A Show Business Primer

Show business basically consists of actors, writers, musicians and comics (I'm leaving out dancers, since they rarely speak). I would like to give a quick primer on show business by way of an anecdote. This way, the uniformed reader in some hick town in the midst of nowhere will feel that they know something about "the biz" as we informed readers in non-hick towns refer to it.

I am a man, so rather than say "he/she" all the time I shall simply use the pronoun "he" for this anecdote. I do not give a shit if this offends you, so don't fuckin' bother me with it. In return I promise to be a bit less profane in the future. And, you get the joy of reading a sophisticated, New York entertainment story, loaded with glamour and intrigue.

The actor is the only person on earth who will kill another actor over a "job" for which he will get paid no money to perform in an arcane and plotless surreal play staged in a dimly lit, poorly ventilated basement located near the south end of Bay Ridge, which no agent will come see because its too hard to get there at 10 o'clock at night and it conflicts with the agent's wine tasting class.

The writer (in this case person who wrote the play) can be seen rolling drunk in the aisles during the performance (which isn't all that embarrassing for him since he is the only one there). He is drunk because he is despondent over the great review of his work which will never come out since the critic is at the wine tasting class with the agent. Oh yes, and he wrote the word "palaver" into the play and the actor keeps pronouncing it "pallbearer."

The musician (jazz in this case) is playing solo piano in the saloon across the street from the theater. He mentions to a largely uninterested, uninvolved audience that he is about to play "Round Midnight" by Monk at which point some intellectual in the audience shouts out that Monk is on at 1am on USA Network and would he please play "Freebird." As the plaintive sounds of the piano begin wafting through the room (over the din of the Jet game) the actor and the writer enter, the play having ended. The smell of booze on the floor causes the writer to throw up on the actor who falls head first on the musician knocking him off the bandstand. No one notices, except the waitress who at the time happened to be bringing the musician his buffalo wings, the musician's union allowing him to accept this in lieu of a monetary payment. Once everyone recovers, the actor, writer and musician sit at the bar together and help each other fill out unemployment forms.

Once the actor is done at the bar he goes home and calls all his friends who didn't come see the play and describes in gloriously verbose detail the outstanding performance he gave as "Agamemnon The Goat Herder," the denouement of the play being the scene in which he hops up and down on a pogo stick humming "Stars And Stripes Forever" (This is analyzed and discussed as if rather than act in a crappy play, the actor had just discovered a cure for leukemia). Once this process is finished the actor brushes up on his Excel skills for several hours and heads back to the temp pool, lamenting the fact that perhaps next time he ought to do something in Midtown, maybe even in the law office he works in since there is a theatrical agent on that floor who can get to the performance quickly and isn't attending night school to try and secure a side job as a sommelier.

The writer leaves the bar, goes home, and pulls out all of his gold teeth with a pair of pliers, hocking them the following afternoon at a pawn shop to get more money for booze. Next its time to get falling down drunk and go to the homes of relatives with the same pair of pliers, trying to extract their gold teeth to hock for food money.

The musician picks himself up, dusts himself off, and rather than start all over again goes to his night job as a urinal polisher at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Once everyone has left the comic has a couple of shots to bolster his sagging confidence and at 3am does his act for the bartender, who is fucking the waitress under the bar. When his joke about "Gilligan's Island" gets no laughs, he shoots himself.

I think the joke had to do with the episode where The Skipper builds a golf course for Mr. Howell and then Mr. Howell hires Gilligan as his caddy.

Ain't show biz grand?

Sender Requests You Send A Return Receipt

Ye of little intelligence. Ye of immense stupidity. Ye grandest schmuck of the schmuckiest.

Why dost thou feeleth the need to email me yet another inane joke about George Bush, or Paris Hilton, or whatever-the-fucketh, and haveth the audacity to asketh me to grace you with a return receipt? Are you brain dead? Delusional perhaps? Suffering from food poisoning or constipation?

This after I've pleaded with thou, nearest a million times to:

1. NOT SEND ME THIS INANE, UNFUNNY SHIT.

2. IF THOU ART SO FUCKING STUPID THAT THOU CAN'T UNDERSTANDETH RULE 1, TO AT LEAST NOT PUT MINE EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE CC HEADER, THEREBY CAUSING ME TO RECEIVE ENDLESS JUNK MAIL ABOUT VIAGRA AND OTHER STUPID EMAILS FROM PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW ABOUT THEIR POLITICAL OPINIONS, IN RESPONSE TO YOUR POLITICAL OPINIONS WHICH THOU EMAILED ALONG WITH THE INANE JOKES THAT THOU SENT.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn't send you a return receipt now if you emailed me that you were in a crocodile pond having your privates chomped on while a rabid raccoon did the rumba on top of your head and you wanted me to notify the Coast Guard to come rescue you.

I'm serious. I wouldn't.

The Introduction

Geomop? Yes, GEOMOP! What is it exactly?

One day I was sitting in a room full of people and there was a complainer. And as usual, the complainer wouldn't stop complaining.

It's not necessary for me to mention why we were in the room. Or what we were doing. Or how long we were doing it for. Or, whether or not it involved small farm animals (I assure you, it did not).

Suffice to say that the complainer became the center of everything, sucking all the oxygen out of the room and with it, all life. Light bulbs began to shatter. People were clawing at the walls, trying futilely to dig their way out of the room. Existence as we know it was quickly ceasing.

Then, a gentleman who had been listening to the complainer go on and on incessantly (and apparently knew the complainer for years in all their complaining glory), turned to said complainant and uttered
"Got Enough Of My Own Problems," before stomping off in a huff.
"Good call," I thought aloud to myself, thereby allowing everyone in the room to hear me think aloud to myself.

The complainer knew not what to do, and in the confusion, immediately stopped complaining. Oh, pervasive joy! The oxygen returned to the room, the remaining light bulbs stayed intact (some even magically repairing themselves) and the walls, no longer being scratched at, got back their original luster with the help of some Spackle. The complainer shrank into a small, self-imposed mental cave, and stopped bugging the crap out of everyone.

"Got Enough Of My Own Problems." A beautiful phrase. After hearing it I decided that a forum out to be created so that I could discuss whatever minutiae is bothering me to avoid the risk of ever being executed by an angry mob trapped in a large room. For you see, I learned a great lesson from the complainer. Geomop, my friends, GEOMOP.

Feel free to comment on what you read here.

Just don't be a moron or I'll delete the stuff.