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colin quinn

I didn’t know what my next blog was going to be about. I had been sitting there thinking about it for the past week. I had just come back from a fucking crazy trip to Iraq and I was so whipped up to write a blog about it. And then my friend Jordy over there at myspace did me a solid and featured my blog on their comedy page. And I just sat back waiting for the blog comments and accolades to come in. I was checking my myspace everyday, like every fucking hour. Who am I kidding? Ok every five minutes. I was checking my myspace waiting for a comment from someone at CNN saying something like, “Hi, my name is Daniel Keller, head editor of CNN online. And I just want to say I have read many blogs on Iraq and you got it. I sent the link to a friend of mine. You may have heard of him, Larry King, and he loved it. He would like to have you on his show, Larry King Live, to talk about your time over there. Would this be something you would be interested in? Let me know.”

It never happened. I don’t think my myspace was working right. I think it was busted. Or maybe no one really liked it. That’s the problem with having a shitty child hood. If my step father Billy Manchington could have told me just a few times, “You’re a really strong, good, smart person and you can do anything you want in life”, and followed up with a huge hug instead of, “Shut the fuck up you dumb shit head cause that’s all you will ever be,” followed by a smack to the head, maybe I would be able to just write something and move on to the next thing and not care what people think about it. I’m not saying that I wrote that last blog so that people would throw me a parade. I’m just saying being on comedy myspace for a week I thought a lot more people would find their way to to my blog and write me and tell me how much they enjoyed it. Or maybe they just didn’t enjoy it. At least that’s what my friend, the legend, Colin Quinn thinks. I think his words were, “ That blog had the humanity of a police blotter”. He said the tone resembled something of a six year olds account of his summer vacation, “And then I went to Vegas. And then I went to Iraq. And then I went in a helicopter. And then I went home. And then I felt good. “ Thats what he said, word for word. I guess I didn’t put enough details in it for him. Like how flying in the black hawk helicopter with the doors open made me feel somewhat invincible. I could remember as a child playing on the swing feeling the same invincibility, as my friend was pushing me harder and harder faster and faster closer to going clean over the swing set. But I didn’t care then. I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt. I new it would be ok because this was what I was supposed to be doing at that very second in my life. It felt right being in that helicopter hanging out the window going 100 miles per hour over the pink dessert sand. Knowing that I would be landing to do what I do best, make America laugh. Maybe I should have explained that a little better. No! You know what? FUUUCCKK HIM!

Now don’t get me wrong; he has a point. And that’s why I love my friends. Because they’re honest with me 100 percent of the time, almost too much. Which leads me to the subject of my next blog: my shitty, although bluntly honest, friends. To be fair, I did start the whole Iraq blog out by saying I’m not a writer. (Which, by the way, was the only part my pal Colin liked) And here I am writing a new blog about the old blog. That says it all right there. I just want to be liked. I want to find some way to reach out to as many people as I can so they can tell me, “Wow, Robert you’re awesome.” I don’t think I’m alone in this desire. I think that’s why everyone creates to begin with. There was some point in my life when everything around me sucked and then I did something creative and I got praise for it. I remember what the exact moment was like for me. I was in second grade. My teacher, Ms. Julian, was kind of a bitch. Hated most things, but she loved art. It was like she turned into a different person when she taught art class. In second grade, you had one teacher for all your classes. There was no switching around classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher. You had that one teacher for the whole year. And if she didn’t like you that whole year was going to suck. And the beginning of second grade was going to suck for me because, you guessed it, Ms Julian did not like me. But one day she gave us this art assignment. We had to draw an animal of our choice. I was excited about this kind of homework. It was so much better than fucking history, which as I would find out later in life, was pretty much all bullshit. Well not all bullshit but they left a few things out. Like maybe the part about black people existing prior to 1970. And Indians getting raped and killed for their land, shit like that. Like instead of a cornucopia we put on the thanksgiving table , why not have an Indians severed head drinking a jug of rice whisky. That would have been a little more historically accurate. Anywho, I digress.

I got home and started on my dog drawing. My mother saw what I was doing and came over to lend a hand. My mother was a very creative person herself. She might have been an artist or something. But she got knocked up at 15 with my sister so that big old bucket of old placenta juice put out that fire. She had to get a job and take care of my sister. Now if I were doing math homework she would have left me alone. There has been no record of any kid showing off a well-done math paper and people crowding around it with amazement. “Wow! Did you do that yourself? I love the plus and minus signs and the way they are perfectly in line with one another!” But you draw or paint something half decent and people love looking at it. How many times have you seen someone painting on the street and you have to walk by and see if they’re any good? Most of the time they suck and they’re just going through a mid- life crisis. But its still cool to see someone being creative. Now me and my mom are both sitting there together. Which to me was amazing. My mom never had time to sit with me. I was always alone. But now, I had found something that got me attention.

(Cut to 37 years later me out side the comedy cellar after a show getting compliments from strangers about how funny I was. )

So me and my mother drew this dog. It was a Great Dane. It came out fucking unbelievable. It looked like a real artist drew it. Definitely not a second grader. I brought it in to class the next day and Ms Julian flipped out. I instantly became her favorite student. She took me class to class to show me off like her little fake prodigy to all the other students and teachers. It was amazing. I went from being the dumb shit to the star pupil in one day because of one stupid dog drawing. I was a superstar. My whole inner feeling about myself changed. I felt proud, confident and most of all happy. Wow, what a thing to learn at such a young age: If you make other people happy you can feel happy. Sound familliar? I would go on for the next 30 years doing the same thing over and over. So let me get this straight. If other people like you, you feel good? You don’t have to learn to like yourself. Just get other people to like you and it feels just as good even if its only temporary? It was still easier than learning to like myself which at that age was a concept I had no idea even existed. That would have been my parents job to teach me. Instead I was taught to draw a fucking dog and hope people liked it.

Years later, on my way to college to pursue a degree in fine arts I found that dog drawing. And I also found out that my mother had done most of the drawing. Sure I had colored inside the lines a little but my mom did 90% of the drawing that I had based my whole artistic career on. Here I was headed to art school based on a drawing I never did!! Based on forgery. I was never that good to begin with. It was me trying to do something that felt good based on what other people thought. I later took an improv class and then did a talent show which eventually led me to explore stand-up comedy. And again, for the first 15 years I did it for the praise. For me, only in the last three years have I started trying to be as honest as I can and not care as much about what other people think. I think it’s only at that point that you are a real good stand up or, for that matter, a good creative anything. The day you just do it and not think about how it’s going to be received or if people will like it. Some people just start off that way doing what they think is good. Some people have to learn that. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t want people to like what you do. You should. But it shouldn’t be the foundation of your creative process. There are always going to be people who hate what you do for no reason what so ever. (And all those people should die speedily of Brazilian AIDS.) But those peopl shouldn’t stop you from doing what you want. You never know where anything is going to lead you. In some fucked up way, my mom drawing that dog for me led me to doing stand up. And stand up led me to writing this blog so there you go.

It’s 4 AM. I have to film another episode of Law and Order tomorrow (shameless plug) and I’m up trying to explain my old blog. Just one hug and some words of encouragement from my shitty step- father Billy and maybe I would be writing about the political landscape and how it affects our country. Maybe, I wouldn’t be trying to justify what a low self esteemed cunt I am.

Thanks Billy. No, really, thank you for being such an abusive fuckface. I would be were I am today.

ONE DESERT TO ANOTHER

I haven't written a blog in a long time and I am truly sorry for that. Its just the way my brain works. I get into these great moments of letting my life poor out of me and then it just stops. I know good writers, which I'm not claiming to be, just push through that point and keep writing until something valid comes out. I just say fuck it, and go play video games or watch TV for the next two years. Well, here I am after playing video games and watching everything there is to watch. I am at a point where I am ready to release my thoughts again.

Another thing that makes it very difficult to keep up the writing is that I have no idea how to write. I mean, I know what I want to say. I just don't know how to put a sentence together, or how to spell. Some people take for granted that they went to school and learned the basics. I never did. I was pushed right through, even my two years in college. I think they were happy I wasn't flipping out and causing trouble in school, so they just let me slide on through. Which, at the time was fucking awesome but now, later in life fucking blows for me. I really enjoy writing, it just gets very frustrating at times knowing that it makes sense in my head, but when I put it on paper the people reading it get dizzy with my stupidity.

Where to start is always the fucking hardest part about writing a blog. What the fuck do I want to talk about? And then, what the fuck would be interesting for people to read? You always want to be interesting and have people like you. Or that's what my low self- esteem keeps saying to me. Well the answer, and any writer will tell you, just write. Easier said that done. When I just write, I go from really cool thoughts and stories, to all the people I hate, and explaining shit that really doesn't need to be explained. Kinda what I just did. So here it goes.

What I'm going to write about is the last two weeks in my life. Seeing that I haven't been able to get back on a regular sleep schedule, because of what I did. Sometimes in life you do something or go somewhere so amazing it seems like a dream. Like it never happened. Some people compare it to getting into a fight. Ya see, when you get into a fight everything is heightened. Your energy, your senses, and your adrenaline. It just happens and it's over. For the average person, it's like, what just happened? I'm sure with those badass UFC fighters, getting into a fight everything just slows down. And they enjoy every punch in the face. Like it was a hot chick unzipping your jeans with a I'm really going to suck your cock smile. But, for me it was like a dream.

To tell you the short story, like I told my therapist when he asked me, what's been going on the last couple of weeks. You mean, going to LA, hanging out with my friends all night, goofing off and then getting a private jet, flying to Vegas, staying in the top floor penthouse of Caesars, doing shows for four thousand people a night, getting paid a shit load of money for telling jokes, having my own body guards, and then finding out my wife's mother passed away, and then flying to Iraq, doing shows at a soccer stadium that Saddam killed his whole soccer team in for losing a soccer game, and then doing a show for 80 troops at 9 in the morning in 120 degree heat, and flying around on Black Hawk helicopters, getting in an Apache helicopter, and a one A Abrams tank, driving a PT boat round the Persian GULF, sleeping three hours a day for two weeks. Besides that, not much!


Ok, Vegas.
I did this gig last year, with Dane, Gary, and Jay Davis, but this time it was very different. It was going to be Dane, Al DelBene and me. Some of you may not know that Dane, Al and me started together in a little group called "Al and the Monkeys". And we haven't been on stage together, or on the same show in 13 years. A little back story. We would all meet four to five times a week, for two years, to write skits and practice our routine. We were inseparable for three years, and then it was over. Dane was gone to LA, I left for NYC, and Al did his thing. Now, we were all on a leer jet heading to Vegas to do three shows at Caesars Palace together. We got to Vegas, there was a team of SUVs waiting for us to take us to the hotel, like we had important information for the president.

Ok, lets talk about the penthouse at Caesars.
It's the whole top floor. Ok, it's most of the top floor, but for the story it was the WHOLE top floor. My room had the bedroom part, a living room part, and two, count them, two bathrooms, with cedar closets, a sauna and steam room and a huge Jacuzzi. There is a balcony with a swimming pool and Jacuzzi. Dane's room was like something out of "Scarface". Al's room was, well it was just a regular room, sorry Al. We had a piano room, a living room, and a full bar, not that any of us drink. We had a 20 person table, a fully equipped kitchen, a 24 hour butler, a 24 hour security guard and our own elevator. Oh yeah, I forgot, our fountain in the living room. It was fucking ridiculous. The best part, it was right across from the place we were playing. I love when the gig is in the same place I rest my head. There is just something soothing to me, knowing I don't have to leave the building to get to my show. At 7:15 two, huge security guards would come up and get us, walk us across the casino floor to the back stage door and to the green room. I have to say, the last time I played this gig with Dane it was a lot different. It was when they were doing "Comic Relief", and the stage was a lot bigger. This time they had it right. The stage was smaller and more intimate. The place holds about four thousand people, but it seemed like you were playing a small club, they way they set up the stage. It was different in another way too. I was less known back then. Now, I could walk around the casino and people would know who the fuck I was. Before, I would be hanging with Dane and I looked like one of his assistants. I fucking hate that. Now at least they knew I was on the show, and who the fuck I was. I can't wait to do my own show at Caesars. But, I really loved doing the show with Dane and Al. Being by yourself on a show is cool, and is the goal of every comedian to have everyone there to see you, to be the headliner and make all that money. But that can get very lonely sometimes. Doing the show with your friends takes a lot of the pressure off your shoulders. Your kinda just hanging out, and "Oh yeah, we have a show tonight that we are all on, fuck yeaaaaaah!!! All the shows went great. All of the meet and greets after the shows went great. I have to say, I get asked, "What was the best show you ever did?" I have the answer to that question now. VEGAS, CAESARS PALACE, SUMMER 2008.

Now, after all that crazy, top of the world living. Having a butler come out of some hidden room, like a magician, at three in the morning, to bring you snacks. Taking a Jacuzzi, in the middle of the night, on your hotel balcony, over-looking the whole strip. After taking a shit in one toilet in my room and running across the hall to my other toilet, to take a piss. We were headed to a totally different desert. One, you would be lucky if you get a shower with water that you can swallow. One, that there were no butlers, no Jacuzzi's and no elevators. A desert where I had to walk outside, down the road with a flashlight to take a shit. But a desert, I would take over Vegas and all its hoorah, any day of the week. Me, and the boys jumped on a plane, went over and gave a visit to our men and women in the United States Military. That's right, we went to fucking Babylon baby, Iraq!

I'm sitting here writing this in some downtown, West Village, trendy, internet café, and it's hard to believe it all happened. It's like it was a dream, or a movie I saw at three in the morning that was fucking great, but I cant remember all of it. I know I went, but was it real? But it is all too real for the Americans who are still there. The ones that didn't get to go home after a week, like I did. They are still there dealing with that fucking ridiculous heat and never-ending sand that invades the back of your mouth the second you step outside. They are there doing there job. And that's what it is, a job. They get paid to stand up for America, around the world, no matter what. They are there still doing their job, and I'm here, enjoying a café Americano because of them.

We flew from LA to DC, and then from DC to Kuwait. You might remember that place. It's where it all started, back in the early 90's, with the first Bush. Well, their free and making fucking, shit loads of money from their oil, thanks to us. Did you know, if you bought a thousand dollars of their money back in the first war when there money was shit, you would be rich now? I don't know the details, but let's just say if you had a thousand American, that would have been a million of their money. Now it's switched, so that thousand you spent on their money would be worth a million, gazillion or something like that, I digress. We landed in Kuwait and were taken to the hotel to check in for the night. It's very westernized over there, they had a fucking Starbucks, granted you had to go by armed guards at the front gate of the hotel, but I got my Café Americano in Kuwait. We were all kinda tired, but way too excited to get rest. So we did as much as possible that first night. We swam in the most amazing pool I have ever been in, got on the internet and checked for the new Iphone updates and emails. Then, we got some dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was a huge wooden Spartan-like ship. Really, look it up if you don't believe me. I was little weary eating food out of the country again after Guatemala, and having my ass explode like it did. But the food wasn't that bad. It wasn't as good as the states. I think other countries make great bread, but that's as far as I would go. Then again, I have only been to third world countries and war zones, so what the fuck do I know. I'm no Anthony Bordain, who I love by the way. Anyhow, after me and my buddy Brian got our coffee. You might know Brian, he was the guy that I threw his hat off Niagara Falls on "Tourgasm". I think he is still mad at me for that. We got picked up by a shit load of big mother fuckers in civilian clothes. So they must be something other than military, because soldiers only have their uniforms on the whole time they're over there. No jeans and t-shirts. Imagine that, just wearing the same fucking thing for a year. Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkk that! I need shirts that sparkle. God, I'm a fag. Now, Kuwait and Iraq have American bases we have made. You can't just drive on one, they are patrolled and fortified, so it takes a little bit to get in. But once you're in, you feel safe. Just looking around and seeing all these people dressed in uniform, carrying weapons. Don't say guns, they hate that. I kept saying gun, gun, gun, like I had a long tongue, and a Mo hair cut, it's a weapon.
We would get on these bases and usually meet the top dog in charge. He would sit down and tell us what they did at that particular base. Every base has a different responsibility and objective. After that, we would do a photo shoot. Where I would just hope they knew who I was and included me. At least, Al looks like a comic, with his moussed hair and skinny fat body, and his middle-aged soap opera star teeth. I look like a Black Water special ops guy, who loves to eat ice cream when he is not killing mother fuckers. After that we would go to where the show was, and have a few minutes to get our shit together. We didn't know if the show was outside, inside, stage, mic, nothing. We just showed up and got ready to jump on stage.

The first show we did, I will never forget. It was around 120 out. I was inside this air-conditioned tent, waiting for Al to bring me on stage. I really had no idea what kinda set this was going to be. I heard him say my name, I walk out of that air-conditioned tent and on the hottest 20 minute set I have ever done, and I don't mean material wise. I could hear the heat, really, there was a fucking sound of just hotness. Everything was in slow motion. I could feel the balls of my cheeks getting burnt, by the second. And at one point, my feet started to catch on fire. I was wearing black sneakers and the tips of my toes felt like someone was using a magnifying glass to burn them. I had to keep picking my feet up and down just to get my feet out of the sun, even for a second. I must have looked like someone was controlling me with strings, picking my feet up and down like a fucking marionette. Halfway through my set, I told the soldiers my feet were on fire and one of them yelled out…" That's cause your wearing black sneakers jackass". I got off stage, walked by Dane and just said, "its fucking hot dude" and then I went and put some sunblock on.

We did two to three shows a day, for the week we were there. We only got our schedule that day or the night before from Dana, the USO girl that took care of us that week. There are a lot of things that happened over there and we filmed a lot of it. I don't wont to ruin the surprise if they make a short doc out of it. You know Dane, he is always thinking how to put new content out there. I would just make some shitty video blog made in Imovie, that only ten people would enjoy. Dane hires Steven Spielberg and Bruckheimer to put it together and wins an Emmy. So you will just have to wait to hear all of it. It's not really the things we did over there that were fun, like flying in the helicopter. That would be great to talk about. It was really about the handshakes from the soldiers after the show. When they tell you how much it means to them that we came over to see them. It's about how they would all cram into whatever space they put the show in. It didn't matter if the show was outside in the blazing heat at 9am, where they would climb sandbags just to stand atop a tin roof, so they could get a better seat for the show. Or, if the show was in a small courtyard with no seats and no sound system, like they were being briefed on their next patrol. It didn't matter, they just wanted to see the show and forget about where they were for a couple of hours. I felt kinda guilty for having so much fun over there. We go there and they let us do things that the average Joe doesn't get to do. Shoot guns, fly in Black Hawk helicopters, drive around the Persian Gulf in PT boats, get inside Apache's and A1A Abrams tanks. But, that's not why I went there. I went there for the handshake, not getting one, but to give a handshake. To shake as many hands that I could, and say thank you for doing what you do. I don't know how I feel about the war. Was it right or was it wrong for us to go into Iraq? I don't know. The thing I do know is that we did and we are over there. And that most of the Iraqi people are happy Saddam is gone. So, I have to be behind them, the soldiers that put their lives on the line everyday because its part of their job. People ask me, how was it over there? I try to explain, but it's a hard thing to do. Its not like I went there for vacation. I was going 90 miles and hour, every second. I was there doing things most people don't ever do. Meeting so many different people everyday. Really, our country is made up of so many different countries. I remember looking at people's face and head shapes. There were thin heads, big heads, blue eyes, brown eyes, small noses, wide noses, light skinned, dark skinned, even the personalities were so fucking different. It's hard to put it into one sentence. In one way, it sucks seeing all these Americans in some dusty desert, just waiting to get home. In another way, it's amazing seeing how people come together to fight for something they believe in. I think only time will tell if we did the right thing. But I'm glad I can say I was apart of it. I went there, and did what I do, for the Troops. So, I guess I can put this whole experience into one sentence. Going to Iraq to do comedy for our troops was one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life.