A few things I’ve absorbed from MySpace:

The number of “Friends” in a MySpace profile is a direct correlation to the number of hours logged on to the internet and inversely related to that person’s actual social skill.

The beacon enlightens me how unproductive we humans have become.

When my beacon is on, I feel like Frodo Baggins when he slips on his ring and he becomes visible to the Nazgûl , Wraiths of the Shadow World.

MySpace creator Tom must get laid every day.

The saddest MySpace moment is having an actual physical friend not accept you as a MySpace friend and you receive the message, “You already have a pending friend request for this person.”

To add insult to injury, you see that the motherfucker is and logs in and out everyday.

Friendster is the equivalent of a pager.

I played basketball today and realized I was extremely hungry. I dipped into Gourmet Garage to buy something to eat. I didn’t know what I wanted, so I roamed aimlessly around until I found something.

Luckily, The cheese department had five platters of cheese cubes with a cup of toothpicks.

Famished, I plucked out a cube and bit it off the end of the toothpick. I sucked off the lingering smokey flavor that seemed infused into the wood. Still starving, I went to the next tray, then the next, then the next and finally hit the last tray and felt a pang of guilt for eating so much cheese for free. Then out of nowhere, some Botoxed Upper Eastsider bitch felt she needed to teach me some manners.

Another woman pushed her cart directly in between the Upper Eastsider Bitch and me. She was shocked by my expletive statement. I told her the dialogue I had exchanged with the crazy lady. Fortunately, she agreed with me (but I suspect she wanted an easy out of the situation) Then I proceeded to talk to each person and stated my case. Oddly, everyone agreed with me. I realize now that I probably scared everyone I encountered.

The paradox of calling someone a “fucking lunatic” to everyone who walks by because that particular person didn’t like how you ate cheese makes you look like a “fucking lunatic”.

There are only a 1,000 comedians living in NYC out of the 8 million people in the five boroughs. That means we each get 8,000 a piece. Personally, I only want 1,000 True Fans.

Why only 1,000? Here’s a quote from Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired,

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

I highly recommend everyone produce a monthly show instead of a weekly or bi-monthly/bi-weekly (what do they even mean?).

Pick a specific day of the week and time (ie…Third Thursday @ 8pm) and stick with it.

Define a hook and/or theme for the show and then name the show. (Great examples…The Liar Show, Stripped Stories, Dream Role, The Rejection Show, Moonwork’s Evenings of Original Works, etc…). For SACAPUNTAS!, we invite one comedian, one storyteller, one TV writer and one celebrity guest.

Find a venue that is receptive to your idea. If this is your first show and you are unsure of how many people you can draw, find a place that looks packed with 30 people. I find the best deal is when the owner of the venue agrees to give you the door and has a bar minimum that your are required to meet. If that requirement isn’t met, you owe the difference.

Book your acts. Honestly, living in NYC this is the easiest part. We are surrounded by incredibly talented performers. For the longevity of the show and your sanity, it would be wise to find a non-performing person to assist you in booking and promote the show (social media, mailing list and emailing the press). Three shows that have an unseen brain child behind it are: Whiplash, Tell Your Friends and Comedy Below Canal.

Obtain and learn Photoshop

If you feel confident, then design a logo and poster. If not, hire a designer. Obviously, I’m partial to my SuperMango Media designers. Email me and I can connect you to the perfect fit for your show.

Design and print postcards branded with the logo and broadcast the aforementioned “Second Thursday @ 8PM)

If you are going to print postcards (optional), I would suggest: 4over4.com

Create a website utilizing WordPress. If you don’t have a host company, I suggest BlueHost. They have one click WordPress installs with SimpleScript. Hands down the best theme to use is Chris Pearson’s premium theme Thesis. If it’s too overwhelming, hire someone.

Create a Facebook Group and/or Page
Here’s a video tutorial

Hire a photographer or ask a friend of the show with a kick ass camera to come to every show. Be sure to upload the photos into your Facebook Group/Page.

Create a mailing list and open an account with MailChimp. Be selective on who you put on the list. Be considerate and allow people to unsubscribe. Don’t judge. There are only a 1,000 of us but that’s a lot of newsletters flooding our inboxes.

Charge a cover charge. $5-$15 (Obviously more for a non-profit). Create and account on: EventBrite. Create an event with an online discount code to encourage people to pre-pay. Research affiliate codes as well. Be sure to compensate the performers for their time and talent.

Research Facebook advertising (you may want to spend $1/day). Learn the difference between CPC and CPI

Write a catchy little blurb (less is more)

Send out your blurb to various blogs and publications:
AM NY, Metro, L Magazine, TimeOut NY, etc…

It generally takes about 4-6 hours. If it seems too daunting, I have a wonderful person that will send it out to 30+ sites and publications for $125.

SUPPLIES:

Promise your mailing list that you will only send two emails (3 weeks out and 1 day before). Be sure to stick to that rule. Your goal should be to only send out one email or in a Utopian world…none.

Your role as the producer is to build trust between your audience and your show. You have to consistently provide a funny show that is different every single time they attend. At the same time, you have to build trust between the performers and your show. They need to know that every time they perform on your show it’s going to be fun and productive. I’m “stealing” that idea from a podcast interview my friend Jon Fisch and I had with the The Comedy Studio owner/booker in Cambridge. For a show to last, you need to create a show that draws people to it because of you and your hook not because of the performers you have on the show.

On that note, “stealing” reminds me of this Jim Jarmusch quote:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) with be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable: originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case remember Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from-it’s where you take them to.

As always, be nice, be funny and be everywhere. ^TM

Raised as fat, capitalistic pigs with intrinsic senses of entitlement, we forget that our problems are insignificant when compared to other citizens of this planet.

I was at LaGuardia Airport last week during the blackout and overheard a hysterical woman speaking to a reporter amongst crying babies and other stranded passengers tearfully cry out, “It’s like a Third World nation!”

Really?

A Third World nation.

Like Darfur? That kind of Third World nation?

Hmmm…funny I didn’t realize that LaGuardia was that bad off. I was under the impression that once the power came back on, everyone would be able to fly down to see Mickey Mouse in an air conditioned airplane. That doesn’t sound so horrible.

Recently, I was walking home late at night and heard a couple fighting. The man was enraged and was screaming, “I can’t believe you slept with him!”

In their world, her act of infidelity created a nuclear holocaust. I wanted to empathize with the husband but in relation to the grand scale of the universe—Who cares if she slept with another man? So her molecules interacted with another set of molecules instead of his molecules. So what.

I looked up at the sky and looked at the stars. Since I live in Queens, I couldn’t see that many because of the city lights. I reached into my head and remembered how many stars I use to see at night when I grew up in Texas. It seemed like a million holes of light seeping through but in reality a human can only view about 6,000 stars with the naked eye under perfect conditions.

We are but a speck of dust in the outer fringes of the Milky Way Galaxy that is but a grain of sand in the observable Universe.

Sagan claimed that there are billions of billions of stars in our Universe. Each star possibly sustaining several planets, one of which that may contain life. Our world has six billion human beings. So feasibly, each star could create six billion intelligent creatures.

With that said, will the Universe suffer if one individual cheats on another individual? I imagined another couple on the opposite end of the Universe.

(Sirens are screaming at ear-piercing level. People are stampeding by with no sense of direction. A digital marquee sign showing the temperature at 145 degrees.)

MAN:
I can’t believe you slept with him?

WOMAN:
Are you kidding me?

MAN:
What you mean?

WOMAN:
The Sun is about to explode and you are going to bring that up AGAIN??

MAN:
Yeah, I’m going to bring it up.I don’t give a damn if the Sun is going to blow up.

WOMAN:
You are pathetic! It was two years ago. When are you going to stop punishing me? We are going to die! He’s going to die!

MAN:
Was he bigger than me?

WOMAN:
You’re an idiot! We are going to die! He’s going to die! Who cares if he was bigger!

MAN:
HA! So he was bigger, I knew you it! You are such a slu…
(Sun explodes.)

There is a fairly new (two year old) monorail from Manhattan to JFK called the AirTrain®. Which is great because it cuts the commute time in half.



“Monorail, Monorail,Monorail, Monorail…Can you hear it, Manhattan?!”

Unfortunately, not enough people even know about it. So the Port Authority of NY&NJ have been plastering billboards everywhere. They reads: “AirTrain®. If it was any faster it would be an AirPlane®.”

Personally, I found the advertisement insulting to my intelligence. Which is sad because I’m not that intelligent. Although, I occasionally can fool people into thinking that I am. By American standards, I’m above average, but most Americans are borderline retarded. So that makes me average.

“If it was any faster it would be an AirPlane®.”

No, it wouldn’t. I don’t care if it traveled at the speed of light, it would never transform into an aircraft. The only way that could happen is if the mayor made a deal with the Transformers© to fight terrorists in the guise of mass transit. If this is true, this would extremely inconvenient for travellers.

MoMA offers a free audio tour to “help” visitors understand what the artist is trying to express.

While helpful with some, you end up looking like a jackass to those brave souls who ventured forth sans audio guidance as you stare at an untitled canvas painted blue by Yves Klein for five minutes listening to a montage of monologues composed by various “experts”.

“Monochrome abstraction—the use of one color over an entire canvas—has been a strategy adopted by many painters wishing to challenge our expectations of what an image can and should represent. Klein likened monochrome painting to an “open window to freedom.” He worked with a chemist to develop his own particular brand of blue. Made from pure color pigment and a binding medium, he called it “International Klein Blue.” Klein adopted this hue as a means of evoking the immateriality and boundlessness that reflected his own peculiar utopian vision of the world.”

Yves Klein, Untitled blue monochrome, 1959.

I enjoy following kids and listening to their reactions to each piece they encounter. It’s in the same spirit of speed dating, they either “love it” or “hate it”. You will either hear, “Oooh…that’s cool!” or “Eeew…that’s crap!” What’s hilarious is that they are usually dead-on while being extremely economical with their word choice.

One room was entirely empty and the halogen lights overhead flickered on and off every ten seconds. Everyone stopped and soaked in the creativity. One couple had found a crumbled scrap of paper and were trying to decipher it’s meaning in the context of the barren room with faulty lighting. As I approached them, they realized it was just a piece of trash some inconsiderate visitor had dropped. They quickly vacated the room to avoid eye contact with me, knowing I knew they had just applied their art history knowledge to garbage.

I was tempted to stick my gum on the wall and attach the wrapper to it and wait for someone to unravel the meaning behind it.

I wouldn’t be shocked if I walked into an installation displaying a diorama of a middle-aged couple’s bedroom with two live models in coital activity with a group of tourist surrounding them holding their trusty audio guide to their ear.

It was horrible what happened nine years ago on 9-11. People lost their lives and will always be remembered.

But what about me, I still exist. Somehow through this tragic event, I have been deleted from everyone’s mind. Erased. Eradicated. Brainwashed out of Man’s hard drive.

Nine, eleven…nine, eleven…nine, eleven

Anything missing?

What happened to “ten”!

I use to be a “somebody”. The world revolved around me.

The Ten Commandments, “She’s a perfect ten”, “Hang ten”, “ten little indians”…for Christ’s sake the majority of Earth’s civilizations use a base-10 numbering system.

Now I feel invisible. A shadow. I know what Ashlee Simpson feels like at Thanksgiving, or Tito at Christmas. What have I done to deserve this? Am I not easily divisible? Do I not make multiplying a simple task? What the fuck more do you want from me?

I could understand if I was irrational or a transcendental number. They’re enigmas.

Who knows their purpose? I don’t.

I ran with that pack in college.

π, Φ the Golden Ratio, e the base of the Natural Log…they were all deadbeats out of they’re minds.

Ï€ was always tripping on acid and trying to convince me he was from outer space and that he helped everyone from the Egyptians build the pyramids to the Mayan temples. Give me a break.

The Golden Ratio was under the impression that he was the divine Renaissance number created by God himself. Φ was one self-righteous, ecclesiastical mother fucker.

The base of the Natural Log e seemed normal, until you started to talk about money. Compound this, compound that…he would get this diabolical look in his eye when you mentioned interest rates. He’d sell his mother’s lung if he could profit from it.

I’m a rational number. A whole number.

God damn you all!

It’s nine,

eleven!

This “morning” , I ordered my usual breakfast at Hebrew National Deli. Two eggs sunny-side up, home-fried potatoes, whole wheat toast, and a small coffee.

I say “morning” because it was around 11:30AM which technically is before noon but it shouldn’t be considered morning.

When my meal appeared, I was appalled at what I saw.

It was 75% correct.

No home-fried potatoes were available, so they had substituted french fries instead without informing me.

Are they out of their fucking mind?

Who eats french fries with their eggs?!

I only eat cube-shaped potatoes for breakfast,

elongated rectangular prism-shaped potatoes at lunch,

and ellipsoidal-shaped potatoes at dinner.

Cylindrical-shaped potatoes are special because they can be served at lunch OR dinner.

Idiots!

Its extremely important to know what geometric shape you are allowed to eat depending on the position of the Sun.

Humans would die without Oxygen.

Our brains would cease to operate if we stopped breathing it, our bodies would be devoured by skin cancer if the ozone layer (O3) dissipated , and lets not forget that H2O is the elixir of life.

Now if you add one itty bitty oxygen molecule to dihydrogen monoxide (aka…Water) you have H2O2 which everyone knows as hydrogen peroxide.

Every household in America has a brown bottle full of this bacteria-fighting, bleaching water-like fluid in their medicine cabinet.

The pharmacies only peddle the commercial version in an extremely diluted form, only three percent of the bottle is actually hydrogen peroxide.

Little does the public know that this potent potion in its full industrial form is used as rocket fuel and causes cancer. In fact, the Russian submarine Kursk tragedy was caused by leakage of hydrogen peroxide.

I truly don’t understand chemistry.

Humans need water.

Humans need air.

Yet, in our universe :: Water + Air = Death?

Geeks will argue that “Air” is not entirely Oxygen. It is composed of 80% Nitrogen and 20% Oxygen.

That is true.

However, my nerdy little Avogrado-lovers…Pure Oxygen is extremely dangerous and flammable.

We have been abused by this manipulative molecule since The Big Bang.

He has broken our spirit. We fear his wrath, but are dependent upon him.

Oxygen is Ike and we are Tina. Fuck you, Oxygen!

I can’t wait until we evolve into another species.

I would rather breathe ammonia than live with this abusive bastard.

I want to talk about my love/hate relationship with my roommate. He’s a condescending douche bag. I mean that in the nicest possible way since we still live together but obviously our relationship doesn’t matter that much anymore because I’m telling this to the “The Internet”. Here’s the problem: He has an eating disorder that he will not accept. It’s not bulimia. It’s not anorexia. It’s orthorexia, which you’ve probably never heard of. Orthorexia means “the fixation of righteous eating”. Basically, he won’t put anything into his body unless it’s “pure”. Flax seed oil, fresh wheat grass, water buffalo yogurt, bee pollen, bee testicles…essentially whatever sounds weird.

Honestly, I couldn’t care less about what he puts in his mouth. What drives me insane is that he always gives me this “tsk tsk” look when I’m eating anything. I mean I could be eating a unicorn burger. And I know for a fact that he would say,
“Hmmpf…I only eat unicorns hand-fed by virgins. But you eat whatever you want. I’m sure isn’t that bad for you.”

Why would he say something like that? I’ll tell you. He’s a prick. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that by his request, we are not allowed to have petroleum-based cleaning products in our house. Which again is fine. I saw Inconvenient Truth. I get it. But sometimes I find that lavender-scented dish soap doesn’t really do the job.

So I have to hide a secret bottle of 409 under the sink to kill bacteria. I know I’m funding terrorism by buying petroleum-based product. Guilty. I’m part of the problem. I’m sorry, Planet Earth. But I would rather die in an airplane explosion caused by Al-Qaeda than puke to death from salmonella because I was dirty.

I remember one time I came home and I wanted to cook something. Fortunately, Captain Planet was meditating in his room probably to the sounds of whales masturbating or whatever he meditates to. Which was awesome because I was able to eat in peace. He finally came out right after I was done eating and had already cleaned up. He beelined to the oven, sniffed the air, then he made “the face” and said,
“Did you clean something here?”

Here we go but this time I was ready.

“Yeah! It was a salmon burger but don’t worry it was wild caught salmon not farm-raised because we all know farm raised salmon is high in PCB. Is that acceptable?”

I thought that would wipe the smug look off his face but what he said next floored me,
“Oh, I wasn’t worried about what you ate. I was more worried about what you used to clean the counters with. It smells like petroleum-based products?”
“Ri-ight, I decided to risk it and use something a little stronger than orange peels and almond-flavored water.”
“Why? The stuff works.”
“How can something that says ‘Non-Toxic’ kill bacteria. You need toxins to kill! I could drink this and nothing would happen to me.”
“I wouldn’t drink it.”
“Really? I would.”

Then I did the bravest or dumbest thing in my life. I sprayed some into my hand, looked him in the eye and drank it.
I didn’t die and forgot about it. But later that evening at my girlfriend’s apartment, I felt nauseous and had a painful headache . Unaware of my “brave” protest, she became concerned and asked if I could remember what I ate.

“Umm…let me see…I had some yogurt, granola and fruit for breakfast, then a salmon burger for lunch…and…umm…ahh…I drank some kitchen cleaner.”
“You’re an idiot.”

Here’s a little public service announcement from TaoOfDan.com:
If you have to drink kitchen cleaner to prove a point then you’re roommate might be a douche.