤°• sings Shaffir’s praises. “fuck pinche pendeje kome mierda joto te voy a matar.”

Yes, Ari Shaffir’s comedy has a broadbased appeal. He has teenaged fans: “i might only be 14 but im speakin up diz is da kind of shitt dats pisses me off ur a fuken az hole u think u might be funny but ur not ur just a stupid igorant dat dosnt kno anyting” notes ♥fUk fAke’s AnD MEssY BiTchEZ from Houston,TX.  And Shaffir’s comedy crosses over to women, as well. Just ask Edna from Arizona. “Me and my Brown homeboys are gonna find you and kill you. Im personally gonna fuck your wife and kill your son. Im gonna have a nigger rape it.”

But don’t take their word for it.  Come out and see for yourself why everyone is talking about the comedy of Ari Shaffir.
=============================================================================================

Well, what do you think?  Of course I would never normally write anything like “…rave reviews” or anything else douchey like that, but I was trying to set up a typical self promoting paragraph like I’ve seen from Jeremy Hotz, or Dane Cook, or any other comic who does those sorts of things in earnest for their websites.  But that was only to mislead expectations for the next two paragraphs.  So don’t judge me, cocksmokers.

And, yes, those are all quotes from actual messages I’ve gotten on MySpace.  I tried to find their real names if I could.  Otherwise, I’d just leave their screen names.

I wrote back to one Latino guy who hadn’t written me in a year. Previously he had said that he was going to find me and shoot me.  This is what I wrote:  “Hey, so what’s going on with your plans to find me? It’s been nearly a year. It seems like you’ve been lazy. Hmm. That’s strange that you’d be lazy, huh?”

That’s one of my new pastimes.  I find old messages of people claiming that they would kill me and I write back to them, asking how their plans are coming.  Sometimes I’ll mention that I’ve already been to their city twice to do comedy since they’ve told me to expect my life to end within the week.  I like to remind them that my tour schedule is up on my page.  I think it’s important to check in with the people that have been affected by your art.  Oh, and they don’t like it when you call it art.  That’s something I learned a long time ago.  It drives them crazy.

It seems like I should have a paragraph here to wrap up this post, but I don’t have the energy to think of one and nothing is just popping into my head without me working at it.  The problem with this blog is that it didn’t stick to one idea.  Really, it was just about the promotional description for the festival.  But then I went into another semi-related topic about my death threats.  I spent too much time on that tangent, and never brought it back to the original topic.  So the result is a disjointed blog that might leave the reader without a sense of closure.  There’s no point, so there’s a greater chance that you leave this page thinking, “Why did I read that?  I didn’t grow at all.  I have left without a feeling of having learned something about the world in which I live.”

Now I’ve added a third, almost completely unrelated subject about writing in general.  This was not a good effort by me at all, and I apologize.  But please let me know what you think about the promotional description, because I think I’m going to use that from now on.  Okay, I’m going to poach some eggs and get back to cleaning my apartment.