Vacations, Sunburns and Cancer

I had this grand idea in my head of this fun story about how I got my sunburn. Then I go to make a post and I get sidetracked by facebook and porn. So now obviously I’ve lost my train of thought.

I guess I’ll start this with the obvious. I’m white (you may be some random spam bot reading this. I don’t know if you even know me.) I live in Seattle, and I don’t see the sun a lot. On top of that. I’m a comedian. I don’t get outside a lot. *annoying “ask the same stupid questions” person voice* “Oh but you only work an hour a day.” “Noo. That’s the headliner. I only work a half hour a day. Dipshit.” ZING. Seriously though. If I had known how much work was involved, I would have never started this career choice. Booking, writing, crying, masturbating, crying again. I do a lot of things during the day when I’m not working. I have these goals I want to meet, it sounds crazy but I have this master plan in my head. It’s right there. My brain is ahead of my own brain. I have these ideas that I know I need to write about and I have different things I know I need to do, but I can’t figure them out yet or make them make sense to other people. Like this blog post for instance. Anyway. I do a lot of work. but I “GET” to travel a lot. We’ll come back to this idea. It’s very hard to get a lot of work done on the road. I’m driving 8 hours a day. I’m staying in a hotel with a crappy internet connection. A lot of my work is networking. Facebook is helpful. Emailing people. Staring at my schedule trying to envision what I can do to keep it going or fill the holes. Imagine trying to get work done at whatever your job is with no internet. Actually, most of you might actually get some shit done. That’s besides the point.

So when I travel it’s not exactly amazing exotic resorts. You’re staying in these crappy hotels. You only work 3 days a week, so sometimes you have to debate, should I grab a hotel or drive back home and then drive back down here? Finally my big breakthrough happened the other day with a show a friend set me up with. A new club opening in Reno hired me for a weekend. Reno can at least be considered a cool place. Even though when you get there. It’s really shitty. Reno used to be THE place for Pacific Northwest people to gamble. Now there’s a fancy indian casino every 30 miles. but you can at least be like, yeah, I went to Reno. It sounds cooler than “Im big in Portland. A massive blast email based comedy booking agency blasted a one nighter around the same time I was in Reno for a show right next to vegas. So I said why the hell not. I took that show. Spent a few days in the vegas area. Went to Reno. It was a fun time. It was kind of a cool feeling. Hanging out in “cool” towns. 4 days later I had a show in Central Oregon. I could either drive home or stick around vegas/Reno/lake tahoe. I’d never been to lake tahoe. Id had a stressful run. I could use some beach time. Growing up in a well off family, I’d done many a trip to hawaii, aruba, Jamaica,  etc. I’d been on a beach before. Thankfully. And as a young arrogant kid. I’ve had many battles with mother nature thinking I was too good for sunscreen. I’d lost a majority of those battles.

As a 26 year old. Somewhat mature (I’d like to think so), self employed stand up comedian. Part of my job is presentation. I have a general responsibility to not dress like a moron until I can afford to tell other people to go fuck themselves, because I’m going to dress like I want to. Also known as “Fuck you money”. Plus since I started as a comic. I’ve sort of not stopped. I went on a family vacation about 2 years ago. but I was still open mic’ing. and it was christmas. Not missing a lot. I also did a thanksgiving trip to vegas that year with my family, but that was like 2 days but beside that, I’ve been working really hard. Since I’ve started featuring I haven’t really taken any time off. Yeah as comedians we “get” to travel. but let’s face it. Our job is to make people laugh and be happy. You don’t need that in cool towns. You get that in Vegas but that’s because it’s mostly huge celebrities not random schmucks trying to get midwest feature money. It’s different. Seattle, Portland. Shitty weather. Great comedy towns. Because there’s always a crowd. People want to laugh. It’s depressing to live there. Minneapolis. All over the midwest. Tons of comedy. These are the places you’re traveling a lot. At my level it’s not Phoenix (working on it though), Miami, or anything cool. It’s Medford, Oregon. Which, by the way. 300 rooms Best Western, Really? How many people actually want to stay the night in Medford? Just a thought. Where else have I been lately? Boise, Idaho. Kennewick, Yakima. Booyah baby!

See what I mean? So I had an opportunity to hang out in one of the coolest vacation spots ever. Lake Tahoe. Which is an hour away fom Reno. I can find a cheap hotel for 30 bucks a night. Gamble a little bit. Hit the beach. Boom. Instead of driving home and then back to oregon and then back home. Boom. Had to be done. So day 1 pretty uneventful. Won a little bit on Roulette which is my new gambling addiction. Hit the beach. Had a good idea to not stay out much or get crazy burnt. Left without even a tingle. Thought to myself. Hey I’m not even slightly tanned. Maybe I don’t give myself enough credit. My skin’s not a sissy. Day 2 I went out but this time I went out at like noon. Prime time. I only stayed for like an hour because a family with like 30 kids came and plopped down on my nice quiet spot.I got hit with a frisbee a few times. “I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it at that point. I went and grabbed lunch. Thought to myself. I’m still not even slightly tanning. I should go back out. Went back out. This time to a different beach. A much nicer one. Less crowded. Better view. Better sand. I lay down my towel. roll around for a little. Now here’s a story. If you’ve never stayed in a $30 a night motel. Not exactly the best. Cigeratte burns on the sheets. In a non smoking room. Fascinating, right? Matress isn’t that awesome. Not that I’m picky. but a little comfort is always nice. I could have just stayed in my car. Light switches control the power outlets. Charge your phone? or sleep with the lights off? Can’t have both! So I’m laying down on the beach. I passed out.

Now I probably got lucky. I was only “out” for maybe 45 minutes. As I was buying sunburn lotion in the supermarket the “dude” at the cash register shared the story of him falling asleep for 3 hours. but if you take into account how I layed down earlier in the day and the time it took me to actually fall asleep and then waking up and realizing I had been asleep. Not good. I rolled over onto my back and thought well. I better get some color on my stomach. The weirdest thing about a sunburn. It’s a slow process. You don’t know until it’s too late. I stayed on my back for about 10 or 15 minutes before I start to feel my back stizzle. I know this isn’t good. My stomach isn’t feeling great. I’m wondering if I pushed it a little far. I get to the car. I go to the hotel. I’m realizing. This is bad. Now. My back got the worst of it. because I fell asleep on my stomach. but somewhere in my twisted mind. I was like I don’t wanna be the guy with a fucked up back and not the stomach. So I guess I torched myself a little on purpose on the stomach. Just so I wouldn’t look odd. When you haven’t had one in a while. You may forget. A sunburn is horrible. You can’t sleep on it. You can’t move. You can’t do anything. Plus I know it’s not good for your skin. Right? They talk about all the skin cancers you can get from the sun. My back hurts so bad right now. I feel like I have sun poisoning. My body is radiating heat. I have no scientific knowledge of it whatsoever. I just know I have a crazy imagination. I like to imagine my body is a leaking nuclear plant right now. It took on way too much power. It’s got to get rid of the heat. I feel like I’ve got enough stored up. I could melt the polar ice caps by taking my shirt off. My sunburn has turned my back into Cyclops’ Eyes. My shirt is the special glasses. lol. That’s a random reference. I couldn’t imagine passing out for more time. Like the kid at the market said he was out 3 or 4 hours. At that point, it’s like you don’t even get a sunburn. You skip sunburn and get cancer immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to cancer.

Anyway. That’s my sob story. I know I haven’t written a lot but it’s hard for me to write constantly being on the road. Because my brain is still stuck on these old ideas. I have lots of stuff on my to work out list. but I usually get lots of stage time to open mic it during the week. but when I’m gone and don’t have open mics. I don’t get to work out the new material. You don’t know if you wanna throw any of the food in the fridge away yet. So you can’t really add anything new to the fridge, unless you empty it out. I don’t know. It’s weird and probably just an excuse. So I have all these ideas still floating in my head. I have no idea what they’re worth. So I’m still focused on those and observing a little bit. Plus working on that big rap music exploration bit I just posted took up some time. Now I feel like I’m turning a two line story and a few jokes into a huge blog post to make up for it. OVERCOMPENSATION ANYBODY? It’s because I have a very tiny cock. Alright. Goodnight.