Work Out Day

Internet,
Sorry I haven't been writing here lately. I've been mostly working on shorter stuff at my site.
I'm working on some longer stuff.

And I've been working out.
February 26th was work out day. Watch this to see how I works on my fitness.



Love,
Ryan

Abortion Shmashmortion

I wouldn’t say I’m pro abortion. I guess I am, though. I’m not sure what else you would call it.
I don’t like abortion. I don’t go around advocating abortion, and I certainly (probably) wouldn’t watch an abortion take place.
Nevertheless, I find myself unable to believe that a fetus should have more rights than a woman. I know, it’s awful. But I am who I am.
Important to note, though, that I am who I am because of the life I have led thus far. I was not born the way I am now. Less hair, for one (I was born with a comb over, though). But I was not born spewing witticisms and minor philosophical queries on the Internet. I’m sure I spewed several things, but carefully constructed sentences and paragraphs were not among them for quite some time. In fact, I even trained most of my life to be a classical musician before deciding I would rather be a writer. And I’m still not exactly sure what I will do with my life, because I have not yet made the antecedent decisions that will define my life.
I bring this up because those who would ban abortion completely have made arguments such as “What if the baby you abort would have gone on to cure cancer?”
Um, ok. What if the baby would have gone on to rape your daughter? Are these things decided pre-birth? See, I’m confused, because many members of the “Babies are better than women” club are also Christians, and Christians believe – at least, many angry Internet Christians have told me that Christians believe – that god gave us free will. It seems to me that the ideas of free will and fate don’t really go together. Either the baby was going to be a doctor the whole time, OR he/she/it/flark could have made decisions throughout life resulting in a career as a doctor and ultimately finding a cure for cancer. Maybe life begins at conception. A PhD, however, does not.

-Joe

P.S. Check out this post on hubpages! If you click the ads I get money! http://hubpages.com/hub/Aaaabortion?done

Ward Davis

We had to interview and write a profile about a person for my Nonfiction Writing class. I decided to give mine a twist ending.



Ward Davis, a lifelong Ithaca resident, prefers not to disclose exactly where he lives, for fear of further harassment from, as he calls them, the “liberal elite college types.”

Davis explained as he took a drag off his cigarette, scowling, that college students and other liberals in Ithaca feel the need to steal the political signs he works so hard to purchase and place on his lawn. “Sometimes I make them myself,” he added, explaining how he goes to Ace Hardware for poster board and glitter to make signs, because he feels the need to get the message out about certain issues, especially on his front lawn.

Davis said he hasn’t spoken to anyone who looks at his signs, that he mostly just speaks “around” people, which consists largely of yelling from his lawn, especially if the signs are gone. “But if half the people who steal them are stealing them because they agree so much, then that’s still pretty good.”

Raised in a conservative Christian environment (at home, at least, where he says his parents talked about the “real issues” the schools wouldn’t talk about), Davis is strongly against gay marriage and other issues championed by liberals. While talking about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, he explained that he believes conservatives are taking back the country from “tax-and-spend” liberals like Barack Obama, who Davis claims want to legalize “gay abortions.” I asked what else he felt the Tea Party movement was about, to which he answered “small government” and “tea.”

Davis stressed that he is fine with gay people, as long as he doesn’t hear about it. “Just keep it in your flooded basement,” he says (he suggested earlier in our conversation that rain and flooding could be brought on by atheism, but didn’t claim to know for sure).

“Gay people can get married when they stop having gay sex. I’m supposed to…[1]with them out there?”

He decried what he thought he may have heard somewhere about gay sex being taught in school, saying it was a “perversion.” “Teaching them how to have gay sex [in] fourth grade!”

When I asked further about Davis’ views on homosexuality, he said he was against coddling “the gays,” who he claims are 1% of the population. He said he has heard that the percentage is higher, but is pretty sure it’s “propaganda put out there by the elitist liberal media.” He also says that the condition is curable. “When your arm is broken, you go to the hospital and get it fixed. Well, same thing when your brain is broken.” Davis said he has never met a gay person.

We delved into Davis’ upbringing, to see where his strong convictions came from. Again, Davis’ parents instilled in him what they believed to be the “real issues” that the schools didn’t touch on. God was a big one of those issues. “God isn’t mentioned in school,” Davis says, and asserts that god is everywhere. “God is present in math and spelling. A lot of people probably don’t even know how to spell god. Well, they probably can spell god. But maybe not.”

Davis’ parents taught him about the bible, in accordance with their Catholic faith. The “best” religion, as Davis said. His parents taught him that evolution is just a theory, and to follow the teachings of the bible, but only the New Testament.

I asked Davis if he found Ithaca to be a liberal town in a governmental sense in addition to socially, and he said it depends on how you look at it. “It’s still mostly white,” Davis said, not wishing to insinuate anything, just “putting it out there.” He also criticized the local police for not responding adequately to the theft of his lawn signs.

He did say the people of Ithaca can occasionally be “foolishly liberal.” “A lot of young people think they know what they’re talking about, because they’re in school. They haven’t lived in the real world yet, so they can be pretty closed-minded about things that way.”

Regarding his real life experience, Davis talked about his job at a local gas station, which he was fired from “because of the recession.” “They said it’s because I stole, but what evidence do they have of that?” I inquired further about there being no evidence. He said there was a video, but it “could have been my money I left in the cash register…before Obama was elected I was never fired for stealing from the gas station.”

Davis touched briefly on his favorite news pundits, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, who he feels are being treated unfairly just for “Speaking the truth.” He posed the question of whether Keith Olberman ever cries for his country. I said Olberman does get very passionate on his show, whether or not Davis agrees with him, to which Davis replied that I could just go watch his show and live in “fantasy land” and “pray to Obama,” the “Black King.” I asked if this had anything to do with Obama’s race. He denied having said anything of the sort. I reminded him that I was recording the conversation for my class, and he then accused me of being part of the college liberal elite. He reiterated that I would learn about the real world when I got out of my “Ivory tower.”

I asked if Davis had anything else to say about any other political issues. He said he doesn’t keep up that much with current politics, watching only the occasional Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.

Ward Davis lives with his wife in Ithaca. He is 26 years old.

As you may have guessed at this point, reader, Ward Davis is not a real person, although there may be people with similar personalities to his, which is what makes this piece such a neat experiment. He is a character created during my interview with fellow comedian and actor Ryan Merriam. After interviewing Ryan as Davis, I talked to him about his acting experience and some of his personal background.

We started by talking about the improvisation process. Improvisation relies on both sides of the conversation, he tells me. You must go into it with good questions in mind that will yield good/funny answers. You have to “have a full character in your head” and “know what they would say.” Exaggeration makes it funny.

Though it’s fairly clear that Merriam does not agree with Ward Davis’ political and social views, I wanted to get some specific answers about his beliefs. He said that he is very “middle of the road” politically, and that “both sides have their crazy people and their stupid people.

“Never underestimate how many stupid people there are. People on left are just as crazy in different ways. It comes from ignorance, which is easy to play,” he said, regarding his portrayal of Davis. “For every person against gay marriage, there’s also someone who thinks gay marriage should be mandatory so we can produce multi-ethnic half gay hybrids of humanity who will only drink the purest water.

He thinks the real problem is that nobody listens to each other. They panic and overcompensate. “It’s hard to get anything done when everyone’s screaming and panicking. But it would also be a shame if there was no one to mock. Like I said, I’m very middle of the road,” he said, at which we both laughed jovially.

Merriam has been acting since he was a kid, starting when he was in first or second grade, playing one of the lost boys in Peter Pan at The Hill Boarding School in Pottstown, where his family moved from Philadelphia when he was 6 months old because his father began teaching theater there (Merriam would later attend high school at Hill). He said he had seen a lot of shows by that time, and loved the “whole experience” of theater; the creative elements, and getting to pretend and have people pay attention to it.

Non-creative aspects of school were never his strong suit or interest. “I’ve never had a science class I didn’t almost fail.” He said it was a combination of inaptitude and indifference – “I’m only ok at science, so I don’t like it, so I become worse at science.”
Regarding Pottstown, he said it was “strange to be there,” his own family being “neither poor nor rich,” meanwhile, “one side of street was rich kids sent to boarding school, the other side people drinking malt liquor…I like to think of myself as both.”

With a major in drama focusing on playwriting and directing, and minors in both writing and English, Merriam plans to break more into live performance and eventually television, both with theater and with standup, his other passion.

His inspiration to do standup comes from years of watching professional comedians on TV with his dad, and going along on his father’s storytelling gigs. Merriam said he enjoys acting because of the feeling of control, and that standup is the ultimate control, because the standup comic is writer, actor, and director all at once.

His standup is “influenced by older guys,” like Jim Gaffifan, Jerry Seinfeld (he grew up watching Seinfeld), and Marc Maron, who talks a lot about his life and “personal stuff,” which is more what Ryan does. He says he listens to pretty much everything, from Larry the Cable Guy and Dane Cook to classics like George Carlin and Steve Martin. “Even if you don’t like the content, it’s interesting to listen to someone who’s really good at what they do.”

Merriam also has been a musician for some time, playing saxophone in his high school band. He told me about his band teacher, Mr. Beard, who didn’t have a Beard.

We closed by talking about Merriam’s family, who he said is always very supportive of his goals. “They’re only a little concerned” about what he says are his unrealistic goals. “They’re just a little worried about how long they’re going to have to lend me money.”


[1] Davis literally said nothing between these two thoughts.



-Joe

Thanks for reading. Please click on the links at my hubpages page http://hubpages.com/hub/Profile-of-an-Ultra-Conservative. You don't have to buy anything, I just get money when you click them. Awesome, right?

Also, make sure you check out the interview the three of us did with Eugene Mirman for Max's podcast, Another Comedy Show (one post down).

Also, check out Ryan's latest youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfrPn2cgyZA

Interview with Eugene Mirman!

Ryan and Joe and I were lucky enough to interview comedian Eugene Mirman (yeah, the creepy landlord from Flight of the Conchords [more importantly, a fantastic stand up comedian whose third album was just released]). It was very nice of him to appear on Another Comedy Show. Topics include his most recent album (God Is A Twelve Year Old Boy With Aspergers), his book "The Will to Whatevs" and his experiences touring with the Comedians of Comedy.

Check out the interview. You'll be glad you did.

The show is also available on iTunes. Subscribe, please. Thanks.

Working Class Douchebag (Revised)

I made this longer. I'm sorry.
_____________________________________________________________________

A lot of people wish John Lennon was still alive, but I’m not so sure. I guess I appreciate that he pissed off the government so much. That’s pretty cool. But what bothers me is that he cared so much. He cared to an upsetting degree. About everything. It would get exhausting to have him around now. If you think Brad Pitt and George Clooney are annoying, just take a minute to imagine (pardon the allusion) 21st century John Lennon. He would probably do a lot of stuff with Bono. Yeah. I know it stings. But you know he’d be right up there with that smug, activist motherfucker guilting you into sending money to Africa.

Space Age John Lennon would also be on Twitter. That’s right. Don’t hide from it. He would have a twitter account and he would update it every 5 minutes from his Blackberry. And in addition to his political whining and preaching, I’m sure John would include plenty of posts along the lines of “I don’t like this season of “Lost” as much as the last one” and “Yoko wants me to do the dishes. Lame! LOL”

He would probably have kept writing whiny songs about Paul McCartney*, and he would record videos of himself playing them in his basement on his Macbook and post them on his youtube page (which he signed up for to keep in touch with his fans and get more “involved”…blech) and angsty 9-year-olds would post “hoo is dis old fag?wat a bloody vaginea niger cunt ball.”

When you put John Lennon in the context of the 21st century, the possibility of his having lived this long doesn’t seem so attractive anymore. Just let it go, folks. Lennon died exactly when he needed to. That is, he died at the optimal moment so that he could remain a hero and not cause his fans any further disappointment. And for that matter, stop wishing Kurt Cobain hadn't died, too. I know you say that now, but you would feel differently if he had lived long enough to create the first Nirvana concept album, and to devolve into the Eric Clapton, Eagles realm of PBS specials, playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" every night for fat 40-year-olds. And I'm sure his public feuds with Jack White and John Mayer about whose music was the most "real" would be equally upsetting.

If John Lennon hadn't died, then George Harrison probably wouldn't have died either - don't ask me why (god dammit!), that's just how these things work - and then we all know what would have happened. Paul, George, and Ringo would start a new band together, and John Lennon would reform the Beatles with an entirely new lineup and hide away for 15 years recording some epic mystery album, only for us to hear it and say "I guess it's good, but I wish the other guys were in it."

John Lennon would not have been able to handle the modern world, and we would not have been able to handle him.



*John Lennon wrote a song called “How Do You Sleep?” about Paul McCartney. Well, they were friends, so John accused Paul of not carrying his weight (clearly it's impossible not to speak in Beatles lyrics) in the Beatles, and taking credit for John’s work. You know, I wonder how John Lennon sleeps these days.




Look at them, the old fucks. By the way, if you never hear from me again, it's probably because I was arrested and sued for the staggering multitude of copyright infringements in this image.


-Joe

Time Ravel

I have found that almost every science fiction piece that deals with future technology fails to incorporate commercialism and marketing. I don’t know how they manage to leave it out, as it so permeates our society, and has for so long. I’m not sure why people think it will disappear.

Back to the Future Part II came pretty close to getting it right, when Marty travels to 2015. The Jaws 19 ad with the shark hologram that seems like it’s going to eat Marty, the equally intrusive flying car ad on the talking billboard, the dehydrated pizza with a Pizza Hut logo on the wrapper, the “Café ‘80s.” They sure pulled that one out of their asses. Beside the fact that as we begin 2010 it doesn’t seem like we’re going to get flying cars and 15 more sequels to Jaws in the next five years, the idea that new technology would be coupled with obnoxious, invasive advertising is more likely than the possible realities created by other science fiction stories. In fact, just a few weeks ago this outdoor flatscreen TV told me to buy things while I was at a gas station.



I half expected Goldie Wilson III to come on the screen and try to sell me a Skyway Flyer.


Nowhere in Star Trek can I find any reference to commercialism. There are very few markings on the Enterprise giving us any sort of hint as to who made it. The food seems to be mostly freeze-dried, but no distribution companies are mentioned. The closest thing to a company in Star Trek is the Federation, and somehow they seem to hold absolutely everything together with relative ease. In the Next Generation episode where they travel back in time and meet Mark Twain, a conversation between Twain and Counselor Troi reveals that all suffering and class systems have been eliminated on Earth (thank god I can’t name the title, number or stardate of the episode). Bullshit. It’s implausible. Besides, the human race will never be a part of something so noble and pure.

Take Rosie from The Jetsons. No brand anywhere. And who built all of those raised houses? And what about their flying cars? Who sold them the “crazy thing” that George Jetson wanted Jane, his wife, to “stop”?

Star Wars. What companies make the ships? They just seem to have them. It’s like they’re a bunch of different tribes who make their own weapons, but their weapons are huge multi-functional starships and laser guns. And the ships seem to have all the important parts right on the outside. One hit and you’re fucked. They somehow manage to always hit the shield generator, even when the shield is already up. In fact, you need a little robot sitting on the outside to constantly fix the damn thing. And it doesn’t come with the ship. Each sold separately. I refuse to believe there’s no commercial bullshit going on there.

Think about some of the things we have today that people of the past could only dream of. High-functioning personal computers. Cell phones with Internet access. A GPS that can tell you where to go, where you are, where you were, and if you go the wrong way. But these things aren’t perfect by any means; you complain about them every day. And they didn’t come out of nowhere, either. They're not god-given advantages of evolution. You paid your dues to Mac, Dell, HP, Verizon, Motorola, and Garmin. You have to call up these masters of modern technology because the stuff gets outdated. It malfunctions, it breaks, it needs new maps, it needs a new processor, a new hard drive, a new mouse, a new keyboard, and every year or so, a whole new system altogether, because the stuff is designed not to last so you have to buy the next one.

This is no secret, but for some reason people think the advertising bullshit that has been around since the beginning of time will just disappear at some point. I’m sure that as soon as early humans figured out how to sharpen a stick, some business-savvy caveman figured out how to make a lot of them, and would trade them for food, or two minutes behind a rock with some poor, dumb, prototherian consumer’s cave-wife. He’d make it worth their while: “You very busy. You must hunt and fuck. Me make stick for you. Best stick in Pangaea. Me give you good deal.”

-Joe

P.S. Check out this post on hubpages. If you click the ads I get money! And you don't even have to buy anything.

Alfred University Show

If anyone reading this is anywhere near Alfred, NY or will be on April 9th of this year, Ryan and I will be performing, probably both together and separately, along with Max Barth at Alfred University. We're guessing it will be mostly Alfred University students if anyone, but just on the off chance people are hanging around Alfred in April, thought we'd let you know. Thanks.

-Joe

Milton & The Duke on online radio

Episode 1 of Milton & The Duke: Seems Like The Truth is replaying tonight on http://geturgeekonradio.com/ at 6:30.

Stand-down

You know, back when standup was beginning, comedians would actually tell jokes, like,

"'Do not board train while moving?' Lemme ask you something: If I'm moving as fast as a train, why would I even need to get on the train? Hohoho. What can I say? IIIIIIIII'm WACKY!"

But now we tell jokes about telling jokes, like what I just did. Judging by this trend, I predict that in 30 years, comedians will joke about what I'm doing now - joking about joking about joking. It will sound something like this:

"Remember thirty years ago when comedians would be like, 'Remember thirty years ago when comedians would tell jokes like, ""'Do not board train while moving?' Lemme ask you something: If I'm moving as fast as a train, why would I even need to get on the train? Hohoho. What can I say? IIIIIIIII'm WACKY!""'? And they were all like "Look at me, I'm so forward thinking and post-modern. I'm part of a historical artistic transition period." How lame was that?"

-Joe

Vote for Protocol!

My band is in another contest on this site. We're in the quarter finals. This time we could win $100. Help us out by voting at least once. Thanks!

-Joe