40-40

Broke rich people have got to be some of the biggest dummies in the whole world. I caught a documentary on A&E about Jose Canseco trying to quit steroids. He talked about how he can't find a job and is nearing bankruptcy. Then it cut to him walking around the outside of his chained up, foreclosed mansion. Then, later on, we find out that he managed to scrape up enough money to put a year's worth of rent down on a new place. And guess what? It was another mansion! Jose, all that juice has shriveled your brain in addition to your nuts! Get a bachelor pad, sell your fleet of motorcycles, eat some packed lunches and then you can cancel your boxing match with Danny Bonaduce. Trust me, I'm check to check and have never had to box anybody.

Just going by what I’ve learned of these men from reality shows, this is my impression of them right before the fight:

Jose Canseco: Aw gee whiz, I wish I had bigger muscles and could still play baseball.

Danny Bonaduce: Arrgh, I finally get to box Jose Canseco!!

Slo Poke

When I was a little kid I hoped that I would grow up to be short so I could just put on a mask and continue trick or treating into adulthood. I also recall wanting big sideburns and a house that was connected to the garage so I could go straight from the house to my car and then drive away just like Batman did. Basically, I guess I was hoping to wind up the neighborhood weirdo.

But now I’m 6’2’’ and living in an apartment with no garage, car, candy or sideburns. I haven’t even seen the new Batman movie. Quite a fall from grace!

Anyway, Happy Halloween!

Who is the real spaghetti and meatballs?

The cafeteria at my work is holding a pretty important election of its own. What should I want to eat for lunch on Wednesday November 5th? Here are my choices:

Spaghetti and Meatballs
Chicken Parmesan
Traditional Meatloaf

Hmmm, I think I'll probably vote forrrrr spaghett--oh no, some guy just tackled me and carved a chicken parmesan into my face! Meatloaf without preconditions! George Bush! Political comedy!

IT WILL BE SO STRONG

Hot dog, it looks like they released some more Kwame Kilpatrick text messages! The gift that keeps on giving:

Kwame Kilpatrick: John Kerry dissed me. I'm trippin!

That has some very strong catchphrase potential. I wonder if he dissed you because your wife beat up a stripper in your mansion, you covered it up, then she got murdered in a drive-by shooting and you fired most of the people who tried to investiagte you and now the stripper's family is suing the city for $150 million. Maybe that's it! Letting this guy be the mayor of Detroit for six years was worse than the Tigers trading for Juan Gonzales.

The court filing with the messages has been released as a 349 page PDF, and yes, I was bored enough to give it the once over. Um, here's one that probably won't make it into the paper:

Christine Beatty:I really wanted to give you some good head this morning and I didn’t know how to ask you to let me do it. I have wanted to since Friday night when you asked me at the club

Kilpatrick: Damn. I just got out the shower and looked at my 2way. NEXT TIME, JUST TELL ME TO SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, and DO YOUR THING! I’m fucked up now!

Oh man, I think they might go "all the way"! There are plenty more that are even funnier and grosser than that, but I’ll refrain from posting them here (cough, pages 43-46, cough, stay away from page 153, cough).

This one’s only funny when you, as I've touched on before, read it thinking about how these are two people in charge of running a whole city with over 900,000 residents:

KK: EVERYTHING IS COOL. DID YOU GET BUSTED? YOU WERE KIND OF WET LAST NIGHT, INSIDE AND OUT. LOL

CB: OH, YOU GOT JOKES? ACTUALLY I DID GET BUSTED. WHICH IS WHY I WAS CHECKING IN WITH YOU. I WANTED TO SEE IF YOU HAD ROOM ON LESLIE WITH ME! LOL

KK: LOL LOL LOL! NOT ON LESLIE, BUT ANYWHERE ELSE YOU WANT TO STAY. LOL

CB: LOL LOL! DANG, YOU WOULDN’T TAKE ME INTO YOUR HOME? YOU TOLD ME THE OTHER DAY THAT YOU WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR ME. WHAT HAPPENED? LOL.

KK: LOL LOL LOL! NOT THE FAMOUS FLIP AGAIN…

Mr. Mayor, we might have to close 100 schools and over one third of the city lives below the poverty line! What should we do?? LOL LOL LOL! I’m fucked up now!

One more. And if I ever get married, these will definitely be my wedding vows:

KK: You and I - Jodeci. That's my cut. You and me, me and you. We can make love all night long. IT WILL BE SO STRONG BABY. IT WILL BE SO STRONG. I just want to say how I feel about you, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!

Anyway, maybe for your next job leave Mayor off your resume and just hope they don't Google you. See ya, fartface!

Shuffle Up and Update This Blog!

Well, my posting on here has been nothing if not inconsistent. It's not that I don't get ideas or have exciting things happen to me. No, that’s not it at all! It's just that sometimes I'll sit down at a computer and wonder if the world is ready to know about how I, for example, came upon a Burger King in Hartford, CT that still serves Rodeo Cheeseburgers and I ate two of them. Maybe, I'll think, this would be better suited for something like a one man show or The Great American Novel.

So you can see my predicament. And now here you are, over a month with no news from the front. My deepest apologies!

So far, only one funny thing has happened to me today. I was walking up out of the subway this morning when I heard a guy yell this:

“Women in charge is a lesbian lie! Women…in charge…is a lesbian…LIE!”

I laughed, turned to spot the guy and almost fell down the escalator but caught hold of the handrail at the last second. Then people started laughing at me instead. You crazy guys yelling gibberish are fixing for a feud!

Angel's Night

A couple months ago, Danny Solomon approached me with an idea for a show. He wanted to fan the flames of hometown pride and have a tournament of comedians grouped into teams based on where they are from. I thought, "That's not a bad idea, but it will probably never happen because Danny Solomon is from Kansas City and people from Kansas City are well known to be lazy and unable to complete even the simplest of tasks without handouts from the government." Then I went to go talk to someone from the Metro Detroit area so I could feel like a real American again.

But, lo and behold, he pulled it off!

Tonight at The Pit
The 1st Annual All-Cities Comedy Tournament
Team New Jersey vs Team Detroit
Hosted by Danny Solomon and David Cope
9:30 PM
$8

Buy tickets here.

Here are the lineups:

Team Detroit
Jesse Popp
Brent Sullivan
Jiwon Li

Team New Jersey
Nick Maritato
Sean O'Connor
Julian McCullough

And just to get you up to speed on this match up, let's take a completely objective look at the tale of the tape.

Industry
Detroit: The Automobile
New Jersey: Manhattan's garbage

EDGE: Detroit

Sports
Detroit: Joe Louis, Tigers, Pistons, Red Wings, Lions
New Jersey: Two football teams that tell everybody they're from New York, a basketball team that's moving to Brooklyn, and a hockey team named after Satan.

EDGE: Detroit

Music
Detroit: Motown, Bill Haley, The Stooges, MC5, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, Glenn Frey from THE EAGLES, Sonny Bono, Madonna, The White Stripes, should I keep going or are you ready to call Uncle…Kracker!
New Jersey: Bon Jovi

EDGE: Detroit

Organized Crime
Detroit: The Purple Gang, The Chambers Brothers
New Jersey: The Sopranos on A&E without the swears

EDGE: Detroit

Weird Laws
Detroit: You can do whatever you want.
New Jersey: You can't pump your own gas.

Edge: Detroit

Incongruous Nickname
Detroit: The Paris of the West
New Jersey: The Garden State

EDGE: Detroit

Recent Political Scandal
Detroit: The mayor had a girlfriend
New Jersey: The governor had a boyfriend.

EDGE: Push

Whoa, Detroit in a landslide!

Provided we win, here are the other places that I am fully prepared to pretend that I hate at upcoming shows:

Chicago
Lake Michigan? Michigan Avenue? I think it's pretty clear where you wish you were from in your dreams!

New Orleans
French Quarter? Detroit = 100% USA!

Providence
Hey, look at me! I went to Brown University where nobody gets grades because I'm a big hippy nerd!

New York
People from New York say waiting on line rather than waiting in line and actually do neither. For that, three of their citizens must be defeated in a stand-up comedy competition!

Boston
A very racist place, whereas Detroit has no history of any racial tension whatsoever.

Atlanta
Not sure what to say here since I've never even been to Atlanta before. Boo hoo, I better go kill myself!

Good luck, everybody!

Next Stop: Right Now

Sometimes people skulk around the subway turnstiles and then ask people for a swipe of their Metro Card. A woman was doing this on my way to work the other morning. I didn’t realize that my card had expired until I swiped it and the screen said INSUFFICIENT FARE. So I walked over to the machine to get a new card, but the woman mistook my walking away as me swiping my card for her. She said, “Ohhhh, thank you so much!” and barreled right into the still locked turnstile before I could say anything.

We’ll file that story under You Had to Be There Physical Comedy.

Anyway, if you happen to be in or around Cambridge, MA next Tuesday, you should come to the Lizard Lounge. I’ll be doing stand-up at my friend Neil Cleary’s show called Neil Cleary’s Doozy. Says this mention:

Boston roots rocker Neil Cleary says he wants Doozy, his Tuesday night residency
running through August at the Lizard Lounge, to feel like a cross between the
classic rock documentary "The Last Waltz" and "The Muppet Show." And if anyone
can pull off that balance, Cleary would be a good candidate. He has a knack for
writing infectious pop rock tunes undercut with sarcasm and self-deprecation
(think Matthew Sweet or Aimee Mann). The residency will feature comedians (Jesse
Popp), musicians (Boston's David Champagne), funny musicians (James Kochalka
Superstar), and musical comedians (MC Mr. Napkins).

21+. 8:30 p.m. $5.
The Lizard Lounge, 1667 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. 617-547-0759.

Looking at the flyer, the other performers on my night are:

James Kochalka Superstar
David Kamm
MC Mr. Napkins
The Artificial Hearts

Come on down!

Also, come to Beauty Bar on Sunday!

Do so many things!

Spain So Solly!

As most of you probably know, the Summer Olympics are currently taking place in China. So, obviously, the Spanish basketball team posed for this photograph:



Not Pictured: Shooting Guard Mickey Rooney



Take a lap, Spain!

Late to the Party

I came home last night and saw that somebody had gone to work on the door to my apartment building. Broke through the first pane of glass, tried to pry open the lock. Hasn’t this person heard about gentrification? You should be doodling in a coffee shop, jerk face!

And where were the old drunk guys that play dominoes outside almost 24 hours a day when all this happened? Their surveillance skills may be slipping seeing as how I’ve walked past them at least 900 times and the other day I came home and one of them said, “Welcome to the neighborhood!”

If you ask me, I think the landlord tried to steal the building for the insurance money, but then realized it wouldn’t fit in his van. At the very least, I put the over/under on him fixing the door at 4.5 months. Place your bets!

To be honest, though, I’m not even sure where I live. When I first moved in the broker said it was Williamsburg. Then someone asked me where I lived, I said Williamsburg, they asked me my cross streets, I told them and they said, “Nice try, that’s Bushwick.” So then I started saying Bushwick but someone pulled the same routine and said, “Sorry, that’s Williamsburg.” So now whenever someone asks me where I live I just throw a bunch of Neutral Milk Hotel CDs into the air and run out of the room. The perfect diversion!

Painting the Town Famous

Growing up in Michigan I never got to see very many celebrities. The truth is it's mostly people from "The Midwest". Sure, one time I saw Chris Hansen at the hardware store, but that was back when he was still a local reporter on the make and online predators were just a glimmer in his eye.

But here in New York almost every time you turn around it's Wowee! and Holy Smokes! Lookee who it is! Here are some of the celebrities I've seen and what exactly it was that I saw them doing.

Andre Dawson

Autographing a baseball for a youngster.

Wallace Shawn

Dropping something in the street and then picking it back up. Whoops!

The Guy from Ashford and Simpson

Wandering through Central Park alone, appearing to be strung out on pancake makeup.

Andy Rooney

Shuffling down the sidewalk at the rate of one half mile per hour. They should be called sideSHUFFLES, right Andy?

Michael Musto

Riding his bicycle in search of gossip.

Rihanna

I came upon a crowd of people causing a commotion on the sidewalk. A young woman I didn’t recognize was being lead into an SUV by a bunch of bodyguards. I asked some lady who it was and she said RIHANNA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so I guess that was her.

Adrien Brody

Walking with his arm around a girl. He must be beating them off with an Oscar!

Tim Robbins

Using an ATM. I tried to see what his balance was but I was all the way on the other side of the street!

RZA

I walked right past him and looked at him like “Whoa, it’s The RZA from Wu Tang Clan!” And then he looked at me like “Whoa, it’s Jesse Popp from the 2002 season of Comedy Central’s Premium Blend hosted by Wanda Sykes!” Then I went to go get a haircut.

Who do you think I'll see next??