Reviews

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."

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.

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…      

 

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.

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.   

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.    

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.