Beep beep beep beep beep beep

I woke up this morning to a beeping sound.

There are lots of sounds in my apartment, early in the morning. Sometimes it is garbage trucks backing up, which is a certain type of beeping. Sometimes it is a guy going through the dumpster full of cans and bottles for recycling, making a little cash with his shopping cart. Sometimes it’s one of the three different alarm wake-up systems I use (actual alarm clock, old flip phone, current iPhone). Sometimes it’s the guy who keeps a wreck of a car on my street, which he moves once a week because he’s gonna fix it up some day but not yet- it’s been five years- he’ll get to it at some point. Sometimes it’s somebody whose car has broken down on the street, but if they just rev the engine on the starter for two hours it will start at some point. Once in a while it’s the lion’s-head doorknocker on my front door, which I have unwisely kept for a few years, which scares the shit out of me every time somebody uses it, which they always do when they are outside my actual front door.  I guess given the choice of rapping on the door with your knuckles and lifting a tarnished brass lion’s head, of course that ‘s the choice people always make.

But this morning’s was different. It was that distant, displaced beep that means… oh no, the battery on my fire alarm is wearing down. You know those round alarms on the wall or ceiling, with the little green light that means it’s all god, or the red light that means… oh, it’s red.

It took three sleepy and tentative circuits of the apartment to figure out where the beep was coming from. I pulled the alarm down, and pulled the battery out. No more beeping. Then I shuffled over to the battery drawer, which had no batteries in it (lots of clothesline and tape, though). So I stashed the alarm on a shelf and went back to sleep.

This is the fourth alarm in my apartment I have done that with. At this point there are NO functioning fire alarms in my place. They’ve all been taken down and stashed. I keep meaning to buy a few 9v batteries so I can hook them up again, but instead I just… leave them down. Rather than heed the warning beep and fix the situation, I procrastinate. I’ll get to it at some point.

Are my fire alarms a metaphor for my life?

So when I woke up today after I went back to sleep, I went out and bought a bunch of 9v batteries. So that I could fix all the fire alarms and hook them up again.

Got home from buying them, and I took them out of the bag,  and I put them in the battery drawer, with the clothesline and tape.

I gotta put those batteries in those alarms, and hook those babies back up. But not now. I’ll get to it at some point.

The License Plate Dude Is The New Fireman Ed

Yes, I am a grown man, and a sensitive artist, almost poetic, but I still get excited when my teams win. Today was sweet. I can’t wait to beat the 49er’s at Candlestick.

 

Go Long, Bad Times

When I was a kid, my folks wouldn’t let us watch television. We had to schedule which two hours a week we wanted to watch, and only on Friday and Saturday nights- nothing on school nights. As I remember we spent a lot of time watching CHiPs, The Donny and Marie Show… The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, although those must have come later, because those were Sunday night shows, on which Paul Anka was constantly a guest star for some reason- wait, was it Paul Anka? Paul somebody… a show called Code R, which may only have been on briefly, if at all… Dukes of Hazzard, certainly, always…we were definitely NOT allowed to watch the Love Boat, for obvious reasons… and they would let us watch baseball games if we wanted to  during the week, later on. Like high school.

But because we weren’t allowed to watch tv during the week, and everybody else was, I always felt very left out of the conversations everybody at school had about sitcoms. “Wasn’t it hilarious last night on…” was, to me, the sound of a conversation starting of which I would not be a part. Welcom Back Kotter (“Up your nose with a rubber hose”), Diff’rent Strokes (“Watchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”), Three’s Company (errrrrr…. Don’t remember). But of curse the best of them all was the shw that starred the coolest man alive.

Now, if I were to ask 100 people, today, who the coolest man alive is, I bet I would get a lot of different answers. Obama.  Jay Z. Biebs.  Aaron Rodgers. But back then, when I was a kid, there was only one answer, and I’m pretty sure everybody knew it:

And that was the show that forced me to have my first experience with peer pressure. I would pretend that I had seen the previous night’s episode, just agreeing with whoever I was talking to that the parts they were describing were awesome, and hilarious, and amazing. I remember knowing who Pinky Tuscadero was, and the Malachi Crunch (sp.?), and I even remember somebody describing to me the episode when Fonzie jumped the shark, which is, ostensibly, when the show itself jumped the shark.

In ceramics class, tongue in cheek (I like to think), I painted a mug for myself to read “the Seanz.” I even carried a comb in my back pocket, which I would pull out, move toward my hair, then widen out my arms as though observing my own perfection in the mirror, and place back in my pocket (this is, of curse, back when I had a luxurious, full, albeit badly misbehaving head of hair).

My point is this: yesterday, I shared the elevator with a gracefully aging and congenial gentleman with a very nerdy  New York accent. A graduate of Emerson College and the Yale School of Drama, who well over a quarter century ago created an indelible character that had such an impact on me that he caused me to casually lie, socially. And I hate to admit it, but when he looked me in the eye and very politely and off-handedly said,”How’s it goin’, fellas?”, it was a huge, huge thrill for me.

After he got off the elevator, I turned to the other guy in the elevator, who was probably 15 years younger than me, and mouthed, wide-eyed: “That was THE FONZ!” He looked back at me, maybe not even understanding what I was saying, and said, “I’ve seen you perform at UCB. You’re very funny.”

Not bragging. That’s just the truth.

Excellence is my presence

Sometimes I think a lot about the difficult stuff.  Money, success, love, money, career, progress, safety, paper, all starts to weigh on me. It gets… I don’t know how to say it. I mean… what do I mean? What does it ALL mean?

That’s a big question. That is a BIGGIE. And that always takes me back to this, which makes me feel better:

In Which I am Quite Similar to Britney Spears

I like meeting all my fans and signing autographs, although it can all get a bit crazy. Yesterday, for example, a boy just came over and planted a big kiss on my face! I was like, ‘Hello?’
Britney Spears

Last night I did a show (and to use a classic comedy trope, by last night I mean within the last month, so nobody’s feelings get hurt). I don’t always stay to watch everybody else perform anymore, but I stayed to see the end of the show, and the final performer was announced as the headliner. Technically he was, because he went last. The reality was that there were 7 or 8 comics on the show, all of whom did about 8-10 minutes, so there wasn’t really a headliner in the traditional sense.

As I watched, a guy sat down next to me. He congratulated me on my set (thanks), told me he didn’t enjoy what the guy onstage was doing (everybody’s entitled to their opinion), told me he wasn’t trying to be a dick, wondered if I enjoyed what the guy onstage was doing (you are not entitled to MY opinion), told me he wasn’t trying to be a dick, and expressed irritation that I was not headlining rather than this guy (again, thanks). Also, he wasn’t trying to be a dick.

He wanted to know why I wasn’t headlining, when I was clearly better. It was really upsetting to him. I pointed out that other people in the crowd were clearly enjoying what was happening onstage, and that comedy was a matter of taste- everybody has their lovers and their haters, and the fact that he didn’t like this particular performer or performance didn’t mean no one did. He underSTOOD that, but why don’t-

At this point I realized I was becoming involved in a heated discussion with a guy who was angry at me because I wouldn’t say I was clearly more deserving than this other comic of the headlining spot, AND because I couldn’t satisfactorily articulate why I didn’t have it. Meanwhile, whether or not I liked what the person onstage was doing (it was okay, not my favorite), I knew the guy I was talking to had no idea what it took to be up there, to decide that THIS was what you were going to put out to the world. Why would I take his side in this discussion? And now he was fucking angry at me. Pissed. Loud and getting louder.

I was not the only one who realized this, as the host of the show turned and shushed us. The guy repeated his “not trying to be a dick” mantra and stormed away.

Larger confrontation avoided.

Until I walked out of the bar on my way home, and he was outside, smoking a cigarette.

“Hey buddy, don’t you think that shows what’s wrong with this business?”

I was like, “Hello?”