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My Review Of Invisalign
When I was a child, I never had braces. I don’t know if this was because of poor dental coverage, the expensive nature of braces, or I didn’t need them. Maybe all three. But as I traversed the path from cute little blonde haired street urchin to ruggedly handsome upstanding member of society with a full head of dirty blonde hair, my teeth have , at some point, stopped coordinating their growth. Instead, each tooth has followed its own individual path, cause some of them to drift farther and farther apart from each other. The number of people who’ve told
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How Can These People Enjoy Fucking Each Other
I sit in a lot of bars and coffeehouses. When I’m on the road, my days are filled with either a day job or a ton of writing to do and emails I need to return (all in hopes of getting rid of that day job). All those hours I’m spending in places like Omaha, when I’m not on stage, are usually spent sitting at a counter, bar or table, keyboard in front of me, while I’m surrounded by the conversations of people who each think they’re the only person in the room. Sometimes it’s fun. I’ve definitely heard some
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This Whiskey Tastes Like Goat Piss
In my first few years of performing stand up, I wrote a joke that went thusly: I like whiskey. I like old whiskey, mostly Scotch. Now, a lot of my friends like to ask me, “Chris, you can’t really tell the difference between a 40 year old Scotch and a 20 year old Scotch can you?” I like to tell them, maybe not by taste, or smell, or anything real. But if you hold a glass of 20 year old Scotch up to your ear, you’ll hear the ice gently cracking as it swims in the whiskey. And then when
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Dying In A Place That Screams “LIVE FREE”
This December will be the third anniversary of my grandmother’s death. While I definitely get sad thinking about her not being here with us, I’m also reminded of the way death is managed in this country, and that makes me makes me angry. It started on Thanksgiving Day in 2019, I had just finished dinner with my family. We’re early eaters, so it was only about four in the afternoon. My grandmother didn’t come to that dinner, opting instead to stay home and let people from different branches of her family tree visit her over the course of the weekend
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Theocracy For The Lulz
Here I sit in a coffee shop in middle America. Around me are various groups of college kids, people clacking away on keyboards, people reading various books (not a copy of Infinite Jest anywhere to be seen), people engaged in conversation. It’s a chill scene. If it wasn’t for the sleep deprivation hangover I’m suffering through at the moment, this would be perfect. Almost. Parked on the side street, among the compact cars and SUVs sporting bumper stickers proclaiming the virtues of Salt Life (which I 99% of the time still confusingly read as “Slut Life” – it’s a bad
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They Eat People In Illinois
One of the side effects of being a stand up comedian in St. Louis is that you get familiar with the drive between St. Louis and Chicago very quickly. And while this drive is only 4-5 hours depending on how you do it, it can be as tedious as a drive across Kansas between Missouri and Colorado (if you know, you know). It’s a lot of highway, a lot of farmland, broken up by the occasional lake or factory. And a lot of small towns. Small towns freak me out a little. Not for any rational reason. As a white
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The Uvalde Conspiracy : Follow the money
File this under “FOLLOW THE MONEY!” That’s what I was asked to do. Not by an employer, or a professor, or even by the drunk guy sitting on the bench at the bus stop in front of the coffeehouse I’m typing this from (He’s yelling something about the Illuminati.). I was told to FOLLOW THE MONEY by the modern oracle that has risen up in the place of gods and prophets, the authority held above all others. I was told to FOLLOW THE MONEY by Facebook (Meta?) post that’s been cut and pasted no less than 20 times in my
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STFU
Any time someone speaks unreasonably loud indoors, I spend way too much time trying to figure out if they’re hard of hearing or just incredibly narcissistic. My vote is usually narcissim. How self-important do you have to be to think you better make sure every word you say is more important than every other sound in a place? Then to speak at that volumen, not caring if anyone in the place would like to not hear a single thing that comes out of your mouth. It’s a fucked up mentality. In some peoplle it’s forgivable. Teenagers for example. I don’t
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Politics Are Already A Joke
I don’t talk about politics much on stage. But it’s not because I’m shy about what I believe. The NyCYRan CreeD (That’s A History/Theology Pun) As the five people who follow me on Twitter can attest, I’m pretty open about my political views. I think, as a party, Republicans have become the enemy of progress. As a party, Democrats are disappointingly timid in their goals. As a a group, progressives (the group I lean most towards) have perfected the circular firing squad and have no idea how to make gains in a political machine. As a cult, Trump voters are
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The Oldest Child
This spring, I’m recording an hour of comedy. So, I’m working on that hour a little bit every time I’m on stage. The goal is to have a fully formed outline for the material by the end of this month. A few years back, I worked with Christopher Titus for a weekend, and he was just at the early stages of writing that year’s hour of material. Titus is one of my comedy favorites. His hours work as both stand-up, and a one man show you’d see in a theater. Watching him work the material that weekend, scripting out each
