Last Keep Up The Good Work Post.

So here I am, beginning and ending the last piece of something I've held on to for many years. Over the next couple of days I'm working on putting together enough comedy material for what will hopefully be 30 minutes worth with any luck. I signed up 2016 Carolina's Funniest Stand-up comic. I'm pretty sure I can win.

Thanks... 

Oh yeah, I have been doing stand-up comedy for a year. Most of the people I suspect will be reading this insignificant blip on the internet radar, will have already suspected this to be the case. I no doubt have sent you an invitation to a comedy show you no doubt did not show up to. And that's kind of okay. Its what I began writing this thinking about. Its okay because I know now what to expect. When I first started doing stand-up in Charleston, South Carolina the Tin Roof Open Mic (TROM for short...or for actual. Come to think of it I never asked) was still called Little Ceasar's Palace and Aziz Ansari was totally cool with doing a random open mic in Charleston at The Upper Deck (whatever happened to that guy?). That was six years ago (and two months but who's counting). The first time I ever got on stage to do standup I told a story that I thought was hilarious. Having experienced it, I still think its a fantastic story...if you'd been there...which you weren't....so you will never find it funny. Ever.

Initial reactions to the retelling of that story.

Later on I was "inspired" by watching Mitch Hedberg perform. By "inspired" I don't mean that I stole his jokes, however, I can say without out a doubt that the style and cadence minus the shades were "inspired." And I did that for a year before quitting after a stellar performance at a stand-up competition. By stellar I mean that heavy drinking finally caught up to my oblivious, minuscule understanding of what it actually took to be good at comedy. I wish I could tell you more about the year or even rattle off one or two jokes from then but its mostly a blur (see heavy drinking). After that competition I didn't really get back into stand-up until a year ago. Sure I tried. And every once in a while I would be funny. Just like before. However, I've come to realize that you don't get good at, nor can you make a career of, something that you inconsistently well at every once in a while.

No sex joke. Here's a bird .gif instead. 

So its five years later and I've stopped making a habit of drinking. I still drink occasionally. Maybe 1 or two overpriced (as it all is) beers before I cut myself off. I'll probably be cutting that down too. Not that its happened anywhere in the past three years, but there are only so many times you can fall asleep in your tub or puke on someone's wall as you try to find the lock because alcohol brain is telling you should totally go puke in the bushes because... "reasons."

How did this get here? That's wasn't my reason.

This is all well and good but why are we even having this one-sided conversation right now, Carlos?

Comedy this past year has been an interesting journey. I moved to Spartanburg, SC for work and got tired of work very quickly. That's when I found out about an open mic at The Upstairs bar and decided to try it out. It went about as well as previous times. I am going to say this once, but I don't think it can be repeated enough: IF YOU ARE GOING TO START DOING STAND-UP, DO IT AS SOBER AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE! Somehow, I managed to figure this out and the quality of my jokes started to change. I'm not going to say it was perfect. In fact it was still awful. I uploaded this video a few months back and watched it twice and have yet to watch it again. In fact this very sentence is an attempt to justify uploading this here because I cringe when I watch it now.

I had about three minutes of material solid material and stretched it out to five. Terrible as it is to watch now, this for me was the turning point in taking this from hobby that I did to kill time on Mondays to hobby that I did to kill time on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with the hopes of turning it into something bigger than a three to five minute set at an open mic somewhere.

I have been asking myself since I did the Comedy Zone- Greenville "Comedy Fight Night" Why I want to do comedy. Even when you are doing well there are no guarantees. Every comic has experienced it at some point. You kill with a set one night and you drive an hour in any other direction with that very same set and all the confidence of Vladimir Putin riding a horse shirtless and bomb. Spectacularly.

Putin: That joke was horse shit.

I still haven't come up with what I know would be a good answer. I'm pretty sure I will never have a good answer.

 I wrote another three paragraphs on the types of comedians I've seen. The good and the bad. Then deleted it. Its not relative to the answer. Comedy is about making people laugh, no matter what you use to get there (as long as its original!). I'm bored now and have walked away from my laptop a few times now. I get distracted easily so standing on soap boxes and preaching to the masses. So to wrap this up: I was bad at it. I'm better at it now. I can still get better.

Oh right, the endings. This blog is going away. It never really went anywhere in the first place but obviously I never did anything with it so there is no use keeping it around for the sake of it just sitting here. I posted once or twice. There are at least 9 unfinished blog posts from over the years. I never finished them and if this post is any indication, If I'm not focusing on it, My mind will wander.

I wonder what its like to eat gogurt in space...........

Its from a time when being a comedian was not the end game. To be honest, I'm not even 100% sure it is. But I'm going to continue working at it until I see whatever success is suppose to look like these days.

This was really just an excuse to play with pictures. 

Keep up The Good Work.

Foot in mouth? No problem. Just keep feeding it through. It'll come out eventually.

Dear Mitt Romney:

I know you're having a tough time right now. Its rough running for President of the United States. People always taking your words and not spinning them. Take for instance the whole 47% thing. #47percent if you are on twitter. I know you are because you bought a few thousand twitter followers. And we can't forget about you're whole debacle with that Libya mess. How were you suppose to know that tweeting an attack towards Obama when America was mourning the loss of an Ambassador was a bad thing. Opportunity knocked. You answered. Again and again.

At this point, you're basically running against yourself. And so is your running mate, Paul Ryan. And that's difficult. So, I understand what you are doing completely. I get it. Secretly campaigning for Obama is the best move you can make.

What's that? You aren't running for Obama? What about all those things I mentioned, or the fact that every time you open your mouth or do anything it either seems disingenuous or forced. Kind of like what those miners must have felt in that rally. I could keep going but what would be the point. If you wanted to win you would come out against the "voter fraud laws, you know, the ones that will keep Jim Cramer's father from voting. Maybe people would see that you are actually paying attention to the 47 percent. You don't have to come out against it hard, maybe create an event where you go out and personally meet people and help them with the process. Something that makes you appear human. I don't know what else to tell you though. I guess stop taking your advice from these people.

So, I'm going to cut this short. I'm kind of tired of hyperlinking stuff. (If you are reading this now, thanks. I needed someone to read the first draft).  I could go on for  a while, going as far back as your first run for president. I'd rather not.

Keep up the good work, Mitt Romney. Your gaffs, goofs, and seemingly oblivious statements are helping people make a decision in what started out as a really tight election.

Oh yeah and if you like reading funny nonpolitical stuff...

Follow me. Or don't. Please do.

From June 13 but on a different site.

Dear Burger King Executive that approved this:

First off I would just like to say that you're store in Milledgeville is a god-awful catastrophe full of people that can only undercook or a cheeseburger and overcook a double cheeseburger. An

d the chicken is almost always cold. I am surprised by the A grade they received. However, it is the health dept. not the chef dept. But moving on...

I am saddened by this recent fat-rocity, fat + atrocity, that you have created. It is a testament to the destruction of our arteries that America has become best known for. There was a time when I weighed between 215 and 220 on a bad day, and most of that was due to the fact that Your company, Sonic, McDonald's, Zaxby's, IHOP, Church's, Little Ceasar's, and a multitude of chinese restaurants all existed on the same strip that I traveled each day on my way to work. Each business offering less time consuming alternatives to making home cooked meals.

But the relationship I had with your company and its competitors eventually had to end. Since I cut back on all of the unnecassary junk food and pizza eating and doing a modest amount of exercising I've dropped down to between 170 and 175 on a bad day. Looking back now I am disgusted by the amount of fast food I once consumed. Its greasy and unattractive, qualities it shares only with old fat mobster types and hardcore pc gamers. Its never filling but always makes you feel like you've eaten too much, but that's simply because you guzzle an entire coke while eating it to wash it down before you finish chewing. Afterwards rather than going for a short jog or run, it instead implores your body to go take a nap. Fast food is a plague on the human race that, if purged, would be only shortly missed.

With that being said, I have made plans to visit and get two of these a week until the promotion ends. Keep up the good work.

Carlos

The Truth

So...if I am to understand this correctly:

Chick-fil-a CEO Dan Cathy (hehe, you're last name is a girl's name, sir) comes out of the closet as you're stereotyped gay-hating Christian and his company sees record sales in the wake of the media shitstorm. Which I have deemed a shitstorm due to the amount of anal leakage that was mistaken for words from both sides of the argument.

Lance Armstrong,

seven time winner of the tour-of-france (come on people...calling it the tour-de-france is like calling a cheeseburger a fromageburger. Granted the words tour and france are the same in both languages...come on, we're Amurecanz), finally stops fighting the legal battle (which many assume to be an admission of guilt) and donations to his cancer charity LIVESTRONG skyrocket.

So today I have decided that from this point on I am going to tell the truth.

Friends. I will not apologize for whatever I have done. Nor will I apologize for any of the statements I have made in the past whatever they were. My alleged actions, whatever they may be, are merely a fabrication of those who wish to take down what you and I believe to be self-evident. They are trying to bully me into yielding, and agreeing with whatever they are saying. So from this point on I'm going to focus on my side business and my recently started charity, both of which started about 5 minutes ago, but that I believe every one will want to contribute to and support. I'm sure whatever I said was offensive to some. And whatever I did may be considered reprehensible. But with your help I'm sure we can create a big enough media shitstorm that people to give me money for whatever stupid reason.

Thank You. America.

And keep up the good work.

Skyrim - HBO expansion

So...I said previously that Skyrim should have mainstreamer vampires that simply want to coexist and don't want to blot out the sun. similar to True Blood in that the show has vampires that want humans to be slaves...the show also has vampires that understand that if that were to happen humans would rise up and destory them...so does Skyrim...except instead of the Fellowship of the Sun, they call it the Order of the Day

Oh Bethesda...your lack of creativity surprises me. You borrowed elements from the game you were suppose to create for Game of Thrones...and while your vampires are no where near similar to the ones in True Blood-they don't get to walk around in the sun-I can't help but feel as though you thought I wouldn't notice....

Stop borrowing from HBO. That's all I'm asking. Yes I know you started working on Skyrim before Game of Thrones was optioned as a series. And yes I know that the story was initially brought to you.

Here is a list of reasons I will quit.:
A group of young Nord women try to navigate Solitude and their own dysfunctional lives... that is seemingly devoid of any other races except a Redguard with indie cred that they add in season 2.
One of the newly elected Jarls navigates the double life he is living as a man with multiple wives.
An adventurer's house burns down so now he works as a mercenary to make money to rebuild it, while also trying to get back his life as a farmer with his now ex-wife.
My character gets sent to an experimental jail in the corner of Skyrim
You release a series of smaller expansions centered around different facets of life in the crime ridden Riften.
My character begins seeing a therapist while still living his stressful life as an adventurer therapist.
My character has to take over a funeral business and I end up in dealing with an existential crisis because of all of the death I see.
I have to to figure out how to make it big with my new armor (ATK-Attack but we go with a hip long version of Arrow to the knee)with my follower while his Uncle tries to market his new Stamina potion Rasta Dragon
...Steve Buscemi...for whatever reason.

Keep up the Good Work

Carlos.