Blessings

I did stand-up last night.  It was the first time in a very long time.  It went alright.  I did not bomb but I did not exactly burn like the sun either.  It was good to get back on the horse and I learned a few things that will help next time.  Thanks to Billiam, KevBob and Doogles for getting me drunk enough to actually get up on stage.

It was not really my target audience.  They were young, coffee-shop hipsters who were there to read angry poems about the brutal angst that accompanies the mid-twenties.   Some of them actually told cancer jokes.  I am not joking-three of them did.  Now I can tell a cancer joke, the zipper on my head and the time on the table getting the naked gray baked earned me the right but the subject is off limits for twenty-four year old art students with no love handles or kids to get in the way of their deep emotional conflicts.  Oh well....the ambulance always comes for us or someone we love.  Learning to laugh and love after that moment is the true blessing. 

Mutual of Omaha is People...You can count on when the goins rough.......Gone Fishin...instead..of just... a wishin.....

Can anybody sing that with me?  It was the opening jingle of a television show called the Sportsman Friend that I watched with religious fervor when I was a kid.  It was hosted by a man called Harold Ensley who traveled the country fishing for every critter that swam.  I loved it.    When I opened the paper this morning, I discovered the sad news that Harold died this week.  He fished for 92 years and his TV show was on for 48.  This news brought to mind again something profoundly beautiful that I heard a long time ago.

We are all given two gifts.  Something that we are good at and something that we  love to do.  If we are truly blessed, those two things are the same.  I believe that Harold was given that blessing.

Love to all of you.  I hope each of you finds the things that you love.

If you would like to know more about Harold and the show....please follow this link:

http://www.sportsmansfriend.com/

jobey

Comments

[dug]

The sickly odd thing about all the cancer jokes was that the "comedians" who delivered them had absolutely no clue of the extent of their ass-hatness.

The singer/guitarist who preceded Joe sported the same permanent crescent-shaped part in his hair (the zipper) that Joe has, and for the same reason. (He could use some orange dye, though.) And of course, among the rest of the couple-dozen seemingly healthy denizens of the bar that night, there's no telling who else might have been a survivor.

Yet these aspiring "entertainers", having watched everything else in their "humor" arsenals fizzle and die in a puff of acrid smoke, whip out the one thing nobody with any sense of humanity could find funny. Truly bizarre.

Joe's my favorite storyteller, and delivered his "Mean Jean of the DMV" story brilliantly, I thought. An audience open to connecting with a strange experience rather than sneering at the world would have loved it. I can't wait to see how it plays for a less self-conciously hip crowd.

[Dear commandment cop]

I don't know what is more pathetic: some one who can't show their true identity when spewing negativity or some one who pretends to be liberal and openminded while spewing negativity. Need I remind you ALL that this website if for JOE to tell funny stories and share them with his friends and family. IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU, JACKASS. There is only one thing scarier than stupidity and that is pissing off a Johnson county stay-at-home mom. Trust me, I deal with toddlers all day. I know how to get around your inability to comprehend basic human concepts. I may not agree with my family all the time but they are MY FAMILY, NOT YOURS.

[Kev]

Jobie,
You sound like you're being too hard on yourself - it's been a decade or 2 since you did standup so of course you didn't kill. But you kept your composure better than anybody else, and more importantly, you kept the attention of the drunken dolts in the audience better than anybody else.

I know you well enough to say that I could tell you were a little nervous. Hell, who wouldn't be? Get on stage a few more times and get more comfortable and you'll find yourself becoming more animated and the audience will respond better so you'll get even more animated and funny...etc. It's a beautious comic/audience feedback loop you can ride 'till everybody thinks you're much funnier than you are, and you're pretty damn funny, so that's saying a lot.

Your set had a little bit of Bob Newhart's engaging conversational style and some of Lewis Black's spastic outrage. That sounds like it shouldn't work, but through the magic weirdness of Jobie, you pulled it off. Now cultivate it so you can get famous and hire me for your entourage of lackies and hangers-on.

By the way, do you remember seeing Bob Nelson, the comedian who came up with "dain bramage"? Here's his site: www.bobnelson.com

If we all get the afterlife we deserve, can you imagine the size of the fish Harold is pulling in right now?

[Mark]

"The Sportsmans Friend" is my very first TV memory. I sang the "Gone Fishin'" song the first time I read your post, (freaky) I was pleased as punch to read that you jumped up on stage again. I remember your open-mikes in Westport... something about football players and jumbo condoms... right? Keep it up, and may I suggest- "Joe B, the crazy, chemo-comic with the kooky coiff" You can thank me later.