Some Reviews of My Future Hypothetical Comedy Shows:
"Joe Coleburn You won't know when the jokes begin...or end!!"
"Joe Coleburn the one thing you can say is... He's likeable!!!"
"Joe Coleburn he WILL make apologies!!!"
"Joe Coleburn he takes comedy to a level that you won't understand, and honestly don't want to!!"
"Joe Coleburn he once ate a bagel off the ground!!"
"Come see Joe Coleburn he asks the tough questions like ' What is the deal with observational humor?' !!!"
"Joe Coleburn... believable..."
"Joe Coleburn...Too Long... Too chubby...Too drunk..."
"Joe Coleburn ain't nothing like him, and there shouldn't be."
"Joe Coleburn umm it was ok, a little slow at first, but I mean it was good. The beers there were good, I am not much into live comedy. Did you see the cat video the other day. Ya know the one with the two cats dancing to 'Turn Down For What', that shit is hilarious. Totally the bomb."
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
SARAH SARAH FRRRRRIIIIIIIEEEENNND!
The other day I was thinking about
the movie Labyrinth. Is Labyrinth
the greatest piece of cinema of all time? Probably not.
Does it hold up? Maybe. Is it a movie that I constantly think about,
and may have had more effect on my life than any other movie? Yes. From
the moment I first watched it I fell deeply in love with both Jennifer Connelly
and David Bowie. The character Sarah was
young and beautiful and a dreamer. She
makes a mistake and has to deal with the consequences. Once in the Labyrinth she shows her smarts
and her determination. Even though she
chooses down, when you should clearly never choose down, I had an immediate
crush on Jennifer Connelly that has never gone away. I sat there and projected myself into the puppet
characters. I was Hoggle who looked at
Sarah’s innocence and beauty and knew that she could never love such a wretched
cowardly ugly creature as he and I were.
And my heart broke when I realized I was Ludo as well the big dumb
animal just searching for a friend. Even
Sir Didymus let me see that loyalty and the virtue of friendship was
important.
Then there was Bowie, Jareth the goblin
King. As I looked at him with his insane
Tina Turner hair and his dramatic eye makeup, strutting about and singing with
a devilish smile or a moody stare, I realized I was in love again. In love with the dark side. In love with the secret pathetic
vulnerability of evil. I wanted to be
him. I wanted to be this tortured soul
who stole babies and turned the world upside down for Jennifer Connelly. I also really wanted to go to that crazy
masquerade even if it was a hallucination.
These crushes were very confusing when I was young. It is only now that I fully understand
them. Although David Bowie still is a
little sexually confusing. I mean for a
kids movie there sure is a lot of David Bowie bulge bouncing around. If you haven't seen it watch it. You may learn something about yourself, or maybe learn more about me.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
NEW NEW NEW!!
NEW NEW NEW! Come check it out. It is the latest advancement. Ladies and Gentlemen, boys are girls come one
come all. It is here. Fresh exciting, different, the next
step. Check it out it is really
great. There will honestly never be a better
innovation. This is unprecedented, unparalleled,
unrivaled, and undeniably the most important thing ever.
Seriously it is great.
The Best.
I mean it.
Really I do.
Ok so maybe there are a few
problems. But you know everything has a
downside. There is no light without
shadow. You know what, I am honestly not
crazy about it, but I mean what choice do I have? I thought we were ok with what we had, but of
course they just had to change things.
To be honest I really don’t even like it. I heard it is the worst. I mean you want ‘new’ but at what cost? How dare they? It basically came from slave labor and is
ruining the environment. I hate this new
thing I want the old one. This new thing
killed my father.
NEW NEW NEW!! It’s the new thing. It isn’t like the old one because it’s
new. It is actually more like the old
one. Classic if you will, retro.
You know what, I love it.
Story I am working on
When we got to the party it was about thirty people all
standing in a gravel covered backyard slash parking lot behind an
apartment. There was a group of guys I
knew shot gunning beers in the bed of a truck, a small group of young professionals in one corner drinking cocktails
and talking about fantasy football or whoever’s wedding they were going to that
weekend, and at the far end of the lot there was a beer pong table and the four
people who I knew played beer pong everywhere they went. I wondered why these people were all still
friends and then also wondered why I was friends with them. After I locked up my bike I hopped into the
bed of the truck with my cohorts to a rauckus cheer. One of them handed me a bottle of Evan
Williams and told me to do work. I
tipped the bottle up to my lips and took a long drink. When I was done I coughed and said geek geek
gah damn and passed the bottle on and said do work.
The sun has gone down and I am
in an alley urinating on a trash can. I
can still hear the party even though I walked about a half of a block to find
my perfect bathroom. The moon is full
and I look up at the big son of a bitch as I sway. My back hit’s the fence behind me, which
causes some mangy old dog to have a hissy fit.
It barks and snarls I zip up and growl and bark back at it letting drool
fly from my mouth. After awhile I
realize I am fighting a pointless battle.
I begin my retreat towards the party noises. My walk is swift and purposeful but the
alcohol makes it look like I am falling towards something. When I get back there is a large group of
people all singing along to a song we all know.
I don’t feel like singing so I go over to a group that is smoking and
ask to bum a cigarette. I center myself and say the same trying not
to sound or look too drunk.
The beginning of My untitled Buddy Comedy
The other night when I was in the
bathroom I felt a sharp pain that I thought was gas. I sat there on the toilet as my bowels
constricted and throbbed. A shooting
pain, like a knife stabbing in and twisting, began to creep up my lower
back. I began to sweat and to pant. I was dying.
My life was limited. I laid down
on the cold tile floor to try and cool off my feverish red skin. There was no solace. I took off all my clothes and grabbed handfuls
of water to splash my face with. I
moaned and screamed and cried. I sat on
the toilet and pushed because that felt good.
I pushed and I pushed. It was
when I was pushing I heard it. It was a
voice, definitely a voice between the flatulants. It sound like it said “Heeeeeeey”. I stopped pushing and breathed, I was white
as a sheet and cold now. Where did that
voice come from? I knew, but I didn’t
want to believe it. I curled up in a
fetal position and shook my head. No,
this wasn’t happening, no there was no voice, no there was no little voice
saying “Heeeeey”… coming from my butt.
Curiosity took over. Fear subsided for the moment, pain
reigned. I sat on the toilet and pushed. “HEY YO.
Keep pushing yo.” I stopped and
wondered if I should ask this hallucination a question. Who are you?
What are you? What are you doing inside me? Instead I took a deep breath and pushed with
all my might. This time relief and
splashing and struggling sounds, as if something or someone was choking on
something. Then a pinch, my left cheek,
an unmistakable butt pinch. “Hey fatty
would you get off the toilet your suffocating me?” I jumped up in surprise and turned to face my
horror. There in the toilet was a foot
tall green man. He had pointy green
ears, buggy lizard eyes, and a snout like a pig. He wore a tiny Hawaiian shirt which was wet
with waist and bile. He pulled some
black wayfarers out of the pocket of his cutoff jean shorts and put them
on. From his other pocket he drew a
toothpick which he stuck between his yellow fanged teeth. “Whooh.” He said “ Yo mang you want to put
some clothes on. Cuz dig this man I just
came out yo butt, and I don’t wanna sit here all night and look at ya junk ya
dig. Think I seen enuf ya know what I’m
saying… ya dig…?” He looked at me with
his yellow eyes as I grabbed the shower curtain and wrapped it around my lower
half. I sat down on the edge of the
tub. This was going to be a long night. To be continued…
Friday, June 6, 2014
Alex's Birthday
Alright so I got liquor balloons
some gifts, I think I am done. Man I
hate shopping for someone. They say it
is the thought that counts, but if that were really true why can’t I just walk
up carrying nothing and say “Hey I thought about you.” I mean clearly I have been thinking. I am constantly thinking. In fact all I have been thinking about lately
is what to get her for her birthday. She
isn’t going to like the gifts. That’s ok
though because she likes me so she has to pretend. I mean if the situation was reversed I would
smile and be like “no I love it, I really do.”
Saying “I really do” usually means you really don’t.
How is it that no matter where this
balloon is it is in my way? It is one
balloon. How could this one balloon be
so disruptive? I look in the rearview
the balloon is there. I look in the side
mirrors the balloon is there. I turn my
head to check my blind-spot and the balloon floats into the way. This balloon is going to cause me to get in a
horrific deadly accident. This balloon
is going to inadvertently kill me. That
will teach her not to like the gifts I picked out. I die on the way to her house with a balloon
and some dodgey gifts. It would be so
tragic. So romantic. I would be remembered as the best boyfriend
ever. Not just some guy who was too
cheap to spring for more than one balloon.
How beautiful it would be, she would have to remember these gifts
forever, as the things I died for. How
tragically beautiful? Fuck this fucking
balloon is pissing me off.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
an illness narrative
I remember my
mother’s face peering down at me. My
hair is matted down on my left side, and my nose is full of something that
stings. My throat is dry and my mouth
feels crusty. I am wet. A hand is sliding down the left side of my
face. A furry moistened hand. I open my eyes and I am in a tub. It is very bright in the bathroom and I
squint as I look around at the yellow tiles.
I am seven years old and I have no idea what is going on. The water is warm but I am shivering. My dad has one arm behind my back supporting
me in the tub, as he kneels beside me the light is reflecting off his glasses
and I can’t make out his eyes, I hear him sigh and his grasp tightens as he
sees me looking up at him. My mom is
kneeling beside him and rubbing the side of my face with a washcloth and
looking very worried. It is at this
point that I smell it. The unmistakable
vomit smell. I feel the side of my head
with my hand, I am covered in it. The
stinging in my nose and throat tell me that it is my vomit. I look over at the door to the bathroom and
see my older brother peering in at me.
We shared a room and I guess he must’ve woke up in all the
commotion. This has never happened to
him before. Nor has it ever happened to
my older sister. My mom and my dad never
had this problem. I am different and
alone and no one knows why.
My brother and
sister told me, that one time when I was four, I had thrown up all over the car
during a family road trip. It was the
three of us in the back seat of a Pontiac sedan and there was no escaping the
fruit loops I had eaten for breakfast.
They said I had been asleep, and then had just started vomiting
everywhere. I know now that this may
have been the first instance of my seizures.
I had nocturnal epilepsy which I was told basically meant that certain
nights, for no reason and without warning, I would lay down to sleep and right
before I hit that level of REM sleep, something in my brain would go haywire, I
would have a seizure, vomit, and pass out in my own sick. Luckily, for me, not for him, I shared a room
with my older brother growing up. So, he
would hear me shaking and moaning, wake up and run and get my parents, so that
they could make sure I didn’t asphyxiate.
Needless to say I wasn’t allowed to go to many sleepovers. I had an overprotective mom who thought my
brother, who was four years older than me, and my sister, who was seven years
older than me, were all the friends I needed.
“Joseph, Joseph, Joseph…”
My eyelid is
peeled back, and a fire burns it.
Uniformed men are thumping around the tulip wallpaper. Hands in my armpits tickle as I am
lifted. There is a sharp prick in my
hand as a belt is tightening around my chest.
“Hey honey?” My moms voice… Where am I? A big busy room. Few man in white coats, few people in green
matching outfits. Everyone is
talking. There are curtains, and
hallways, and machines. Hospital.
A man in a white coat says that I had a… ‘Grand Mal’. They are all staring at me, but not talking
to me. Their eyes look sad. The other’s leave. My mom and I look at each other. There is a thin curtain next to the bed I am
in. My mom squeezes my hand. “You had another seizure and you wouldn’t
wake up.” My face is hot and I feel
different and alien and fragile. My mom
always said that everyone who goes to Johnston Willis hospital dies. I look around. My mom tells me I’ll be fine. “Try to get some sleep”, she says. I close my eyes. My eyes open to a loud bang. The doors at the end of the hall have burst
open. A black haired man in a white suit
is strapped to a table with people, dressed in green from head to foot, rushing
him in. They push the table up to a wall
and pull a curtain around him. I can
just see silhouettes. His head has a
gash in it and the shoulders of his suit have turned pink. I close my eyes again as things start to calm
down. My eyes open, my mom is standing
up looking worried. There are loud
yells. One of the nurses comes out from
behind a curtain nearby with her hand over her face and blood gushing from her
nose. Doctors come running and grab her
and rush her to a bed. The pink and
white suited man creeps out from behind the curtain staggering as if
drunk. His pants around his ankles, he
turns to face my mother and I. He stares
at us and there is nothing behind those eyes.
My mom moves between him and me, and puts her back to me. I have to lean over to peer around my
mom. He pulls his pants up as he sways
around with a stupid grin on his face.
My mom turns to me and tells me to try to get some sleep. She keeps looking from the man, to the
hospital staff huddled around the nurse, and then back to me. It is bright and loud and strange, I know it
is night but in here it is as busy and bright as school during recess. Two police officers and a doctor approach the
man in the suit, he struggles as they get him back behind the curtain. A new nurse walks towards the group with a
needle. Yet another nurse comes up to us
and says. “Your room is not quite ready
yet, but I think if we move ya’ll a little ways down the hallway he may get
some sleep.” “I’m not tired.”
I wasn’t, I was
afraid to go to sleep. Afraid to go to
sleep and have another seizure. Afraid
to go to sleep and miss whatever mischief the man in the white suit was going
to get into. Afraid to go to sleep and
leave my mom alone with her thoughts, and her hatred of hospitals. I was afraid.
Over the next few days I spent in the hospital, I took all the
tests. The MRI, the EEG, and
others. I remember thinking the MRI was
nowhere near as cramped or as loud as everyone said it was(although now in
hindsight I realize I was a tiny kid, and was too fascinated to be
annoyed). During the EEG they glue
things to your head that somehow read brain activity. They gave me legos to play with while they were
running this test and they asked me to please not grit my teeth. Immediately I gritted my teeth to see what
would happen, as soon as I did it, it made the machine jump all over the place
and they said they had to start over. I
thought it was funny, but my mom told me to cut it out. Most of my hospital visit was spent watching
cable and flirting with the night nurses.
For some reason they were all cuter than the day nurses, and more
willing to laugh. At the end of all
these tests and all this time, my parents and I were told that, the cause of my
Epilepsy was: uncertain, the
possibility of it happening again: uncertain,
the likelihood of me growing out of it without medication: probable, but Uncertain. Gee Docs what a relief?
I am twelve years
old and it has been over a year since my last episode. I am allowed to go camping with my brother
and dad now, and I am allowed to stay the night at my friend Chris’s
house. I am nervous all the time. I have now read about people like jimmy
Hendrix and others who died of asphyxiating on their own vomit. Sure this was usually drug induced, but I am
convinced that one day I won’t wake up.
I bite my nails to the point where they start bleeding. At school they tell me that I may have a
learning disability. That I have a high
verbal IQ, but that I am a slow reader and may be due some ‘accommodations’. I hate this.
My brother and sister are both top of their class. Again I am different and alone and alien and
fragile. I begin to twirl my hair during
class, and when I am doing my homework.
My friends and I spend most of our time playing Dungeons and Dragons
after school, and I twirl my hair while I do that too. I begin to twirl my hair at night as well,
unable to go to sleep. Either out of
fear of seizures, or fear of not being a good student, or the fear that the
friends and the whole little life that I had going could come crashing down at
any moment because I might just asphyxiate in my sleep one night. I was a very stressed out twelve year old.
The hair twirling,
turned into hair- pulling, which turned into a bald spot. Yes, I was the only kid at Midlothian Middle
School with male pattern baldness. It
was alright until people started to notice on the bus. My mom started yelling at me about twirling
my hair, not realizing what was really going on. My grades began to get worse and worse
because I couldn’t concentrate. Who
could concentrate when everything seemed so awful and strange. And what was the point in concentrating if it
all could end at any second, and if some standardized test already lumped me in
with people who were incapable of learning.
I was trapped in a circle. I was
scared, sad, angry, and anxious, so I bit my nails and twirled my hair. Which in turn made me scared, sad, angry, and
anxious. In other words I was a very
normal tween. Here was another disease
that had no clear cause, cure, symptoms, or warning signs. When I finally expressed all this to my
mother, she looked up at me over a glass of wine and said derisively, “What do
you want to go see a therapist?” From
then on I shut up. I did grow out of the
hair pulling, and my hair grew back. Do
I still bite my nails? Yes. Do I still have fits of panic, and bouts of
depression? Yes. There are two lighter
notes to this section of this illness narrative, 1) I found out in highschool
that in middle school they had read my test scores wrong and that I probably
didn’t have a learning disability, Gee thanks Docs. 2) As I write this I am twenty-eight years
old and I have thick hair with no bald spot what’ so’ ever.
It is September
12th, 2001 and I am very depressed. I am
sixteen years old and something happened yesterday that I don’t quite
understand, but I can’t stop thinking about it.
I was in school when it happened and watched the second plane hit from a
television in my history class. After
lunch I had my theater class, the place where I felt most comfortable and our
teacher told us to do whatever we wanted and if we needed to talk she was
there. I sat there talking with some
friends, I was angry, sad, and anxious. Over the next few weeks, the news kept
showing more death and sad stories.
Tragic stories of heroism and disbelief.
I begin to think that the world is scary and hateful and ugly. I wonder again what is the point if it can
all come crashing down. I spend the next
year and a half floating through high school pretty much only putting effort
into theater. Performing was finally
something I found that helped. For some
strange reason getting up in front of people and feeling that fear, made me
happy. And made me forget all that other
fear. Performing made me happy,
confident, and comfortable. I was living
in a world that seemed to me, very temporary and hateful, and scary. But being on stage there were moments where
you had the butterflies in your stomach, but you overcame them. It felt like there was no hurdle to high when
I was performing. If I could stand in
front of a full auditorium and say whatever I wanted, then maybe none of this
anxiety mattered. Maybe I wasn’t going
to asphyxiate in my sleep, maybe I was going to be alright.
I am older now.
I have good friends, and I am working on being happy, rather than
drowning my anxiety and depression. The
fact is it could all end tomorrow, and that is the point. That is why you have to keep trying, that is
why the sick have to get well.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
SELF HELP
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN HOPING YOU ARE NOT EXPECTING AND SUSPECT
THE UNEXPECTED ISN’T ALL THAT GREAT: Do
not EXPECT people to tell you the truth when speaking about your child. Always EXPECT someone to say “she looks just
like you!” she doesn’t, but they will say it.
She actually resembles a flesh colored potato with a tiny face, but they
will tell you which great aunt’s and uncle’s they resemble within ten minutes
of birth. EXPECT they will never agree
with you politically. Do not EXPECT them
to take care of you when you grow old, by then there will be a panel of Jonas brother
types that decide the fate of everyone over 50.
THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING?: Positive thinking leaves you powerless. It makes you ignore the truth. That no matter our thinking we are powerless
against the cruel mistress that is the universe. Not to say that negative thinking is any
better. Best to not think at all.
MEN ARE FROM MARS/WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS: If men are from mars and women are from venus,
then there are no earthlings. We are all
just tourists in fanny packs and tommy Bahama shirts hoping to see the
sights. Tip check out the world’s
largest pumpkin.
WHAT COLOR IS MY PARACHUTE?:
Your parachute is there. It does
not matter what color it is. If you have
a parachute it means you are falling.
You may be falling slower than others, but you are still falling slowly
towards the endless abyss.
ZEN AND THE ART OF STUFF THAT ISN’T THAT
TRANQUIL: To the motorcycle mechanic,
motorcycle maintenance is work
20 pounds
I realized today that if I lose 20 pounds I will be
happy. Wait, it isn’t that I am not
happy now, I just know that if I lose 20 pounds right now I would be happy. The thing is which 20 to lose? Let’s just say for the sake of argument I
lost something unimportant like my pinky toes and my pinky fingers. I am pretty sure this wouldn’t amount to even
a pound of flesh. A quick google search
informed me that the human head weighs 10 to 11 pounds, but I only have one of
those to lose. My head may be more dense
than most, but losing my head would only lose me 13 pounds at the most. Maybe I should get diabetes and lose a foot,
that has to be at least a couple pounds.
I would say we could go ahead and get rid of my testicles but that
wouldn’t make a very big dent in the 20 pound goal. The pitfalls of losing my testicles
though. I would be like one of those
male soprano castrato singers, but without the voice. It also would probably cause me to have crazy
hormonal fluctuations. But other than
that, honestly who needs them?
I really have never really enjoyed
eating, it usually gets in the way. I
mean first there is the actual process of eating which in itself is
cumbersome. Do I really have to count to
36 every time I chew a bite of food?
Then there is how you feel after you eat. And pooping is extremely over rated. They say that you spend 1/3 of your life
asleep, I would say I spend another 1/3 on the toilet. That only leaves a 1/3 of my life to find the
best place to eat brunch, which probably takes up more than that. That is it, I am quitting eating. I read somewhere it is good to set attainable
goals, and come up with a plan to achieve said goals. Done and done.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
These Sunday Brunch Jazz Hounds
I
look up from the bar and see the stand-up bassist’s face shaking and
quaking. His huckleberry hound jowls
jiggle around, his eyes shut tight in concentration and his fingers dance and
squibble. Bum bum badum dumming all over
the place. Luckily his white fedora with
the black ribbon is pulled down tight on his sweaty brow, or else it would be in
danger of flying off in a fit of jazz frenzy.
The guitarist sits behind him with a maniacal smile noodling along softly. His old grey eyes grow wide, like a zealot's
as he sits noodling waiting for his turn to shine. The sax man in the flowered shirt keeps time
with his polished black shoes. I sip my
bloody mary and wonder what I have gotten myself into. The early morning summer wind blows in the
bar door, taking with it a stack of cocktail napkins. I watch them float down the bar, and see the
bar keep grab a salt shaker to use it as a paper weight. Just then the sax man begins to blow from his
stool. His legs dance out from under
him. I wonder how he stays on that stool
with all that music and movement coming from him. I finish my drink and pay. These Sunday brunch Jazz hounds are too much
for me today.
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